I eyed the door carefully and assessed the steam coming out from beneath it. Why am I doing this? Oh, yeah. The other bathroom is occupied. Joey decided that he needed to re-dye his hair right at the moment that I needed to pee. Just my fucking luck that Chris was in the other bathroom taking a shower.

I pressed my ear against the door -- nothing but the ssssssss of running water. I knocked softly and thought I heard a stifled moan. I wondered if he was masturbating. I knocked harder.

"Chris?" I said. If he was jacking off, I could see him now, frozen, penis in hand, about ready to lose it.

The voice was a bit weak but persistent. "Yes?"

"It's Josh. Can I come in?" I said. "I just need to piss, and Joey is hogging the other bathroom." I pictured him again, looking down at his nearly overflowing penis, weighing his options. I really hoped that he wasn't, but knowing that he liked to do it in the shower, often while I watched, I couldn't help cringe at the torture I might be causing at the moment.

"Uh, sure," came his answer, finally. "Come in, I'm almost done anyway."

I exhaled the breath I'd been holding. He was actually going to let me in. I put my hand on the door knob and turned it with a concentration normally saved for more complex tasks.

The shower door was transparent but distorted, and I could see the blurry form of his body. He presumably just stood there and allowed the water to flow over him. I felt silly and self-conscious unzipping my pants and pulling out my penis, even though the man on the other side of the shower door had seen it before, had held it, sucked it, been fucked by it. I tilted my head back and tried not to enjoy the sensation of my painfully full bladder emptying. I shook out the last remaining drops, pushed my penis back in my boxers and refastened my pants. I almost flushed, but I stopped myself before I gave Chris a blast of cold water. Not that he maybe didn't need it, but then water in the shower stopped. The door opened a crack and Chris' hand shot out searching for a towel. I flushed the toilet. The hand withdrew and Chris poked his head out.

"JC, could you hand me a towel?" he asked, not quite looking at me. Great. He was back to calling me JC again. I don't think I've heard him say my name for almost a month, and then it was still "Josh." I grabbed a towel from the cupboard and handed it to him. Not even a thanks.

I stood there, for no apparent reason, and watched him step out of the shower, towel barely knotted around his waist. The bulge at his crotch wasn't huge, but it was enough to lift the towel away from his thighs a bit. He looked up at me, perhaps surprised that I was still there. His eyes seemed bubbly and effervescent for a moment, like a shot of freshly pulled espresso. They quickly bitter like a stale cup of slog from 7-11. My insides constricted -- I knew that I was the cause of both. Caught in his stare, there was no doubt in my mind, my heart or my soul that I loved him. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but his eyes became wet. He put a hand over his gaping mouth and, like a little boy who has just been punished, stomped out of the bathroom. I was afraid that staying apart would end up killing us both. But I was still afraid of who I was and what it would mean to be with him -- even though I didn't think he'd take me back. It was like quicksand swallowing me up -- wet and consuming and I wanted to let go.

So I fled.

I walked out the door and drove to the coast, then headed south -- a coping mechanism I developed when I broke up with Chris. Each time I ended up at the same beach. Pelican Beach -- probably named so for the awkward birds that are always there. Purple dune flowers are strewn across the beach -- I always think of picking some and taking them back home. There are also patches of sea oats everywhere -- a pleasant green that also gives color to this otherwise desolate beach.

Surfers test the water once in a while, and I think of how Chris might like to surf here. I studied the waves -- the way they pulled the sand off into the ocean. This simple act of wind and tides was my relationship with Chris -- the grains of our lives separate, the waves take us to different continents.

The day before I broke up with him, I fucked him -- it was rough, passionate, it was a fuck that yearned to be love. I came quickly, my cock couldn't hold back it's cloudy fluid after a dozen or so desperate thrusts. Chris hadn't orgasmed yet, and his cock still stood, purplish and painfully erect. I withdrew from him and he moaned, still struggling in a sensual purgatory, fully aware that judgment day was near. I leaned down and took him in my mouth. His scent was like rare incense -- salty and smoky like the morning after a bonfire on the beach. He held my head in place and thrust his hips up, my mouth at his mercy.

He came without warning, no sound from him save for breath. My mouth filled with his semen as he continued to fuck my face. It tasted like frustration and gritted in my teeth as if saturated with sand. I couldn't swallow it all and it bubbled from the corners of my mouth like sea foam. He pulled away and grabbed a shirt off the floor to wipe his cum from my chin and chest. He kissed me deeply and I wondered if he tasted the same sense of dread -- a bitterness sitting in the center of my tongue.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and I let the sand I was clutching slip though my fingers.

"Josh?"

I turned my head to meet a pair of tired brown eyes.

"Chris?" I said. "But how did you--"

"I followed you once." His voice was rough, like his vocal chords were scraped by sandpaper. "And when you didn't come back last night, I was worried and figured this would be the first place to look for you."

He sat down next to me, but not to closely. He played with the sand around him, piling it up and shaping it. I put my arm around him and drew him closer. He resisted at first, but gave in and rested his head on my shoulder.

"This isn't working out, is it?" I said, my eyes still trained on the patterns in the water. "Do you still love me?"

He sat up and turned so he could look me in the eye. "Of course I do."

"And you'll forgive me?"

He nodded and I noticed that he was building a sand castle -- putting back together the pieces of us that we thought had washed away.

End.