~*Chapter Four*~
The evening was fairly uneventful, at least compared to some of our previous endeavours over the years. We enjoyed catching up, and of course, the chance to ridicule each other with stories of the past was too enticing. We had all grown and moved on from the dickheads we were in College. But despite the wives, the children, the jobs, we still managed to maintain our youth around the table. We had our fair share of laughs, and when the bartender told us it was last call, we were surprised. It was still early, but a Sunday night in a hotel lounge didn't exactly scream late night.
We had been expecting a riotous night out, but instead re-acquainted ourselves with one another, and it seemed right after all these years. There was talk of moving the party to a new bar, but eventually we decided on an early night to prepare ourselves for a late outing tomorrow. I wasn't disappointed in the way the evening turned out, none of us were. It was comforting to know we could all 'pick up' where we left off all those years ago.
As I said my goodbyes to the guys, with catcalls of 'pussy' for bailing early, I realized how much I missed this. How much I missed the idea of friendship, camaraderie and a sense of belonging. Back East, I didn't have any of this. I had my job, and I had my kids. I liked to think I had my wife, but that was debatable. I didn't belong anywhere or with anyone, I was an island unto myself.
A hand clamped down on my shoulder, and I jumped, swiftly coming out of my reverie. Jasper held up a bottle of whiskey that he had managed to swindle from the barkeep.
"Rooftop?" he said swinging it in front of my face. I could only nod my head in return for I didn't trust myself to speak.
We walked in silence to the elevator, our heavy footsteps echoing in the empty lobby. As we stepped into the elevator, I caught Jasper's eye in the mirror while he pressed the button for the top floor where the swimming pool and gym were located. I doubted it would be open, I doubted we could even get on to the patio, but Jasper always had a way to make things happen, so I trusted him.
He held my gaze, as he straightened up and it was me who had to look away first. That one look seemed to speak volumes, like he could read every thought I ever had. He could see right through my façade, he always could.
The elevator chimed and the doors opened. I could smell the chlorine of the pool and the air was humid, but warm. The hallway was dimly lit, obviously indicating this area was now closed, but Jasper stepped through the door, and walked to the end of the hallway. He pulled a keycard from his back pocket and swiped it over the grey security pad. The light switched from red to green and he grabbed the door turning back to give me a wide grin while he held it open for me.
My thoughts flashed to the night back at our apartment when I held the door for him. My breath hitched, just a little, while I walked through trying to push the memory from my head.
The pool was one of those that was half inside and half outside. It was surrounded by glass walls, and at the other end of the pool there was a break in the glass where one could dive beneath the water and end up on the other side in the fresh Chicago air, atop of the hotel.
The lights from the city seemed to be glowing behind the foggy glass windows, and it was all quite breathtaking really. I stood admiring the view, oblivious to where Jasper had gone. He had walked to the opposite end of the pool and was standing in front of another door that lead to the patio.
"Coming?" he said, a cigarette hanging from his lips.
"How did you get access to this?" I asked while I walked toward him with my hands in my pockets.
"Really?" He raised his hands in disbelief while he gave me a cheeky grin. "You have to ask that?"
It was true, Jasper could influence just about anyone to get his way. It didn't surprise me at all that he had a keycard to the rooftop patio of a prominent hotel in Chicago.
We stepped through the door and the crisp, windy city air was sobering. It wasn't too cold, warm enough to be able to sit here drinking whiskey at least. The dull sounds of the traffic could be heard below, and a plane was flying overhead, but it was as if we were in our own little world up here, and I guess we were.
A layer of mist was coming from the pool, as the warm water made contact with the cooler air giving the patio an eerie feeling. It had rained while we in the bar, and the smell was fresh and clean, a renewal of sorts. There were a few lounge chairs stacked up along the wall to avoid the rain, Jasper grabbed one and gestured for me to do the same. He placed it near the edge of the roof, beside a little table where he placed the bottle and his pack of cigarettes. He finally lit the one he had been dangling out of his mouth, took a big puff and exhaled while letting out a howl.
Turning up the collar on his shirt, he rubbed his arms, and his body did one giant shiver before he sat down.
"A little cold, but it'll do. Whiskey'll help," he said.
I was apprehensive to join him, feeling a little awkward. There were so many emotions running through me, it was terrifying. This day had been a rollercoaster of memories, and they had stirred feelings in me I had long since forgotten. Of course standing here, not moving, was only making the awkwardness worse.
Jasper let me have my moment, and continued to smoke his cigarette while he looked out over the city. What did I expect from him? What did he expect from me? Had I imagined that look back in the room, the bar... the elevator? Yes. I had. We were both married, and as far as I could tell, Jasper loved his wife and he was happy. But I was under no illusion that the setting of this place with the night air and the whiskey could quite possibly lead to a conversation I should be trying to avoid. Then again, maybe it was all in my head. It was me who was miserable, and maybe I was desperate for something... anything to just feel something again, no matter how wrong it was.
With a heavy sigh, I grabbed a chair and joined him, placing it on the other side of the table to give us some distance. Strangely enough, I hadn't felt the cold like he had. I was quite warm, my face and ears still burning red I was sure.
"Smoke?" he asked, offering me his pack.
"No, never took it up," I refused, holding up my hand. "I've forgotten how amazing Chicago is at night."
He nodded. "Better view than what we had at the old apartment, huh?"
Our old place didn't have a bad view, but the building was a small walk-up that didn't exactly have the height like this place. But it overlooked a park, and the green in the spring had always been a bit inspiring to me. I used to spend most of my afternoons up there with my guitar or some sheet music, Jasper did too.
"I don't know, I kinda liked the view," I answered honestly.
"You just liked it 'cause we took that fridge up there and it was always stocked with beer." He laughed, grabbing the whiskey bottle, and twisting the cap off of it. "It ain't beer, but I need something to warm me up." He took a swig and passed it back to me.
Again, my ears burned a little at the embarrassment I felt from his words. I tried my best to recover, grabbing the bottle and took a deep pull. The liquid burned the instant it hit my throat and I couldn't help but choke.
"Pussy," he said laughing.
"Fuck you."
"I see you're still the master of the lame comebacks." He tipped an imaginary hat at me, and I couldn't help but laugh.
We sat for awhile, passing the bottle back and forth, Jasper was on his third cigarette, and we still hadn't said anything significant to each other. Comfortable silence was such a luxury. It was something Jasper and I had always shared. The whiskey was doing the trick, keeping the chilly, windy air from seeping in, almost creating a glow from the inside out. Maybe it was the whiskey, or maybe it was the company, whichever it was, it was a welcome change.
"Do you want to talk about it?" he finally said, while putting the cigarette out in a small puddle of water that was next to his chair.
My eyes went wide, and I swallowed instinctively from the shock. I wasn't ready to talk about that yet, and started to fidget in my seat.
"Don't mean to pry into your life, just thought I'd ask," he said calmly, rubbing his hands back and forth on his thighs.
"What?" I asked, confused. My life?
"I may not see you every day, Edward," he said simply, "but I think I still know you enough to tell when something's wrong back home." He cleared his throat. "You want to talk about why you flinch whenever someone asks you about your home life?"
I should've known I wouldn't be able to hide anything from him. It was true, it may have been years, but it didn't really matter when it came to the two of us. Now, I just wondered if I should trouble him with my burdens. The last thing I wanted was for Jasper to feel sorry for me. I didn't want to ruin the night with bringing up my miseries, I had promised myself back in the hotel room that I wouldn't do it, but sitting here with him, none of that seemed to matter. Jasper would never judge me, and maybe I had wanted to tell him all along. Deep down I wanted him to know my pain, because he was the only person on this earth who could possibly understand.
"I love my kids," I blurted out without thinking. "I love them more than anything." His brows furrowed with the mention of my children, and for a moment I saw a ghost of pain slip across his face before he masked his expression once again.
"But..." he prompted.
"But... but that's it." I sighed, my heart heavy at the thought of telling him. "My wife hates me. She won't let me touch her, she won't let me comfort her... she barely even speaks to me." I leaned forward on my knees with my head down. "I love her. I do, but I don't have a clue how to get past this." I played with the wedding band on my finger, twisting it around and around. I started to laugh while I grabbed the bottle from the table. "You know," I said between chuckles, "I haven't had sex in over a fucking year!" I exclaimed, almost in hysterics. "Fifteen fucking months!" I took a long sip from the bottle, wiping my mouth with the sleeve of my shirt once I was done.
"The friends I have are all pricks who cheat on their wives regularly, and talk about nothing but their money, their cars or the money and cars they're going to have. They walk around in their designer suits with their Rolex watches, strutting like fucking peacocks, finger pointing, comparing their dicks and wishing they were Ari fucking Gold! It's all so fucking pointless, some days I imagine blowing all their fucking heads off with a fucking shotgun, then turning it back on me to put me out of my misery." I was breathing heavily, my chest panting up and down while I tried to get all the words out in one breath. It was such a relief to get it off my chest. For years it was just sitting there, like an inert bottle of soda, then someone came along, shook it up, and twisted the cap off.
I tried to get my breathing under control. Leaning forward, I put my head between my knees, hoping it would help, and it also meant I wouldn't have to look at Jasper, for fear he'd be thinking I'd finally lost it. I inhaled loudly, holding it in for a few seconds. My ears were buzzing, but I could still hear the laughter coming from my left side. Not only did I have to endure the embarrassment of possible tears that threatened to spill, but now the fucker was laughing at me. What did I expect, really? The two of us had always laughed at our failures and rants. It was how we coped.
I chanced a look at him, and it was as I had imagined. The fucker was staring at me with that wry grin of his, while his eyes were filled with amusement.
"It's not fucking funny."
"Oh, yes... it is," he said between fits of laughter. "Well, not the stuff about your wife, but the other stuff is fucking hilarious."
I sat there with my mouth hanging open, staring at him with an incredulous look on my face. "I just admitted that I wanted to go all postal on my so-called friends. Call me crazy, but I don't see the hilarity in it."
"Thank fuck! Is all I have to say," he said, leaning forward and patting my shoulder. He gripped it a little too hard, and I couldn't help but wince.
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked him, extricating myself from his grip, a little annoyed with him.
"It means..." he said dragging out the last word, "I haven't lost you." He took another sip from the whiskey bottle before continuing to sport that shit-eating grin. "I met those guys at your wedding, and they were... complete and utter dicks... morons! But they were your friends, so I've kept my mouth shut all these years. I didn't know if you'd turn into one of them... you know... after..." He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to cover up the awkwardness of what he was trying to say. "You know... after what happened."
He stood, walking to the edge of the railing, his shoulders were hunched over while he grasped the railing and bent over. I found myself staring at his form a little longer than I should have, before it was my turn to start laughing.
"You honestly thought I'd end up like one of those jackasses? Seriously? Thanks a lot, asshole." I was laughing at the idea of me turning into one of those 'suits' I worked with. Jasper should have known I wasn't one of those guys, I never would be.
"Well, what do you expect? You move across the country, take a job that is destined to fast-track you to the 2.5 kids and picket white fences. You gave up your music, and married the first girl that stroked your dick the right way but also looked good on paper."
"Shut the fuck up!" I yelled. "You know nothing about my life!" I was seething now, his back was still turned to me though, and I didn't know how serious he was.
"You're right!" He turned suddenly, raising his hands in the air. "I don't, 'cause you don't tell me anything about it! What happened to you, man? Who the fuck are you? The Edward I knew would never let his life take hold of him like this. I watched you tonight. You're miserable, man, and the gleam in your eyes is gone. I don't know what she's done to you-"
"Don't you dare talk about her! Don't you fucking blame her!" I was up on my feet, grabbing hold of his shirt, our noses inches from each other. "My life isn't as perfect as yours, but that doesn't give you the right to tear it apart!" I shoved him... hard, and he stumbled backward, but caught himself before falling. "My life is far from what it should be. I'm well aware of that, but we all can't have what you have!"
"Yeah, cause mine's all sunshine and roses," he scoffed. My body halted, wondering what he meant by it. "My wife wants a child... and I can't give her one," he admitted sadly before sitting down on his chair again. I didn't understand what he meant and asked him to explain.
"What's not to get? I can't have children... apparently I'm shooting blanks, well at least that's what the doctors say."
"But that doesn't mean you can't have a family," I offered up.
"I know, but it's not what she wants. She was adopted, and you'd think it would mean she'd want to do the same, but it doesn't. She wants a child of her own."
"Have you tried-"
"We've tried everything," he cut me off. "There's nothing left to try. You said you haven't had sex in fifteen months? Well, there was a time when I would've welcomed that. It became such a fucking chore. I was nothing but a means to an ends. It was all so clinical, at least until we found out the truth a few months ago. Now we don't even sleep in the same room. She's hurt and I know she loves me, but I don't think we can get past this. She wants her own child, more than she wants me."
This was one of those times that laughter wasn't going to make it all right, and it was the last thing I felt like doing. My troubles were real, but hopefully we could work it out. We had our children to think of. Jasper would never know what it was like to stare into the eyes of your child and see yourself staring back. We were grown men now, with real problems.
"Well that was a bit of a buzz-kill, wasn't it?" he said, leaning back on his chair, crossing his leg over his knee.
"Jas, I-I don't know what to say. I'm sorry," I said with a heartfelt apology. I dragged my chair closer to him and sat down. "I can't imagine what that's like. I'm sorry," I apologized again.
"Me neither, that's the problem. Where do we go from here? Do we end the marriage, or get a donor-which I can't imagine having a stranger father my own child and besides I feel like she wants a child created out of love. I don't know. We're just stuck."
I couldn't help but snort. "I know the feeling." My own wife and I were stuck as well. We couldn't agree on anything, and divorce seemed likely, but we had the children to think about.
"Shit... we're a bunch of sad-sacks, aren't we?"
"Fuck-ups."
"Yeah," he said quietly, staring out across the city. It was close to dawn, the sky was just starting to lighten in the east. I really needed to get some sleep at some point. I had an early meeting with some investors that were reallyimportant to the firm, but I didn't want to think about that right now. It was all about me and Jasper, nothing else mattered to me. This was why I was here, not because work sent me to Chicago. It was time him and I set things right between us, even if it was just our friendship. We needed this... we needed to remember the way things used to be, back to a time when we were on top of the world.
"You know there's only one thing left to do...right?"
He looked at me quizzically, his face breaking into a smile, while he shook his head. "Yeah, I suppose you're right."
I jumped up suddenly and hollered, "All right then!" It was louder than I thought it would be but decided I didn't care. I ran toward the pool edge, stripping off my clothes in the process. Down to just my boxer briefs, I hesitated for a split second, contemplating whether to take them off or leave them on. In my haste, I left them on and dove right into the pool without another thought. I broke the surface of the water, and watched Jasper still sitting in the chair with his head down and his shoulders hunched over. I continued to swim, doing laps, giving him the space he needed. He'd join me on his own time.
Diving under the barrier that separated the pool from the outside, I came up on the other side and couldn't help but think it felt somewhat like a cocoon. Everything echoed and the air was warm and humid. It was a little suffocating, but I did happen to notice the hot tub in the corner of the room. I was doubtful it was hot though, it had been turned off for hours. I looked around the room for the dial to turn it on, but was interrupted by a large splash from the outside.
I smiled. We really did know each other well.
I saw the dial on the wall just to the side of the hot tub, and jumped out of the water, hanging on to my briefs as they came dangerously close to falling around my ankles. I was dripping water everywhere, while the air caused goose pimples to rise all over my skin. It wasn't cold, it was a combination of things that caused them to appear. Possibly a little bit of fear at the idea of Jasper swimming just on the other side of the barrier.
I tested the water, the hot tub was warmer than I thought, warmer than the pool, but not by much.
Hearing the splashes behind me, I turned to see Jasper holding his hand over the top of the whiskey bottle as he came up from under the barrier.
"Ah!" he said, spitting the water out of his mouth. "Thought we might as well finish this off."
"You never could open a bottle and not empty it," I said, pushing the button to start the jets on the tub.
"And you love me for it." He said it absently, not giving it a second thought while he jumped out of the pool, but I couldn't hide my embarrassment at his insinuation. I knew what he meant, he was just saying it in passing, like you would joke with a friend, but the truth was, I did love him, possibly more than anyone else in my life. I slipped under the jets hoping to hide the flushed color of my skin, turning my back to him while I collected myself.
The sound of the jets changed, and I knew he had slipped into the hot tub. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath before pushing all those thoughts away again. I needed to get those ideas out of my head. We were no longer the same university students with no responsibilities to anyone else but ourselves. That time had come and gone.
"Thanks," he whispered before I had even turned around.
I nodded, and remained where I was. I heard him take a sip of the whiskey, remembering the familiar sound as he sucked it back through his teeth. I imagined his lips, as his tongue slid out of his mouth flicking the stray drops that managed to escape. This was not helping my situation, I thought, as I looked down at the new predicament that was unfolding. I had to turn around. I was looking like an idiot, and Jasper would catch on that something was wrong with me. I lowered myself further under the water, seeking out one of the benches before turning around. My eyes stayed on the window, and the light grey color the sky was turning. My thoughts had turned melancholy all of a sudden, but it couldn't be helped. I wasn't sad for what I revealed to Jasper, and I wasn't sad about what he shared with me. There was so much more that needed to be said to him, but I couldn't do it... what was the point and that's what had made me sad. Something that could never be.
"It's no way to live your life, Edward," he said sadly. "A marriage without love..."
"I know," I managed to breath out.
"So why do you stay?" he asked. It was a loaded question, one that I couldn't answer easily.
"The children-"
"Will be fine," he interrupted. "It's worse to grow up in a house filled with resentment and anger." He moved across the water, sitting next to me, passing the bottle. "Trust me, I know that. I grew up in that environment. Kids always know."
"I do love her though."
"I don't doubt that you do, but sometimes," his voice was soft, tender almost, "it's not enough."
I finally managed the courage to look him in the eye. He was facing me square on, having set the bottle down and he had a look of resolve on his face, like he'd made up his mind about something. His face was honest, and I felt the twinge in my stomach again as I stared at him. My eyes lowered to his lips... those lips, and instinctively, I licked mine in return.
"I have nothing else," I said quietly, inching forward just a little bit.
His arm moved below the water, and I felt his hand on my thigh, while both of us let out a staggering breath.
"That's not true," he said, his eyes glancing toward my mouth.
He was leaning closer, only inches between us. My head was screaming not to do it, while my body said differently. I wanted to feel his lips on mine again. I did. I'd been waiting for eight long years for this, even though it terrified me because I didn't know how to stop myself from wanting this. It would be so much harder to walk away this time... I didn't know if I would be able to. I didn't know if I wanted to.
I could smell the whiskey on his breath, the heat from it mingled with the warmth on my cheek. All I needed to do was move one inch, one inch and I would taste him again. My stomach flipped, and my cock hardened, poking through my boxer briefs. I glanced down, and to my surprise, I realized Jasper wasn't wearing anything under the water. My eyes widened, and my ears flushed as I saw his cock in the same predicament as my own. I couldn't help but smile and laugh a little, and he did the same.
"I didn't get the memo about the boxers."
I snorted at that, but resumed my spot inches from his mouth. I didn't want to lose the moment we were having. I'd waited too long, and was too curious to let it slide by.
"Are we really going to do this again," he whispered.
"Yes," I said nodding. Because I needed it. It had been way too long since someone had kissed me with want, and clearly Jasper wanted this as badly as I did. I needed to feel the contact from someone who wanted to touch me.
"Okay," he agreed, leaning his head against my forehead while his hand came up to the back of my neck. Our noses touched, and his tongue flicked out from his mouth. My cock twitched in anticipation, waiting for him to press his lips against my own.
"You-hooooo," a shrill voice pierced the air, causing us both to jump to either side of the tub, our hearts pounding out of our chests, "Jasper, honey! You in here?"
