The Other Guest Was Wearing the Same Suit as Me

When Sergio and Marina asked me to be the best man at their wedding, I knew I couldn’t say no. We’d known each other since school, and we’d shared more birthdays, exams, trips, and drunken nights than I had with almost anyone else. They were also the only two people in the world who knew I was gay, which made the request into something more than a formal gesture. It was a silent declaration that, whatever happened, I was still part of their chosen family.

The day dawned under a clear sky and a sun that promised not to spoil anything. After a brief ceremony, the obligatory photos on the steps, and the shower of petals, the whole convoy moved to the country hotel where the banquet would be held. It was a stone house on the outskirts of a village whose name I can barely remember, with a cobbled inner courtyard and rooms reserved for guests who didn’t want to drive back to their cities in the early hours of the morning.

I was called Andrés — I still am, I suppose — and, at thirty-two, I’d been dodging the predictable questions for quite a while. When was I getting married, did I have a girlfriend, was there anyone special? At this particular wedding, I was in for an even worse interrogation, because I knew half the guests had watched me grow up.

“Don’t stress,” Marina had told me the week before. “If anyone asks, make something up. And if not, tell them to fuck off with elegance.”

I borrowed the suggestion. I arrived alone, smiling, in a flawless black suit that Marina herself had talked me into buying to match Sergio’s. That way, in the photos, the head table would look uniform. I’d agreed without a peep, but as soon as I walked through the doors of the ballroom, I discovered the plan had one major flaw.

There was another guest dressed almost exactly the same.

I noticed him right away. He was a little older than me, maybe thirty-five, broad-backed, with brown hair slicked back. A neatly trimmed goatee defined his jaw. He wore the same cut, the same shirt, the same dark bow tie. For a second I thought he must be some distant relative of the groom whom I’d forgotten to be introduced to. For another second — and that one lasted quite a bit longer — I thought of something else, but I set it aside.

The banquet unfolded the way banquets like that usually do. Too much food, too many speeches, someone making the bride cry with a childhood story, somebody else getting drunk before dessert. The band started playing after eleven, and as soon as the first bars began, my lifelong friends dragged me onto the dance floor without giving me a chance to refuse.

The good thing about dancing with the same old crowd is that nobody looks at you strangely if you make a fool of yourself. The bad thing is that you stop paying attention to the rest of the room. When I looked up in the middle of some song or other, I saw that the other guest in the twin suit was standing less than a yard from the circle, moving to the beat and looking at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read.

He slipped over discreetly between bodies, taking advantage of a change of song, and leaned toward my ear without stopping dancing.

“The shop swore to me there wouldn’t be another suit exactly like mine,” he said. “Looks like I’m going to have to go give them a proper dressing-down.”

I laughed more than the line really deserved.

“They told me exactly the same thing,” I replied. “If you want, we can go together and yell at them twice over.”

He let out a clean, bright laugh that stuck to my chest for a while.

“Daniel,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Andrés.”

The handshake lasted an instant longer than necessary. Or maybe I was the one who took too long to let go. Daniel had come alone, on the groom’s side. He lived in another city, didn’t know anyone in my group, and had no choice but to stick close to somebody if he wanted to survive until the end of the party. I introduced him to my friends, who welcomed him with the indiscriminate cordiality of well-meaning drunks. In less than half an hour, he was one more at the table.

***

The alcohol did its work. Daniel and I ended up dancing close together several times, and I began to suspect that the closeness wasn’t entirely accidental. A brush of shoulders that lasted too long. A hand lingering on my lower back half a second too long. A look that held when I thought it would drift away. Small things. Those small things that, when you’ve spent years learning how to read them, make you think.

Even so, I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Experience had taught me not to project my desire onto any kind man, much less one with Daniel’s looks, who had all the hallmarks of someone who’d been through pretty, boring girlfriends in some faraway city.

After one-thirty in the morning, people started filtering out. Those who lived nearby picked up their jackets and said their goodbyes with kisses. Those staying at the hotel went up to their rooms one by one or in pairs. When I saw the ballroom emptying and realized I no longer had any decent excuse to keep dancing, I said my goodbyes too.

“I’m off to bed,” I said, taking my jacket off the back of the chair. “I’m going to have a coffee in the café and head up. I’m exhausted.”

I said it mostly so Daniel would hear it. It was a stupid card to play, but it was the last one I had left. If he wanted something, he’d know where to find me. If he didn’t want anything, I’d save myself the humiliation of asking him.

***

The hotel café was practically empty. Just the half-asleep waiter, an elderly couple finishing off a cognac in one corner, and me, standing at the bar, ordering a coffee I really had no desire to drink.

I was still waiting for the machine to finish when I heard a voice behind me.

“Waiter, leave the coffee for another time,” he said. “Bring us a little bottle of cava and two glasses instead.”

I turned slowly, fighting my smile. Daniel had loosened his bow tie and undone the first button of his shirt. His cheeks were faintly flushed, from dancing or from the alcohol; I couldn’t quite tell.

“We’ll have to make one last toast to the newlyweds,” he added. “And to how well we know how to dress.”

“To the newlyweds, no problem,” I said. “As for the suit, I disagree completely. I want to get out of it as soon as possible.”

Daniel held my gaze a fraction longer than necessary and smiled crookedly.

“You’ve just given me an idea,” he said. “We’ll take the bottle upstairs and toast there. It’s a lot more comfortable in my room than it is here.”

I didn’t answer. I nodded, left a couple of coins on the bar, and followed him up the stairs with the bottle wrapped in a white napkin, trying not to let my footsteps sound too eager.

***

Daniel’s room looked out onto a silent inner courtyard. A huge bed with a cream-colored coverlet, a low table, two armchairs, and a small sofa facing the window. He closed the door behind me and, in the same motion, turned the key in the lock. That click sounded louder than it was.

He poured the cava into two glasses, handed one to me, and sat down on the sofa. I sat beside him, my thigh brushing his thigh. We toasted in silence. We took a sip. I set the glass down on the low table without taking my eyes off him.

Then I put my hand on his leg, just above the knee, and left it there. Daniel didn’t pull away. He wasn’t surprised. He lowered his eyes to my hand, lifted them back to mine, and drew one slow breath, as if he was finally allowing himself to breathe.

“You’ve been looking at me all night,” he said softly.

“So have you.”

“I know.”

I kissed him. It wasn’t an elegant kiss. It was direct, mouth open, going for his. Daniel responded at once, grabbing the back of my neck with one hand and pulling me toward him. I brushed my lips against his goatee and felt a quick shiver run all the way down his back.

I loosened his bow tie as we kissed. He did the same with mine. Then came the jacket — his first, mine after — the cufflinks on the table, the shoes kicked to the floor without looking where they landed. Every time my hand slid a little farther down his torso, his breathing quickened a little more. I could feel my own pulse in places where one shouldn’t feel a pulse.

“I’ve been wanting you since you introduced me to your friends,” he murmured against my neck.

“Since before that,” I admitted.

I slid my hand down to his crotch and, over the trousers, checked that he was as hard as I was. I stroked him there for a while without undoing anything, just to hear him groan softly, just to hear him ask for more with every movement of his hips. When I finally lowered the zipper and pulled out his cock, I was surprised by how thick it was. Wider than it was long, with a reddened head and a bright thread of pre-cum on the tip.

I slid off the sofa onto the floor on my knees, spread his legs, and kissed it first the way you kiss lips. Daniel threw his head back against the cushion and let the air out between his teeth.

“You said you wanted to take off your suit and be more comfortable,” he asked, voice broken.

Without answering him, I took his cock out of my mouth, stood up, and started undressing myself. Button by button, unhurried. Daniel sat up and helped me with my shirt, my trousers, my underwear. When I was completely naked, he stayed there for a moment, looking me over from head to toe.

“You’re a lot hairier than I am,” he said, smiling.

“Deal with it.”

He pulled my hand toward him, sat me beside him, and began a slow ceremony of kisses over my whole body. Neck, shoulders, chest. He lingered on my nipples, licked them, bit them carefully, sucked them until I arched without meaning to. He went down across my sternum, my stomach, the line of hair, until he reached my cock, which was already pointing at the ceiling.

He took it into his mouth slowly, all the way down, then moved up and down with a rhythm that felt practiced in other beds. I had to bite my knuckles to keep from making a sound. I felt the whole room spinning around his tongue and the exact pressure of his lips.

“Stop,” I asked him when I was about to lose it. “Come up here.”

I lifted him up, laid him on the sofa, and returned the blowjob with all the care and all the shamelessness I could muster. I stroked his thighs with one hand, held the base with the other, looked him in the eye whenever he looked down. We took turns for a long while with those games, with mouths, with hands, with tongues. When we couldn’t take any more, we decided without words that it was time to go further.

I asked him to stay seated, with his ass right at the edge of the sofa. I went back to the floor, spread his legs, and, after wetting my fingers well with saliva, began probing him slowly. One finger, then two. Daniel breathed deeply, eyes closed, letting me do it without the slightest sign of hurry. When I felt he was ready enough, I brought the tip of my cock to him and pushed carefully.

In just two thrusts I was all the way inside. Daniel smothered a moan against my shoulder and dug his nails into my back. I gave him time to adjust, not moving, kissing his temple, until he himself moved his hips to tell me to go on.

I thrust slowly at first, then with more force. Every stroke drew a different sound out of us: a growl from him, a sigh from me. After several minutes I knew I wouldn’t last much longer. I told him in his ear. Daniel took my hand, brought it to his own cock, and started jerking himself off with my fist closed around him so we’d finish together.

He came first, spilling between our chests with a strangled groan against my neck. I came two thrusts later, inside him, with an intensity that left me breathless for several seconds. As I came, I thought that I had never felt pleasure like that with another man. And I thought it with the calm conviction of someone who knows he isn’t lying to himself.

***

Afterward, in the bed, we finished the bottle of cava that had served as our excuse. We toasted Sergio and Marina, the woman in the shop who had lied to us both about the suit being exclusive, and, more quietly, everything that that night had stopped being by chance.

We slept pressed together, legs tangled and one person’s breathing over the other’s nape. The next morning we went down to the café together, still tousle-haired, and ordered the same waiter the two coffees I hadn’t managed to finish the night before.

The waiter, without saying a word, smiled as he served them to us.