“Why not? Come on, I have to know—”
“C’mon Kyle, think,” he said, tapping his temple. “There could still be more of them around, watching us—”
“Simon’s still in there,” I offered, trying to help. Giving strategic information to Phil like that was the equivalent of giving him a gift; that much I knew for sure.
But he nodded like he already knew. “Yeah. He’s waiting for someone to sober up.”
I tilted my head. “What are you talking about?”
“Again. Not here,” Phil said.
And from the way his dark eye slid to me, I knew the subject was cut off—for now.
An hour later, we found ourselves in the dingy twenty-four-hour diner in the middle of town, Lucky’s. I couldn’t put my finger on what made this place seem so dingy and dirty—it was clean enough. Maybe it was something about the 1950s setup—it reminded me of that game, Fallout, after all the bombs go off. Maybe it was the lighting, or the way the leather benches of every booth were made of dry, cracked leather.
But whatever made it dingy, it certainly wasn’t the food. In front of me was a gorgeous platter of two coney dogs sitting on a bed of chill cheese fries. Not one, not two, but three different sauces were piled on the plate with different colors like a painter’s pallet.
Phil chose not to eat. Instead, he had a tall, translucent red glass in front of him that said Coca-Cola in faded cursive, but I knew the liquid inside was lemonade.
Always lemonade.
I popped a fry into my mouth. The warm salty flavor exploded on my tongue, emphasizing what Phil just said with an exclamation point. When I swallowed, I asked, “So what we saw all those years ago in the barn… it wasn’t…”
“It wasn’t rape, no. Somehow,” Phil said.
Phil had just told me about how there’d been a guy in the horse stall next to him—Benny the Town Drunk—who claimed he was the guy we’d seen.
He was the one held down on the mattress that day.
He was the one surrounded by all those hooded figures in that weird ritual.
He was the one getting pounded in the ass while he cried out for help.
I blinked a few times and shook my head, my appetite wavering. “There’s no way that was all consensual.”
Phil propped his elbow on the table and rested his head in his hand. With his other hand, he stirred the ice cubes around in his glass. They gossiped with gentle clicks and clatters. “I know. But I’m inclined to believe him. Said it was all some sort of game or whatever. BDSM.”
I felt my forehead scrunch up as I furrowed my brow. “Like Fifty Shades of Grey stuff?”
The corner of Phil’s mouth lifted. “I’ve read that book. For research purposes.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, a little smile curving across my lips.
Phil let out a chuckle, and suddenly, things didn’t seem so serious.
I smiled a little, then extended my leg so my ankle was touching his.
Phil’s leg felt warm and sturdy under the table.
“Anyway, what we saw in the barn earlier….” He glanced out the window onto the dark streets, the single street light illuminating the four-way-intersection outside with a dim orange glow. “That wasn’t Fifty Shades stuff. Nothing like that happens in that book…”
I stayed silent and watched his face. It was fascinating to watch him work through something; calculate it from all angles like he was figuring out an especially difficult math problem.
And it may have been the adrenaline ebbing away, or the way the orange glow fell over the side of this face like that, or his thoughtful expression. But in that moment, he looked… different to me.
He looked like that boy I’d been best friends with as a kid, and as the man he’d become all at once.
A fluttering sensation flicked inside my stomach.
“Do you think he’s lying?” I asked.
Phil turned his dark eyes to mine, unblinking. “No. I don’t. I think he was just playing the game. Whatever fucked up game that might be.” Then Phil returned his gaze to the window. I saw the thought forming above his head; I knew what he was going to say before he even said it:
“I’m… I don’t know about you, but there was something about that that was a turn-on.”
Heat flooded into my cheeks as I looked down at my coney dogs. Thick sausages tucked into a bun, nestled in there, one could say…
Phil reached across the table and took my hand.
I looked left, then right. I looked at him as if to ask, Do you care if anyone sees?
I remembered his hesitation when I kissed him earlier in the night, on the street, in full view of everyone.
Then, as if the thought had been telepathically transmitted to him, he withdrew his hand as if he’d touched a live wire.
I felt cold without it, and looked down at the hot dogs.
11
Phil
After we finished at Lucky’s, we went back to Kyle’s house. As we walked down the subdivision sidewalk, our hands hung by our sides, but I didn’t make a move to hold his.
I was still trying to figure out what this all meant between us. We were together, right? We didn’t have to hold hands to prove it.
That was what I liked most about Kyle—there was nothing I had to prove. Nothing I had to do to think ahead; to plan, to calculate. Plus, right now I didn’t know if I could do that to full capacity—my mind was swimming with the weird experience we had earlier.
I was exhausted, and all I wanted to do was lie down and think.
If I was walking next to anyone else, I would have wanted to go home; go have alone time in my room to think. But as we walked past my house—still with all the lights on and glaring out into the night—my resolve faltered.
I didn’t want to be alone.
Well, I did want to be alone, but only with Kyle.
We passed my driveway, the blacktop sparkling in the moonlight. I didn’t make a move to separate myself from him, and I could almost feel the giddiness coming off of him in waves.
His hand lingered by his side, as if subtly asking me to reach out and grab it.
Did he want me to hold his hand?
Your partner is going to have needs, too, and you have to fulfill them. No matter how annoying.
I frowned. Where did that thought come from? That memory?
Oh, right. The ENTJ subreddit, full of toxic people and immature little twits that thought of themselves as some baby sociopaths.
When one of my classes made each of us take that silly Myers-Briggs personality test thing, I tested as an ENTJ. Basically a loveless little working machine that manipulates everyone into doing anything they want—it seemed to fit.
I felt resonance when I read the description… the test seemed like it knew me.
But then there was the section about relationships that said yes, that was where I was weak.
I internalized that, irritated that there was any kind of weak point within me. So I scoured the forums online, and found a community of people that were also ENTJs on Reddit. But everything in there made me feel…
Well, I always left the forum feeling a little more like a robot. A little less optimistic.
And more certain that everyone around me was a derp, intent on wasting time following their feelings or prattling on about stupid nonsense.
It made me feel… alone.
I looked down at Kyle’s hand, then up at his face.
Was that an invitation? Did he need me to hold his hand?
Then all at once it hit me like a ton of bricks:
I’d been scared tonight. I’d been scared when we saw what we saw through the window. I’d been scared when they locked me in that cell. And I’d been scared most of all, not for my own safety, but of what might happen to Kyle.
I put Kyle’s safety above my own.
I could almost hear everything latch into place as I took his hand.
He tilted his head toward me and smiled wordlessly.
; Hot tears began to pour down my face. I didn’t even know what was happening to me—it didn’t make sense.
All I could feel was a sensation of relief. Ease. Appreciation for Kyle, and how he didn’t stop and make me explain myself.
He never made me have to explain myself.
Suddenly, all I wanted to do was hug him close and cry against him, even though doing so would make me look weak to him.
But that thought didn’t fit in, either. I would have thought that way if I was with a girl; someone I was trying to look strong for. Unfeeling. Capable. I could handle anything the world threw at us; it was very important to try to be strong for girls.
Though, this wasn’t a girl. This wasn’t a girlfriend. This was Kyle, and I knew somewhere deep in my soul that it didn’t matter how I acted around him. It didn’t matter if he thought I was a weak-ass pansy. Everything with him was okay, because he already knew everything about me.
He opened the door and we stepped into his house.
As soon as I passed the threshold, I think we both just knew.
Kyle closed the door behind us, and as soon as it latched into place, he shoved me against the wall again.
His lips were on mine in less than a second, kissing me with a fierce passion.
I didn’t know what this kiss meant. It wasn’t like he was trying to prove something, as it had been before when we kissed in the hallway. It wasn’t about trying to convince me of something.
No; this one felt genuine. Like everything else had fallen away and this was all that mattered.
His fingers interwove with mine as he pressed me against the wall, kissing me fiercely.
I could feel his rock-hard cock press against mine; our ridges rubbing together.
“Oh…” I gasped, tilting my head back.
Kyle rained kisses down the side of my neck.
I ran my fingers through his silky hair and my knees weakened.
“Yes…” I said, letting him come at me. I wanted to melt into him; become one with him. I wanted to use the heat of this passion to fuse our souls together once and for all.
Just like it was always meant to be.
He pressed me against the wall and his lips returned to my mouth.
This kiss was hurried; like he couldn’t get enough of me.
I let my hands travel down his rock-hard sides and to his hips.
I loved the way his muscles flexed under my touch, and in that moment I wanted nothing more than to be underneath him.
To forget about all the things around us. Forget what we’d seen, because none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered to me was Kyle—the one pure thing in my life. The person that had been there for me—that had always been there. And now that we knew the truth of what we’d seen all those years ago, it felt like our bond had been altered, somehow.
Like there’d been this thread connecting us; a silvery string of a secret. Something we shouldn’t had seen; something that had taken our innocence away at the same time.
Stolen from us.
The bond felt dark and poisonous, but it was a bond all the same.
Now that we’d learned what we’d really seen, it purified it somehow. All we were doing by making out like this was consummating the truth of things:
We were always meant to be together.
Every time his lips came to mine, a blockade was removed between us.
When we stumbled down the hallway to his room, our limbs twisting around each other’s bodies with passion, I heard a crash, but I didn’t care.
This felt right. It felt so right, that nothing about it could be wrong.
Somewhere along the way, I’d lost my shirt.
Somehow, I’d managed to peel off his shirt, too.
Bare chest to chest, we collided with his door with a deep thud.
He scrambled for the knob, opened it, and we tumbled inside, giggling.
It was the same room as Saturday night when we hooked up, but something about it was completely different.
His bed was still in the corner. His hamster cage still in the window with a sleeping critter inside; his dresser was in the same spot.
As he closed the door, I realized it was us that were different. We were so different than the people we were when we first hooked up, and in such a short amount of time, that the sensation was like vertigo.
But I didn’t have much time to think about that, because Kyle closed the space between us and pressed his lips to mine.
Fiery passion swirled in my gut.
His bare chest came to mine, his hard abs grinding against my stomach.
I took two steps back and tumbled onto his bed.
He came with me, pinning me down.
His tongue entered my mouth.
I opened my jaw a bit, yielding to him.
Kyle moved his body in hard, harsh fucking motions.
I buried my tongue in his mouth, taking control. All I knew was that I felt a ravenous, all-consuming desire to be on top.
And fuck, he was going to let me…
I pulled away from the kiss and swung my leg over his body.
He rolled, willing himself to be on bottom.
It was impossible not to take in how fucking beautiful he looked in the moonlight; all abs and manly hardness and muscle and sinew.
I reached down and touched his nipple.
He bit his lip and bucked his pelvis.
I smiled. If this was any other fuck, I would have taken the time to tease. I would have asked him of that was one of his buttons or something.
But there was an intuitive sense in me that told me now was not the time for joking. Now was not the time for lingering in this moment, dragging it out.
No; we needed to consummate something. Something that had been growing between us for years.
And finally, I felt a creeping sense that we were finally in the right place at the right time. We had the house to ourselves. No one to distract us. Our shirts were off, and I was in the middle of taking his pants off, too.
Removing all barriers.
Part of it felt ceremonial; ritualistic, like a wedding night or something…
Collaring ceremony.
I shook my head as if to shake the thought away, but it only flickered like a candle flame with not enough breath to extinguish its fiery dance.
Collaring.
I was suddenly possessed by the urge to… to…
Well, it was an urge.
I just wanted him to…
“Turn over,” I said, my voice hard and threatening with the command.
His eyes widened, and even here in the darkness I could see them glint green with all of his layers.
That same strange urge twisted in my gut. I wanted to… to…
I wanted to make him come, and I wanted him to beg for it, and I wanted it to be my fault.
Not my doing, per se, but my fault.
Specifically that phrasing.
Whatever. I didn’t have time to think or the capacity to plan—
Kyle turned over, and his beautiful, naked, pale jock ass shone in the light. All those sprints up and down the soccer field were paying off…
I couldn’t resist squeezing it, kneading it. It was like I was operating on some basic instinct that demanded I do this; compelled me to take him and claim him.
Yes, claim him.
My eyes traced the curve from his low spine to his bulbous ass with shaking wonder, and excitement erupted in me like a ball of confetti. Rational thoughts receded.
I wanted him so fucking bad I was trembling for it.
But I had to wait; I had to be patient.
“Fuck,” I said, letting my hands glide down his sides. Then they followed the convex curve of the sides of his ass.
They dipped on those muscle dimples next to his cheeks.
“Fuck!” I said, completely losing my grip on reality.
I had no idea how to have sex with a guy, so I just followed my instincts.
I dipped my body down a
nd peppered his lower back with kisses.
He peppered the air with his moans, his body flexing and writhing beneath mine.
Oh yes, I had him under me.
Pinned.
Mine.
I didn’t know where it came from, but all of a sudden I felt the urge to—
I dipped my body over his, leaned down, and bit the side of his neck.
“Oh!” he cried, jerking his head back.
Fuck yeah, my brain thought.
An intense feeling of satisfaction flooded through me.
Another pulse of desire stiffened my cock even more, and I slipped it between the hills of his ass cheeks. I didn’t push it in—not yet, but I let it nestle into his crack just like that hotdog he ate at Lucky’s earlier.
“Fuck…” Kyle moaned.
I withdrew from the bite—more like a nip, really—and trailed kisses down his back.
I made sure to explore every contour of his body with my hands and mouth; thinking for the first time how he would feel if I did certain things. When I was with women before, sex was always about me. Sure, I was a gentleman and made sure they got off first, and I knew what to do to achieve that goal like following an instruction booklet. But I’d never tried to get in their heads in the same way I was doing with Kyle. I’d never considered what would it would feel like for them if I touched them a certain way.
I just knew it would feel good for them; simple input and output.
Touch. Feel good. Repeat until they come.
But with Kyle, I was actually thinking about how it would feel for him if I touched his body here; if I kissed with a mild pressure there.
I wasn’t used to doing it, so I lacked finesse. Plus, I was so riled up just from touching him that I thought I would come at any second—
“Oh…” Kyle moaned, writhing on his mattress underneath me.
As I watched his body move like that, I realized with a dawning clarity that I was horny, yes. I was riled up, yes. But for the first time, I was afraid.
Afraid because I was about to have sex with someone I actually cared about more than myself. And that… that was something I had no idea how to handle.
Moving like a man possessed, I leaned forward, pulled open Kyle’s bedside drawer, and rummaged for the pack of condoms I knew was in there.
Kyle From High School Page 11