“I’m getting close,” he told Justin.
“Me too,” Justin grunted. “I’m gonna cream.”
“Do it!” Tyler ordered. “Give it to me!”
Justin withdrew quickly from Tyler’s ass and ripped off the condom. In a few short strokes, his load erupted from his cock, sending milky threads flying across Tyler’s back.
“Fuck!” Spencer yelled as he pulled Tyler’s hungry lips from his tool and exploded across his friend’s cheek. Gooey streams of come splattered across his skin before sliding down his face.
Moaning, Tyler frantically yanked on himself until he emptied a large pool of spunk inside his palm.
When Spencer and Justin looked into each other’s eyes, Tyler’s moans of pleasure drifted away, and they, instead of him, took center stage. Having been plugged into the same body, their connection sparked to life once again. The chasm separating them ceased to be.
CHAPTER 15
2010
SPENCER saw the confusion in Justin’s eyes. He fiddled with the towel that had fallen open and no longer covered his nakedness.
Whenever Justin was confused or in deep thought, he played with the nearest object. For months, it was a pen. He tossed it into the air, until he found a resolution. After the pen was lost, then came the remote control, which he broke after a particularly hard day. Since then, Spencer had banned him from picking up delicate objects, so Justin had resorted to snatching up unbreakable items around the house in times of distress—a pillow or an empty water bottle he hadn’t thrown away.
Today, it was the towel. He wrapped and unwrapped the edge around his index finger, trying to understand how having sex with Tyler had led them here.
“I still don’t see it,” he finally said. His hands started twisting the towel instead of wrapping it around his finger.
Spencer sighed. He felt Justin was being intentionally dense, a tactic he often resorted to in order to avoid uncomfortable subjects. “Our three-ways with Tyler started because of me,” he reminded Justin. “I’m the one who started us down this path. I not only introduced the idea of a third, but I was the one who got the ball rolling.”
“Maybe,” Justin admitted. He was now rolling the end of the towel up like a tamale. “But I was a willing participant. It’s not like you forced me to have sex with Tyler the first time or any time after that.”
“I know that,” replied Spencer. Justin’s slow acceptance of a perfectly logical fact irritated him.
He wasn’t talking about being forced. Nobody forced either of them into doing anything. Being two uncompromising men was one of the first hurdles they’d learned to jump shortly after moving in together.
“Then what does Tyler have to do with anything?”
Spencer rolled his eyes. It was an automatic response brought on by his complete exasperation. Justin hated having someone roll their eyes at him, and when he learned that fact, he’d done his best to check that behavior. At this point, however, he felt it appropriate to let his rolling eyes express his frustration.
“If we never started having the three-ways with Tyler, we never would’ve had any of the hookups that followed. Tyler was a slippery slope that brought us to this point,” he said plainly. “Since they started because of me, I’m just as culpable as you are in all this.”
“I still don’t see it,” Justin told him. Justin stared at him crossways, apparently trying to gauge the level of aggravation before continuing. “Neither of you played a part in my relationship with….” He averted his eyes and stopped speaking, unwilling to say the name, as if doing so would summon a demon.
And in a way it did. While they hadn’t brought Dutch up, his presence filled the room like a poltergeist. Instead of the magic that had brought them together and kept their souls tethered, Dutch became a negating force to the magic, nullifying, if not completely severing, their link.
After all, Justin did go to Dutch first. Spencer had seen him running madly toward the hospital, as if his most precious possession in the world lay within. The image might have hurt, but it was something he needed to see. It brought him closer to closure, which was what he desperately needed.
Then why am I doing this? he wondered. If Dutch was his first consideration, was there any need to continue this conversation? Didn’t that prove Justin’s heart was no longer his?
That’s why you should’ve killed the faggot when you had the chance, his father’s voice scolded from deep within.
“Where’d you go?” Justin asked. His face creased with concern. “I lost you there for a moment.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he told Justin. Shoving his father’s angry voice deep into his subconscious, he sat up straight. His armor refortified itself for the next devastating blow that was most certainly on its way.
“I just don’t agree with what you’re saying,” said Justin, continuing their conversation. “I can’t let anyone else take blame that is mine.”
“It doesn’t matter what you can or can’t do,” Spencer told him. His previous calm vanished. The almost utterance of Dutch’s name riled him and his anger. “The truth is the truth. Sex with Tyler opened a door we previously kept shut on purpose.” Spencer got up from the kitchen table and paced back and forth from the kitchen sink to the table. Pacing was something he often did when he was about to lose control emotionally. “Our hookups with Tyler led to more hookups with Tyler.” He stopped before the kitchen window before asking his question. “How many do you think we had with him?”
“I never counted,” Justin told him. “We were having sex with him every week for a while there, but it tapered off when he stopped trying to meet other guys and was completely fixating on us instead.”
While their three-ways with Tyler had been a good marital aid for them, it hadn’t been so beneficial for Tyler. Tyler loved the two of them immensely. Bringing sex into the relationship had confused him. He saw himself as a part of the relationship instead of merely a part of a sex act. When he and Justin realized the disservice they were committing against their friend, they ended the sexual part of their relationship with him.
Deeply hurt at first, Tyler’s depression returned. This time, it didn’t last. He reevaluated his life and took stock of his situation. A few weeks later, he began dating. At first, the dates were disasters, but Tyler eventually met Jerry, who had moved in last month.
“You see,” Spencer said, realizing the troubles they unexpectedly caused Tyler served as an indictment against them. “That should’ve been our clue to stop. Instead of working on our relationship, we brought Tyler into it. He wasn’t helping us. He was something else we were using to not deal with our own problems, our own inability to connect with each other.”
Justin’s silence told Spencer he couldn’t argue against that point. While their three-ways with Tyler had jumpstarted their sex life at home, their relationship sputtered shortly after their sexual relations with Tyler ended.
Before they knew it, they were right back where they started.
Spencer hated himself right now. Though he was loath to accept part of the burden, he had no other choice. Their relationship had been floundering the whole time, and neither of them had done anything to rescue it. Instead of tossing a life preserver, they’d added more water, cubic metric tons of water, into the already deeply churning sea.
“And what did we do?” Spencer asked, more to himself than Justin. “We turned to Cyber.”
Cyber was a social app for the iPhone Spencer discovered. It allowed them to create individual profiles where they could search San Antonio or other cities for guys looking for hookups.
Shortly after he told Justin about it, the two of them downloaded the app on their respective iPhones. At the beginning, they’d spent a great deal of time on Cyber, chatting with guys from San Antonio and the surrounding areas. They’d developed online personalities that were separate from who they were as a couple.
Now that Spencer thought about it, that was when their lack of a connection
had turned into a rift. They sat together on the couch, chatting with other guys and trying to lure them into a hookup. It was time they should have spent together as a couple.
Cyber became an obsession for both of them. They often tried to see who could catch the hottest trick, which wasn’t too different from what Justin and Xavier used to do at the club in their single days.
Instead of being a couple embracing their love, they split into individuals on the hunt for sex.
They enjoyed some hot encounters with some very sexy men. Every now and then, though, they came across a dud. Someone who was a fish mouth or a snake tongue. Someone who didn’t know what he was doing in bed or someone who turned out to be a little too crazy.
After those tricks left, they reevaluated the app and talked about deleting Cyber from their phones. They didn’t. The high they each received from the chase was too satisfying to abandon.
“That’s when our fights got worse,” Spencer said. “Especially after I deleted Cyber and you didn’t.”
Justin’s nod told Spencer he was right. Their fights did get worse because of Cyber. At first, Spencer was just as intrigued with the hookups as Justin was. But while his interest waned, Justin’s only increased.
At last, Spencer saw what was happening to them. The disconnect widened from a rift to a yawning chasm, but Justin was too blinded by the hot profile pictures. The cruising and the promise of sex enraptured Justin. He had finally found a platform where he was good at flirting.
Online, he was better at snagging men than he had ever been in person. Justin had scores of men interested in him, simply based on his profile picture. That alone was an ego boost. More confident online, Justin felt powerful, magnetic, and unstoppable.
Justin became a man he didn’t recognize. Drunk with the power of seduction, he spent more and more of his day on Cyber, chatting with guys he would never dream of approaching in person. When they agreed to come over, he was ecstatic, as if he had just completed some impossible task. In a frenzy, he rushed around the house, unmaking their bed, turning on the bedside lights and turning off the brighter overhead lights, opening a bottle of wine, and then retiring to the bathroom to make sure all his manly parts were clean for up-close inspection.
Spencer didn’t always feel up for a three-way, and when he said no, Justin became sulky. He complained about how his hard work was for nothing and then retreated to the bedroom like a sullen child.
“You’re right,” Justin finally said. “The three-ways led to Cyber.”
“Which led you to Dutch?” Spencer asked, invoking the name for the first time. In response, his already weary heart thudded sluggishly.
Justin nodded. His hands immediately returned to the towel, this time picking away at the fibers and pulling them one strand at a time.
Spencer had suspected Cyber was to blame for Dutch and Justin’s relationship.
Still, the admission troubled his mind and soul, for he had yet to admit his own secrets. Justin still had no knowledge about the completely different set of circumstances that had set him on his path with Dutch. Even more, he feared his righteous anger was nothing more than guilt that, once acknowledged, would render his armor completely useless and result in his ruination.
CHAPTER 16
2008
FED up, Spencer marched from the bedroom to the living room in search of Justin. The proof he needed was in his hand. From Justin’s cell phone, which he’d commandeered while Justin took out the trash, he had learned exactly how much time Justin spent on Cyber and exactly what he was doing on the app.
Simply chatting had become passé. Sexting and trading X-rated pics were apparently all the rage. As far as he was concerned, cheating was only a stone’s throw away. That wasn’t going to happen to him again.
Fear settled into his soul at the thought of losing Justin, and for the briefest of moments he felt the first piece of his armor strap to his body.
No, he thought to himself. Not again. I let you go years ago. I don’t need you anymore.
I wouldn’t be so sure of that, his father’s voice echoed. What have I always told you? When you prepare for battle, you don’t leave your body armor behind. It saves lives. It’s saved your life for years.
Shut the fuck up! he railed at his father, whose voice immediately went mute.
It had been years since his father’s voice rose from his subconscious, offering unsolicited advice on how to take care of himself. Justin’s love had silenced him almost from their first kiss. To have his voice return now terrified him. Does this mean we are in that much trouble? Have I let the situation deteriorate that far?
Spencer feared he had.
When he deleted the app a few months ago, he’d banked on Justin doing the same within a few weeks, if not days. It didn’t happen. Justin’s time on Cyber increased exponentially. Spencer felt Justin slipping away from him, so he had to do something, anything, to refocus Justin on him and not the damn phone app.
Getting Justin’s attention was easy. A kiss or a flash of skin revved him up. For the past few months, they had been enjoying a sexual renaissance. Their appetites for each other’s bodies were insatiable, so he felt confident Justin still found him sexually desirable. After all, they had sex at least four times a week, which was a lot better than where they were before they started having occasional three-ways.
Recently, though, Spencer felt more like a live-in trick than a partner. While the sex might have been great, the intimacy had all but vanished. Every now and then, he caught a glimpse of it in Justin’s eyes, the way Justin looked at him or kissed his flesh. His arms still held him tenderly when they were physically joined, but once orgasm was achieved, the connection severed with the spilling of fluids.
After cleanup, Justin returned to the couch or to his work, his phone ever at his side. Every few minutes, he logged onto Cyber, checked his messages, and chatted. Spencer felt as if he was no longer enough, no longer what Justin ultimately desired.
Still, he did nothing. He sat back and watched Justin move further and further away until he was but a speck on the horizon. His culpability kept him from trying harder to bring Justin back. The changes in Justin and their relationship were partly his fault. He had to reap what he had sown. At least that was what he told himself.
Not anymore. Justin’s obsession with Cyber needed to come to an end.
In the living room, Justin sat amidst a pile of Christmas ornaments, untangling the hooks they used to hang them on the tree. He resembled the little boy from his mother’s yellowed photographs, anxiously preparing the house for Santa Claus’s arrival.
The innocence of the scene stopped Spencer in his tracks; his anger caught in his throat, unwilling to shatter such a pure moment in time. He wanted to forget about the phone and place it on the bathroom counter, so Justin would think he forgot it there. Then they could decorate the tree together, without dredging up bitterness or hostility.
That idea seemed more in keeping with the holiday spirit.
It also means you’ve lost your balls entirely and become his bitch, you pussy!
The surprise return of his father’s voice caught him off guard. He dropped Justin’s phone, and it crashed upon the ceramic tile in the foyer.
Justin turned, a string of tangled Christmas lights in his hand. His eyes were wide with horror at the sight of his phone on the floor.
“My phone!” he yelled, struggling to disentangle himself from the Christmas lights. In his haste to reach his precious phone, he stepped on the first Christmas ornament they'd purchased for the house.
When they first saw it at an art gallery in Austin, the spyrograph pattern on the handblown glass caught his eye. The spiraling yellow lines along the dark-green disk reminded him of a sun, shining its light above a richly green pasture.
Justin fell in love with it too. Not as much of an art aficionado as Spencer was, Justin said the ornament resembled Spencer’s eyes. Justin plucked it from the display and purchased it without once looking
at the price.
Now the ornament lay in pieces, shattered underneath Justin’s hasty stampede. The broken shards of green and gold enraged Spencer, especially as Justin gently scooped his phone off the floor, examining it to make sure it still worked. Not once did he notice that he had broken something so precious to both of them.
I’m not one for symbols, his father’s voice said. But even I get that one. It’s kinda like a kick to the nuts, isn’t it?
Fury swelling within, Spencer snatched the phone from Justin’s grasp.
“Hey!” Justin called out. “I want to make sure it still works.”
“I’m sure it works fine,” replied Spencer. He walked over to the ornament and stood over its broken carcass. Tears wanted to fall, but the heat of his anger dried them instantly.
“Can I have it back?” Justin asked. He now stood beside Spencer, still oblivious to what lay broken before them.
“No, you cannot!” Spencer said. With rage he didn’t know he possessed, he pushed Justin backward, causing him to stumble and fall into the tree. The tree rocked back and forth; most of the ornaments held their perch, but some fell to the hardwood floor and shattered, joining the original in death.
Justin caught himself on the wall, which prevented him from falling completely to the floor. When he recovered and was once again standing, his brown eyes, which used to remind Spencer of a beach, turned as dark and ominous as the coastal sky before an approaching storm. “What the fuck?”
“Do you even know what you’ve done?”
“What I’ve done?” Justin asked him. “You dropped my phone and then pushed me into the fucking tree!”
“I’m sick of this, Justin,” he said. His voice wavered, not from a loss of will but merely from impending loss of something far dearer. “I can’t take this anymore.”
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