Rick & Taine at the Hop - 1. Rick & Taine at the Hop

We walked quickly down the street, huddling in our winter jackets against the dry, cutting October wind. It was crazy being out here in the early morning frost, but we were hungry and our stomachs were growling more than our teeth were chattering. Besides, he had explained before we left, if we didn't get there early, we'd have to wait for twenty minutes as endless groups of Mexican families were seated before us.

"Dad told me we moved here because it was warm," he said, his slender arms crossed against his chest. "He didn't tell me that dry cold was worse."

I could only nod, my teeth clenched against the frigid gusts, my eyes narrowed as if avoiding an incipient freeze. I had lived up North for many years myself, and there was something about Texas winter which just felt colder, even though we hadn't seen a flake of snow in the four years since I had moved to San Antonio. The chill had set in early this year, however, and it meant serious business.

"We're almost there," I said, reassuring myself as much as him.

He lowered his head, as did I, and we continued our march up Walden Road.My mind took me back to an hour before, when I had awakened with a start, my sleep-hazy mind confused for a brief moment about finding myself in an unfamiliar bed. I was wrapped around him, and the comforting scent of strawberry shampoo from his hair, the warmth of his body and the down comforters surrounding us put me immediately at ease.

He was still deep in slumber, impossibly cute, dressed in matching black fleece sweatshirt and sweatpants, and I wrapped my flannel-clad arms tighter around him, nuzzling into his warm, sleepy neck. He stirred a bit at the contact, digging his face contentedly into the pillows and pressing his back against me.

This has to be Heaven, I thought, drawing my knees up tighter as we curled together in fetal positions, spooning close against the rising sun streaming through the bedroom window. I closed my eyes tightly to prolong the moment, inhaling strawberry and his sweet, comforting scent.

It had been our first sleepover, and we had played video games and talked long into the night before bedding down in happy contentment. I think both of us were asleep the moment our heads hit the pillows, and all I wanted was to stay that way forever, hugging him close and hovering in the warm, fuzzy pleasure of that place between waking and dreaming.

He yawned then, his mouth opening impossibly wide before closing into a peaceful smile, and I suppressed a giggle before his yawn became contagious, sneaking up on me before I knew it was coming. I shook my head slightly as the yawn traveled through me, then cuddled closer to my new best friend as it left. I was sure he was still asleep, but then I heard him mumble something into the pillow.

"Mm-hpp," is what it sounded like.

I opened my eyes fully, puzzled but happy. I softly kissed the back of his neck and he emitted a contented sound into the pillow, then repeated his previous mumble, slightly louder.

"Mm-hpp!"

"Hmmm?" I asked, moving my head over his so as to hear him better.

"I-HOP!" he said, lifting his lips from the pillow. "IHOP."

He rolled onto his back and opened his eyes, the sun's rays backlighting the irises a brilliant emerald green.

Awake only a few seconds, he already had that mischievous glint in his eyes and slight smirk which told me that his insistent tone was playful rather than demanding. Which is not to say that it wasn't demanding, exactly, just that he was being playful about it.

I traced a finger lazily down the warm fleece covering his back as he curled into me, his palms flat against my flannel-clad chest and his eyes focused intently on mine.

"IHOP," he whispered.

I couldn't help but laugh, pulling him into a fierce hug. I loved him so much at that moment that I thought my heart would burst, and I knew then that I would kill or die for this wonderful boy, that I would do anything in my power to make him happy. Yes, even if it meant pulling off the covers and getting out of bed.

"Mm-hpp!" he said into my chest, the rumble from his lips traveling up through my neck with a slight tickle. Then his body relaxed for a moment and he let himself be hugged, kissed and adored, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me close. I don't think I had ever been as comfortable or happy in my life as I was at that exact moment, and as much as I wanted to do anything I could to please the cuddly, fleece-covered angel in my arms, I didn't want the moment to ever end.

"Just a few more minutes?" I pleaded with a pout.

He came fully awake then and pushed me onto my back, straddling me and holding my arms above my head onto the mattress. This sudden motion disturbed the covers, breaking our sleep-seal of warmth, letting in the cooler air of the room and bringing me fully into the new day. He shook me a few times, causing me to break out in giggles.

"Now! Now! NOW!" he chanted. "If we don't go right NOW, we'll be stuck behind Papa Chupacabra and his brood for twenty minutes!"

"Okay," I relented with a sleepy sigh, smiling up at him. "Get off me, and let me take a shower."

He pounced happily from the bed, and I followed, and before too long, well, here we were, the bitter Texas wind whipping at our thin, inadequately bundled bodies as we crossed the vast expanse of the IHOP parking lot toward our destination.

Taine ran ahead, whipping open the door of the restaurant, and I hurried inside after him, shivering as the super-heated air from inside hit my cold body. We were early enough that there were only a few tables of diners, and my eyes settled on one Mexican family, five children staggered roughly a year apart between the ages of four and nine. There was a large Mamacita in an ill-fitting pink frock, and the head of the family was even larger, his knit striped shirt stretching obscenely over an enormous belly.

I nodded in their direction and whispered to Taine, "Papa Chupacabra?"

Taine grinned, then turned toward the approaching hostess.

"Can we have David's section?" he asked. This request was uncharacteristically bold for Taine, as his shyness usually let me handle most interactions with retail and service personnel, but we had come here enough that he felt comfortable, and I had learned that this was rare for him in public places. This place should be honored, I thought.

The hostess smiled and led us over to one of David's tables. He was our regular waiter, and treated us like gold. I had a suspicion that the young, handsome Hispanic kid was so nice to us because he had eyes for Taine, but he was never anything other than polite and respectful, so I held my natural jealousy in check.

We didn't have to wait long before David arrived, but it was long enough for us to warm up a little and for me to study the menu and decide what to order. Taine didn't need to look, as he had a favorite item, the reason we always came to IHOP rather than Denny's or Coco's.

Well, the reason we didn't go to Coco's had more to do with Taine's first meal there, where he found a hair in his food and was so disgusted that he refused to ever return. I teased him about it once, staging a fake tantrum because he didn't want to eat there, but I found that he took me seriously, thinking me to be a big fan of the cruddy, soon-to-close greasy-spoon, so I didn't do it again.

David showed up with a big smile on his face, an iced tea for me and an orange juice for Taine already in his hands. Usually, the hostess would have taken our drink orders, but David knew us well by then, and insisted on giving us full service.

"Good morning, guys, great to see you!" he said enthusiastically, although I noticed that he only glanced at me and let his gaze linger on Taine's beautiful face. I suppressed a snicker, knowing that David took inordinate pride in remembering Taine's favorite dish.

"Chocolate-chip pancakes?"

Taine nodded, smiling, and David nodded back warmly before reluctantly turning his attention to me, order pad at the ready. My orders were usually quite specific, but tended to vary, unlike Taine's. That day I chose three eggs, sunny-side up, with bacon, sausage, hash browns and an order of sourdough toast. David took it all down, gave Taine a last smile, grabbed our menus and rushed to put in the order. I could swear that he was blushing as he left our table.

Taine looked over at the table set-up, a frown appearing as he saw the syrup caddy. There were two maples and a blueberry, and his eyes widened in concern.

"Don't worry," I grinned. "You won't even have to ask."

Sure enough, David came by our table a couple of minutes later with a fresh dispenser full of strawberry syrup, which he semi-ostentatiously swapped out for one of the maples before rushing off again. This time, I was sure he was blushing.

"He's really good," Taine said.

"Yeah, he likes us," I replied, although I was sure that I would still have to ask for extra butter for my toast. It was best not to bring this to Taine's attention, I knew, because he still got weird about stuff like that. His youthful naivete was incredibly cute and charming, and I wanted to protect it, for no other reason than that I found it so adorable.

Taine was staring over my shoulder, and then his eyes widened and he turned his head inward, looking down at a spot on the seat toward the wall as if he was trying to hide. Indeed, he seemed to draw in on himself and visibly shrink toward the inside of the booth across from me.

I was momentarily puzzled by his sudden withdrawal, and slowly turned to look over my shoulder at what might have provoked this reaction. I couldn't see anything strange, but then the realization dawned on me.

There were three Mexican girls, who looked to be our age or a year or two younger, walking with a hostess toward us.

They all wore identically tight shirts, and one of them -- wearing hot pink -- had what Taine would call "a great rack," large, firm breasts straining at the thin fabric. As they passed our table, Taine slowly returned to a normal position, although he still kept his eyes downward.

"The one in pink?" I asked softly.

Taine looked up at me with a bashful smirk.

"She had a great rack," he admitted, fidgeting with his fingers on the table.

I smiled and shook my head. Taine had a weakness for great racks, but was intimidated by the sorts of girls who made those racks as obvious as the local Mexican girls seemed to. Open displays of sexuality in general seemed to push him into a state of paralyzing shyness, and the young crop of Latinas in our neighborhood were about nothing if not flaunting all of their God-given assets at all times.

That thought reminded me of Carmelita, a girl at our school whose hot pants and belly shirts pushed the Polk High dress code to its limits, despite the fact that her particular belly bore all of the tell-tale stretch scars which marked her as a teen mother. I had asked my Mexican friend Dion about it one day, and received an illuminating answer.

"That's not for you," Dion had told me. "They do that for Mexican men. We're all about babies and fertility and having a shitload of kids. It's gross to you, I know. Me too, because I was born here. But when real Mexicans see those tetas, that belly, and those stretch-marks, they think 'That's the mother of my children,' and they gotta get with her."

I had nodded sagely, but was internally marveling about how two cultures, smashed together side by side as they were in heavily Hispanic South Texas, could have such different mindsets and such different attractions.

Then again, I had different attractions myself, and Dion had picked up on that as well, although he had no inclinations in that direction whatsoever. It didn't bother him at all, and we remained friends throughout our lives, well into our forties, when he and I commisserated over our impending divorces together by telephone after he had become a career military man and I was running a nightclub in Washington, DC.

David arrived with our food, and I was amused to see that he had drawn a whipped-cream smiley face on Taine's chocolate-chip pancakes. I was further amused -- and pleasantly surprised -- when he set down a ramekin full of extra butter next to my toast. He must have caught my surprise, because he gave me a quick wink as he walked away. He was a clever one, I'd give him that.

"Do you ever wonder what we're doing?" Taine asked suddenly.

"What do you mean? We're eating breakfast."

Taine drizzled the reddish syrup on his pancakes, and the whipped-cream smiley face seemed to me to have just been in a horrible accident. I flashed on the boy in the truck that had T-boned us in Sly's car, then pushed the image from my mind and concentrated on what Taine was trying to say.

"That's not what I mean," he said, and I could feel the frustration in his voice. "I mean in general. What is this?"

I looked at him across the table, thinking. I knew this was an important question, the most important question that Taine had ever asked me, and I wanted to give him an honest answer, but I had to phrase it carefully. As much as I loved him, and thought I knew him, I also knew that there was a potential minefield here. I flashed on one of those 15th century navigational maps of the oceans, with the carefully-lettered warning: Here there be dragons.

"We're best friends," I said at last. "We're two very different people with different stories, different backgrounds and different lives who are still somehow the same deep down, whose souls connected and found each other past all those differences. Like two puzzle pieces that fit together, that work together. That belong together."

Taine took this in, then locked eyes with me, and I could see something unsettled there.

"But," he said with a sigh, "I'm not..."

"Taine, who cares? I don't care what you call anything. I really, really don't. Do you really think I do? Why should we call this anything? We're best friends, and that's all anybody needs to know about us."

He looked pained. "But what does that mean?"

"What that means to us stays between us," I replied. "I can go see Rocky Horror and you can stare at Mexican girls' racks, because that's who we are. Nothing between us changes that, and it doesn't mean that we need to walk down the hallway at school holding hands and singing 'We Are Family'... because we're not part of that family. I'm not a part of that any more than you are. What we have together is special and unique to us, and doesn't concern anyone else on this whole planet but us. Okay?"

Taine chewed his pancake, took a small sip of orange juice, and nodded his head slowly, but reticently. I finally understood what had been bothering him. It wasn't me he was scared of, or even the way we felt about each other. It never had been. He was scared of what he thought my expectations of him might be. That I might expect him to go public, to embrace an entire lifestyle, to label himself in a way which he could never reconcile.

And that wasn't even scaring him that much, I realized. What scared him was that I would be disappointed and would abandon him in anger and resentment when he couldn't be what (he thought) I expected him to be.

"I am not interested in being a word," I said. "I am not interested in being a symbol, or a lifestyle, or a philosophy. I am interested in sharing myself -- my specific, individual self, Rick Spivey -- with you. Your specific, individual self. Taine Maxwell. And my only want, the only thing about this that I want, is for you, Taine Maxwell, to share your specific, individual self with me. That's all. Good and bad, happy and sad, fears and hopes and dreams and private secrets. But just you and me. And if we both do that, and just that, then neither one of us will be disappointed or pressured or feel uncomfortable."

Taine was silent for some time, digesting all of this.

"You live too loud," he said.

"I know. I'm very sociable and gregarious and open and loud, and you're very shy and private and internal and quiet. I get that, and I don't expect you to change any of yourself unless you want to, and I know that you don't expect me to change either. And I'm not going to make you do anything. You can leave your hat on in public. Just take it off with me. And you know what? I'll wear a hat in public too if you like. I don't care. All I want is to be with you. My best friend."

Taine gave an almost imperceptible nod and returned to his meal. I gestured to David to refill my iced tea, and proceeded to dump four packets of sugar into it. Taine watched this process and grinned.

"I don't know why you do that," he said. "Most of it goes on the bottom and doesn't even dissolve. You know, one packet of sweetener is as good as all four of those, and it doesn't sit at the bottom."

"I know," I smiled. "You tell me that every time we come here. I don't like the taste of sweetener. Besides, I like the sugar at the bottom when I finish."

Taine shook his head, smirking. "Yeah, I don't expect you to change either. My best friend."

We paid our bill and went back out into the cold, dry, slicing Texas wind, which still howled through the streets like a frigid banshee. But I think we both felt a lot warmer inside.