by Megan Hart
Alex nodded. “Nice.”
“You want some water?”
“Yeah, thanks.” Alex followed Luke to the kitchen area and took the bottle of water.
He watched Luke as they both guzzled. The other guy could drink, that was for sure, but Alex wasn’t surprised. He was a frat boy, barely out of college. Of course he could handle his booze.
They both drank the water in silence. It had been Luke’s idea to come back here. His parents, he’d said, were away visiting an older sister who’d had a baby a few months ago. They wouldn’t be back for a week. Luke could make Alex breakfast, a home-cooked meal. Something better than takeout from a coffee shop. And Alex had fallen for all of it, knowing this was probably a mistake but doing it anyway because it had been so damned long since anyone had offered to take care of him.
Luke tipped his back to get the bottle’s last drops and tossed the empty bottle into the sink. He gave Alex an expectant look. Alex had not yet finished his water, but capped the bottle and set it on the countertop.
“I want you to fuck me again,” Luke said.
“Of course you do.”
Luke’s brow furrowed. “If you don’t want to, just say so.”
“I want to. Of course I want to. I asked you to meet me tonight, didn’t I? I came back here with you, didn’t I?” In Alex’s pocket, his phone pressed against his thigh. He was only imagining that it was getting hotter, ready to singe him.
He didn’t want to read the messages he knew had come in. He wanted to push all that away. He did want to fuck Luke and get lost in that pleasure. He crooked a finger, drawing Luke closer.
“Kiss,” Alex ordered.
Luke gave small, huffing sigh and obliged. It was sweet, that kiss, lingering and slow but tinged with heat. Luke took Alex’s hand and put it on the denim-covered bulge of his crotch.
“Nobody’s ever got me this hard,” Luke whispered.
Alex squeezed gently, earning another moan from Luke. “What about all those fine young lads you were swapping spit with tonight?”
“Nope.”
“Lucky me,” Alex said. “Bedroom? Or here on the floor.”
Luke shuddered. “Oh. God.”
“You’ve thought about that, huh? The way you thought about everything else. Getting fucked right here, out in the open, right in the middle of your living room. Feels dirty, right?” Alex laughed as his hand stroked harder, and Luke once more got that hazy, dazed look in his eyes. “You want me to put you on your hands and knees and take your ass right here, don’t you?”
“Yes. God, yes, please.”
They both stripped quickly. Alex stroked his cock to life as he watched Luke get into exactly the position he’d been describing. Women were softer. Easier to get inside. Their bodies angled differently. But from behind, once he was in deep, sometimes it was easy to forget if he was fucking a man or a woman. The same smooth slope of a back, tautly muscled asscheeks. Gasps and moans. The clutch of flesh on his cock. It all felt good.
“Condoms?” Alex asked.
Luke straightened onto his knees, looking over his shoulder. “In the bedroom.”
“Wait here. Don’t move,” Alex said. Commanded, really. Luke seemed to kind of like that, being bossed around. Alex could do that. Not his long-term thing, but sure, he could be dommy, sometimes.
In the bedroom, he found Luke’s condom stash right where it was expected, in the nightstand. Alex took a minute or two to look around the room, being nosy. Luke was messy, clothes flung all over the place. Posters of bathing suit models all over the walls, along with a few sports heroes Alex recognized but not by name. It was a typical frat boy room, and it made Alex grin.
In the living room, Luke had stayed in place. Face down, ass up. He had great cheeks, and he’d spread his thighs so there was more than a hint of ballsack showing, along with the shadowy pucker of his asshole. He twisted when Alex came into the room.
“Your phone’s been ringing,” he said over his shoulder.
Alex looked automatically to his jeans, slung over the arm of an ancient orange recliner. He’d thought he’d turned the ringer off, but maybe in the struggle to get out of his jeans he’d accidentally flipped it back on. Even as he moved toward Luke and the promise of sexual oblivion, he could hear the phone ringing again.
Back in Black.
The ringtone cut off as the call went to voicemail. He got onto his knees, condom in his fist, behind Luke. He spit into his hand, ready to use that since he’d found the rubbers but no lube.
The phone rang again. Same ringtone. Jamie was calling him again. It went to voicemail.
Alex put his hands on Luke’s hips. His cock had been semi-hard when he went into the bedroom, but it was softening now. He stroked it with one hand while he used the other to tease at Luke’s opening. The condom was still in its package, next to him on the floor.
The phone rang again. Cut off. Rang at once. Now Jamie wasn’t leaving voicemails, he was immediately hanging up and ringing again.
Luke pushed up onto his hands and rocked back on his heels. He looked over his shoulder. “Aren’t you going to answer that?”
“No.”
“At least turn the ringer off?”
Alex got to his feet and went to the chair, digging into his jeans pocket for the phone. Flipping the ringer off, he slammed the phone onto the chair and turned to face Luke. The other guy got to his feet, his face first alarmed, then smoothing into an expression Alex hated.
Sympathy.
“Don’t,” Alex warned. “Don’t say a fucking word. Either get down on the floor again and let me fuck you, just like you said you wanted, or I’m out of here.”
Luke spread his fingers open with a shrug, saying nothing. He glanced toward the door to the outside. His cock was still hard. He didn’t get onto his hands and knees again.
The phone, which had fallen face up on the chair, lit up and buzzed. Alex cursed and grabbed it, fumbling to get to the phone’s settings screen so he could turn off even that shitty hum.
The phone rang again as he was swiping. The call connected. He heard Jamie’s voice, at first hesitant and surprised. Then loud. Cursing. Pleading. Jamie sounded drunker than Alex felt right now.
Luke gently took the phone from Alex’s shaking hands. “Hello? Hey. Alex can’t take your call right now, okay?”
Alex couldn’t hear what happened after that because he was stumbling to the bathroom, sure he was going to lose every single drink he’d had the entire night. He managed to keep it all in his stomach, although he hovered over the toilet with his mouth open and several nasty tasting strands of drool dangling before he was finally able to swallow them. He sat on the edge of the tub and put his face in his hands.
Luke knocked gently on the door, which was open, but stood in the doorway at a respectful distance. “You okay? You need anything?”
“No. I’m going to go home. To the hotel. It’s not home. I call it that, but it’s not. I don’t have a home anymore.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Luke said. “In fact, I don’t think you should. It’s fucking late, man. And you’re not in any shape to be trying to get yourself anywhere but into bed. Just stay here. It’ll all be fine. Okay?”
After a moment, Alex nodded. Luke took him to the bedroom. Gave him another bottle of water and stood over him while he drank it, garbage pail at hand in case Alex needed it. He didn’t. He wasn’t sick because of the drinks, although he couldn’t tell Luke that. He was sick because of Jamie.
Luke turned off the lights. Turned on a floor fan to provide white noise and a sweeping band of irregular coolness that was surprisingly refreshing, considering the entire basement flat was nothing close to being warm. He plumped the pillows and drew a sheet over Alex up to his waist, but he didn’t try to cuddle.
“I told him you’d call him back tomorrow, when you were awake,” Luke said into the darkness. “He said to tell you that he was sorry about everything, and that he wasn’t mad or anything, h
e just wanted you to call him. He said for you to please, please just call him.”
Alex said nothing.
Luke turned onto his side to face him. “He sounded pretty bad off, Alex.”
Alex closed his eyes and opened them again. There was so little difference between the backs of his eyelids and the basement bedroom that he almost couldn’t be sure if he had his eyes open or not. He closed them again, wishing for sleep.
“Do you love him?” Luke asked quietly.
“He’s my best friend.”
Luke huffed a sigh. “So. Yes.”
“It’s not like that,” Alex replied, weary and torn down.
“Could it be like that? If you let it?”
Alex couldn’t find an answer to that. The bed dipped and shifted as Luke rolled onto his side. He nudged Alex hard enough to turn him over, so Luke could spoon him. His big hand went flat over Alex’s heart. His breath was hot on the back of Alex’s neck.
“Go to sleep, dude,” Luke murmured. “Things always look better in the morning.”
Chapter 10
The shrieking woke Alex from a sound sleep so deep he hadn’t even been dreaming. He bolted upright, feet hitting the floor and his fists up before he could even make sense of what was happening. The entire room whirled around him as he blinked, trying to focus in the dark basement room.
It took him a good thirty seconds to figure out where the hell he was. Through the open bedroom door he could see the rest of Luke’s apartment. Voices, one low and soothing, the other high-pitched and hysterical, came from just out of sight. Alex considered going to the doorway to see what was happening, but common sense, a thing with which he was not usually connected, convinced him to hang back and eavesdrop. He had to piss something fierce, though. He couldn’t stay in the bedroom forever. He started looking for something to pee into, though, just in case.
“You said it wasn’t me! That’s what you told me, it wasn’t me!” The feminine voice screeched this, then dissolved into loud, braying sobs.
Luke’s voice, a placating mutter, words indistinct, came next. Alex couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying, but he had a good guess. Whoever the girl was out in the living room, he imagined she’d gotten an eyeful of something she wasn’t expecting. The fact that Luke had never mentioned a girlfriend was irritating, not that Alex had the right to be annoyed. He hadn’t pictured Luke as a cheater, but as the owner of a glass house, Alex wasn’t about to toss so much as a pebble.
“You’re fucking disgusting!” The girl screamed again.
The crack of flesh on flesh had Alex moving toward the door. If Luke was resorting to physical violence, someone needed to stop him. As it turned out, Luke wasn’t the one doing the smacking.
The small blonde had her hair done in a high ponytail. She wore skinny jeans and cowboy boots. Lots of cleavage. A belly button ring glinted from beneath the hem of her tank top. At the sight of Alex she let out a long, guttering cry and hammered Luke across the face again.
The guy took it without a word, but when she tried to hit him a third time, Alex stepped up. “Stop that.”
“You don’t tell me what to do! Disgusting faggot!” The words choked out of her. She actually turned her face to spit to the side.
“Classy,” Alex said with a glance at Luke, who looked miserable but wasn’t saying anything.
The girl yanked at a ring on her, oh shit, left hand. She waved it around. “And you can take your goddamned ring back!”
“I told you I didn’t want it back,” Luke said. “You keep it.”
“I don’t want anything you ever gave me.” She’d stopped screaming, at least. She looked at Alex, her gaze scanning his naked body. Her lip curled, and then she looked simply defeated. “Jesus, I hope you didn’t actually give me something.”
Luke took a step toward her, then. He, at least, wore a pair of briefs. He put out a hand, but she jerked away from it.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Fuck you,” the girl told him. She slammed the ring onto the half-bar separating the kitchen area from the living room. “You and your boyfriend can eat shit.”
“He’s not…” Luke began, but she flipped him off and went out the door, slamming it behind her.
In the silence that followed, Alex’s urge to pee rose to unignorable levels. By the time he got out of the bathroom, Luke had seated himself at the bar. Head in his hands. The ring glittered on the counter next to him.
Alex took the barstool next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Always make sure you get the key back, dude.”
“She used the one under the rock. She wanted to surprise me.”
Alex laughed. “Someone got surprised, all right.”
“It’s not funny,” Luke said.
Alex’s chuckle faded. He squeezed Luke’s shoulder. “You’re right, it’s not. I’m sorry.”
“I do love her.” Luke swiped at his face. “I wanted to marry her. I think I still might want to. I don’t know. Maybe she’ll forgive me.”
Alex let go of the other man and got up from the stool to make his way around the bar. He found the coffeemaker and the filters next to it. Filled the carafe. Added the coffee from the package next to the filters. He spoke as he made the coffee, not looking at Luke.
“She might forgive you. She might not even make you pay for it for the rest of your life, but that doesn’t seem likely. Someone who calls someone else a disgusting faggot isn’t going to forget that she found you in bed with a naked guy.” He turned, then, as the coffeemaker burbled happily behind him. “I’m sure you do love her, man, but you should give a long, hard think about spending your life with the kind of person who hates like that.”
Luke shook his head. “She’s not like that.”
“Obviously, she is,” Alex pointed out with a shrug.
“She was surprised. She was…” Luke’s voice softened and trailed off.
Alex shrugged again. “When someone shows you who they really are, man, you should always pay attention.”
Luke nodded. His eyes were red-rimmed. His mouth twisted into a miserable frown. He put his face in his hands again, and his shoulders lifted and fell with a heavy, grieving sigh.
Alex filled a mug with coffee and pushed it in front of the other guy. He filled one for himself and sipped it. Silent. He wasn’t sure what else he could say.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here,” Luke said in a low voice.
“Probably not,” Alex agreed. “But you did.”
Luke looked up. He drank some coffee. Put the mug down. Nodded.
“She’s going to tell everyone I’m a fag. Queer,” Luke corrected. “Gay. Shit. What am I supposed to call it?”
“You don’t have to call ‘it’ anything. You’re attracted to men and women. You don’t owe anyone an explanation about that. It’s not anyone’s business where you put your dick unless you’re fucking them with it,” Alex said, a little harder than he’d intended to. He softened his voice. “Look, I’m the last motherfucker to be giving out relationship advice, okay? I’ve never had one that lasted or worked. I’ve been a complete asshole to just about everyone who’s ever given me the time of day.”
“You haven’t been an asshole to me.”
Alex laughed. “Give it time.”
Luke groaned and stretched, then drank more coffee. He set the mug on the counter next to the ring. He picked it up and held it to the light. “What do I do with this?”
“Sell it. Go on a trip around the world.”
“It might buy me a trip to the Wawa,” Luke said.
Alex put a hand over his mouth to make a dainty “ooh!” They both laughed. Luke looked better than he had a few minutes ago.
From the coffee table, Alex’s phone rang.
“Are you going to answer it?” Luke asked.
Alex shook his head. Luke frowned. They both drank their coffee in silence as the phone went quiet, too. After a few seconds, the voicemail tone beeped.
“You
can’t avoid him forever, man. And I don’t think you want to, anyway.”
Alex clenched his jaw. “It’s a fucked up situation, that’s all. I made a huge mess of things, and I don’t know how to fix them.”
“Maybe he doesn’t need you to fix them. Maybe he just wants to…you know. Move on.”
A short bark of a laugh burst from Alex’s throat, painful and tearing. “It’s not just about him. Fuck. It’s barely about him.”
“So…who’s it about?”
Alex had finished his coffee, and his stomach protested at the thought of drinking any more. He tried to make a joke. Play it all off. He tried to get mad, insulted, that Luke thought he could try to get in Alex’s business. All he could manage was a small, sad sigh.
“Her name,” he said, “is Anne.”
Chapter 11
“I didn’t go to their wedding,” Alex said. Luke had made good on his promise of making breakfast, and although he’d thought he wouldn’t be able to stand a bite of it, Alex’s stomach was rumbling at the smell of frying bacon and eggs. He’d already devoured a piece of toast laid thick with butter and jam. “He invited me, of course, but I was an asshole and didn’t go. I couldn’t watch him walking down the aisle, I guess because I was jealous that he’d found someone and I hadn’t, maybe? I mean, not something that was going to last.”
Luke slid a plate in front of him and took one for himself. “You weren’t jealous because he was marrying someone who wasn’t you?”
“No. Jesus, no.” Alex gave a genuine laugh. “I told you. It’s not like that. And no, it can’t ever be like that.”
“But he wants you like that,” Luke offered.
Alex was quiet for a minute while he chewed and swallowed, thinking how to answer. When his mouth was clear, he said, “I think Jamie wants, yeah. The way you’ve been wanting. I think he won’t admit it, and he tells himself that it’s me. Just me.”
“You sure it’s not just you?” Luke shoveled a forkful of dripping eggs onto his toast and bit into it.
Again, Alex thought. “I don’t know. I don’t want it to be just me.”