“Case in point, Mr. Properly Uptight. But that doesn’t mean you’re not loved.”
“I’d like to take you there, the Vineyard.”
“We’ve only just started.” I pushed away my plate, now sadly bereft of the strange cookie pie. “That was excellent.”
“Thanks. I’m serious, though. The Vineyard is awesome. We relax when we’re there. It’s weird. It’s the opposite of here where everything is achievement. Dad’s law firm. Mom’s research. They’re constantly talking about new clients and initiatives. They live at a hundred miles an hour. Are all those people around them really friends? When I’m cynical, I think everything about them is strategic. That’s the Hinsdale family 24/7. Except for July, our one month to take a break and loosen up. Scheduled relaxation. That’s how we do it. But I have to say we do a good job with July. Good stuff happens on the Vineyard.” One side of Derek’s mouth started to curl up, and I recognized the glint in his eyes. “I’m getting the feeling good stuff happens when I’m with you,” he said. “You loosen me up. Just imagine the two of us on the Vineyard.”
I smiled. This wasn’t exactly a game. It wasn’t flirting. It wasn’t innuendo. It seemed real.
“Whose condo is closest?” I asked. “Yours or mine?”
“Yours. Let’s go.”
“Actually, I think we should go to yours. It’d be good for you to be loosened up in your place around your stuff. Good to see that you can let go in your own life. You don’t need someplace different like an island or my apartment.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve been loosened up in my apartment plenty of times.”
“Yeah, but today it’ll be us. We’ll be dreaming about Martha’s Vineyard.”
“I get it.”
THE MAKING out started in the elevator up to Derek’s floor. He kept tweaking my nipples through my shirt. I thought we’d tear each other’s clothes off the second we stepped into Derek’s place. We shut the door, and I grabbed immediately for Derek’s chest. What a chest. I had a pec in each hand and went in for a hungry kiss.
Derek just stood there smiling. He didn’t kiss back or grab for any part of me. Not for my clothes, my body, nothing. He didn’t loosen any of his own clothes.
“What’s up?”
He just kept smiling.
“What?”
“You have no idea how hot you are.”
“Look who I’m standing with.” I turned him around to look at himself in the window, all dark outside and reflecting the inside, reflecting us. “That’s you. You are beauty. You are heat.”
Derek turned and went in and kissed my neck. “The most stunning thing is that you don’t know it’s true for you.” He kissed me smack on the mouth.
“This is weird, Derek. You have to know that no one else is as movie-star handsome as you are.”
“Right back at you, man.”
“You’re twice as muscular as I am.”
Derek tackled me, and we were down on the floor. And our clothes were off. And we were back on the sofa. He raised his arms up and rested his hands on his head: receive-a-blowjob pose. So I went to town. I loved that. The smell of him. The tickle in the back of my throat. I took a break and jacked him while licking his nuts. That was when I knew exactly what was next. He was pushing up, his balls pushing farther in my mouth, his legs spreading.
He exhaled and his legs spread apart more. I got one finger in, moving slowly in and out. Two. Three. He was pushing up at me.
“Wait,” he mumbled and disengaged. He knelt and reached to the windowsill, and there it was. A ceramic bowl of condoms that I hadn’t noticed. And the rich-guy light switch I’d once thought he didn’t have. The room went dark, and the city lights outside seemed to turn up. He stayed on his knees, ass up toward me. He arched his back. I grabbed his butt. Damn. He passed me a condom and a bottle of lube.
“What a power butt.”
He arched his back and moaned.
“Fuck me, Jeffrey.” He kept arching his back, wiggling his ass. “You have to fuck me. I need you in there.”
I tried not to think about Greg, the obnoxious guy at breakfast, who’d told me never to cry for Derek to fuck me because he only liked to be in charge.
I hugged Derek from behind, my cock nestled in his crack, and pulled him in close, the length of his back against my chest. “You are amazing, Derek Hinsdale. You are amazing. Exactly as you are.” I rolled on the condom and slowly lubed us both until the head of my cock was at his hole.
He groaned as I pushed in, then audibly exhaled at every push.
The exhales. The fuck-me moans. The city outside. The lights. The cars below. I was fucking Derek. I was fucking the city. He kept pushing against me, arching his back and moaning. The beautiful smack of my pelvis on his ass as I pounded.
His exhales and his moaning sped up. Intensified. He finally stopped moving, and held his hips steady as I pounded again and again. His moans quickened. Deepened.
“Agh….” He shot over the sofa. I kept pounding and pounding even after his hand fell from jacking himself and his breath slowed, but he didn’t ask me to stop. He kept moaning as I pounded.
I lost myself at the finish line. “Fuuuck.” It was a long finish line. I kept coming. “Fuck.” He wasn’t about to clamp up on me, was he? Was I making him uncomfortable?
“Thank you,” he said.
I pulled out and wrapped up the condom. Sleep was instant.
THREE O’CLOCK in the morning, and I left the bedroom to pee.
What the fuck had Greg been talking about? He’d thought Derek was an alpha, controlling top? Who was Derek? Had I given him what he wanted? In the moment, I thought I had.
Stop thinking, I told myself. I went to the biggest window in the living room. Lights still glimmered outside, although fewer of them. Darkness swelled. DC would always be light and dark. The known and the unknown. What about us? I went back to bed.
MORNING. THE city below was waking up. Derek cupped my face and kissed me. That was how we started. It was a morning of making out. He was still kissing me later when I was on my back, my legs in the air as he fucked me. I jacked off, and as I came, I could feel my hole clamping around his cock as he grunted and went turbo. Two near-simultaneous orgasms in two days. Too much to shoot for. But there it was.
Chapter Six
AFTER A month of many mornings waking up together, Derek asked if he could visit me at my job. We were at my place, cleaning up after smoothies, coffee, and tea. Derek would walk to work, and I’d take the Metro to the Coalition.
“I also want you to give me a tour of Columbia Heights and what’s changed, what building you grew up in. I think of it as a pretty cool place.” He whirred hot water in the blender to scrub it out, then wiped it dry with a cloth. Oscar had never been so considerate.
“It’s just the city. Columbia Heights was once tougher. Urban renewal is winning the battle. What I knew as a kid is mostly gone.”
“Nostalgia aside, isn’t that a good thing?”
“It’s a safer place, yes. But families like Eddie’s now have difficulty affording it. Community is dwindling. Eddie’s family is what saved me.”
“I want to see exactly where you started.”
“Only if you promise to drive me through ritzy Foxhall. That’d be more fun.”
“There’s nothing interesting there, just big houses.”
“Spoken like someone who knows money. For those of us who don’t, it’s fascinating. Yes, I’ve been places. But it’s different with someone who can personalize it. It’s like I can then personalize it. Same reason you want to see my past.”
I didn’t tell the staff that Derek would be visiting the Homeless Coalition. They would have wasted time cleaning and organizing a reception to show off the Coalition at its best. But I thought our best was our work for people who were unhoused or on the edge. I wanted Derek to see us doing the good stuff that we normally did. I also didn’t want him to think that we were spending the $50,000 from the Burkewest Academy on receptions. S
tars flickered in a few eyes when I brought Derek through. Did they recognize him from press for the Burkewest Academy Young Philanthropist Award?
I showed Derek the locker room where people who were homeless and trusted us could secure their stuff. I explained how the mailroom worked and the importance of it—people without addresses couldn’t receive checks or mail, register for many services, or even apply for jobs. He met the volunteer chef taking a week off from his restaurant to cook for us.
“Makes total sense,” he said when he learned we delivered a plate of food to each guest.
“It helps people know they’re important enough to be at a restaurant,” I explained. “And so they don’t grab food from a buffet line and stuff it in their pockets.”
“But they need more,” said Derek.
“Yes. But fresh food in pockets can go bad and put people in the emergency room.”
At the end of the visit, I had arranged for Christine, Sandy, and Trevor, our three program heads, to meet Derek.
“Amazing. I knew the Homeless Coalition did great work, but it’s an honor to be here to see it for myself. I also have some potential news for you. The Burkewest Academy Young Philanthropist Fund has been considering new ways of awarding gifts.” He sat even straighter. It was amazing how he could occupy space, but his smile was contained, like I’d first noticed weeks ago. It wasn’t the large one I’d been seeing when it was just Derek and me. But still, it was endearing. No matter his mood, he was one hell of a handsome man.
“Jeffrey, I apologize for not giving you a heads-up about this, but on my drive here I received the text that Burkewest Academy has approved the new initiative. I thought they would, but now I know, and I’ve only known an hour.” Derek scratched his neck. “The kids have been researching effective DC nonprofits, and they’ve decided that, in addition to the small, one-time gifts that we award every year, the committee will be introducing a three-year grant in order to have a greater impact. The Homeless Coalition is one of the two organizations the kids are considering. You’ll have to submit a three-year proposal. I apologize about the tedious work, but it’ll be good for the students to see grant applications for the first time. The Homeless Coalition will only be competing with one other agency. Basically, you have a 50 percent chance of receiving $150,000 distributed over three years.”
Was it possible for Derek’s visit to have gone any better?
As he had requested, I walked with Derek the ten minutes to the block where everything had started for me. But the crusty, rusty old buildings were now mostly scrubbed, and some held signs for luxury condos. Luxury, here? I could never get used to that. How many people had been priced out of the neighborhood? It was interesting that the occasional gunshots and broken car windows didn’t frighten more people away. Or the few dilapidated old buildings with crumbling bricks and plaster and boarded-up windows. Was it a gift to look at shit and see opportunity? Maybe. But the heel of gentrification ground out the unwanted. And the unwanted were real people. By no means had Columbia Heights all been shit. There had been a thriving community of a darker color. DC had its choices. Whitewashing seemed to be the preference.
Derek and I hadn’t talked about this yet. How would I react if I learned he invested on the side of destroying community for gentrification?
There it was. The small, dingy gray rectangular brick building from the 1940s. It was still dingy, gray, and rectangular. The shades were drawn on most of the small dirty windows. Dad hadn’t lived there in years. Officer Hanson had told me that she thought he’d been squatting with friends in an abandoned building before it was demolished for new construction.
“Not so bad,” said Derek, nodding at my childhood home.
“It’s hard to tell what’s happening inside.”
“Some buildings are cleaned up.”
“Developers would love to hear you talking like that. They could use you in their ads.”
“What the fuck!”
I knew that voice. But I hadn’t heard him yell in years. Dad tried hard to be polite around the Homeless Coalition. But right now there was nobody around but me.
“Hi, Dad.”
“I saw you coming. What the fuck are you doing here? Who’s the other asshole?”
“Derek Hinsdale.” He extended his hand to my father.
“Fuck you.” My father moved quickly as he sucked in more air. “Wait, wait, wait. I know you.”
“Okay,” said Derek.
“You’re another person my son uses for money.”
“Dad?”
“Fuck you, Jeff. You’ve been banking off my story for years and giving nothing back.” Dad pointed his tattered glove at Derek. “Now he’s banking off you.”
“Dad, you need to leave.”
“Fuck you. I’m not at your office. You’re in my neighborhood. You’re the one who needs to leave.”
“We’re going now.” I pivoted to walk away.
“Have fun with your rich shit. Jeff, you’re a fucking user. You use people.”
Derek and I calmly walked away. Dad wouldn’t follow us back to my office. He knew people like Officer Hanson lurked closer to the Homeless Coalition.
“Hey, rich asshole, I know who you are. Don’t be ignorant and think I’m stupid because this is how I chose to live. I read papers. What the fuck else do I do all day? Fuck you, Derek Hinsdale the fucking III or something. I hope you enjoy getting your money fucked out of you by my son.”
A cop car appeared on the street. No lights. No stopping. Just cruising.
I’d texted Rebecca before we left the Coalition.
DEREK AND I were silent during the walk back to the Coalition. There it was, the stoop where at age ten I’d found Dad passed out. The other stoop where Mrs. Norcott sneaked me beer after Mom died. The doorway of the Martin brothers, who’d liked to smack my head. My steps didn’t quicken. I hadn’t been scared for years. But I never forgot.
At first I thought we were going to sit in his car and talk it out, but the moment passed, and we were still standing on the sidewalk.
“You said you’re busy tonight?”
“I’m meeting up with Michael. I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“When do you want to get together this weekend?”
“I’ll call you.”
“Oh, shit,” I said. “I know what that means.”
“Jeffrey,” he started, “maybe we’ve been going too fast.”
“What?”
“We’ve been acting like boyfriends, when we’ve only just started.”
“Is this because of what my dad said?”
“No.” He was uncharacteristically rocking, shuffling on his feet. As if Derek wanted to be anywhere but in front of me. “We’re both smart. We know better. No project gets off the ground this fast. Not business. Not social service. Not intimacy.”
“Intimacy is a project?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Do I?”
What happened to all the noise? No trucks, no traffic, no distant yelling?
“Derek, what the fuck?”
“Don’t raise your voice at me.”
“That wasn’t a raised voice. That was a strong voice. What’s going on?”
His phone rang. He fumbled around his pocket and took out his cell. “Shit.” It flew out his hands and hit the pavement. Michael was on speaker phone.
“No more Jeffrey! Respect yourself! No more Jeffrey!”
Derek snatched up his phone, turned it off, and stuffed it in his pocket.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
We just stood there, staring.
“Did you text him while we were walking back?”
“No.”
“So he’s responding to something earlier?”
Nothing from Derek.
“Why doesn’t Michael like me?”
“He doesn’t know you.”
“So why is he so shitty?”
“He’s a good friend. A stupid friend sometimes, but he does
n’t want me to get hurt.”
“You think I’d hurt you?”
“No.” Derek stood there too perfectly. Perfectly broad. Perfectly creased pants. Perfectly blank gaze.
Christine, one of the program managers, waved eagerly as she drove past.
“Jeffrey—”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said and looked away.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too.”
Chapter Seven
ACCORDING TO Eddie, the Jefferson Memorial was the perfect place because it was small, beautiful, and not so difficult to book quickly. The wedding was in two months.
“It makes perfect sense,” Cassandra explained as Eddie wiped the kitchen counters. “This way I won’t be more than three months pregnant. I don’t want the baby to be so big I look like I’m wearing a muumuu instead of a wedding dress. Two months is too soon to invite people for a big, proper wedding, so it’s as if we don’t have a choice but to do something small. Later, we’ll do the best, biggest baptism ever. That will be our big party.”
The wedding wouldn’t be inside the actual Jefferson Memorial itself, but on the grass outside with the stunningly stark and white building behind it. The event was only family and a handful of guests. During the planning, Eddie explained I was family.
“Bro, I can’t believe you even asked. Don’t ruin my prenuptial buzz. You’re my bro, Bro. I know you better than my older bros and my sister.”
“I know, but I want to be respectful. I want to give you space for real family.”
“Do you need me to smack you? Cassandra, do me a favor and smack Jeffrey. You are real family, you asshole.”
“Easy.” Cassandra grabbed Eddie’s shoulder and smiled at me. “I love that I’m marrying into this family. And that includes you, Jeffrey. You know that.”
I opened my mouth to give her an embarrassed thank-you, but she wouldn’t let me speak.
“Maybe you don’t want to come because Derek will be there. I’m sorry. He’s been a jerk, but he’s still one of my oldest friends.”
Power Players Page 6