Alden: my cop best friend - Chapter 1 (Patreon)

Author’s note: All my characters are consenting adults (18+). All sexual acts depicted are consensual between the adult characters.

Chapter 1

Alden started showing up after the divorce papers were signed.

Not every day. Enough. A black-and-white parked crooked in my driveway like the neighborhood had committed a crime by existing. He’d sit in my kitchen in jeans and a department T-shirt, mustache still damp from the shower at the motel, and drink two beers while a movie from 1998 yelled in the living room. I don’t drink. I sat with a soda and let him talk around the divorce until the talk ran out and the gunfire on screen did the rest.

Alden is thirty-five. Broad. Solid. Dark hair that never quite stays down, pale green eyes, a thick mustache, the stubble of a man who just came off a shift. He wears the quiet of a cop even in my house — straight-backed, watchful, the badge still in the way he stands. I’m twenty-five. I paint. The house is glass and concrete and a pool that looks obscene at night. I make more than he does with a star on his chest and he hates that in a way he never says.

We’ve known each other since I was a kid drawing on envelopes and he was already a cadet. Same block. Same Sunday dinners at my parents’ until they sold the house and went to the country. When I came out at twenty-one he didn’t yell. He did the Republican version of yelling. Quiet. Certain. That’s a choice. That’s not how you were raised. Then he stopped coming over. Then Maggie happened. Then the driveway became a parish again.

The first night he only stayed for one beer. He talked about the motel coffee and a noise complaint on the east side and didn’t say her name. When he stood to leave he looked at my mouth by accident and corrected himself by looking at the door. I walked him out. The cruiser smelled like vinyl and rain. He said thanks like I’d loaned him a wrench.

The second night he stayed for two. Die Hard was on because he put it on. I couldn’t stop thinking how hot Bruce Willis was back in the day and I didn’t say that. Alden sat with his knees open and his badge on the island, off duty and still on duty. He told me Maggie’s father had called him a disappointment. He laughed once, no humor. The mustache hid most of it.

“It wasn’t another woman,” he said. To the TV. “She said I was a lot. You don’t take certain tastes home to a wife who thinks the bedroom is for kids and thanking God.”

I waited.

“I wanted her to meet me in the middle. She looked at me like I’d asked her to rob a church. So she left. Motel. This.” He lifted the bottle. “Your couch.”

I asked what a lot meant. He got red from the neck up and told me to drop it. I didn’t. By the end of the movie I had the shape of a man who liked it rough and hadn’t been allowed to be, and a best friend sitting in my kitchen climbing the walls in a T-shirt.

He didn’t touch me. I didn’t touch him. The space between the stools did the work.

He started coming on nights that weren’t convenient. After midnight. Before a morning shift. He’d text you up from the lot and I’d turn the kitchen light on and he’d walk in.

We watched bad action. We talked around Maggie. He asked about a painting once and I watched him hate that he asked, like liking a canvas was a softness he couldn’t afford. His eyes did this thing — they’d land on my hands, my throat, the open collar of my shirt — and then he’d find the TV again like the TV had arrested him.

“You seeing anybody,” he said one Thursday, not looking at me.

“No.”

“Good. People complicate houses.”

“You’re in my house.”

“I’m not people. Im your best friend and I’m broken furniture that drinks.”

He smiled with no teeth. I wanted to put my mouth on the mustache and I sat on my hands until he left.

The slip was already in a drawer upstairs. Black. Thin straps. I’d bought it a year ago after a night I don’t tell anyone about and never worn it for a body. I tried it on the afternoon before his next visit and looked at myself in the bathroom glass like I was committing a small crime. Mid-thigh. The straps cut my shoulders. My mouth looked different over it. I took it off. I put it back. I painted nothing for two hours and the pool threw light on the ceiling.

He came that night in the T-shirt. Two beers. Another Die Hard movie. I stayed in sweats on purpose. The drawer upstairs felt loud. He talked about a stop on Fifth that went sideways and his voice was the stop-voice even at my island, and I thought about the strap on my shoulder and had to shift on the stool.

“You’re quiet,” he said.

“I’m listening.”

“You’re looking at me like I’m a sitting.”

“You are.”

He snorted. Drank. Didn’t leave early. When he finally stood his knee brushed mine and neither of us moved for a second too long. Then he did. The door that night was quiet. I went upstairs and put the slip on again in the dark and took it off again and slept wrong.

Three nights later I didn’t take it off.

He was already on the stool with the bottle when I came down. Jack Reacher on low. Badge on the marble. He looked up and the cop scan hit me first — inventory, threat, exit — and then the rest of his face caught up.

He didn’t speak for a full second. Heat. Anger. Something that made his throat move.

“What the hell is that.”

“Clothes.”

“Take it off.”

“No.”

He stood so fast the stool scraped. He was bigger in my kitchen than he is in the driveway. Green eyes gone ugly.

“You think this is funny. You put that on because I told you my wife left and you thought I’d—” He cut himself off. He looked at my legs and hated that he looked. “I’m not gay, Jax.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“Then what is this.”

“You sit in my house and talk around it. I got tired of the movie.”

He laughed, short, mean.

“You’re my fucking best friend. I’ve known you since you were a kid with paint on your hands. You don’t stand in front of me dressed like that.”

“I just did.”

He came around the island. Not touching. Close enough that I smelled motel soap, beer  and pinch of sweat. It The slip felt thinner. His eyes kept dropping and climbing back up like he could arrest them. The strap. The line of my thigh. My mouth. Back to my eyes like that was the legal place.

“You look—” He stopped. Started again. “You look like a problem I don’t get to have. Put a sweater on. I’m leaving.”

“Then leave, Alden. I’m at my house and I’m comfortable dressed like this!”

He didn’t leave. His hand opened and closed at his side. The department shirt pulled across his chest. He stared at the strap where it cut my shoulder and his voice came out lower.

“If I stay I do something I can’t take back.”

“I’m not asking for anything...”

“Don’t.” He pointed at my mouth, at the slip, at the whole stupid idea. “Don’t you stand there looking like that and talk soft. I’m pissed. I’m also—” He bit it off. The mustache didn’t hide the heat in his face. “Don’t make me say it.”

“Say what.”

“You know what.”

I didn’t help him. The fridge hummed. Guns and actors yelled in the other room. Alden’s breathing had changed. He was hard. I could see it when I wasn’t supposed to look and he knew I could see it and that made him meaner.

“I should put you through that wall,” he said, quiet. “Not like that. Like a friend who crossed a line.”

“You haven’t touched me.”

“That’s the line.”

He reached up like he was going to hook the strap and pull it off. His fingers stopped an inch from my skin. I felt the heat of his hand anyway. He dropped it. Wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist like he’d tasted something.

“I’m going to the car.”

“Alden.”

“Don’t say my name in that. You look like… I don’t even have words.”

He grabbed the keys. At the door he turned around one more time and looked at me like I’d keyed the cruiser, like he wanted to shove me into the wall and also wanted to put his fist through the canvas in the hall.

“Don’t you wear that when I come back.”

“Are you coming back?”

“I shouldn’t.”

The door hit the frame hard enough that the canvas tilted. The cop car pulled out like the neighborhood had been warned.

I stood in the slip in the kitchen with the movie still going and my pulse in my throat. The stool he’d scraped was still crooked. I didn’t take the slip off for a long time. I wanted the house to keep the shape of what he’d almost done.

He texted at 1:14 a.m. from the motel.

Alden: take that thing off

Alden: I mean don’t text me

Alden: I can still see it

I didn’t answer.

I watched the three dots appear and die. Appear and die. Then nothing.

Day one I left him alone. I painted a bad canvas on purpose and scraped it off. The pool was a black mirror. I didn’t jerk off. I wanted the night to stay sharp.

Day two he sat in my driveway at dusk and didn’t get out. I stood in the doorway in a regular shirt. He stared at the windshield. Eleven minutes. I counted. Then he backed out without looking at the house.

Day three he called from a grocery lot. A cart rattled. A lady yelled somewhere behind him.

“I thought about the lingerie,” he said, no hello. “I thought about putting you against the fridge. I jerked off in the motel and I was mad the whole time. Twice. I am not gay. I am not coming over so you can play dress-up. I am telling you so you stop waiting.”

“I wasn’t waiting.”

“Don’t lie to a cop.”

“Then don’t call from the meat aisle.”

Silence. His breath. A scanner beep.

“You looked like someone I don’t get to want,” he said, and it came out angry, like the sentence had robbed him. “That’s not an invitation. That’s me telling you why I left. I should’ve taken it off you. I should’ve laughed. I did neither. I drove to a motel and acted like a teenager. I’m thirty-five.”

“I know how old you are.”

“Then act like it. Put your normal clothes on. Be my best friend. That’s the job. I need a shoulder after the divorce.”

“The job is you in my driveway pretending I’m a criminal and not getting out of the car?”

He hung up.

He showed up at ten the night after. T-shirt. Eyes shot. Dark circles under his eyes. Jaw tight. No beer. He looked at my body first, checking, and only then at my face. Sweats. Old shirt. His shoulders dropped a half inch. Disappointed and relieved in the same breath.

“If you have that on I’m walking.”

“I don’t.”

“We don’t talk about that shit. We don’t do it again. I’m your best friend. That’s the situation, Jax.”

“Okay.”

He sat. He didn’t watch the movie. He watched my mouth like he hated it. Twenty minutes of gunfire and neither of us laughed at the lines we always laughed at. His knee stayed away from mine on purpose. I could still feel the inch where his fingers hadn’t touched the strap.

“Maggie asked if I was staying with you,” he said, sudden. “I said no. I said a friend. I didn’t say your name.”

“Alright.”

“If I say your name she hears the rest.”

“What rest? Are you worried about the wife who left you?”

He looked at me. Green. Tired. Mean with want he wouldn’t name.

“Don’t.”

He left at eleven. At the door:

“If I see it again I won’t be nice about walking out.”

“What does nice mean.”

“It means I walk. The other thing is I don’t walk. I’m trying to stay on the first one.”

I already knew I was going to wear it.

He already knew he was going to come back anyway.

I slept in the slip that night and it stuck to me in the heat and I thought about his hand in the air over my shoulder and the way he’d said problem I don’t get to have like the problem was already living in the motel with him.

In the morning there was a cruiser slow-rolling past the house that didn’t stop.

I left the side door unlocked.

Not because we’d written rules.

Because I wanted him to decide in the dark, with no movie on, whether he was still walking out.