All That Matters - 1. Chapter 1

*******************

I met Trevor in March of 2002. We were both newly promoted and attending a week-long orientation course for executives at our corporate headquarters. We were playing in the big leagues now and were expected to build networks across the various corporate functions; the orientation course was our CEO's way of kick-starting the process. There were about twenty of us sitting in the high-tech conference room that year, coming from all parts of the world. It was the first time most of us had met, and already during the round of introductions I could start to tell which ones were willing to trample over dead bodies on their way to the top, and which ones were still a little bemused at having been promoted to executive level in the first place. I belonged to the second group. I thought Trevor did, as well.

The course was demanding, with a series of team-building exercises and projects that were meant to carry over after we returned to our jobs. Trevor and I were assigned to the same team and over the period of the five days, I grew to both like and respect him. In theory, we were all good leaders, that's why we were there in the first place, yet in Trevor leadership seemed like an innate talent rather than something he'd had to painstakingly learn along the way like some of us (me for instance). There was no question of how intelligent and capable he was, but he appeared laid back, with an irreverent and slightly snarky sense of humor that was aimed at himself as often as at others. He spoke of his wife and two daughters with great affection and mentioned how he'd passed up a promotion that would have required his moving to Germany a couple of years earlier, because his wife's father had been in poor health and she needed to stay in the US. My impression was that this was a man who was ambitious, but who also had his priorities straight.

He wasn't classically handsome, but he took care of himself, exercising faithfully three to four times a week, and he chose his clothes carefully, making the most of his 6'4" height and athletic build. Much later he confided to me that he had a personal 'styling consultant' and that he traveled to Milan once a year. He admitted it was an investment that had stretched him to almost breaking point in the beginning, but that was steadily becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of his disposable income.

"Don't ever kid yourself, Marcus. Image is extremely important. You've got to sell yourself every minute of every hour of every day," he advised me, despite the fact that he was eight years younger than me, and he was right. I knew for a fact that he consistently scored slightly lower than me in almost every single one of our bi-annual 360-degree evaluations, because he wasn't bashful about sharing the results. Yet he was the one on the fast track, getting assigned to the plum positions, while I languished in the relative backwaters of smaller operations, where we worked just as hard but were hardly ever singled out for mention in an annual statement or in our CEO's quarterly state-of-the-business communications.

From 2002 to 2005, Trevor and I met at a number of corporate events and became good friends. If he noticed that I only spoke of my personal life in vague generalities, he never questioned it. Our company was predominantly male, as were our clients, and I always followed a strict don't-ask-don't-tell policy, especially where Trevor was concerned. In the first place, he liked to gossip--as did I, it was one of the foundations of our friendship--and secondly, I was concerned that if he knew I was gay, he'd also guess I'd developed a crush on him.

Which isn't to say that I pined away for him or was consumed by my feelings for him or anything like that. In a lot of ways what I felt resembled the crushes I'd had on actors or baseball players, when I was a teenager; comfortable and safe, because they were so far out of reach, simply a nice fantasy to jerk off to. Uncomplicated. A little harmless escapism, essential in keeping my spirits up, as I fruitlessly tried to figure out the intricacies of the gay scene in Kiev, where I was posted.

In October of 2005, the company held its annual international leadership conference in Berlin. As with every conference, the days would be packed with events up to and including dinner. After dinner, people always drifted back to the hotel bar for drinks; I belonged, along with Trevor, to a hardcore group that took pride in outdrinking and outlasting the rest and still being able to show up on time and attentive the following morning. Much as I liked my colleagues, I didn't intend to pass up on my chance to party in Berlin, and I arrived faking the flu, which would not only serve as an excuse not to hang out with the others, but would explain how wrecked I might look in the mornings. And if things went my way, I was going to look very wrecked. Not the most professional of attitudes, but I was on the verge of burning out, and I needed a break.

The first night worked out exactly as planned. Within five minutes of arriving at the dance club the discreet hotel concierge had recommended, I hooked up with a guy, whose name I no longer remember, assuming he even gave me his real name, and we had a fun time until after 5:00 a.m.

"What time did you guys finally shut the bar down?"

"I'm not really sure. Late. Early," he mumbled vaguely. "I need another cup of coffee."

He wandered off towards the coffee table. I followed him and, in keeping with my alibi, opted for an herbal tea rather than my usual triple-shot espresso, so he had to elbow me awake twice during the endless presentation on business resumption planning that followed the break. Instead of lunch, I went up to my room and snuck a nap and two cups of coffee, and managed to stay awake all the way through dinner.

Like the previous night, I went back to my room directly afterwards, and changed into a T-shirt, jeans and boots, which was about as dressed up as I ever get. If I ran into a colleague as I left the hotel, I could always pretend to be looking for a late-night pharmacy. I had a quick consultation with my trusty concierge, and set off on foot. Berlin never truly sleeps, but it had been cold, gray and drizzling all day, and the broad sidewalks near Potsdamer Platz were almost deserted.

In preparation for another late night, I'd opted to wear my glasses instead of contact lenses. The prescription wasn't up to date, and the lenses were misted by the rain, so it took me a couple of blocks to realize that the tall, broad-shouldered guy in the leather jacket ambling along about sixty meters ahead of me didn't just look like Trevor. Intrigued, I trailed behind him as he walked along the same route that the concierge had instructed me to follow.

I didn't know quite what to think when I saw Trevor enter the club. It never once crossed my mind that he might simply have been curious or experimenting, or that it was the first time he'd ever done something similar. Over the years I'd seen Trevor nervous and I knew the signs; nothing in his relaxed body language displayed anything other than an almost bored self-confidence as he tipped the bouncer and walked through the door. It wasn't only the idea that he might be, at the very least, bi that left me almost dazed with disbelief. It was the fact that straight-arrow Trevor, a man whose integrity I'd never doubted, a man who maintained an ever-updated collection of photos of his wife and daughters, would cheat on his marriage. I'd have been as shocked if I'd seen him picking up a woman for a one-night stand.

I briefly considered returning to the hotel, or hailing a taxi and going to the club I'd been to the night before, if only I could remember its name. In many ways I didn't welcome knowing this facet of Trevor. But . . . I did know. And I'd had to have been a saint to resist the possiblility, however small, of realizing some of my fondest jerk-off fantasies, if only for one night.

Even though it was a Tuesday night, the club was packed. The music was so loud, it seemed to throb in my chest and up through the floor and the soles of my boots, and the air was humid with the sweat of so many bodies dancing--or some writhing approximation thereof--on the floor. Trevor stood almost a head and a half over the rest of the crowd, and he was easy to track as he made his way towards the bar. I forced a path through the crowd, not even bothering to take off my jacket, despite the heat that was already making me perspire. For a few seconds I lost sight of him, but once I reached the bar, I realized that he'd perched on one of the stools, which had had the effect of lowering him to my own 5'10".

His eyes were on the bartender who was serving a customer at the other end of the bar, patiently waiting to be noticed. I squirmed my way into the space next to him, but he didn't look my way, even though he must have been aware of somebody standing that close to him, almost rubbing shoulders with him.

"Can I buy you a drink?"

He'd been leaning his elbows against the bar and his body jerked upright in surprise, then went very tense. It took him a long time to turn around and look at me, as if he hoped that if he gave it enough time, my presence would turn out to be a figment of his imagination.

I saw his lips move, forming my name, but if he actually said it out loud, I couldn't hear it over the music. He stood up and took a step back, putting some distance between us, but he gripped the edge of the bar, as if to steady himself. Even in the ever-changing colors of the swirling strobe lights I could see that he'd turned very pale. It made me reconsider my approach; this wasn't something we could be flippant about or pretend was normal, which had been my first, ostrich-like instinct.

"Hey, it's okay," I tried to reassure him. "We can forget we saw each other here."

I turned away but his hand grabbed my bicep and he spun me back towards him.

"Did you follow me?" he shouted. It might have been to make himself heard, but in the span of one second he also looked like he'd gone from shocked to blazingly angry. I unsuccessfully tried to jerk my arm out of his grasp.

"Of course not!"

I made a second attempt to release myself. He ignored my struggles, and simply cocked his head and studied me. I'd never before realized how strong he was. Suddenly he smiled and leaned down, his lips almost brushing against my ear.

"You don't really have the flu, do you?"

Surprise at his smile and playful question rendered me still; his warm breath against my ear made me break out in goose bumps. Disappointingly, he let me go and stepped back again.

"Not really," I admitted, smiling up at him.

I wasn't really sure what to do or say next. I watched his face turn solemn and uncertain again, and knew that my own expression mirrored his. We'd both been outed, and our friendship and his marital status made things even more awkward than they might have otherwise been.

It struck me that he had a lot more to lose than me; after all, I was already posted in the closest operation we had to Siberia, though I supposed they could always send me prospecting for clients in outer Mongolia or something. Besides, I was just being melodramatic; there were openly gay men in high positions in our company, though they tended to occupy the more predictable spots within Marketing, Human Resources or Design, so I had no reason to believe that I'd experience anything other than a slight discomfort for the period that colleagues who'd known me for over twenty years adjusted their perception of me and gossiped behind my back.

But Trevor . . . Trevor had presented a totally false image of himself. In essence he'd tricked everybody, made them think he was one of them. Every single one of our regional and executive vice presidents was married with children. Sure, some of them were at their second or third attempt, or at the age where they'd moved on to trophy wives, and we all displayed a forgiving "boys-will-be-boys" attitude about what might occur at conferences far from home, but I doubted that forgiveness would extend to being a boy with other boys, rather than with the high-class female prostitutes that frequented the fringes of most of our conferences.

The same thoughts had to be running through his head, but I could see the habitual self-confidence start to seep back into his eyes and posture. He wasn't totally comfortable, not yet, but as the shock wore off, he began to realize that his secret was safe with me. His shoulders dropped and he resumed his perch on the barstool, leaning back against the bar.

"I'll have a beer," he told me, reminding me of my offer, and I nodded.

After I'd managed to attract the bartender's attention and placed and paid for our order, I stood stiffly next to Trevor, looking out on the dance floor. Even though the hotel concierge had promised that the club attracted a slightly older crowd, most of the guys looked as if they were in their early to mid- twenties, which made them a good twenty years younger than me. And the techno beat that rendered all songs sound identical to me was starting to get on my nerves. For a second I thought longingly of my bed, oddly enough without Trevor in it.

"Has Stevens spoken to you?" he asked me suddenly, referring to my manager, whom I liked well enough on a personal level but had no respect for on a professional one. By now, Trevor was one rung above me and Stevens' equal on the corporate ladder, even though we'd made executive level at the same time three years ago. Sometimes I was jealous, but, for the most part, I wasn't surprised by his rapid progress and was happy for him.

"Stevens speaks to me all the time," I told Trevor glumly. "Why? What's the problem now?"

Trevor smiled.

"I'm not supposed to tell you this, but you won't be in Kiev for much longer."

"Why? Where am I going?" I asked with considerable trepidation. One thing I was sure of, and that was that I didn't want to end up reporting to Trevor. Not before, for reasons too tangled, and even petty, for me to want to delve into, and most certainly not now.

"They're starting up a new team; process management and harmonization. You're going to be leading it. I'm surprised Stevens hasn't mentioned anything yet. Kim is going to be announcing it the last day of the conference. You'll be reporting directly to him."

Kim was a Regional Vice President, which meant that I was also being promoted to the same level as Trevor and Stevens, if not immediately, then within a short time frame provided I didn't royally screw up. Big geek that I am, I was excited. I'd been pretty vocal about the need for driving more efficiencies into our processes, for ensuring that the local operations worked off common templates, even if they had to localize them to some degree. I was probably the one executive who'd put most of his time in the smaller operations, and I knew from first-hand experience how easily things could fall apart in physically remote countries where the financial results were never large enough to stand out until they did so in a spectacularly negative way, and everybody had to scramble. The fact that I'd been listened to, and been chosen to lead the effort, filled me with pride.

Trevor slapped me on the back.

"Congratulations, Marcus. Well-deserved. Try and act surprised when Stevens finally tells you."

"He wanted to speak to me at lunch today, but I ducked out to take a nap. It was probably about that."

I couldn't help the wide grin on my face and my head was a jumble of thoughts that ranged from wondering whether I'd be based with one of our larger European locations or in the US (anywhere I actually spoke the language was fine with me) and whether I'd travel frequently enough to merit business class for even the short hauls according to our travel policy, to how large a team I was being given.

"Hey. You're thinking about work. Stop. You're going to start jotting down priorities on a coaster any minute now."

"Got a pen?" I laughed, reaching out as if expecting him to hand me one.

Instead he grabbed my wrist and jerked me towards him, standing up at the same time, so that I stumbled off-balance against his chest.

"Let's dance, Marcus. This is what we came here to do, isn't it?"

"Not with each other," I said, a little breathlessly, pushing against him.

He let me put a couple of inches distance between us, but then wrapped one arm loosely around my waist and the other around my shoulders, and moved against me in sync with the music. It was more dancing than an overtly sexual move, but my body started to respond regardless.

"I've never danced with a friend," he said simply.

I moved out of his arms to take off my jacket and drop it off at the coat check, then returned to him. Falling into rhythm with Trevor was easy, as easy as our friendship had been until that point. I thought and felt a lot of things during those two hours of dancing with him.

I'd never even flirted with a guy I knew to be in a relationship, much less fucked a married man. It's not that I particularly believed in monogamy or looked down on adulterers, but I felt oddly quixotic about not wanting to take my short-term pleasure at the expense of somebody's long-term dreams, even if I didn't know that somebody, even if I also knew that the cheating partner would simply find another willing mouth or ass.

I doubted that Juliet, whom I'd met on a couple of occasions, knew about Trevor, and I felt sorry for them both. After my initial surprise and disappointment, I found that I couldn't think of Trevor otherwise than as the fundamentally honest and open man he'd seemed to be until that night. He couldn't have been faking his love for Juliet, and certainly not for his girls. I didn't know why he'd got married in the first place, but I wasn't in a position to pass judgment from my own closet. I might have been a free agent, but that was due more to not being very ambitious, and to not having met a woman that I thought I could make an honest attempt at compromising with; certainly my independence hadn't made me any braver than him about being open about my sexuality or living my life on the terms I'd have preferred.

After we stopped seeing each other and in the occasional breaks from the ensuing endless mental self-flagellation regarding everything I'd allowed to happen, I excused myself by thinking that I'd been sucked into overestimating the connection I felt with Trevor by my own unacknowledged loneliness after twenty years of constant moves and by the increasing isolation I felt as I grew older and less able to adapt to foreign cultures. It could have happened to anybody, I told myself. It didn't necessarily make me a bad person, only a deluded one. But for the most part, I blamed myself for everything that took place. No matter what the reasons, I'd been weak and given up on my own moral code, lenient as it had been in the first place. Worse, I'd willfully and consciously ignored reality and seen only what was convenient for me. And at the end of it all, everybody was worse off.

That first night, though, I couldn't have known everything that would follow, even though in retrospect it turned out to be so fucking predictable and trite. That first night I actually convinced myself that I didn't even want to kiss Trevor, that all I wanted to do was finally give him the opportunity to dance with a friend. If I were younger, I'd have either given in immediately and dragged him into the restrooms for a blowjob, or I'd have pulled away, knowing that I'd eventually succumb to temptation. But I was 45 years old; I thought that if I hadn't done it all, I'd certainly done most of it, and that I had everything under control.

Turned out I had nothing under control. Not Trevor, not the situation, not even myself.

Sometimes, when I wasn't firmly on guard against stray and maudlin thoughts, I was overcome by the oddest regrets. Mostly I regretted that I couldn't pinpoint the exact moment when I'd fallen in love with Trevor, because it must have been before he told me we needed to stop seeing each other.

Was it in Detroit, when we caught each other's eye and smirked whenever one of our fellow newly minted executives raised his hand for the umpteenth time to ask a stupid question in an effort to be noticed by the orientation speakers? Or perhaps it was at some point during the conferences that followed, maybe that night the hardcore drinking group found itself stranded in a bar in Gibraltar, not one of us sober enough to remember the name of our hotel across the border in Spain, our keycards blank so as not to provide information to possible pickpockets, until Trevor called Juliet to ask her where he'd told her he'd be staying, and we all then serenaded her over the phone, as Trevor leaned drunkenly against me and giggled.

Maybe it was that Tuesday night in Berlin, as Trevor and I danced, sometimes with each other and sometimes with others, brushing against each other every so often, stubbornly concealing sexual attraction under a display of affectionate friendship.

Maybe I fell in love with Trevor two nights later, after the announcement of my new assignment and the end of the conference, when most people had already headed home. My return flight to Kiev was on Friday morning, so I'd already arranged to hold the hotel room one extra night.

*******************

"Ready to celebrate?" Trevor asked me Thursday evening, obviously prepared to celebrate with me.

"You're not flying out tonight?" I asked, pleased at the prospect of spending some extra time with him.

"Nah. Bright and early, tomorrow morning."

Perhaps nothing further would have happened if we'd gone out clubbing again, if we'd been distracted by the music and the pretty boys; the next day we'd have both been on our way home and the ensuing physical distance would have allowed us to regain our equilibrium. But we were both tired, and, in a case of divine retribution, that morning I'd woken up with real flu symptoms. We went to Playoff, a sports bar in the Potsdamer Platz arcade, for hamburgers and ribs, and then back to the hotel for a nightcap. The bar was relatively empty now that our group was gone, and we snagged ourselves a couple of armchairs. My joints were starting to ache, but I was reluctant to call it a night, because I had no idea when I might see Trevor next. We sat quietly, and I was starting to drift, when I felt his cool fingers touch my cheek.

"You're burning up," he said with a frown.

"I'm okay. Nothing a couple of aspirins won't fix," I told him drowsily.

"Come on, Marcus. I'll see you to your room."

He stood and pulled me to my feet. He was staying on the floor above mine, but unlike the previous nights, in the elevator he only pressed the button to my floor.

"Do you have aspirin? If not, Juliet always packs some for me."

"I've got some," I said hastily. The last person I wanted to think of was Juliet, even though that was exactly who I should have been remembering all along. I glanced at him, but he was glaring at the elevator doors, his lips pressed together in a thin line.

When the mechanical voice announced my floor, I started to say goodbye to Trevor, but he only shook his head, and shoved me gently out of the elevator, following close behind me down the quiet corridor.

"This is me," I whispered awkwardly when we reached my room, and I fished in my back pocket for my cardkey. I opened the door, and, one hand on the handle, turned to him once again to say goodbye, but again he pushed me, backwards this time, until there was enough space for him to step into the room and close the door behind him. I didn't exactly resist him, but I was stiff, uncertain, wondering if we both wanted the same thing, simultaneously hoping that we did and that we didn't.

"Trevor..." I started, but I had no idea how to continue. I'd been bungee jumping in France once, and I was now feeling a lot of the same sensations I'd felt standing on the bridge railing, too terrified to take that final step into the void. But at Artuby people had counted down for me, and way deep down I'd known that I was firmly anchored and in no real danger. In my hotel room in Berlin I knew no such thing, and there was nobody to direct or encourage me one way or another, only Trevor standing in front of me, his face stern.

"I'd like to kiss you," he said a little stiltedly.

"I don't want to give you my cold."

Apparently that dazed, inane comment was the right thing to say, because he burst out laughing and reached for me, pulling me into his arms. He bent his head and kissed me, his lips soft and cool on mine.

*******************

So maybe that was the moment I fell in love with him, or maybe a little later, when he walked me backwards until my knees hit the edge of the bed and we fell back together, or when he kneeled behind me, his skin almost as hot as mine by that point as he lay against my back and pushed into me in one long stroke, gathering speed as I rocked against him, his hand wrapped around mine as I jerked off.

Or maybe it was even later, when he pulled me into his arms, even though I hadn't asked him to stay and had half-expected him to leave after we were done, and we lay awake but silent until dawn.

Ultimately it didn't make any difference, because whenever that moment had occurred, it had apparently created a rippling effect, like a stone falling in a calm lake; the ripples spread out across my whole life, until it seemed like I'd never known Trevor and not loved him.

*******************

From 2006 until 2009 all I seemed to do was travel. My home base was in Frankfurt, because most of our operations were located in Europe and Frankfurt Airport offered the most frequent connections to almost anywhere I needed to be. I rented an apartment in Wiesbaden, but I was almost never home.

During those years there were only three people I was consistently in contact with. One was Kerem, the cab driver who drove me to the airport and picked me up again. He was an older man, who liked to tell me all about the successes of his children and the increasing number of his grandchildren. The second was Gulseh, who was my cleaning lady and also turned out to be Kerem's second cousin by marriage. Between them, they kept tabs on me.

The third was Trevor. In mid-2006 he got his second chance at Germany, only in a much higher position than the one he'd refused before, running our largest European operation. He moved to Frankfurt with Juliet and the girls. I had few reasons to see him professionally, other than the occasional courtesy call or visit. But he always came around to see me the few days I was at home.

It started innocently enough, when I sent Trevor an e-mail congratulating him on his promotion. I'd been out of the country during his move, but I promised I'd take him out for a celebratory drink when I returned. Trevor offered to pick me up from the airport, but Kerem already had my arrival details.

"Why don't you come over to Wiesbaden? I'll show you around," I told him, but all he ended up seeing was my apartment and my bedroom. If he ever visited the sights of Wiesbaden, it wasn't with me.

"What do you tell Juliet?" I asked him once, when we'd lost track of time and he was sitting on the side of the bed, hastily pulling on his socks. He paused, staring at the shoe in his hand as if he'd never seen it before, then shrugged.

"This and that, depending on when and how long I'm here. That I'm visiting a client in Munich, or that I'm playing golf; once that we had a meeting in London. It's not like this happens so often or with any regularity."

He had a point. A couple of hours here and there, mostly when Juliet would have expected him to be at work, an average of one or two overnights every eight to ten weeks, weekends strictly off bounds. It would have been barely noticeable.

"What about when you see others?"

He turned then to stare at me. "Others? I don't see others."

I gaped back. This was another one of the many discussions we'd never held, but I hadn't expected or even wanted exclusivity, because exclusivity increased my responsibility. And yet, that had been my rationalization in the first place, hadn't it? That if I gave Trevor what he needed, he wouldn't pursue other, riskier activities, that I didn't pose a real threat to his marriage or his way of life.

"I thought . . ."

He turned his back on me and resumed putting on his shoes, then bent over to tie his shoelaces.

"No. There's only you."

"And Juliet," I reminded him.

"Don't, Marcus."

He sounded so anguished that I shut up.

And so, I kept on letting him know my schedule, generally just forwarding him the ticket confirmations our travel agency e-mailed to me. The rest was up to him, but I was never disappointed. In January of 2007 I gave him a key to my apartment.

*******************

"HQ," I told Trevor, as we lay on top of the sheets, sweaty and sated. Germany was in the grip of a heat wave, and the windows were wide open. The occasional car drove by, and a TV droned somewhere in the neighborhood, but otherwise it was quiet enough to hear the second hand on my old-fashioned alarm clock jerking forward, marking the time until Trevor finally reacted.

"When?"

"September. It's another cost-cutting measure. More tele-commuting, fewer actual trips."

The move was being imposed on me, but I should have recommended it myself. Often things got accomplished a lot faster if we just went on site and spent some face-to-face time, but after three years my team and I had established enough processes and templates that there were fewer severe or urgent issues requiring our presence.

Trevor sat up and hunched over, rubbing his forehead with the tips of his fingers. "Well, shit," he said softly, then more vehemently: "Shit!"

I rolled onto my side and stroked his long thigh soothingly. Ever since the HR Director had told me of the coming move, I'd been considering my options. And really, there was only one.

"I'm not going to do it."

He looked back at me.

"What do you mean, you're not going to do it? Do you have a choice?"

"Yeah. I can quit, look for something else."

"In this economy? Are you nuts?" He paused for a second. He'd always been quick to connect dots, even under stress. "Marcus, no. Whatever you're thinking, no."

I swallowed.

"It's been over three years. Isn't it time you . . . we reached a decision?"

His eyes grew soft with something that I perceived as pity and that made me want to punch him. "You know my decision, Marcus. You always have."

"Over three years," I repeated, a little helplessly. I should have prepared some arguments, but surely the length of time meant something in and of itself.

I'd stopped stroking his thigh and instead was gripping his quadricep, my knuckles white. He had to pry my fingers loose, and then he laced them through his own.

"I know," he agreed softly. "But we both knew this wasn't going anywhere, right? It doesn't mean it hasn't been important to me. It's just... Well, it's a dead end street."

He raised our linked hands to his lips and kissed my wrist, then ran his fingers down my forearm and kissed the inside of my elbow, my shoulder, my neck. I pulled him on top of me, feeling his solid weight press me into the mattress. His lean hips fit snugly between my raised thighs. It was only June, and I wouldn't be moving back to the US until September, but I knew, without his having to say so, that this was the last time we were going to be together.

After he'd dressed, he stood at the side of the bed, looking down at me, his blue eyes wide, as if he was trying to stop tears from forming.

"Marcus. We're friends. We're still friends, right?"

What did he want from me?

"Yeah. We're still friends," I agreed quietly, even though I could no longer imagine it ever being the same when we hung out with the hardcore group at conferences, or that we'd ever sit next to each other and keep each other awake and amused during long and boring power point presentations.

Besides, there were credible rumors flying that Kim was going to retire within the next two to three years, and Trevor was regarded as the most likely successor. I thought it entirely possible. As he'd gained more experience, he was consistently scoring higher than me in every single review. His direct reports loved him, his clients loved him, his bosses loved him, even the unions loved him. His undisclosed homosexuality and his affair with me were the only shadows in an otherwise unblemished life and future. But I couldn't see reporting to him in the future. I couldn't see how I'd stand it. Resigning remained my only option.

"Be careful, Trevor," I told him. "Please, take care."

"Don't worry about me, Marcus." He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and balled them into fists. "I won't do this again," he promised after a few seconds. "This was only with you."

For a while I tried to interpret what he was trying to tell me that hot afternoon, but there were too many possibilities, most them painful, and finally I gave up.

*******************

After handing in my notice and briefly entertaining daydreams of doing something simple and uncomplicated like becoming a tennis instructor or a wilderness guide in Colorado--both of which I'd done as a student thirty years ago but sadly no longer had the skill or stamina for--I took the route of practically every other jobless upper level manager and dubbed myself a consultant. My first and, for a long time only, client was my old company; ironically they now appeared prepared to foot the bill for almost limitless travel, if I told them it was necessary. I didn't, of course. Instead, I tried to accomplish as much as possible from my home office, which I'd set up in Morrison, just west of Denver. Given that I wasn't an EU citizen, and having lost the sponsorship of my employer, in the end it had been easier to move back to the place I grew up in.

Things were different, of course. I was my own boss, and my old team had been disbanded, so in some ways I was working harder than ever, yet there was also a sense of freedom I'd never experienced before. I felt a pang of regret when I heard about the annual international leadership conference, which was going to be held in Prague and which was the first one I wouldn't be attending, and I moped around for a couple of days, but I soon got over it.

I put off visiting Frankfurt for as long as I could, but finally needed to schedule the trip. I took the official route, arranging the visit with one of Trevor's direct reports. After everything had been set, I dropped Trevor a one-liner, advising him in vague terms of the days of my visit to the operation and stating that it would be nice to catch up, if he was free at some point. By now I had enough experience with other ex-colleagues to know that they rarely turned out to be free, and I expected that Trevor wouldn't be either. He sent me an equally brief mail back, expressing his regret that he would be at headquarters in US those two days.

I arranged to stay in Germany over the weekend. Despite the fact that I'd been living in Wiesbaden for almost four years, I hadn't seen much more of the town and the region of Hessen than the local supermarket and dry cleaners, and the road between my apartment and the airport. I rented a car for a couple of days and drove from Frankfurt to Wiesbaden and to Mainz, where I walked around, enjoying the sights and the beautiful late spring weather. It had been almost a year since the last time I'd seen or spoken to Trevor, other than that one exchange of e-mails.

I got back to my hotel in Frankfurt Saturday evening tired, hungry and slightly sunburned. The hotel bar boasted a small shaded patio and served club sandwiches, so I decided to stay put. My return flight wasn't until Monday mid-afternoon, so I had some time left to also explore Frankfurt, and I could afford one lazy evening doing nothing but drinking a couple of beers and reading the book I'd downloaded on my Kindle.

"Marcus."

He was thinner, his face both leaner and older-looking; he looked tired. He sat down, crossed his arms and rested them on the table, and simply stared at me, as if he couldn't quite believe his eyes.

I laid the Kindle on the table.

"Hey," I said, as if I'd just seen him yesterday. "Is this a coincidence?"

One corner of his mouth curled up.

"No, it damned well isn't. My PA told me which hotel you're staying at, and when I called, they told me you weren't in your room, but that you hadn't checked out."

"I thought you were in the US."

"I was. From last Friday through to Thursday. Got back here yesterday morning. I was under the impression that you were in Frankfurt only on Wednesday and Thursday," he remarked mildly, and I blushed. "I guess I know you better than you thought I did," he concluded.

"You're looking good," I lied. "Was the trip about the expected announcement?"

"Yes and no. I was visiting the girls first, then I had a meeting with the Board. Nothing's certain yet, but my chances aren't bad."

"You already moved your family back the States? Isn't that jumping the gun a bit?"

"You haven't heard the gossip? You must be losing your touch."

"What gossip?"

He sighed.

"Juliet and I are getting a divorce."

"What? Why?"

He kept his eyes fixed on me.

"You told her about you?" I asked incredulously.

"I told her. I also told her about you."

"Jesus, Trevor."

He made a dismissive gesture.

"Not about the past. But about what I hope for the future."

The waiter picked that exact moment to come ask Trevor if he wanted a drink. I was vaguely aware of Trevor ordering a beer for himself and a refill for me, and then we were alone again.

"Well? Aren't you going to say anything?"

I looked at him accusingly.

I jerked my hand away as the waiter approached us with the drinks, an automatic reaction that I couldn't help.

"I don't know if I'm willing to come out of the closet. Maybe in a few years. I just don't know," he warned me.

"That's okay. I'm not exactly the poster boy for out, loud and proud myself."

"And so?"

"And so?"

"Are you willing? To give it a go with me? We can take it as slowly or as quickly as you--"

I interrupted him. This time around, I had to say it. I had to let the ripple catch up with me again.

"I love you, Trevor."

He smiled at me and took my hand again.

"I love you, too. I don't know when or how it happened. I just know that I do. And that I need you."

"Exactly," I breathed.

*******************

Having never lived with somebody before, I never quite appreciated the level of logistics required to combine two households, small though they both may be. Trevor is an old hand.

"Just be glad one of us isn't pregnant and throwing up all the time, and that we're not also simultaneously planning a big wedding," he told me on the phone, after I'd finished bitching about something or other, then he quickly changed the subject.

I wondered if he was implying a shotgun wedding, events overtaking him and forcing him into choices he wouldn't have otherwise made. Even if it that's how it had happened, knowing Trevor, it would have only been part of his story, so I didn't ask him about it. At the end of the day, trying to determine what makes us who we are and how we reached this point is as impossible as trying to figure out when our feelings for each other developed into something we could base a joint future and life on.