Then ten minutes after that: So, I was thinking maybe we could hang out and catch up sometime.
I so should have paid Wyatt for the tutoring. I was still behind in calculus, but he’d totally come through on the Blake advice.
I stared at the screen for a second, thinking of all the times I wished he’d text, or call, or bother to find out where my dorm room was.
I ducked behind a filing cabinet and tapped out: Too busy to suck you off right now. Good luck with that.
It seemed like I’d barely hit Send when my phone buzzed with his answer.
What the fuck is wrong with you? I was trying to be nice.
Yeah right.
Blake wasn’t done. Five minutes later I got: Fuck you, Ethan. You’re the one who chased me here.
I almost fought back, spat out every bit of hurt “chasing him here” had gotten me. But this was Blake working through his shit. I’d ruin everything if I didn’t stick to the plan now.
After dinner, I backdated a bunch of entries for my ed soc journal, pretended to read my bio book and finally nudged my calculus text toward me like it was made of explosives. The expression on my parents’ faces if I failed a class would probably be explosive enough.
Maybe I should get Wyatt to tutor me. He seemed to know his shit. He’d been dead-on about Blake.
* * *
The next morning my phone text alert went off before my alarm and I swiped it open without thinking.
Blake.
You were right. I was a jerk yesterday.
Just yesterday? I rolled my eyes midmessage.
I would like to talk to you. Actually talk, that’s all.
I flopped around on the bed, teeth clenched to keep from shouting yes in time with the fist I pumped in the air.
I knew he only needed to get his head out of his ass. I owed Wyatt a great big thank-you, but a fruit basket didn’t seem like his thing. He was fond of hoodies though.
I raced through my shower but took a few extra seconds to scrape my jaw smooth, even though I was determined not to do any kissing. Just talking. I’d have to sprint across campus to get to the dining hall under Butler Student Center. It was closest to Kilpatrick, where all the jocks ate.
I’d still have time to make it to calculus if I busted ass. Bonus, the sprint kept me from being zombie chow.
The student center was on a hill—like most everything here. I kept getting confused when I took stairs down to the basement but the back half of the lower level had doors to go outside. Even though I knew that was the case with the student center, I didn’t see any windows or doors leading to the October sunshine in this dining hall. Wood-paneled walls, fraternity paddles over the serving line, banners claiming championships. It was dark and loud like a bar.
Just stepping inside I had a sensation of dread in my stomach. Like high school, pre-Blake. The feeling that everyone had their groups and outsiders were not welcome. I felt extra stupid with my neon orange human bandanna tied around the sleeve of my henley. No one here seemed to be playing the game.
I peered into the gloom wondering if the school thought an extra lightbulb would threaten the dining hall’s masculinity.
I didn’t see Blake right away, but I saw Wyatt. He was at a long table by himself, back pressed against the wall, textbook open next to his tray. His backpack occupied the seat next to him. Since I’d made a quick stop in the campus store, the timing was perfect. I headed for his table.
A few steps in I saw Blake, right in my path. He was at a table crowded with his team, I guessed, based on them all wearing matching blue-and-gold jerseys. The expression on his face was half knew-you’d-come-looking-for-me-expectant, half don’t-embarrass-me-in-front-of-the-guys-dread. I nodded at him and kept right on walking. Was that nonclingy enough, dickhead?
I slid into the seat opposite Wyatt. It was hot in here, but he still had his hood up.
He glanced up and then went back to his book. “What the hell do you want?”
Given how weird he’d been when he left two weeks ago, I wasn’t expecting a hug, but I suspected that his greeting had more to do with how crappy it was to eat alone than me showing up at his table.
“To say thank you.”
“What for? You’re not over there on lover boy’s lap so I can’t have been much help.”
I followed his gaze over to Blake’s table. One of the guys had a girl in his lap. I recognized him from the media I’d seen last year. He was their star goalkeeper. Blake was his backup. I’d never sat on Blake’s lap—or he on mine. I couldn’t even picture it working—unless I finally got my dick up his ass.
But I didn’t want to talk to Wyatt about Blake anymore. “You told me the truth and I needed to hear it. So thanks.” I plopped the eco-friendly paper bag from the campus store on the table in front of him.
“What’s that?”
“A thank-you present.”
He pushed it toward me. “Keep it.”
“I got it for you.” Since he didn’t seem like he was going to open it anytime soon, I said, “It’s a hoodie. In Coborn Cougar colors. Say that three times fast.”
He looked in the top of the bag. “Get your money back.”
“It’s also a kind of an apology present. You told me the truth after I—” I tripped over the word lied. “—manipulated you so I could ask about Blake.” Shit. That actually sounded worse.
“I don’t need it.”
“Well, it turns out I really do need help with calculus. I need you to tutor me for real. I’d still—” There was no way pay you for it didn’t sound dirty. “—pay the same rate.”
Wyatt pulled away from the wall, turning to face me. The right side of his face was darker than ever in the shadows. “What are you stuck on?”
Everything. “Velocity. And parabolas. They’re killing me.”
Wyatt stuffed his book into his backpack and studied my face for a second before saying, “Here’s what you do. Library, second floor.”
I nodded. I’d miss the semiflirting if we were in public, but I could meet him there. It would be better than trying to figure it out myself.
Wyatt leaned toward me. “Go there, any day between eight and six. The academic success counselors will hook you up with a tutor, and you can stop yanking my chain.”
He slung his backpack over his shoulder and grabbed the tray, leaving me and the paper bag with his hooded sweatshirt alone at the table.
Chapter 7
I sat stunned for a second. I was jerking his chain? The back of my neck burned until I started to sweat from the all the ways my filthy mind wanted me to jerk him. Swallowing hard, I grabbed the paper bag and went after him.
Wyatt was already shoving his tray in the return slot next to the exit. If he hadn’t bothered, I might not have caught him before he disappeared through a door next to the elevator. I hadn’t noticed that door was there before.
I grabbed it before it shut behind him and followed him into a hall that cut through the middle of the basement of the student center.
He turned. “Christ, what is with you?”
“With me? Why are you so pissed-off?”
Wyatt’s voice went from furious to flat. “For all you know I’m always like this.”
“No.” I was so certain I shook my head too. “No, you’re not.”
Wyatt was sarcastic and funny and he teased, but he wasn’t mean.
He slumped against a wall, dropping his head back against it. His hood slipped back. “I should have known. You don’t know how to quit when you’re ahead. And I can’t....” He rolled his head against the wall. “Go back to your boyfriend. He’s all thirsty for your dick again.”
There was something in the way he sneered that, not disgust, but—
“Are you jealous?” I asked, grabbing his sleeve. “Do you like him?”
“No.” He jerked free and stomped away down the hall.
His no didn’t sound like a lie, but there was something he wasn’t saying.
“What is this place?” M
y long legs caught up to him easily.
“Service access to the kitchen, dining hall and campus shop.” He jerked his thumb at a wide elevator door.
“How do you know about it?”
“Because I work in the kitchen. Washing dishes and trays. Forty hours a week. So I don’t have time to play your tutoring-slash-make-Blake-jealous game.”
At the end of the hall was a door to the outside. I thought Wyatt would head for that, but he turned and started up a narrow flight of stairs. Even as skinny as I was two of us couldn’t fit on a stair at the same time.
“Why would me hanging out with you make Blake jealous?” I called after him. “Unless you’re gay.”
He stopped on the top stair. He didn’t turn around, but his shoulders hunched down.
I joined him on a landing barely three feet square and stepped around him until we were face-to-face. I’d kind of always known about myself, and my parents had said they’d figured it out by the time I got up enough nerve to mention it back in eighth grade. But even if gays could get married in any state, even if your parents were all whatever about it, realizing you were queer wasn’t easy.
I thought he’d be hiding, but he wasn’t. His jaw was tight, but he looked straight at me. For the first time I saw his left eye, chocolate brown, a disorienting dark when his other one was so pale.
Heterochromia. The word popped into my head. I’d found the whole thing about genetics in bio to be cool, but I really remembered it because I’d seen X-Men: First Class about a million times. What can I say? The guys in that movie are hot and they flirt with each other. Wyatt probably wore the hoodie and his hair like that so people didn’t bug him about it. It was a little surprising at first, made me want to take his picture so I could study him, but with that suggestion hanging between us—Unless you’re gay—I found myself more obsessed with his lips and the way they had that full pout in the middle.
His jaw was a little dark with stubble, it would scrape mine if I—
“How do you know for sure?” His voice was thick and his throat bobbed on a swallow.
That bob chased away any idea I’d had about teasing with a Well, what kind of porn do you like? Because his face was open, and he was looking at me like I could give him the answer.
So I did.
I put a hand on the back of his neck, under his thick soft hair and pulled his mouth to mine.
I felt it when our lips touched. Something like a static shock, and his breath hit me with a surprised rush. I took advantage of that to make it a real kiss. No tongue, but parted lips and movement. That jolt zinged around my nerves, and my breath sped up.
Wyatt got his hand between us and pushed me away. Before I could say anything, his fingers gripped my shirt and he dragged me back. His mouth opened. I accepted the invitation with a little slide of my tongue, but that didn’t seem to be enough for him because he chased my tongue back with his, driving into my mouth. The slide of sensation, the taste, the sharpness of his angles pressed against mine, poured heat down my body, flooding my dick.
He shoved me back as hard as he’d kissed me, but there wasn’t a lot of space for me to go. My backpack hit the wall.
He put a hand to his mouth. “I don’t need your fucking pity.”
“Pity?” I grabbed his hand and put it on my crotch. “Pity doesn’t make my dick hard.”
His fingers closed around me. Hot palm through denim, the ouch—damn it—rasp of my zipper. He made a tentative stroke, watching my face.
I reached for him, found the hard shaft angling left from his fly. I smiled. “Well, there you go. You’re gay enough to get hard from kissing a guy and touching dick.”
There was a half smile and his tongue appeared between his lips. Fuck, he was sexy like that. Almost shy under that punk-edgy hair. I never knew shy turned me on. It was still surprising when I looked at his eyes, but I’d gotten used to one hiding under the hair so it wasn’t as weird as it could have been.
“What?” he said it like a challenge.
I regretted staring since it had made his tongue retreat and told him the truth. Actually, I didn’t say anything, I backed him into the wall and started kissing him again. Hard, the way he liked it. The way I liked it. When your lips feel bruised against teeth and you can’t catch your breath because there’s a tongue deep in your mouth and there’s nothing to think about but him.
Wyatt spread his legs and angled his hips against mine, our dicks making contact through our jeans. It felt so good I had to make it feel even better. I tugged at his button, worked his fly, and then he was in my hand, hot and satiny, pulsing and getting harder, thicker. He groaned into my mouth, fingers squeezing my dick.
I swept my thumb over the crown, and the wetness of his precome made my jaw ache, made my knees get all loose. I got myself out as fast as I could, and rocked up into him. His dick felt sweet on mine, a tight drag, warm and silky and slick from the way he was dripping precome.
Wyatt grabbed my ass with both hands as I thrust into him. His backpack had only been over one shoulder and it banged off our sides, echoing in the stairwell.
The stairwell.
Fuck. What the hell was I thinking?
I wasn’t.
I smelled sex and sweat and him. His mouth was inhaling mine, feeding my oral fetish while our naked dicks slid together in my hand. I couldn’t stop. Not if the whole soccer team trooped by to watch. His hand fumbled between us, covering mine, working around it. Perfect pressure everywhere. God, was that his nail in the spot under the ridge?
My legs shook, and I tore my mouth free, getting a good mouthful of his sweatshirt to bury my gasps. He grunted almost soundlessly into my shoulder, but nothing could quite cover the thick, wet sound of our slam together.
His sudden stillness warned me, and thank God, I could let go of the muscles I’d been using to hold off coming. He jerked and shot. A slippery string dropped over my knuckles, the smell of come sweet and bitter between us, and I fell over the edge with him. Pleasure shook me, wringing my balls dry until there was nothing left.
I kissed his sweaty neck, then the soft curve of his ear and my lips found the tang of a barbell hidden by his hair. “Fuck.” I blew the word softly into his ear. “So good. God. I want to do that again. Wanna suck you.” It wasn’t only the sweet rush from coming making me say it. I wanted him. Wanted to see every inch of what was hidden under the sweatshirt. Wanted to taste his skin. His cock.
Wyatt wasn’t much for afterglow. He jabbed an elbow into my ribs forcing me back far enough to give him room to fasten up his jeans. “Get off.”
I couldn’t resist. “I did.” I smiled, despite the continued application of his elbow. “You did too.” I wiped my palm and fingers on the thing in my other hand. Right, the paper bag holding his sweatshirt had been between us. The tan color was streaked now with strips of dark brown from our come. “I don’t think I can return this now.”
Wyatt’s hair swung back over his face as he grabbed the bag from me. “Fine.” He unzipped his backpack and wadded the bag as small as he could before stuffing it inside. He yanked the zipper up again and slung the strap over his shoulder.
“Wyatt.” I reached for him with my non-comey hand.
“Don’t.” He stumbled back against the next flight of stairs. “Just don’t.”
“It’s okay.” I stuffed my hand in my pocket. “I mean, it doesn’t have to be anything but sex.”
He’d said he didn’t know if he was gay. Shit. I should have left it with kissing. But he’d been into it. No doubt about that. Maybe the problem—again—was me. All that stuff I’d whispered in his ear probably came off as clingy rather than hot.
“Or it doesn’t have to be anything at all.” If he was just figuring himself out... “If you want to talk about...stuff, you can. With me.”
He yanked his hood back up over his head. “What I want,” he bit the words off, his jaw snapping tight after the T, “is for you to leave me the fuck alone.”
He turned
and took the stairs two at a time.
I didn’t go after him.
Chapter 8
I went down the narrow stairs, then through the door at the end of that hall. There was a Dumpster to my left and a loading dock to my right. A few more concrete stairs took me down to the pitted asphalt of some service road.
I threw my shoulders back and took gulps of the trash-scented air to clear my head. How had I managed to fuck that up? Not that I’d planned any of it. But I wanted it again. Wanted Wyatt.
How could I still want to be Blake’s boyfriend while wanting to suck off Wyatt?
Because I was a selfish asshole.
That’s why Wyatt had taken off. I’d been whining at Wyatt about Blake since the minute I met him. No wonder he accused me of jerking his chain. I’d gone along with all those double entendres. Flirted.
But I hadn’t known he was interested.
Shit, I still didn’t know.
I walked to the edge of the access road where it bordered the hill. A stretch of grass blotted with leaves and dandelions lead down to Lake Murphy. The fountain in the center sent up a mist that the morning sun turned into a rainbow.
When I was younger, back when just hearing the word gay made me nervous and embarrassed and excited at the same time, I’d always gotten this secret rush when I saw a rainbow. Like nature was telling me being gay was cool.
My eyes tracked the path around the lake, a thin strip of tan. I could even pick out the spot on that path where Blake had dumped me six weeks ago. I’d avoided the lake since then, but the rainbow was pretty. I should go back up around the student center, make my way to Perry, duck in a bathroom to clean up better and go to my calculus class. I needed all the goodwill I could get from the professor.
My phone buzzed. After wiping my hand on my jeans some more, I pulled the phone out of my pocket.
A text from Blake. Where the fuck did you go?
Oh, shit. I’d completely forgotten that I’d gone there to meet Blake. To talk. And technically we were broken up, but guilt still slithered through my stomach. I couldn’t see him now, with another guy’s come on my shirt.
Getting Him Back Page 5