It felt better than it ever had before, a thousand times hotter than I remembered—I knew what I was doing now, and so did Jimmy. There was no hesitation, no worry about being caught. And there was nothing stopping us from keeping going.
I fumbled to get my hands under his shirt, needing to feel bare skin against my fingertips. He arched into me and kissed me harder, one hand going to the back of my head, his fingers tangling in my hair and holding me to him.
He wrenched his lips away, his forehead pressed hard against mine, his eyes squeezed shut. “Ben.”
The room spun, the strobe lights making everything jerky and erratic, but that one single, breathless word brought everything to a startling clarity. It took every ounce of willpower I had not to just shuck our clothes and let him fuck me right there on the dance floor, but somehow I managed to rein it in and pull away.
Without a word I grabbed his hand and pulled away from prying eyes, forging on through the mass of gyrating bodies until I found the door I was looking for. I don’t know if I’d ever been so singularly focused on anything in my life. All I wanted to do was get Jimmy somewhere I could get my hands on him—really get my hands on him—without a fucking audience.
Chapter Nine
Jimmy
“Where are we going?”
Ben either couldn’t hear me over the music or he was full-out ignoring me as he stalked with purpose toward the bathroom door, his hand clasped firmly around mine.
My head swam, a delirious mix of arousal and alcohol, but mostly it was images of Ben and me intertwined that repeated themselves over and over, flashing like the lights on the dance floor. Confused didn’t begin to cover my mental state. But I was hard as a goddamn steel spike, and it was impossible to focus on anything except the way his shirt stretched over his frame and how his jeans hugged his ass in all the right places.
The bathroom was blessedly empty, and Ben didn’t waste any time shoving me into one of the stalls. The instant the door was latched behind us, he pulled me against him and resumed what we’d started. His mouth was on mine, his hands in my hair. I could feel how turned-on he was, how desperately he wanted this. In the back of my mind, a little voice was screaming about how wrong this was, that I wasn’t this guy and that we needed to take a step back and talk about what was happening, what had caused this to happen. It was the voice of reason and practicality and order.
I fucking hated that voice.
Because my heart was bursting right now, squeezing painfully at the absolute feeling of rightness of having Ben in my arms.
I tilted my head to the side, giving him better access as he gripped my hips, his lips fixed to the pulse point in my neck as it beat in time to the muffled thumping bass of “What Is Love?”. I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else but right here. He smelled like Big Red and Drakkar Noir, and suddenly it was 1988 again and we were back on our living room couch.
He palmed my cock through my jeans, and I shivered violently. It had been so long—god, I missed this. Ben had been the subject of my late-night fantasies since fucking college, and knowing exactly how it felt to have him underneath me did nothing but spur me on, my hips rutting furiously against his touch. I gazed at him with slightly unfocused eyes and wanted to combust just from the lust-addled look reflected back at me.
“Ben,” I gasped, and he swallowed any protest that threatened to spill from my lips, his mouth moving so sure and with such conviction over mine that my knees buckled. He pulled me closer, his own cock rigid and straining against his jeans.
He tasted like sweet heaven, better than anything I’d find in a restaurant, and I was on sensory overload as my brain tried to reconcile my memories to the newer, more mature Ben who knew exactly what he wanted. And he wanted me.
When I felt him lower my zipper, my eyes snapped open and I pushed against his hard chest, trying to catch my breath.
“Shit—George Michael was just arrested for shit like this.”
There was mischief in his eyes. “Let’s give him a run for his money.”
He winked—fucking winked—and dropped to his knees. I stared, fixated on his lips as they hovered in front of my straining cock. His eyes were hooded with lust as he tugged open my jeans and leaned forward, mouthing at the ridge of my erection through the fabric of my briefs. His breath was hot on my already superheated skin, and I suddenly wished I’d gone commando. Even through the thin cotton, he was driving me insane. I could barely form a coherent thought. All I could do was watch as he lowered the waistband of my briefs and my cock sprang free. Precome had already started to leak, making the flushed head glisten under the fluorescent lights.
I scrambled to process what was happening, my brain overloaded by the visual of Ben’s mouth so close to my dick.
“That floor is filthy,” I blurted, my breath shaky.
“Quit thinking so goddamn hard all the time.” He smirked. “It’s time to have a little fun.”
I opened my mouth to respond, and then all thoughts flew when he took my cock all the way to the back of his throat. My words came out as a garbled mess. God, when had he gotten so fucking good at this? Just for a moment, I let my eyes close and my head fall back against the wall. It was too much to watch my cock disappearing into his mouth, the sensations and the sight pushing me too close to the edge too fucking fast.
“Jesus fuck,” I cried out, my voice high and breathy. I couldn’t care when he was doing things to me that I’d only dared dream about for years. I threaded my fingers in his short hair, just barely enough to grab, and held him in place, and I felt the vibrations of his approving moan all the way to my toes.
If he moved, I was going to come.
My body was already tense, my muscles trembling as I struggled to hold on to what little control I had left. My chest heaved as I sucked air into my lungs, willing away the urge to shoot down his throat before he’d even got going.
And then he started to suck.
Without pulling off, I could feel the pressure on my cock increase, his tongue massaging the length of me. The tenuous grasp I held over the last of my restraint snapped. With a ragged moan, I tightened my grip on his hair and rocked my hips forward. I could already feel the pleasure building, the threat of orgasm hanging there, right fucking there, and coming was the last thing I wanted and the thing I wanted the very most.
Ben’s mouth felt so fucking good on me, hot and slick, and the things he was doing with his tongue… Keeping my eyes shut didn’t stop them from rolling back.
I fucked into his mouth, any semblance of my inhibitions long since shattered. I was a trembling mess, operating on nothing but my basest drives, straining toward the finish line.
My orgasm hit, slamming into me so hard I couldn’t breathe. Wave after wave of pleasure filled me as I shot into Ben’s mouth. I opened my eyes and watched him swallow it down, every drop, his swollen lips stretched around my cock. As the last tremors shuddered through my body, I froze.
“Fuck,” I muttered, stepping sideways out of Ben’s grasp and pulling my pants up. Hot shame washed over me, and I turned around to right myself. I heard the rustle of his clothes as he stood too. What the hell had come over me? This wasn’t me—none of this was.
“Jimmy…”
“Don’t.” I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to see my stricken reflection in the bathroom mirror as I hustled out of the stall. “I can’t do this.”
He pressed his body against my back, his arms coming around me. It was too much, too soon, and I shrugged him off. The space I put between us felt like a chasm, and I wanted to go back to the safety and warmth of his embrace, our own little bubble where a world of hate and intolerance didn’t exist, where we could just be Jimmy and Ben, together.
That world didn’t exist.
“I’m sorry. I can’t… I can’t.”
The room tilted, the walls closing in on me. I needed out.
Without looking back, I burst out of the bathroom, my eyes focused past the half-naked bodies tow
ard the exit. I thought I heard Ben shout behind me, but by the time I’d reached the entry, I was alone.
Or almost alone.
“Hey, honey, you okay?” Troy stood from his desk, his thin eyebrows pinched in concern.
“I’m fine. I just need—air,” I gasped. I stumbled for the exit and flung the door open, looking up and down the street. There wasn’t a cab in sight.
Fuck it. I’d walk.
My head was a mess. Had I honestly let my best friend suck me off in a bathroom stall of a gay club?
Fuck. What the hell was I thinking.
The short answer was that I hadn’t been. I hadn’t been thinking about a fucking thing from the second I’d asked to tag along with Ben. It had felt so good to give in, even if it was only temporary. I’d fought to keep that part of me hidden for so long, letting it lie dormant for years, and within the span of one song, it had been unleashed.
I was still semihard, aching to go back and finish what Ben and I had started, but my mind was racing with the implications of that. What the hell was I going to do? How the hell was I supposed to move forward, pretending nothing had ever happened? I wasn’t sure I was ready for the inevitable conversation when I didn’t even know my own feelings and what it all meant.
Living with Ben had been difficult enough, the mere proximity to him stirring up shit from a decade before. He’d grown up and so had I, but that didn’t change the way I felt about him.
One moment of weakness and I might have fucked up the best thing in my life.
Where did I go from here? Did I show up at my old place, hoping Jenna was home and would let me crash on the couch for a few hours, or did I make the trek back to Jersey? The last train didn’t leave for another hour, but I wasn’t totally sure I wanted to be on it.
More than that, I wasn’t sure Ben would want me there after I’d bailed so hard on him, or if I even wanted to see him right now.
I’d panicked. I was still panicking.
I slumped against the side of a building, rubbing my hands over my face. Of course I wanted to see him. I always wanted to see him, even when it had been impossible.
My relationship with Ben was complicated. What had once been so fucking simple now felt like the world’s most difficult riddle. Everything had been so weird, and then it wasn’t, and now this was happening.
I was having difficulty parsing out my thoughts, my emotions clouding the rational part of my brain, but with the alcohol and the aftereffects of an orgasm, cohesive thought had flown right out the window.
Tagging along with Ben had been a shitty fucking idea. I should have known better. I should have trusted my gut and listened to the little voice that told me it was a stupid idea. But I’d been so desperate to patch things up with him, and now I’d just made it worse.
How was I supposed to go back to the way things were, when that carefully guarded desire I’d managed to keep so effectively tucked away was laid bare? How could I look at him without remembering? How could I be near him without wanting to touch him?
There were too many components to consider, and I couldn’t see how to slot it all together to make sense. But even if I somehow managed to, if I could find a way to be okay with what we’d done—and there was a tiny voice roaring inside of me that I wanted to do it again, and soon—I knew the reality was that it couldn’t go anywhere.
All the reasons I’d walked out on Ben in the first place still existed. My parents hadn’t changed. Society hadn’t changed. I still had career ambitions, and who the fuck knew what would happen if someone discovered my secret? I wouldn’t be able to claw my way back from nothing, this time with no financial backing and no wife to create the perfect picture with me.
I didn’t think I could do it on my own.
Maybe, subconsciously, I’d gone into that club hoping to recapture what Benny and I had been all those years ago. Instead, I had discovered my life could reach new lows.
What the hell was I going to do?
My mind still a jumble, I continued walking through the busy New York streets with no real destination in mind. I walked for hours in the muggy night until there was no feeling left in my toes and my limbs were heavy with fatigue. I was numb all over, but inside I was drowning.
Chapter Ten
Ben
I’d expected that Jimmy would need some space after what we’d done. In fact, I’d figured he’d probably freak out. Hell, even I needed a minute to work everything through in my head.
I just had no idea Jimmy’s moment of confusion would include him booking it the fuck outta there three seconds after he came. He left me, sweat soaked and still hard in a dirty bathroom stall, wondering what the fuck I’d done.
I didn't know where he'd gone or when he'd be back, and the longer he was absent, the more I started to question my decision-making. We'd been drunk enough that he could blame a lapse in judgment on that, but if he tried, we’d both know he was full of shit. He’d wanted that as much as I did. The way he looked down at me, his hands tight in my hair… nothing was clearer in that moment. Now he just had to accept the fact that something had happened, some kind of weird fucked-up chemistry, and things had shifted between us.
I had no idea what it all meant, or if it would end up meaning anything at all. Because he was gone. It wasn’t like that was the first time I'd had his dick in my mouth. Not by a long shot. But it had been the first time since we’d grown up and knew what the fuck we were doing. I thought we did anyway. This time had been different, more real, more… I don’t even know what the word for it was, and the more time I spent thinking about it, the more convoluted my thoughts became.
There was one thing I was certain of, though. There was weight to what we’d done. I’d known it the second I’d kissed him.
So I was torn. Did I wait for him to come around or go looking for him? I wouldn’t even know where to start. Usually when shit went down, he showed up on my doorstep, but clearly that wasn’t fucking happening.
I decided to go home—what the hell else could I do? The trek back to Jersey seemed longer than usual. I couldn’t keep my thoughts quiet, and the closer I got to home, the angrier I got. Fuck him for not manning up and sticking around, abandoning me in a goddamn restroom stall, the taste of his come still in my mouth.
It's not like I needed to have some big life-affirming conversation with feelings and emotions and shit, but taking off without a word was bullshit.
I finally made it back to my apartment. I stalked to the kitchen to pour myself a drink to take the edge off, but it just reminded me of the flavor of Jimmy’s mouth from hours earlier. I dumped the rest of it in the sink and reached to the back of the cupboard where I kept my emergency pack of cigarettes. I lit one and inhaled, pulling the smoke into my lungs until the nicotine rushed through my veins. I took a few more drags, then doused it out under the tap, turned off the lights, and went to bed.
The sheets were cool and the room was quiet, but there was no way I was getting to sleep anytime soon. I kept replaying the whole scene over and over in my head. My heart tripped over the memory of when he gave himself over and let me kiss him like I wanted to, and then it almost stuttered to a stop when I remembered the look of panic and shame on his face afterward. It was that look of absolute regret in his eyes that almost fucking killed me.
I wasn’t sure if I was more pissed that he’d taken off, or terrified he wouldn’t come back. Probably both.
I rolled over and stared at the clock, watching one minute blink over into the next, and then the next. I was coming out of my skin, but there was nothing to do but lie there and wait.
Sometime after four, I heard the sound of the front door opening, followed by muffled footsteps. The relief of hearing Jimmy in the house was almost immediately overtaken by a tsunami of anger. I tore back the covers and stood just as he walked into the room. I marched over and shoved him hard, causing him to stumble backward, almost tripping over his own feet.
"Where the fuck were you?" I demanded,
either the anger or the alcohol making my vision fuzzy. "I didn't know where the hell you went. You just fucking left me there. What the fuck, dude?" I shoved him again.
This time, he shoved me back, pushing me hard against the wall. "I needed a goddamn minute, okay? I'm not like you."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" My hand was balled into a fist, and I came close to winding up. I couldn't remember ever being so fucking angry at Jimmy. Not when he stained my Save Ferris T-shirt with raspberry coulis or when he backed my car into a fire hydrant and tore the bumper off. My reaction to those events paled in comparison to the fury coursing through me now.
"It means that this is so easy for you. You've got everything all figured out. You fuck guys and who cares what everyone else thinks, but Jesus… That's not me. I was fucking married for the last five years. To a woman, in case you forgot."
"Like I could ever fucking forget that. Biggest mistake you’ve ever made," I muttered, but it was obvious Jimmy heard me clear as day.
"Maybe, but that was the choice I made. The choice to be normal.”
If I could have killed him with my bare hands and gotten away with it, I would have. He kept pushing the limits of my capacity for rage. “It’s not a fucking choice, Jimmy, and you know it. You can’t just turn off the homo like it’s a goddamn table lamp. It’s who you are. It’s who I am. I didn’t realize you were so utterly disgusted by me.” I spat the word with as much venom as I could muster.
He looked like he wanted to kill me just as bad. “But I’m not. And that’s the fucking problem. Christ, Ben. I let you suck me off in a filthy fucking bathroom in a gay bar. That's not me,” he repeated. “That's never been me. I'm not that guy."
"What, gay?"
He glared at me, and I wondered if that, of all things, was going too far.
"Of course I'm fucking gay. Jesus Christ." He was yelling so loud I knew the neighbors would be banging on the wall soon, but I didn’t give a shit. His eyes were stormy, dark, and fixed hard on mine. The air around us was thick with a fog of pent-up tension. My heart was beating in the back of my throat, and I barely registered Jimmy moving before his mouth was on me. He pinned me hard against the wall, his whole body pressed against mine. It was then I realized he’d stripped down to almost nothing. All that existed between us was a single layer of thin cotton and a lifetime of repressed emotions.
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