Forbidden Fruit

Starsky thinks I hate his car.

This isn’t strictly true, but I let him believe it.

I let Starsky believe it because of that look he gets sometimes when I make fun of the Torino. There’s something about the childlike joy he takes in it, plus that wounded puppy-dog expression he gets when I say something cutting. It makes me want to kiss him. I shouldn’t enjoy that feeling, because wanting to kiss Starsky is going to get me into trouble one of these days.

On second thought, maybe I do hate his car, because it reminds me of how much I want what I can’t have, since watching the way he handles it makes me want to do more than kiss him.

It’s especially bad right now, because it’s August, and we’re officially in the dog days of summer, and I swear whenever I drive over to Starsky’s apartment, he’s outside washing the Torino in nothing but a pair of cutoff jeans, and I get these thoughts-thoughts that include me running my fingers through the hair on Starsky’s chest, bending him over the hood, divesting him of those cutoffs….

Yeah, now that I think about it, I really hate that car. And watching him lovingly soaping it up just infuriates me. I’ve got a nice smooth surface he could be running his hands over, but all of this is off limits, because we live in a world in which a man falling in love with his partner, his best friend, the one person in his life whom he would take a bullet for, raises more eyebrows than a man being in love with his car.