Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman

slipped my hand straight into his shorts. He must have read my intention and, with total composure, bordering on a gesture that was very gentle but also quite glacial, brought his hand there and let it rest on mine for a second, then, twining his fingers into mine, lifted my hand.
    A moment of unbearable silence settled between us.
    “Did I offend you?”
    “Just don’t.”
    It sounded a bit like Later! when I’d first heard it weeks earlier—biting and blunted, and altogether mirthless, without any inflection of either the joy or the passion we’d just shared. He gave me his hand and helped me stand up again.
    He suddenly winced.
    I remembered the scrape on his side.
    “I should make sure it doesn’t get infected,” he said.
    “We’ll stop by the pharmacist on the way back.”
    He didn’t reply. But it was about the most sobering thing we could have said. It let the intrusive real world gust into our lives—Anchise, the mended bike, the bickering over tomatoes, the music score hastily left under a glass of lemonade, how long ago they all seemed.
    Indeed, as we rode away from my spot we saw two tourist vans heading south to N. It must have been nearing noon.
    “We’ll never speak again,” I said as we glided down the never-ending slope, the wind in our hair.
    “Don’t say that.”
    “I just know it. We’ll chitchat. Chitchat, chitchat. That’s all. And the funny thing is, I can live with that.”
    “You just rhymed,” he said.
    I loved the way he’d flip on me.
    Two hours later, at lunch, I gave myself all the proof I needed that I would never be able to live with that.
    Before dessert, while Mafalda was clearing away the plates and while everyone’s attention was focused on a conversation about Jacopone da Todi, I felt a warm, bare foot casually brush mine.
    I remembered that, on the berm, I should have seized my chance to feel if the skin of his foot was as smooth as I’d imagined it. Now this was all the chance I’d get.
    Perhaps it was my foot that had strayed and touched his. It withdrew, not immediately, but soon enough, as though it had consciously waited an appropriate interval of time so as not to give the impression of having recoiled in panic. I too waited a few seconds more and, without actually planning my move, allowed my foot to begin seeking the other out. I had just begun searching for it when my toe suddenly bumped into his foot; his had hardly budged at all, like a pirate ship that gave every indication of having fled miles away but was really hiding in a fog no more than fifty yards away, waiting to pounce as soon as the chance presented itself. I had barely enough time to do anything with my foot when, without warning, without giving me time to work my way to his or to let mine rest at a safe distance again, softly, gently, suddenly his foot moved over to mine and began caressing it, rubbing it, never holding still, the smooth round ball of his heel holding my foot in place, occasionally bringing its weight to bear but lightening it right away with another caress of the toes, indicating, all the while, that this was being done in the spirit of fun and games, because it was his way of pulling the rug out from under the lunch drudges sitting right across from us, but also telling me that this had nothing to do with others and would remain strictly between us, because it was about us, but that I shouldn’t read into it more than there was. The stealth and stubbornness of his caresses sent chills down my spine. A sudden giddiness overtook me. No, I wasn’t going to cry, this wasn’t a panic attack, it wasn’t a “swoon,” and I wasn’t going to come in my shorts either, though I liked this very, very much, especially when the arch of his foot lay on top of my foot. When I looked at my dessert plate and saw the chocolate cake speckled with raspberry juice, it seemed to me that someone was pouring more and more red sauce than usual, and that the sauce seemed to be coming from