Apron Strings is a very nice short story. It’s about two long-term lovers, living together for the last 5 years and with an apparently perfect life; but routine and also silences are wearing their relationship, both of them knows that but no one has the courage to speak aloud, until maybe it’s too late.

When the relationship started Danny was young and penniless, a struggling artist he relied on Neil’s kindness to move on with his life. He was also very experienced and maybe with a kinky side, but Neil was very vanilla and maybe also a bit shy, and Danny didn’t want to scare him away: the love of the man was more important than having kinky sex or being careless, and so Danny decided to settle down and becoming a perfect house-husband.

Now five years later, nor Danny or Neil are changed, but Danny is regretting a bit what he left behind. He is still in love with Neil, Neil still represents his safe haven, but sometime Danny’s mind wanders far away, to another time and place. Neil feels that he is losing his lover, if not forever, at least for little tiny bit of moments, and he doesn’t like it; but he has no the streak to impose to his younger lover to stop doing it, less to fill that void.

I didn’t have the feeling that their love was in danger, sure they had trouble, but the love between them was clear. How Danny always searched Neil to be comforted, how Neil’s vanilla side was something Danny cherished more than finding annoying, how when he was forced to sleep alone, he felt abandoned, those were all signs that Danny was still deeply in love with Neil, for the same exact reason he was five years before. And even if he was wounded, Neil has never let it go the hope to find a solution, and night after night he came back home to Danny; sure he slept alone, but at least he was there, waiting for the courage to speak to Danny, or in the hope that Danny did the first move.

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