You and Me Together

"You're going tonight, aren't you?"
Anthony gave her an annoyed look out of the corner of his eye. "Yes," he said simply.
"I mean it, Anthony," she warned him. "We have a deal. You haven't seen one scrap of garbage over the past few days, my rent is cheap, and you go to meetings. And for as long as I stay here, that's how it is."
They were slowly but surely growing more comfortable with each other, enough so that Anthony could be honest with her, and vice-versa. After all, his biggest secrets were out now. Why hide anything else? "Um, I'm not going to St. Mark's, though."
Piper had just grabbed her keys as he spoke. "You're kidding, right?"
"No," he shook his head, sheepishly dodging eye contact. "There's a meeting at that Lutheran Church on Kedzie. I think I'm gonna check that one out."
"Kedzie?" she asked, calculating the distance. "That's at least a twenty minute drive. Why would you go all that way?"
He looked at her and raised an eyebrow, hoping she'd take the hint.
"What?"
"You really don't know why not?"
She shook her head and tried to think. "Are you Lutheran or something?"
"Hell no!" he laughed. "I just don't want to run into... what's-his-name."
She thought a moment. "Oh, you're not seeing him anymore?"
"I was never 'seeing' him," he told her. "It was a one-night stand. It'd be awkward walking in there again."
"Well maybe you shouldn't pick up guys in AA meetings," she suggested.
"Yeah, probably not."
She placed her keys back in her purse and grabbed her shopping bags from earlier, heading toward her room. "Hey," she stopped, "How do you do that, anyway?"
"Do what?" he asked.
"How do you have sex with someone and never want to see them again? Is sex that small a thing that you can just forget the person you do it with so quickly?"
"Sometimes sex is just sex," he told her. "You never had that kind of thing? The way you look, you never just had sex with a guy and then it was over?"
Piper's face fell as she listened to him. "No," she whispered. "I never have."
"Wow. Most girls with a body like that will take full advantage of it and become the biggest sluts."
"Well, I'm not one of them," she said, quickly turning back and heading to her room as she had originally planned to do.
Anthony could sense that she was deeply offended by his words, and he followed her back. "Hey, I didn't mean that you were a slut or anything..."
"I know," she said, light traces of tears forming and causing her to avoid eye contact. "It's not you."
"Well what is it?"
"Just that sex is so meaningless to men."
He didn't know how to answer without starting a fight. "I have to go to the meeting, but when I get back, let's talk."
"Talk about what?" she asked. "How little sex means to you?"
He shook his head. "I'm sorry that whoever it was that dumped you made you feel so bad. I want to talk to you about how wonderful boys are," he smiled, trying to cheer her. "Do you want me to stay home?"
"No," she smiled kindly. "You need to be there."
"Okay, as long as you're alright." He stepped into her room briefly, just long enough to give her a kiss on the cheek. "See you in a bit, Pipes."

He arrived at the old, dilapidated church just in time to get there before it started, unlike last time. He looked to the refreshments table, debating with himself whether or not the coffee would be worth taking this late in the evening. He decided against it, ultimately choosing nothing but the furthest seat to the back right.
The crowd here was much smaller than the crowd at St. Mark's. And it was also less depressing. There were fewer bearded old men with body odor and more young women in business casual attire. The crowd here was younger in general, although there were a couple exceptions, and as Anthony panned the crowd, he came across a familiar face. Too familiar.
He wondered if he should try sneaking out before he was seen, but it was too late. Steve was already looking back at him, a smile that sat painfully beautiful on his face, and as he stood to approach Anthony, the latter wondered what he would say to get out of this.
"No fucking way," Steve smiled down at him. "What are you doing here?"
Anthony smiled back, shaking his head in disbelief of this turn of events. "I came here so I wouldn't have to see you."
"Yeah, that was actually my plan," Steve chuckled. "Well, this is awkward."
"Doesn't have to be," Anthony told him.
"So what's your story, A.J.? You must have one. You're here, after all."
"My story is... complicated."
"You don't want to tell me?"
"Maybe another time."
Steve smiled, leaning closer to A.J. and bumping shoulders against him playfully. "So... you want there to be another time?"
He smiled back. Steve's was so contagious, he couldn't help it. "Maybe," he winked.
It was then that the meeting started, and Anthony and Steve sat beside each other, facing what could have been a severely uncomfortable episode by looking it in the eye. Steve didn't speak this time, and as the last testimony was given, Steve slipped a piece of paper into Anthony's hand.
"It's just a phone number," he whispered. "In case you need moral support."
Steve was possibly one of the most handsome men Anthony had ever met. He was exactly Anthony's type, too - blonde, tall, slim, good dresser, smart, funny...
Anthony kept waiting for something to go wrong.
People left immediately as they usually do after such meetings, but the two men stayed behind, talking some more about their weeks, comparing work stories. Steve was an accountant, and the stories he told of how people tried so desperately to cheat on their taxes compared well with Anthony's stories of high demands from small-time stage actors.
"There's this one guy," he told Steve, "Who insisted on having a single red rose delivered to his dressing room every night before a performance. We had to dip the rose in his wife's perfume and write a note of encouragement signed from a fan!"
"That's crazy!" Steve answered. "But that doesn't even compare to my guy who wanted to charge his cocaine purchases as business expenses!" A.J. laughed, clapping his hands together before setting them down. He soon realized his hand had rested on Steve's knee, and although he would normally have removed it in a situation like this, he kept it there, even moving it slightly up and down his leg, smiling sheepishly up at Steve.
"You want to go grab some dinner right now?" Steve asked.
A.J. almost accepted, loving the idea of getting to know Steve even better. But his mind kept flashing back to Piper, her pitiful look as he discussed casual sex, and the way she couldn't understand how he was treating the whole Steve situation.
"Rain check?" he asked, hoping he would oblige. "It's just... roommate issues."
"I wouldn't know about that," Steve told him. "I live alone. Just another one of the many perks of being my friend."
A.J. smiled. "Friday night, then? Dinner?"
"Friday is so cliché," he smiled. "But I suppose if I have to..."
A.J. smiled at Steve's lovely sense of humor and his playfulness. "Let me walk you to your car."
They walked outside together and arrived at Steve's car, hemming and hawing and making excuses as to why they couldn't part just yet.
"You want to kiss me, don't you?" Steve asked in a sly sort of way.
"Honestly?" Anthony answered. "I really fucking do."
Steve leaned forward, crooking his arm around A.J.'s waist, pulling him closer. His lips fell softly against his, and as Steve felt the warmth of A.J.'s tongue slick across his lips, he pulled away gently, maintaining the eye contact they'd had before the kiss occurred.
"We better settle down," he said. "You're gonna get me too excited."
"Sorry," A.J. shook his head, embarrassed at his forwardness. "I should have just kept it to the lips only."
"What fun is that?" Steve winked.

Anthony arrived home to find Piper sitting in the living room. He thought she'd be at work, but here she was, a look of loneliness on her face as he sat in a chair across from her.
"Did you go?" she asked finally.
"Yep."
She looked up to him, seeing a smile on his face that he was obviously trying to hide. "What's up with you?"
He looked to her, but tried to seem serious. "How are you doing? Any better?"
"Oh," she answered, her tone sullen as she spoke. "Sorry about earlier."
"It's okay," he told her, leaning forward and reaching his hand to rub her knee. She pulled back as he touched her. The jerk of her movement was so hard and fast, he jumped a bit.
"I was just comforting you," he said. "You don't have to freak out."
Before he finished the sentence, Piper fell forward onto the couch, crying so hard that her breaths became uneven, and she heaved up and down when he tried to sooth her.
"Piper, sweetie, talk to me," he said tenderly. "What's wrong?" He reached his hand to her again, this time touching her back, but at the feeling, she jumped again, moving off the couch and marching back to her room.
"Piper! Come on!" he yelled, knowing his neighbors could hear it, and imagining what they could possibly think at the sounds of them.
"Sex is about love," she finally said when she could. "Sex is not a game!"
"Is that it?" he smiled, almost laughing. "This is because I had a one-night stand?"
She fell onto her new bed and curled into a ball, rolling the pillow up underneath her head as she steadied her breathing. "I'm sorry," she whispered when she could. "It's not about you."
"Well what the hell is it, then?" He had become angry now, sick of her lashing out at him about every little thing.
She looked at him, hyperventilating a bit as she tried to catch her breath. "I can't even tell you, and that's the worst part."
"Why can't you tell me?" he asked.
She wiped the tears away as well as she could. "Because I've never told anyone," she admitted. "And I can't. I can't tell anyone."
He approached the bed and sat beside her, deciding against his urge to touch her comfortingly, remembering how he'd been rejected before. "Pipes, you know more about me than anyone does, and you've only known me for a fucking week. I think you can tell me something secret and feel secure about it. Besides, who am I gonna tell?"
"But it's so... personal," she said. "And I don't want you looking at me differently. You've become very dear to me, Anthony, and if you knew..."
"You've become very dear to me, too," he smiled, repeating her carefully chosen words. He loved hearing her talk in that accent. It made her seem so much smarter than him. And she probably was, he figured. "You're the first person who's given a fuck about me in I don't even know how long."
She smiled up at him for the first time that evening. "Of course I give a fuck about you," she said, somehow sweetly. But if anyone could make the word fuck sound sweet, it was Piper.
"Talk to me, Pipes," he urged. "Tell me everything."
She sat up, moving the curled pillow into her lap and pulling slowly at the strands of string around the hemming. "It's a long story," she confessed.
"I'm not going anywhere, baby."
"I just heard today that my dad has made an appeal, and if it goes in his favor, he's out of jail."
"Jail?" he asked. "What did he do?"
"This is where the story starts," she explained.
"I was born in Cuba, if you couldn't tell from my accent. Everyone there is always talking about el sueño Americano," she smiled, remembering better days, apparently. "The American dream. Everyone there was always talking about freedom and opportunity and democracy. Everyone wanted it, and my dad... he was no different."
Anthony reached for a tissue, handing it to Piper as she wiped her tears and spoke.
"When I was ten, we finally got our big chance. I'm not sure what my dad had to do, but somehow he secured legal passage for me and him to this country. We lived in Miami for a while, and he told me we would bring my mama and my little sisters later, but... they never came."
She fought the urge to cry more at the remembrance of them, but she calmed herself.
"And then we moved here," she said. "To Chicago. My dad had a contact here and he was able to get a job running a bar. My bar, actually."
He supposed she owned the bar because her father, the actual owner, was in prison. No wonder she had been offended when he called her job the "perfect job."
"Then the war started, and the economy got bad, and things... they just sort of got bad for us. Papa almost lost the bar, but then a friend suggested he try other business to keep the bar afloat, and he started selling drugs. The place was running strong after that, and by the time I was fourteen, I had seen more drugs than most people see in a lifetime."
"I'm sorry, Pipes," Anthony frowned as he cautiously reached for her hand. This time, she accepted it.
"And then there was the slavery..."
His ears perked up as he listened. Exactly what kind of pig was her dad?
"My dad was always high or drunk or both," she continued. "Then one day, a customer comes in and says he'll give my dad fifty bucks if he can have his way with me for an uninterrupted hour. And my dad... said yes," she sniffled.
"And that's what my purity was worth to him. Fifty fucking dollars."
Anthony was frozen. How do you react to that?
"Four years and 326 men later, over 500 times I was raped in that upstairs bedroom of the bar," she said somberly. I never had a choice, and I never had an option."
He stayed speechless for several moments. Had that really been the number of men? Could that be right? How did she survive? How did she maintain her sanity? How could she ever walk into that bar ever again after that? He had so many questions, but settled on one. "How did you get out?"
I opened the window," she said. "And I jumped. I figured I'd either live and tell the cops or die and be free. Either way, it was better. And I lived."
Anthony was crying now, too. He couldn't help it.
"Do you know what it's like working in that fucking place?" she asked. "Do you have any idea?"
"No," he answered truthfully. "I'm so sorry."
"And he might get out now," she reminded him. "He says that he was promised a lesser charge for revealing names. But since none of the men were caught, he didn't get the break he asked for."
"I guess that's why you don't like people touching you, huh?" he asked.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't mean to be that way."
"Can I hug you?" he asked.
She leaned in with a smile and allowed him to wrapped her up in him, lovingly patting her back and placing his lips softly to her ear. "We're gonna be alright," he told her. "I love you, Pipes."
"I love you, too, Anthony," she said.
A she felt him there, she felt something else as well. It was another disappointment. When they say the good guys are either taken or gay, they aren't kidding. He was the perfect man - handsome, sweet, edgy - but he was the one man she'd never be able to get.
She backed away, sorry she had to do so, but beginning to feel the oppression human contact gave her when she was prolonged to it. "I should be more sensitive to letting you run your relationships as you choose. It's none of my business who you are or aren't seeing."
"No," he insisted. "You have a lot on your plate, and if talking to me about my love life helps you, by all means, talk away."
I really am doing well with the subject itself, and the incidents. I just don't want him getting out of prison."
He held himself back, but he wished he could hold her forever he pitied her, but even more than that, he loved her.
"Tell me about your meeting."
He couldn't believe how easily she switched from one subject to the next when they were so drastically different, but he figured that's just how she coped.
"Did you meet anyone cute this time?" she asked.
"Speaking of which," he smiled. "Steve and I have dinner planned for this Friday."
She looked at him, surprised and delighted. "How did that happen?"
He explained the story of his evening, complete with details about the kiss. And as Piper listened, she was torn between the part of her that was happy for him, and the part of her that wanted to make him the first man she ever voluntarily had sex with.