Gigi Sinclair

Jude knew he wasn't the brightest bloke in the world. "Jude the Obtuse", an English master, who thought himself far too good for the Liverpool secondary modern school where he'd ended up, had called him once. Jude couldn't really argue, and not only because he wasn't sure what it meant.

Still, it was quite easy for Jude to believe that when Max started spending more time with him than any of his fraternity brothers, it was because he was bored with his other friends. When he took Jude's hand and interlaced their fingers as they sat on the floor of the frat house, or when he passed out against Jude as they lay on the stained sofa, that was the drugs or the drink, and when Max brought him home for Thanksgiving, that was American sympathy for a foreigner without a family on a family holiday.

It wasn't until they got to New York that he began to think there might be something else going on with Max.

Jude wasn't expecting luxury when they got to Sadie's. He was expecting a cheap place to stay, somewhere he could draw and paint and maybe earn a few illegal dollars while he enjoyed life in the Village. He didn't mind sleeping on a sagging mattress in a strange-smelling room, he enjoyed the endless parade of eccentric and colourful people that passed through the house but it was, he quickly discovered, a real pain in the arse trying to shave without a mirror.

"Maybe you should grow a beard," Max suggested, coming into the bathroom behind him. He had a greying white towel around his waist and Jude noticed, not for the first time, that he was looking thinner every day.

"Maybe you should eat more and smoke less," Jude replied, feeling his upper lip gingerly before passing the razor over it.

"Thanks, Mom." Max went over to the bath and turned the taps. After the customary sputter of rust, a stream of tepid water began to flow, and Max turned back to Jude just as Jude took what felt like a quarter-sized chunk out of his face.

"Shit!"

"Oh, for God's sake, man." Max crossed the narrow bathroom in about two steps and took the razor from Jude's hand. "Stand still." Jude obeyed. He couldn't, he thought, have moved even if he'd wanted to. He was paralyzed as Max rested one hand on his bare shoulder and used the other to slide the razor across Jude's cheek. He rinsed it in the sink and returned, again and again, until Jude felt better shaven than he had in months, even as he hoped desperately that Max wouldn't notice the sudden and inexplicable stirrings in his boxer shorts. It had only been a few days since Jude had last had sex, on his mattress with one of Sadie's skinny longhaired girlfriends, but, clearly, that was too long.

When he'd finished, Max lay the razor on the edge of the sink, but he kept his hand on Jude's shoulder. "That better?" he asked, brushing his other hand over Jude's clean shaven cheeks.

Jude felt he should say something, but nothing appropriate came to mind. All he could do was look at Max and think in ridiculous poetry. Sky of blue and sea of green. It was all there in Max's eyes.

He didn't know what would have happened if the bathtub hadn't overflowed, a small tidal wave cresting the side of the bath and splashing onto the floor. "Fuck," Max swore, but he laughed at the same time, turning off the taps and desperately mopping up the mess with a handful of mostly dirty towels. Jude took the chance to escape, shutting the bathroom door behind him and heading for his bedroom.

He expected things to be awkward with Max after that, but they weren't. It went on just the same as before, and if Max had felt it, had felt anything, in the bathroom, he wasn't letting on. Which, Jude told himself firmly, was good, no question about that.

It was nearly a week later when, after an unsuccessful afternoon of trying to sell his pictures, Jude came home to find everyone sitting around with the vacant, blissful expressions that could mean only one thing.

"You might have waited for me," Jude stepped over Prudence, who was lounging on a pillow on the floor, and squeezed onto the sofa between Max and Sadie.

"Sorry, man," Max sighed. He rested his head on Jude's shoulder, and Jude knew he was already pretty far gone. "You'll just have to catch up." He giggled a little and Sadie passed the joint.

Jude didn't smoke much, just a couple of tokes before Jojo came in and he and Sadie disappeared into her bedroom. Jude looked at Prudence, but her eyes were closed and she looked like she was asleep, arms outstretched and hair spread over her pillow.

"Do you believe in a love at first sight?" Max sounded far away. Jude looked at him, but he was staring somewhere into the middle distance, his eyes glazed.

"Yes," Jude replied, honestly. "I'm certain that it happens all the time." Just look, he thought, at poor Prudence.

Max nodded thoughtfully, like that was some soul-deep philosophical revelation, reached over, and kissed him.

Jude's first impulse was to pull back, but he didn't act quickly enough. In a split-second, Max, who maybe wasn't as baked as Jude first thought, had pushed him over onto the sofa and lay on top of him.

The first kiss felt awkward, Max's tongue pressing wetly against his closed lips, but Jude was amazed at how quickly it got better. Much, much better. They lay together for what felt like hours, each kiss deeper then lighter, ebbing and flowing like waves against the shore. Max's body, Jude learned, was a study in contrasts. He looked fragile but he was strong, his hands leaving marks where he gripped Jude's shoulders. His mouth was soft but his body was hard, bones and muscle and an increasingly insistent erection pressing into Jude's hip, that Jude was increasingly less certain he wanted to ignore.

Too soon, Max sat up. His cheeks were flushed and, for a moment, Jude was sure Max was going to ask what he wanted to do next, and he would have to make the decision.

Max didn't ask. Instead, he took Jude's hand and led him towards his bedroom, carefully stepping over Prudence as they passed. "Wait," Jude said, as they reached the doorway and Max's bed, unmade and rumpled, suddenly loomed large in front of them. "I'm not...I mean, I don't..." He hadn't been that way in Liverpool.

But, he thought at the same time, there were a lot of things he hadn't been until he came to America. The son of a Princeton janitor. A drug user. A New Yorker. An artist.

Max looked at him and suddenly, his eyes weren't skies or seas, but warm below the storm, a little hideaway beneath the waves. "Try to see it my way," was all he said.

And Jude did. They loved each other, they weren't bound by rules or conventions or what people did in Liverpool. They'd chosen this life, so why, he thought, shouldn't they take full advantage of it? "We can work it out," he agreed, even though he wasn't sure exactly what he meant by that.

It was worth it, anyway, for the smile on Max's face and the undisguised lust in his eyes. Jude's last thought, as Max pulled him into the bedroom, was that they should let Sadie know if they weren't going to be using the other bed anymore.

He wasn't that stupid and, knowing her, she'd want to rent it out again as soon as possible.