The Years Between and Your Blue Eyes

The bar was exactly as I remembered it, which was the first surprise. The second was the way my heart hammered against my ribs when I saw him.

Fifteen years. The phrase had been a neat, manageable abstraction in my head for months, ever since the email chain started. Wouldn’t it be fun? Just like old times. Now, standing in the dim, beer-scented glow of The Anchor, a dive two blocks from our old campus, the weight of that decade and a half settled on my shoulders like a physical thing. Fifteen years of promotions and layoffs, of a marriage that bloomed and then quietly wilted, of moving cities and building a life that felt, most days, like a very competent forgery. And through it all, the persistent, ghostly outline of him.

Leo.

He was at a high-top near the back, half-turned toward the door as if he’d been watching for me. The sight of him was a punch to the solar plexus, a visceral shock that stole my breath. Time had been kind. The lanky, perpetually tousled boy I’d known was gone, replaced by a man with broader shoulders, a sharper jawline dusted with just a hint of stubble, and laugh lines that fanned out from eyes that were still, unmistakably, the same devastating shade of blue. He wore a simple grey henley and dark jeans, and he was smiling—a slow, familiar curl of his lips that reached those blue eyes and made them crinkle at the corners.

“Ben,” he said, standing up. His voice was deeper, richer, but the cadence was the same. It unlocked a vault of memories in my chest.

“Leo,” I managed, my own voice sounding strange to my ears. We did the awkward dance—a half-hug, a clap on the back, a retreat to assess the damage and the dividends of time. His hand on my shoulder was warm, solid. “God, you look… the same.”

He laughed, a low, easy sound. “Liar. But I’ll take it. You look great. Distinguished.” He gestured to my glasses, my probably-too-crisp button-down. “Very… metropolitan.”

“Very trying-too-hard,” I corrected, sliding onto the stool opposite him. “I almost wore my college hoodie for authenticity, but it disintegrated in 2012.”

“A tragic loss. The one with the duct tape on the sleeve?”

“The very one.”

A comfortable silence fell, filled by the murmur of other patrons and the tinny classic rock from the speakers. We just looked at each other, a cataloguing of changes. His hair was shorter, but still fell in a way that begged to be pushed back by a careless hand. My hand, specifically, a traitorous part of my brain supplied. I shoved the thought down, deep. I noticed new details: a faint, thin scar near his temple that hadn’t been there before, the way his forearms, resting on the table, were corded with muscle that spoke of actual labor, not just gym routines. The boy had been all sharp angles and restless energy. The man was solid, grounded, a completed structure where there had once been a promising sketch.

“So,” we both said at once, then laughed, the tension breaking.

“You first,” I said.

“No, you. Tell me everything. Start with the big stuff. I did my social media sleuthing, but it’s not the same.”

I told him about the consulting firm, the divorce two years ago, the condo with the view of a parking garage. I found myself telling him things I hadn’t planned to—the hollow silence of the condo after the settlement, the way I’d taken up running just to feel my body move through space, the bizarre comfort of cooking for one. He listened with an intensity I’d forgotten, his blue eyes fixed on me, nodding at the right moments. It was unnerving and intoxicating. He’d always listened like that, as if your words were the most important thing in the room.

When I finished my abridged life story, I gestured to him. “Your turn. Architect, right? You built things.”

“I try.” He sipped his beer—some local IPA, I noted. “Mostly residential. A lot of glass and angry homeowners’ associations. Married for ten years to Clara. Amicably split, three years ago. No kids, just a very needy corgi named Gus.”

“A corgi. Of course you have a corgi.”

“He has an Instagram. He’s more popular than I am.” He pulled out his phone, scrolled, and showed me a picture of a fluffy, smiling dog sitting proudly on what looked like a meticulously designed modernist sofa. “He’s my model client. Never complains about my designs, only ever asks for treats and belly rubs.”

We ordered another round. Then another. The years between us began to compress, not disappear, but soften at the edges, becoming a shared landscape we could point to rather than a wall separating us. We fell into the old rhythm, finishing each other’s sentences, resurrecting inside jokes that hadn’t seen the light of day since the Bush administration. We laughed until my sides ached, recounting the time we’d tried to build a raft for the campus pond out of stolen cafeteria trays, and how it had sunk in under thirty seconds.

“You were so mad,” Leo chuckled, shaking his head. “You kept yelling about buoyancy and structural integrity.”

“I was an engineering major! It was an affront to science!”

“It was an affront to the dining hall staff. We had to eat off paper plates for a month.”

The warmth of the beer and the warmth of his presence spread through me, a dual intoxication. I found my gaze lingering on his hands as he gestured—strong, capable hands with long fingers, a faint scar across one knuckle I remembered from a biking accident. I watched his throat work as he swallowed, the way his smile was slightly lopsided. The attraction I had spent four years of college meticulously ignoring, boxing up, and labeling ‘friendship,’ was unpacking itself with ruthless efficiency.

It had always been there, a constant, low-grade hum in my bloodstream whenever he was near. In our cramped dorm room, when he’d walk out of the shower in just a towel, smelling of cheap soap and steam. During late-night study sessions, when his shoulder would press against mine at the library table. The time we’d shared a bed at his parents’ house over break, lying back-to-back, both of us rigid and pretending to be asleep while my heart raced like a trapped bird. I’d convinced myself it was admiration, envy, the intensity of male friendship. I’d dated women, he’d dated women, and the unacknowledged thing between us remained just that—a silent, shapeless tension that defined the perimeter of our closeness.

Now, under the guise of nostalgia and alcohol, I let myself look. I let myself feel it.

“Remember that philosophy class we took together?” Leo asked, his voice dipping into a more reflective tone. “The one with the terrifying professor who looked like a Victorian ghost?”

“Doctor Albright. He once cried while reading Kierkegaard.”

“Yeah. He had us debate the nature of desire. What it means to want something you can’t, or shouldn’t, have.”

The air between us shifted, grew heavier. I took a slow drink, buying time. “I remember you argued that ‘shouldn’t’ was a social construct. That desire was its own justification.”

He held my gaze, his blue eyes darkening in the low light. “Did I? I was a pretentious little shit.”

“You were brilliant,” I said, and the words came out softer, more earnest than I intended.

He didn’t look away. “You said desire without action was a form of cowardice. A slow death.”

“I was a romantic,” I said, my throat tight.

“Are you still?” he asked, and it wasn’t about philosophy anymore.

The noise of the bar seemed to recede, leaving us in a bubble of charged silence. I could hear my own pulse in my ears. This was the precipice. We’d been dancing toward it all night, circling the unsaid thing that was now so loud it was almost a physical presence at our table.

“I don’t know,” I answered, truthfully. “I think I’ve been… cautious.”

Leo’s finger traced a circle of condensation on the table. “Me too.” He looked up. “Ben… all those years ago. Was it just me? This… current. This thing I could never name.”

There it was. Laid bare between the empty pint glasses and bar napkins. My face flushed hot. All my carefully constructed defenses, the stories I’d told myself, crumbled under the direct, quiet force of his question and those blue, blue eyes.

“No,” I whispered. “It wasn’t just you.”

He exhaled, a long, slow breath he seemed to have been holding for fifteen years. A profound relief washed over his features, followed by something hotter, more urgent. “Christ,” he murmured, almost to himself.

“Why didn’t we…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

“I was scared,” he said simply. “I thought it would ruin everything. I thought I’d lose you.”

“You lost me anyway,” I said, the words laced with a quiet regret that spanned a decade and a half.

“I know.” He reached across the table, his hand covering mine. The contact was electric. His skin was warm, slightly rough. A jolt shot up my arm, straight to my core. “I’m not scared now.”

The statement hung there, a challenge and an invitation. My mind raced. This was madness. We were both tipsy, emotional, caught in a riptide of nostalgia. But my body, thrumming with a long-dormant awareness of him, screamed that it was the most sane, inevitable thing in the world. The years between had been a detour. This, him, his hand on mine, was the destination. We stayed like that for a long minute, his thumb stroking the back of my hand, the world outside our two stools ceasing to exist. I saw the question in his eyes, the same one that was screaming in my veins. What now?

“Your place or mine?” I heard myself say, the words leaving my lips before my brain could censor them. A reckless, thrilling courage fueled by his touch and his confession.

A slow, devastating smile spread across his face, but his eyes were serious, searching mine. “You’re sure?”

Was I? My stomach was a riot of nerves and want. Leaving this bar meant crossing a line we could never uncross. It meant admitting that the ghost that had haunted me for fifteen years was real, and that I wanted to be consumed by it. I looked at our joined hands, then back up at him. At the man who had been both my quietest thought and my loudest absence. “I’ve never been more sure of anything I wasn’t supposed to want,” I said, and it was the truth.

“Mine’s closer,” he said, his voice low. “It’s a rental. It’s kind of a mess.”

“I don’t care.”

We paid the tab in a blur, our hands brushing as we both reached for wallets. The cool night air outside was a shock, doing nothing to dampen the heat radiating from my skin. The walk to his apartment was only a few blocks, but it felt like a journey through a new, charged territory. We didn’t speak, but the silence was full. Every accidental bump of our shoulders sent a fresh current through me. I was hyper-aware of the space between our swinging hands, a gap of mere inches that felt like a magnetic field. My mind was a frantic debate: This is a terrible idea. This is the only idea. You’re drunk on memory. You’re finally sober. You’ll ruin the past. You’ll redeem it. I glanced at his profile, etched in the orange glow of a streetlight, and he looked back, his expression unreadable but his eyes blazing with that same blue fire.

He led me to a modest brick building. He fumbled slightly with the keys at the outer door, and the small, human clumsiness of it steadied me. We climbed a flight of stairs, the sound of our footsteps echoing in the stairwell. At his door, he paused, key in hand, and turned to me. In the harsh fluorescent light of the hallway, the years were visible again—the finer lines, the traces of fatigue—but they only made him more real, more present. He didn’t smile. He just looked at me, as if memorizing this last moment before the plunge. Then he unlocked the door.

His apartment was, as advertised, a mess—an architect’s temporary crash pad with rolled blueprints on a dining table, a single suitcase open in the living room, and a sleek laptop surrounded by coffee cups. But it was clean, and it smelled like him—sandalwood soap and fresh linen, with an underlying note of graphite and paper. A single, elegant floor lamp cast a pool of warm light. On the windowsill, I saw a small, smooth stone, the kind you’d pick up on a beach.

He closed the door, and the click of the lock was deafening in the quiet. We stood in the small entryway, facing each other. The playful confidence of the bar was gone, replaced by a raw, vulnerable tension. The reality of our isolation crashed over me.

“I feel like I’m twenty-two again,” I said, my voice husky, breaking the silence.

“You’re not,” he said, stepping closer. He lifted a hand, hesitated, then gently took my glasses off, folding them and setting them on a console table. The world went softly blurry, but he was crystal clear, moving into my space. “And neither am I.” He reached up again, this time his fingers brushing a strand of hair from my forehead, a gesture so tender it made my chest ache. “We’re not kids pretending this is something else. We’re not scared of what it means anymore.”

Then his hands were cradling my face, his thumbs stroking my cheekbones, and he was looking into my eyes with an intensity that stole the air from my lungs. “I’ve thought about this,” he murmured. “For fifteen goddamn years, Ben. I’ve thought about what your skin would feel like. What sound you’d make.”

My own hands came up to grip his hips, pulling him against me. The solid, real feel of him, the heat of his body through our clothes, was almost too much. “So have I,” I breathed, the confession torn from me. “In hotel rooms. In my empty bed. Your face was the one that wouldn’t go away.”

His lips met mine.

It was not a tentative, exploratory kiss. It was a claiming, a release, a dam breaking. It was fifteen years of suppressed want exploding into a single, searing point of contact. His mouth was soft yet demanding, tasting of beer and Leo, a flavor uniquely his that my body remembered on a cellular level. A low groan escaped me, vibrating into him. My fingers dug into the hard muscle of his back as I kissed him back with equal fervor, my tongue sliding against his, relearning the shape of his mouth.

He walked me backward until my shoulders met the wall, his body pressing the length of mine, pinning me there. I could feel the hard ridge of his erection against my hip, and the answering surge in my own groin was immediate, painful in its intensity. He broke the kiss, his breath coming in ragged gusts against my neck.

“Tell me this is okay,” he whispered, his lips brushing my jaw. “Tell me to stop and I stop.”

I turned my head, capturing his mouth again, my answer clear. My hands slid under his henley, skating over the warm, smooth skin of his back. He shuddered under my touch. “Don’t you dare stop,” I managed between kisses. “I’ve waited too long for you to be careful with me.”

He made a sound, half-growl, half-moan, and his hands went to work. He pulled my shirt from my waistband, his fingers splaying over the skin of my stomach, making me jump. Then his mouth was on my neck, sucking, licking, nipping, marking a trail of fire down to my collarbone. I let my head fall back against the wall, a litany of curses and his name falling from my lips. “Leo… god…”

“Bedroom,” I gasped. “Now. Please.”

He took my hand, leading me through the dim apartment without turning on lights. We stumbled into a room dominated by a large, unmade bed. Moonlight filtered through the blinds, painting silver stripes across the sheets and over his body as he turned to face me. The urgency paused, just for a heartbeat, as we stood in that quiet, silvered space.

“Let me see you,” he said, his voice thick with desire, but also with a kind of reverence.

We undressed each other slowly now, the frantic energy giving way to a deliberate, worshipful pace. Every new inch of skin revealed was a revelation. The boy I’d known was gone, but the man before me was more beautiful. His chest was broader, defined with muscle and dusted with dark hair that trailed down his taut stomach. My fingers traced the lines of him, relearning his geography. I found new landmarks: a small, dark mole just below his rib, a faint tan line at his wrists. He did the same, pushing my shirt off my shoulders, his palms smoothing over my chest, my arms, his thumbs circling my nipples until they peaked into hard, sensitive nubs. He leaned in, taking one into his mouth, and I cried out, my hands fisting in his hair.

“You’re so much more,” he breathed against my skin. “All this time, I was remembering a sketch. This is the finished building.”

When we were both naked, we stood for a moment, just looking. The hunger in his blue eyes was a physical force. He reached out, his fingers wrapping around my hardening length, and my knees nearly buckled. His touch was firm, knowing, his thumb swiping over the head, spreading the bead of moisture that had gathered there.

“Leo,” I choked out, my hips pushing involuntarily into his hand.

“I know,” he said, as if I’d spoken a whole sentence. And then he whispered, his voice ragged, “I used to watch you sleep. In that dorm room. Your mouth would be slightly open. I wanted to kiss you so badly it felt like a toothache.” He kissed me again, deep and searching, as his hand continued its slow, maddening stroke. The intimacy of the confession, paired with the physical touch, undid me.

I broke the kiss, panting. “I pretended to be asleep that night at your parents’. I was so hard it hurt. I thought if I moved an inch, you’d know.”

He groaned, resting his forehead against mine. “I was doing the same thing. Back to back, both of us lying there like statues, dying.” He dropped to his knees then, his hands on my hips, and looked up at me, his eyes reflecting the moonlight. “No more pretending.”

When he took me into his mouth, I did more than cry out; I sobbed his name. His technique was confident, unhurried, a blend of deep suction and teasing flicks of his tongue that had me arching off the floor, seeing stars. I’d fantasized about this, a thousand times in a thousand lonely moments, but the reality was so much more—the wet heat, the sounds he made, the possessive way his hands gripped my hips, the shocking vulnerability of him on his knees. It was overwhelming, a sensory and emotional flood.

“Too good,” I panted, tugging gently at his hair. “Too much. Come here. I need to touch you. I need to be under you.”

He released me with a soft pop and moved back up my body, his own erection, thick and flushed, pressing against my thigh. I reached between us, wrapping my hand around him, mirroring the rhythm he’d used on me. He buried his face in my neck, his breath hot and ragged. “Ben… fuck. Just like that.”

“I have… supplies,” I managed to say. “In my wallet. Just… in case.”

He let out a breathless laugh against my skin. “Optimist.”

“Realist,” I corrected, and he kissed me, deep and filthy, as I continued to stroke him.

He retrieved the small packet and bottle from my discarded pants, his movements fluid in the moonlight. When he returned to the bed, he knelt between my legs, pouring lube onto his fingers. His eyes locked on mine as he pressed one slick finger inside me. The intrusion was a shock, a burn that quickly melted into a deep, spreading fullness. I gasped, pushing down against his hand.

“Okay?” he asked, his voice strained.

“More than okay. Don’t stop.” I reached for him, pulling him down for a kiss, trying to convey what words couldn’t. This is where I was always meant to be.

He added a second finger, scissoring, stretching, his other hand stroking my thigh in a soothing rhythm. He knew exactly where to press, to curl, to make me writhe and beg. My world narrowed to the feeling of his fingers inside me, the blue fire of his gaze, and the aching need coiling tighter and tighter in my gut.

“Please, Leo,” I heard myself beg, my voice foreign to my own ears. “I need you. Now. I need to feel you where I’ve been imagining you for fifteen years.”

He withdrew his fingers, sheathed himself, and positioned himself at my entrance. He leaned over me, bracing his weight on his forearms, his face inches from mine. His expression was a mixture of awe and fierce desire. “Look at me,” he commanded softly. “I want to see it in your eyes when I’m finally inside you.”

I did. I looked into those blue eyes that had haunted my dreams for half my life as he pushed forward, slowly, inexorably, filling me in one long, breathtaking stroke. The stretch was intense, overwhelming, a perfect, burning fullness that blotted out every thought, every memory, every year of separation. I cried out, my nails digging into his shoulders, my eyes watering.

He stilled, buried to the hilt, letting me adjust. Sweat gleamed on his brow. “God, Ben… you feel… you feel like coming home,” he finished, the words cracking with emotion.

I rocked my hips, taking him deeper, answering him with my body. He began to move, a slow, deep rhythm that was less about frenzy and more about reconnection. Each thrust was a reclamation, a promise, an erasure of the empty years. Our foreheads touched, our breaths mingled. I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him closer, meeting him thrust for thrust.

“I missed you,” I whispered against his lips, the words coming unbidden. “Every day, I missed you and I didn’t even let myself know it.”

He kissed me, hard. “You have me now. You have all of me.” He shifted, driving deeper, and the change in angle made me see stars. “Is this what you imagined? In all those lonely hotel rooms?”

“Better,” I gasped. “Real is so much better.”

The pace quickened, driven by a mounting urgency that was as emotional as it was physical. The slap of skin, the creak of the bed, our mingled gasps and moans filled the moonlit room. I was hurtling toward the edge, every nerve ending alight. He shifted his angle slightly, and on the next thrust, he hit the spot that made white light explode behind my eyes.

“There! Right there, don’t stop, please don’t stop!” I babbled, my body bowing off the bed.

He drove into me, relentless, his rhythm fracturing into something more primal. His blue eyes were dark, unfocused, seeing only me. “Let go, Ben,” he growled, his voice ragged with the strain of holding back. “Let me see you come apart. I’ve waited a lifetime for it.”

His command, the feel of him pounding into my prostate, the sheer emotional cataclysm of being with him like this after so long—it was too much. My orgasm ripped through me with violent, silent intensity. My back arched off the bed as I came in hot, pulsing stripes across my stomach and chest, my vision whiting out, my whole body seizing around him in wave after wave of ecstasy that felt like it was tearing me in two and putting me back together.

The sensation of my tight, clenching muscles around him was his undoing. With a choked shout of my name—not a generic cry, but my name, filled with everything we’d just said and done—he followed me over, his own release shuddering through him. He collapsed onto me, his weight a welcome anchor as we both gasped for air, slick with sweat and spent.

For a long time, we just lay there, tangled together, hearts hammering in unison. The reality of what we’d done settled over us, not with regret, but with a profound, quiet wonder. He eventually shifted off me but pulled me immediately into his side, my head on his chest. His fingers traced idle patterns on my shoulder. The moonlight had moved across the floor. The world outside his window was quiet. I listened to the slowing beat of his heart, felt the rise and fall of his breath beneath my cheek.

“So,” I said eventually, my voice hoarse and ruined. “That was…”

“The most honest thing I’ve ever done,” he finished, his chest vibrating under my ear. He pressed a kiss to the top of my head.

We lay in silence for a while longer, the afterglow a warm blanket. Then, softly, he said, “The stone on the windowsill. I picked it up on a beach in Oregon last year. It was this perfect, smooth grey. It fit in my palm just right. I kept it because it felt solid. A touchstone.” He paused. “That’s what tonight felt like.”

I propped myself up on an elbow to look at him. His face was in shadow, but his eyes caught the faint light. “What happens tomorrow?” I asked the question that had been lurking in the shadows of my mind all evening.

He was silent for a moment. His hand stilled on my arm. “I don’t know,” he said, honestly. “I live three states away. You have your life. This… this wasn’t part of the reunion plan.”

“I know.”

He tilted my chin up so I had to meet his eyes. In the dim light, they were the color of a deep, calm sea. “But that thing we never acknowledged? We just acknowledged the hell out of it. We don’t get to pretend it didn’t happen. I don’t want to pretend.” He took a deep breath. “I have to go back Tuesday. But Gus hates being alone for long. He’s with a sitter.”

A fragile, fierce hope bloomed in my chest. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying the years between us… they happened. They’re real. But so is this.” He gestured between our naked bodies. “So are we, right now. I’m not letting another fifteen years go by without you in my life. However that looks.” He reached over to the nightstand, grabbed his phone, and handed it to me. “Put your number in. Not just your cell. Your landline, if you have one. Your work. Your address. And then… call Gus. Say hello. He’s part of the deal.”

I laughed, a wet, surprised sound, and took the phone. As I typed in my information, I said, “I have a lot of frequent flier miles. And a very understanding boss.”

“And I,” he said, pulling me back down to his side, “am suddenly very interested in potential projects in your metropolitan area. Very interested.”

It wasn’t a fairy-tale promise. It was messy, complicated, adult. It involved a corgi and frequent flier miles and the gritty reality of distance. It was real. It was more than enough.

“However that looks,” I agreed, snuggling closer, breathing him in. The scent of sex and sandalwood and Leo. My old best friend. My new, terrifying, exhilarating possibility. My touchstone.

Outside, a car passed, its headlights painting a brief, moving stripe across the ceiling. I closed my eyes, listening to the steady beat of his heart. The years between had been a long, winding road. But they had led here, to this bed, to this man, to the finally-acknowledged truth in his blue eyes. And for the first time in a very long time, the road ahead didn’t look lonely at all. It looked like a shared journey, finally beginning.