Read Online Better Than Easy by Nick Alexander - Free Book Online

brazenly, surprising myself, “Yeah, well, I can’t wear bike gear all the time either. Shame huh?”
    Ricardo shrugs one shoulder and smirks at me. “You look fine,” he says, half closing his eyes.
    I restrain a frown, and then turn and wave to a waiter as a welcome distraction. “Oh!” I say.
“S’il vous plaît?”
But the waiter ignores me with studied expertise. “They’re incredible here,” I say, turning back to Ricardo. But he’s standing, pulling a banknote from his wallet and pushing it under the ashtray.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he says, shrugging. “I really
do
have to go.” He glances at his watch. “I have a
…
” he cockshis head,
“rendezvous?”
    I nod. “A meeting.”
    He winks at me and nods and smiles again. “Yes, a meeting. At two.”
    â€œOh, I
…
” I say, looking up at him and taking his outstretched hand.
    He shakes my hand solidly and then keeps hold as he says, “Maybe another time. I’m usually here on Wednesdays. As long as it’s sunny.”
    I nod and say, “Sure,” and I start to wonder about the overly long handshake. I notice my heart speeding up again. “I’ll keep watch
…
I mean, a look out
…
an eye open for you,” I say in a confused manner.
    Ricardo smiles and releases me, then says with another wink, “I’ll keep a look out for you too.” And with this he spins and walks away.
    I shake my head and finger the ashtray and Ricardo’s banknote. I move round to take his seat – it’s facing the sun. It’s still warm from his arse. I swallow hard and blow a little air between my lips and think,
“What the hell was that?”
    â€œAutres choses?” the waiter asks, apparently unaware of the change of occupant at Ricardo’s table.
    â€œOui, un café,” I tell him, “s’il vous plait.” And he grabs the plate, dumps the knife, fork and napkin on it and sweeps away leaving me to sit and think about Ricardo’s body language.
    The problem, I realise, is that I don’t know what his gestures, the long handshake, the eye contact, the face-cracking smile, might mean to a straight guy, to a straight
Colombian
guy – I’m trying to interpret them through my own built-in dictionary, but it doesn’t work, because my own vocabulary of male-to-male contact is all about sex and attraction. But straight men presumably do actually meet people they like sometimes, and occasionally they must decide to make an effort to befriend them, and so maybe Ricardo’s winks and smiles are just innocent signalswithin a language – a foreign language – of heterosexual male bonding?
    I realise, I think for the first time in my life, just how vague my grasp of that language, those rites, actually is.
    â€œMaybe I can learn with Ricardo,” I think. “Maybe he can be my new, straight friend. I could catch him here, next Wednesday, and we could talk about motorbikes
…
Maybe we can go on bike rides together. He said his girlfriend isn’t keen.”
    But my dick is stirring at the image in my mind – of Ricardo on the back of my bike – and it forces me to take in the truth of the situation.
“Who am I kidding?”
I think. The answer clearly is –
not even myself.
    And with the realisation that my heart is pounding and that, beneath the table, my dick is distinctly heavier than normal; that I’m blushing and fantasising about a guy I don’t know at all, a fireman from
God-knows where
, I start to feel guilty, and so I think of Tom and his gift beneath the chair, and realise that it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black; that his cyber-crimes, put into perspective by my own thought-crimes, really aren’t so bad after all.
    By the time I get home the Parka strikes me as an insignificant gift. It’s probably something to do with