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- Winter in LA’s like summer everywhere else, says Barry. - I couldn’t deal with snow.
Barry’s seen snow before, but only on ski trips.
- If there was snow, you wouldn’t be able to get up your driveway in LA, says Tim. - Or down it. You’d be marooned.
Tim thinks of the blue-gray skies of Seattle in December, the sweet, dark smell of coffee drifting into the air around the corner from his place, the blues and greens of Christmas lights refracted in the rain-wet sidewalks. His condo’s got a north-facing balcony that he’s furnished with a single chair; it’s always cool and wet out there. At night he likes to watch the city lights glitter off and on through the cloud cover.
They’re lying there, bedclothes tangled around them. Most of the pillows are on the floor.
One of Tim’s arms is folded back behind his head. He’s stretched out on the covers, legs crossed at the ankles. His skin’s flushed, and sweat glistens on his bare chest, his neck, at his temples. Barry sits, propped up against a pillow, the sheets pulled up over one bent knee, his other leg stretched out straight. His hair is impeccably tousled, his head tilted back against the headboard, his eyes half-shut.
- I don’t believe it, says Barry.
- What?
- How different you are.
There's too long a pause.
- What did you expect? asks Tim.
Barry sits up and pushes away the covers. He rolls over and stretches out on his side next to Tim, and nestles his head into the crook of Tim’s shoulder. With his free hand Barry slips his arm around him, and gently traces the lines of Tim’s belly and his chest, the muscles of his pitching arm. Tim closes his eyes.
He turns his head and buries his nose in Barry’s hair. It smells faintly of coconut. Tim flashes back to his Marina apartment two years before: Zito’s bottle of shampoo on the shower floor, Barry’s rugby shirts in Tim’s bottom-left drawer, his bottles of San Pellegrino water crowding the cans of Red Bull in the fridge.
What that time felt like - his desperation, Barry’s detachment - comes flooding back.
- God, you have a huge nose, says Barry. - I never noticed. It’s pretty ugly.
- Taxi-door ears, too, says Tim. - I barely made it through childhood. And I think my nose might be getting bigger.
- Like the rest of you, says Barry.
- Maybe, says Tim. - Maybe you just need new glasses.
Tim flips onto his stomach, rudely dislodging Zito’s head, rolls the remaining pillow into a bolster and stuffs it underneath his chest.
Zito reaches over and takes the edge of Tim’s face in his right hand.
- And you’ve got quite the lantern jaw going there, young man, he says. - Your flesh is catching up with your bones.
He hates it when Zito calls him “young man.”
- We can’t all be the perfection that is Barry Zito, says Tim.
Barry leans back and bends one arm behind his head. He sighs.
Tim does something that surprises them both. Without warning, wordlessly, he rises up, seizes Barry’s shoulders, locks a knee around his lover’s legs and rolls both of them over twice. When they stop moving, Zito’s shoulders are at the edge of the bed, his head suspended above the floor. Tim’s straddling him, thighs braced, arms stiff, his dark eyes huge. His long hair hangs forward, partly shrouding his face, which is contorted with emotion.
- We’re not doing this, right? says Tim. - Tell me about how we’re not doing this.
Zito’s silent. He’s hard to fight with.
- Why are you always the one who calls the shots? Who made those rules? Fuck you.
With a single motion, Tim hikes Zito back onto the bed and collapses onto him, crushing his mouth with a kiss that smothers breath, forcing Barry’s head back until the two of them are straining, wrestling, against each other. Tim’s hands are all over his body, and he’s moaning, though Zito can’t figure out whether it’s from pleasure or from pain.
After a long time, Zito manages to break the kiss. It takes nearly all his upper-body strength to push Tim away, even for a moment.
He sees Tim’s agonized face above him, as he’s felt Tim’s hands roaming over his skin and heard him crying out. And Barry gives himself up, and lets Tim pin him to the bed with his body and his tongue.