Second First Dance

The party had been going for four hours and I had already talked about the weather with eleven people. Fifty years of marriage for Ramon's parents, and they put on a spread like a small wedding. Shrimp towers. A cake bigger than my first car. A five-piece band playing songs nobody under seventy cared about.

I'm Doug, forty-three, and I've been married to Ramon for four years now. We eloped after six months of dating, which his mother still brings up like it's a crime she plans to press charges for. Tonight she was in her element, gliding around the ballroom in a gold dress, introducing me to people as "Ramon's husband, the quiet one."

So yeah. Around ten I bailed.

The ballroom had these floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the golf course, all moonlight and dark fairways, and past them there was a balcony nobody was using. I slipped out with my drink and leaned on the railing, grateful for the quiet. The jazz inside went soft and muffled behind the glass. Out here it was just crickets and the little fountain by the eighteenth green.

I pulled out my phone and started scrolling. Nothing good. A guy from work selling his boat. A video of a dog. I scrolled anyway, because scrolling was better than going back in there and hearing about someone's granddaughter's sorority.

That's where Ramon found me.

"There you are," he said, coming through the balcony door. "I looked in three bathrooms."

"I wasn't hiding."

"You were absolutely hiding." He leaned on the railing next to me, close enough that our elbows touched. He's forty-six, three years older than me, and he still fills out a suit better than any man at that party. "Mother wants you to come meet her cousin's son. He does something with insurance."

"God!"

"God is right!" He sipped from his own glass and looked out at the course. We stood there a minute. It was nice, actually. Comfortable. But comfortable had been the whole problem lately, if I was honest with myself, and lately I'd been honest with myself a lot more than usual.

"Can I say something without it turning into a thing?" I asked.

Ramon turned his head. "That sounds like it's going to turn into a thing."

"Probably." I set my drink on the railing. "I've been feeling stuck. Us. Me and you. Not bad stuck. Just... stuck. Like we're roommates who plan the groceries."

He didn't say anything right away. Out on the green, the fountain cycled through its little routine.

"I noticed," he said finally. "Me too, if we're being honest. I figured you'd gotten bored of me and were too polite to say it."

"Jesus, Ramon, no!"

"Well, what was I supposed to think? You fall asleep at nine-thirty. You used to grab my ass in the kitchen like it owed you money. Now you ask me if I paid the water bill." He wasn't angry about it. He said it plain, the way he says most things, and that's one of the reasons I married the man.

"I didn't get bored of you," I said. "I got bored of the schedule. There's a difference. But I don't know how we fix it from inside the schedule."

Ramon put his glass down next to mine. Then he turned so he was facing me, and he held out his hand, palm up, like we were back at that wedding almost five years ago where we met on the dance floor and didn't leave it for two hours.

"Dance with me," he said.

"There's no music out here."

"There's music inside. It carries." He wiggled his fingers. "Come on. One dance. Nobody's watching."

I took his hand. Of course I took his hand.

He pulled me in and we started moving, slow, nothing fancy, just the way we used to sway at the end of bar nights when neither of us wanted to admit we were ready to go home. His hand settled on my hip. Mine went to his shoulder. The band inside was playing something with a brushed drum and a lazy horn, and it drifted through the glass well enough.

And it came back. That's the thing I'd forgotten. Our bodies remembered how they fit. He's three inches taller than me and my head lands right at his collar, and his hand rides the small of my back like it was machined to fit there. We turned a slow circle on that balcony and I felt something in my chest unclench that had been clenched for months.

"See?" he said into my hair. "Still works."

"Shut up." But I was smiling against his collar.

Somewhere in the next turn my hand slid off his shoulder and down, under the edge of his jacket, resting on his waist. I felt him stiffen just slightly, and his breath caught, a small hitch he probably thought I didn't hear.

"Doug," he said. Low. Not a warning. A question.

"We're not watching anyone's anniversary right now," I said. "Just us."

He turned his face down toward me, and I looked up, and we both knew what was coming, and neither of us stopped it. "Kiss me," he said. So I did.

It started slow and then it didn't. Four years of marriage and he still kisses like a man committing a crime. His hand came up into my hair, and mine flattened against his back and pulled him in, and the balcony stopped being cold. We stood there at the rail making out like a couple of men half our age, and I didn't care who was inside or who could see through the windows, which is a lie, I cared a little, but not enough to stop.

He broke off first, breathing hard, forehead against mine.

"The shed," he said.

"What?"

"By the stairs. The golf cart shed. It's dark and nobody goes in it during parties. I saw it when I was looking for you." He was already pulling back, holding my hand. "Tell me to stop if you want to stop."

"I don't want to stop."

"Good."

* * *

The shed was a lean-to off the back of the stairwell, three golf carts parked nose to tail, a coil of hose, one bare bulb somebody had left switched off. Ramon pulled the door mostly shut behind us and the moonlight through the gap was plenty.

We came back together fast. His jacket was off my shoulders before I'd registered his hands moving, and I had him backed up against the closest cart, one thigh wedged between his legs, my palm dragging down his chest to his belt.

"God, I've missed this," he said against my mouth. "Missed you being greedy."

"I'm always greedy. I just got quiet about it."

"Never again," he said, and then my hand cupped him through his slacks and he stopped making sentences. He was already hard, straining against the fabric, and he rocked his hips forward into my hand without any shame at all.

I worked his belt open slow, and he fumbled at my shirt buttons, and we laughed once when our hands collided, both of us trying to do everything at once. His cock came out into my hand, warm and heavy, and I gave it a slow stroke from base to tip, thumb over the head, the way he likes.

"Fuck," he whispered. "Doug. Fuck."

"Yeah."

"Get yours out too. I want us even." So I unzipped and pulled myself free, and we stood there pressed together, both of us in fist, his hand and my hand and two cocks sliding against