Where We Left Off

by Roan Parrish

Gone was the man I’d made out with over pancakes, or cuddled with on the couch, binge watching Orphan Black. Gone was the man I’d listened to as he ranted about typography on book spines, and the one who’d eaten chicken tikka masala off my plate and grinned when he got caught, sauce in his teeth.

  The one in his place was sexy, experienced, in control. Distant. But I had said I wanted this and I wasn’t sure I’d get another chance to prove to him what we could be.

  I thought back on all the porn I’d watched, but couldn’t actually remember what happened before the actual fucking part. Maybe they edited that out? Was I supposed to, like….

  “It’s on the condom already.”

  “Huh?”

  “Lube. If that’s what you’re waiting for.”

  “Oh, okay. Um, so should I like… do something?”

  “Yeah, you might consider fucking me. That or get me something to read in the meantime.”

  “No, I meant, um, like in terms of preparation or—”

  “I know what you meant.”

  “Okay, then I’ll just, uh….”

  But my hands were shaking and my knees were shaking and really this did not feel like I wanted it to. And I know Will made fun of me for having these grand romantic notions—“capital-R romantic,” Professor Ginsberg would probably say—and maybe he was right, but….

  I dropped my chin to my chest.

  “Hey, can we not do it like this?” I said, my voice small.

  “You’re the one who wanted to switch places!”

  “No, I mean…. Will, come on. Please. I know it’s maybe a joke to you, but I really haven’t ever done this before, and you’re kind of making me feel like shit.”

  I opened my eyes a crack and looked at Will. He looked away.

  “Like, I want you you, not sex you.”

  “Sex me,” he repeated.

  “Yeah, with the whole ‘I’ve slept with a ton of people, and this is just one more notch on my bedpost, I’m beautiful and confident and not terrified I’m about to totally fuck it up’ thing.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You’re not gonna fuck it up.”

  “I might,” I whispered.

  This had been a huge mistake. Will was looking at me like I was a stranger he’d offered a favor to who was now making the favor much more work than he’d anticipated. I’d had warmer, more intimate exchanges checking out library books. This was nothing like what I wanted with him. Nothing at all.

  Chapter 8

  January

  I CLAMBERED off Will and rolled out of the bed in a mortification of clumsiness, running into the living room and tugging on my pants as I went, in a futile attempt to feel less exposed.

  God, what the hell just happened?

  Images of Will, sublimely beautiful in his nakedness, got all jumbled up with the expression on his face: a neutrality so blank I may as well have been a stranger. A pathetic, overly eager, horny stranger. I dropped my head forward to clunk against the kitchen wall. Fuck my life.

  “I didn’t quite live up to the fantasy, I guess?” Will’s voice was ice.

  “Can you… can you please not be mean to me right now?” My voice was muffled by the wall.

  “I’m not being mean to you. I’m serious. You had a vision of what it’d be like to fuck me, and I didn’t fulfill it. Like college, or Christmas.”

  I turned around, wrapping my arms around myself against the chill. Will’s jaw was tensed, his eyebrows drawn together, and the pale skin of his chest mottled with a flush. He’d put his pants on again too.

  “Wait, are you… are you mad at me?” I asked.

  Will gave an uncertain shrug, a gesture so at odds with his usual surety that it distracted me.

  “Why are you mad?”

  He shook his head in irritation but said nothing, just moved around the kitchen, picking things up and putting them back down again.

  “Will.” I put a hand on his shoulder, and he shrugged it off. “Will, come on.”

  “Fine! What do you want me to say, Leo? I thought you were different, okay? I didn’t think you saw me that way. The way everyone else does.”

  Was I imagining it, or did his mouth tremble slightly?

  “What do you mean? How does everyone see you?”

  Will glared at me. “You know how—you’ve seen them. Like I’m… like they just care about how I look. They just want to… to fuck me.” He spat the word out, making sex sound filthy for the first time since I’d met him.

  “Uh, okay, I know what you mean, but the idea that you would lump me in with those people is… it’s fucked-up, man.”

  He set his jaw. “Is it?”

  “Will.” I put my hand on his arm and this time he didn’t shrug me off. “You’re totally beautiful. You are.” His eyes flew to mine, narrowed, and angry. “Hang on. Jesus. Yeah, you’re super hot. But… like, a lot of people are. Give me a little credit for not being some mindless… sex zombie or something, would you? I’m not like totally powerless in the face of your beauty.”

  This was almost completely true. Will’s looks did still take me by surprise sometimes, his beauty rendered something separate from him. A thing he possessed rather than a thing he was. But it definitely wasn’t the moment for that shade of distinction to be meaningful to Will.

  “Especially not now that I know you.”

  Will snorted at this though I hadn’t actually meant it as an insult. Then he lifted himself up to sit on the counter, leaned back against the cabinet, and stared moodily out the window.

  “You seriously think that I just want to… to fuck you because you’re pretty and that’s all? How could you possibly think that?”

  He shook his head, and his expression was confused, like he honestly couldn’t quite figure out if I meant what I said.

  “I just get tired of not knowing.” Will’s voice had a darkness to it that was completely different from his pissed-off tone of a minute before. But he shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “Never mind.”

  “What?” I followed him with my body, standing between his knees and putting my hands on his thighs.

  “Would you even have liked me when we first met if you hadn’t thought I was hot? You totally wouldn’t have. I was just some asshole your friend’s boyfriend used to date. I made fun of you, gave you shit. Why would you have wanted to spend time with me if you didn’t want to fuck me?”

  His intonation was flat, like these weren’t even questions, but stories he’d told himself for so long he already believed they were true.

  And I wasn’t sure what to say. Because the truth was that, sure, the first thing I’d noticed about Will was how he looked. And could I honestly separate that from who he was? Not with any certainty.

  “Well, okay,” I said. “But, attraction’s… mysterious, right? At some level that happens whenever people are attracted to each other. Like, someone says something that would one hundred percent annoy you if someone else had said it, but because it’s that person it’s charming or funny or whatever. And in case you forgot, we aren’t fucking, and I basically want to hang out with you all the time.”

  “Yeah, but you want to. Wanted to.”

  “So… I was supposed to—what?—prove that I was different, that I care about you, by not being attracted to you? Now who’s being the romantic?” I squeezed his knee to soften my words. “Besides, you wanted to, too, right? At least a little bit?”

  He shrugged. And even though I didn’t exactly think he meant it, it cut kind of deep.

  “Seriously? You have no interest in sleeping with me, but you said okay totally out of pity? Damn, Will, that’s kinda cold.”

  “No, no, fine, yes, I want to, I guess.”

  “Wow, that’s so incredibly flattering.”

  Will grabbed my chin so I had to look up at him. He looked intense, but he was biting his lip in this maddening way that made him look kind of lost at the same time.

  “You’re probably my best friend,” he said. “And I’ve bee
n honest with you about not wanting a relationship. So I can’t help but wonder.”

  My brain had short-circuited somewhere back around the words “best friend,” and now I was struggling to keep up with Will’s logic, which, at its most clear was often inconceivable to me.

  “Wonder?”

  “If you know that I don’t want a relationship, and you wouldn’t just be thinking of it as sex, then where does that leave us? Because it kind of seems like it’d leave us someplace where you end up feeling like I’ve betrayed you, and I end up losing my friend.”

  “That won’t happen, I swear,” I said, but my heart was pounding because with a few sentences Will had pretty much blown to smithereens every avenue I’d thought we might walk down together. “I want to—we like each other, right?” Will hesitated but nodded grudgingly. “And we have fun.” Another nod. “And you know we have a… like, a thing.” I ran my hands up his thighs and felt the energy spark between us. Will bit his lip, eyes never leaving my face. “Sooo….” I nudged his knees a little farther apart and stepped closer, leaning in to kiss him.

  “You sure?” he murmured, eyelids going heavy.

  “Yeah.”

  And this time when I kissed him it was with the full weight of knowledge behind it that this was really going to happen. This wasn’t just We’re kissing now. It wasn’t on an against-all-odds hope that Will might suddenly be taken over by his passion for me and push things further. It was a kiss with intent.

  He slid his hands up my arms, squeezing my biceps, holding us together and keeping us apart at the same time, and I pressed myself against him, trying to cast my vote on which way things should go.

  “God damn it, Leo!” Will bit off, leaning backward. “Are you sure we should do this?” He looked savage, sprawled across his own counter, hair mussed, and pupils dilated.

  Lust blasted through me, but his question seemed sincere, and I made it my duty to obliterate every doubt he might have. I threw myself back against him, kissing him with everything I had.

  And Will came alive. His hands were in my hair and running up and down my spine. He kissed like a whirlwind. There was nothing tentative about it anymore. He finally kissed me like he meant it. After a few minutes of a make-out session so hot I was trying not to come in my pants, I pulled away long enough to tug Will down off the counter and over to the couch.

  Nothing about being with Milton or Terrence, the guy from my statistics class last year, could have prepared me for how things would be with Will. It was like every sensation I’d ever had was amplified, every millimeter of skin sensitized like it had never been touched before. I felt flushed and light-headed with lust as I buried my face in Will’s neck and kissed under his jaw.

  His pulse raced beneath my mouth, and I licked along his neck, unable to get enough of his skin, his heat, his smell. I traced the shell of his ear with my tongue and licked inside, wanting to taste every inch of him.

  “Ah, fuck!”

  Will was wild. Not like he was trying to seduce me, but like he was desperate to get at me. I wasn’t complaining—hell no—but it was so different from the calm, detached way he’d approached things in the bedroom earlier that it was as if he were a whole different person. Though I don’t know why I was surprised that Will’s shifting personality would show itself in bed as well as out.

  I’d pictured the suave Will who dressed impeccably for work, but I was getting whirlwind Will who stomped around the apartment ranting about weird stuff that I’d never imagined anyone could care about.

  And I loved it. Because it was real. I wasn’t just another nameless hookup, and this wasn’t something that Will could shrug off, deny, sideline.

  His pale skin was perfect, just a few of those dark beauty marks clustered near his belly button and one near his left nipple. I kissed it, sucking his nipple into my mouth, and then bit it lightly. Will groaned and let me kiss my way to his other nipple before he lost patience and rolled us so he was on top of me and pulled my pants down to my knees. He tapped my hip bone.

  “You’re so damn skinny,” he muttered.

  “Wow, not the moment I want to feel self-conscious,” I gasped.

  Will kissed the spot he’d tapped, his lips a soft apology, and I groaned as his chin hit my crotch. I was ridiculously hard just from kissing him. He pressed his face to my crotch and inhaled my smell.

  “Fuck, that’s the sexiest thing anyone’s ever done to me,” I said.

  Will let out a scornful breath. “Yeah, not the moment to remind me you’re basically untouched.”

  “I’m not untouched! I—” But then he pulled my pants down and swallowed my erection, and suddenly it didn’t seem like a point that really needed to be made just at that moment.

  His mouth was hot, and he slid a hand between my thighs and started rolling my balls in this way that made me feel like I was going to die.

  “Oh my god, oh my god,” I said. I twined my fingers in his hair as he sucked me, trying to look down and see myself sliding in and out of his gorgeous mouth, but my brain couldn’t do more than two things at once, apparently, and touch Will’s hair and have my mind blown were currently occupying those slots.

  “Will, fuck, Will,” I gasped. I could track the pleasure as it spread across my skin, from my dick and balls up my spine, curling in the pit of my stomach and flushing my chest and throat with heat, tingling down my trembling thighs. Then, in an instant, it all coalesced into a giant heartbeat that throbbed and then exploded, sending shocks of pleasure through me, leaving me light-headed and gasping as the world was swallowed in blackness, my awareness dwindling to my pulsing dick and the halo of Will’s hair.

  I heard a sound from a long way off. An undignified whimpering sound that I didn’t want to believe was coming from me.

  “Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry, I meant to warn you,” I slurred.

  Will raised his eyebrows at me and wiped his mouth. That tore another groan out of me because holy mother, Will had just sucked me off, and I could see the evidence of it gleaming on his perfect fucking lips. It was too much.

  “Oh god, shit, I just came in like five seconds didn’t I?” I put my arm over my eyes as I flushed, this time from embarrassment rather than arousal.

  Will snorted and then his mouth was on mine and I could taste the salt of my release on his tongue. The thought of us mingled together like that totally turned me on all over again, and I moaned into his mouth. Will reached down, and I jerked at his touch.

  “Jesus,” he muttered, but it was fond, appreciative. His kisses were less desperate now, and he positioned us so we were lying on our sides on the couch facing each other.

  “Take your pants off too?” I couldn’t believe I’d come before he was even naked.

  Will shimmied his pants down, and I slung a leg over his hip, pressing our erections together as we kissed slowly.

  “Mmmm,” Will murmured. I slid a hand down and felt the curve of his ass, pressed him tighter into me, making him shiver. So I did it again, squeezing the round muscle and digging my fingertips in. Will gasped into my mouth and grabbed my ass too. We ground together, the heat building between us, legs tangled together, hips pumping, chests and stomachs sliding together, tongues entwined, every place we touched its own warm point of connection.

  I held his face to mine and kissed him, the taste and smell of him gradually taking over my mouth and nose, settling on me like a private atmosphere.

  Will pulled my hand between his legs and used both our hands to stroke us off. I came again when he ran a finger over the tip of my cock, gasping as it twitched, spent.

  Will smiled wolfishly, his eyes raking over me. He was flushed and panting, his erection throbbing against my hip.

  “Ah, youth,” he said. And I made a new resolution on the spot. That, inexperience or no, the next time I had the chance I was going to make Will Highland beg me to let him come. I grinned at him and flipped him onto his back, sliding his dick between my thighs, grinding us together even though my
sensitive skin protested.

  “Oh fuck,” he muttered, his breath coming faster. I leaned down and put my lips to his throat. His pulse was racing, artery throbbing with every heartbeat. I nipped at his neck, and he grabbed for my ass, pulling me tighter against him. I bit harder, felt his pulse jump under my tongue. Then I kissed him with everything I had, squeezing his cock with my thighs. I bore down on him, bending my knees so I could squeeze his perfect ass.

  Splayed on the couch, his pale skin and blond hair made the black leather look almost sinister. His chest was flushed, his throat bruised from my mouth, and his pupils blown wide. I dragged my fist up and down his erection, tightening my grip until Will moaned and reached for me. I kissed him once more, then set a brutal pace, jerking him off until his eyes rolled back and his mouth fell open.

  When Will came, every muscle tightened, and he squeezed his eyes shut. His cry was silent. He looked like he was in pain, his jaw clenched and his mouth in a snarl.

  “YOU ARE seriously the worst at choosing produce ever.”

  As I was unpacking bags from the market, Will was pulling certain things toward him and assembling a pile on the counter.

  “These are all bruised. This shit’s like misshapen or something. And—are these all broken?” He pointed to the chocolate bars. “Do you shop blindfolded? No, even blindfolded you could feel that these are broken!”

  I squirmed, putting a box of pasta in the cabinet and cheese and eggs in the refrigerator.

  “Seriously, Leo, have you never been grocery shopping before? Oh shit, you haven’t, have you?”

  “I have,” I couldn’t resist saying, no matter how many times I’d tried to learn the lesson that if I responded to Will, he’d eventually get any information out of me that he wanted.

  He was gaping at me, eyebrows raised expectantly.

  “I just… I don’t want them to get thrown away… so….”

  “What?”

  “Well, I just worry that no one else will buy them if they’re a little bruised or funny looking. You know. People always buy the most perfect ones. And I feel sorry for the ones that aren’t because maybe people won’t want them.”