The Platinum Triangle

by T V Hartwell

  Jake turned back to look at Kirby. “So how are you doing? I know you’ve got a lot going on right now.”

  “Other than the fact that Laren and I split, I guess I’m all right.”

  “Seriously? When did that happen?”

  “Tonight. About an hour ago.”

  “Wow. So you actually did it.”

  “No, she did it. She broke up with me, dude. And she claims she’s already dating someone else. She said she’s been seeing some other guy for about two months now and they’re ready to take things to the next level and that I’m not meeting her needs anymore. Blah, blah, blah. You know, the usual bullshit.”

  “Wow, man. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I feel bad that I kept her around for so long. She’s a good girl and all, but I wasn’t feeling it anymore. I actually feel more relieved than sad about it. Mentally, I checked out of that relationship a while ago, so what happened was supposed to happen.”

  “Well, if that’s what you want, then I’m happy for you.”

  “To be honest, I really haven’t gotten what I want,” Kirby said, looking straight into Jake’s eyes. “But I knew that things between Laren and me had to come to an end because our relationship was only keeping me away from what I truly want.”

  Jake again felt the same energy Kirby had directed at him on Monday night; a mix of anger, betrayal, and passion—only this time there was less anger and more sadness. It made him uncomfortable, but he knew that whatever was going on between them needed to be addressed. This was the issue that was nagging at Jake: his relationship with Kirby moving forward. There was no better time than the present, while they were at home and alone, to address the tension in the room.

  “So what is it that you really want?” Jake asked.

  “Remember last weekend when we were in Runyon Canyon, I told you that I had something to tell you.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think you did.”

  “I wanted to tell you that I’m in love with somebody else and that’s the real reason why I didn’t want to be with Laren anymore.”

  “Okay,” Jake said.

  There was a pause for a few moments as Jake stared at Kirby, expecting him to say who the person was that he was really in love with, but Kirby held his head down and did not look back at him.

  “Do I know the person?” Jake finally asked.

  Kirby looked up at Jake with eyes watered and soft. “It’s you,” he said. “You’re the one I love.”

  Jake could tell, in fact, he knew that Kirby was not happy about being told that their sexual relationship had to end, but he had never expected to hear Kirby tell him that he was in love with him and that was why he no longer wanted to be with Laren. Jake looked at Kirby with his mouth slightly agape, momentarily frozen in stunned silence before he managed to say, “I love you too, Kirby, but you’re saying that you’re in love with me?”

  “Yes, Jake, I’m in love with you. I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time now, but I’ve been afraid to. Even though you’re marrying Amanda, I feel like we’ve been afraid to admit to each other how we feel. At least, I certainly have. But when you told me last weekend that you didn’t want to have sex with me anymore, it cut me like a knife, right through my chest. That’s not what I expected to hear you say. We had just made love to each other, like so many other times before that. We kept saying ‘I love you’ to each other. For me, when we get together, it’s not just sex. In the beginning, the very beginning, I know we were just horsing around. But I love you now, and it means something more to me.”

  “Kirby, I’m sorry that I hurt you. That’s not what I meant to do. I realized after we spoke on Sunday that I didn’t come across the right way and that I should have been more sensitive in how I expressed myself. I just feel that since I am getting married to Amanda, I should be completely monogamous with her, which I’ve been with the exception of my relationship with you. It’s not that I don’t love you or care about you, because I do, but I feel like being monogamous with Amanda is the right thing to do.”

  “Jake, I want the best for you. You mean so much to me, man.”

  “I want the best for you too, Kirby,” Jake said as his eyes welled with tears.

  “I want you to be happy,” Kirby said as tears began to stream down his face. “But can you truly say that what we have is only a friendship? You don’t have feelings for me beyond just being a friend? When I’m kissing you and holding you and you’re telling me that you love me, that’s not real?”

  “Yes, it is real. I do love you. I’m attracted to you. I’m crazy about you. I would do anything for you. You’re my best friend. Closer to me even than my own brother. I will never stop loving you and caring about you. You will always be one of the most important people in my life. But I also love Amanda and we’re getting married. I hate to say I’m choosing her over you, but I guess in a way I am.”

  “If you love me then what are you afraid of? Why not choose me?”

  “So you want to be in a gay relationship?”

  “I don’t care about labels. If that’s what people want to call it, fine. So is that what you’re afraid of? Being called gay?”

  “No, I am not afraid of anything. But as much as I love you, I don’t want to be married to a man. Trust me, if I did you would be the one. The only one. But I want to marry Amanda and have a family the old-fashioned way.”

  As Kirby wiped the tears from his face, Jake moved around the counter to comfort him, rubbing Kirby’s upper back and neck with his left hand while leaning his head on his shoulder. Kirby turned to face Jake and they hugged and held on to one another tightly.

  “I will always love you,” Kirby said as he pulled back to look at Jake. “It’s a hard pill for me to swallow to hear you say that you love me and feel the same way I do, but that you prefer to be with someone else. That really hurts. I always knew that you loved me like I love you, and I was really hoping that you would’ve been willing to take things a step further with me.”

  “But I’ve been with Amanda all this time and you knew that we were eventually going to get married.”

  “Well, you’re not married yet. Look at me and Laren. We just split. You could do the same thing.”

  Jake pulled away and shook his head, running his hands over his face and through his hair, feeling the intensity of the moment and trying to manage his way through it without making things worse for Kirby or for himself. “I wish there was something I could say or do to make this right for you, to make you happy. Honest to God, I do. But my relationship with Amanda is very different from yours and Laren’s.”

  “But don’t you love me as much as you love Amanda?”

  “Yes, I do, but it’s different. I want to marry Amanda.”

  “But we could have that too. Same sex couples are getting married and having

  children—”

  “Kirby, come on,” Jake said, cutting him off. “You’re really breaking me down, man. You’re making this so hard on me. What more do you want me to say? What do you want me to do?”

  Kirby moved closer to Jake and put his arms around him. “I want you to open your heart to me and to give us a chance. I’m putting everything on the line right now, and I am willing to do whatever it takes so that we can be together. I just want you to consider doing the same for me. Don’t let this moment pass so quickly. Think about it. We love each other. You and I were meant to be from the very start. Since we were in middle school, and we’ve been inseparable ever since. Don’t give up on us, Jake,” Kirby said as he began to kiss Jake’s face softly.

  Jake closed his eyes and allowed his body to melt into the warmth of Kirby’s tight and hard embrace. The sensation of Kirby’s rising erection pressed against him, pelvis to pelvis, stirred Jake’s desire for him and caused his heart to flutter rapidly with emotion. “I need you,” Kirby said as he kissed Jake’s forehead, then his left cheek, the ridge of his nose, his right cheek, and then the top of his mouth.

  “Look at me,” Kir
by said as Jake opened his eyes. He and Kirby were so close their noses were touching as they inhaled and exhaled onto each other. “Look at me,” Kirby commanded, pressing Jake more tightly against him. “Look at me and see my soul,” he said again, his voice full of emotion and tears swelling in his eyes. “Don’t leave me, Jake. I need you. Please don’t give up on us.”

  A single teardrop fell down Jake’s face before Kirby pressed his open mouth hard against Jake’s lips, engulfing them completely. Jake had no other choice than to surrender himself to the moment as he kissed Kirby back with equal intensity and passion, wrapping his arms tightly around Kirby’s waist. Their tongues extended from their mouths, wrestling back and forth, searching for a connection before finally melding together for a moment. Then they took turns sucking on each other’s tongue without inhibition or restraint, like a baby sucks its pacifier. The love and passion that they unleashed on one another was animalistic and raw as they tilted on the brink of pure, unadulterated, male-on-male, sexual combat.

  Kirby began to feel Jake’s ass, grabbing and caressing his firm, round cheeks forcefully before he pulled his shorts down low enough to reveal Jake’s cock, which was stiff, erect, and yearning for attention. Kirby dropped to his knees to service him. “I love you, Jake,” he said, looking up into Jake’s soft blue eyes before he engulfed Jake’s manhood deep into his mouth. He sucked hard as he pulled his mouth off. “No one can love you better than me,” Kirby said, returning his mouth to Jake’s body member, relentlessly tugging and massaging him with his warm, wet mouth. He pulled off again as Jake moaned in protest. “You belong to me, Jake. You’re mine and I can’t let go of you,” Kirby said as he pressed Jake’s tool up to his nostrils inhaling the scent of his sex and moving it around his face before he plunged down on it again hard with his mouth, sucking with an audible ferocity.

  Jake’s body trembled, tantalized and consumed with pleasure. He contracted his abdominals hard, reaching for control, wanting to prevent an early release. His body enjoyed the gratification and feel of Kirby’s touch and it craved more, but his heart and his head told him to stop. Jake pulled himself back and out of Kirby’s mouth. “Kirby, I can’t do this,” Jake cried, pulling his shorts up.

  “You want me, Jake. You know you do. Why deny it?”

  “I know I do. That’s why I can’t do this anymore. If I don’t force myself to stop, this thing between me and you will never end.”

  “Why does it have to end?”

  “Because I’m in love with Amanda, Kirby. That’s my choice. You’ve got to accept it,” Jake yelled as he shook with emotion and frustration in his voice, his eyes stressed and red.

  “I won’t accept it. I won’t,” Kirby cried back with equal emotion.

  “Damn you, Kirby. What more can I fucking say?” Jake yelled as he walked away to go to his bedroom.

  He tried to close the door behind him, but Kirby prevented him from doing so. “Fuck…Kirby…cut it out,” Jake struggled to say as he tried to push the door shut while Kirby leaned in to push it back open. After about fifteen seconds of tussling, Kirby’s strength proved to be greater, and Jake gave in.

  “I want to be left alone,” Jake yelled over his shoulder while throwing clothes from his bed.

  “No you don’t,” Kirby replied as he followed behind him.

  “Yes I do,” Jake said, his voice cracking as he fell facedown onto his bed and grabbed on to his pillow and held it tightly.

  Kirby climbed onto the bed and on top of Jake. “No, you don’t,” he said as his lips softly scraped against Jake’s right ear. Kirby pulled Jake over to his side so that he could spoon him with his body. Then he pushed his right leg between Jake’s two legs and wrapped his arms around his torso and held on to him tightly while pressing his face against the back of Jake’s head. Jake did not resist. He just closed his eyes. And there they stayed until their eyes dried, silence fell, and sleep overtook them.

  Chapter 28 A Kingpin Weekend

  After sleeping deeply for nearly two hours, Jake pulled himself loose from Kirby. After taking a quick piss, he turned off the lights in the bungalow as they had been left on before he and Kirby landed on top of his bed all tied up together. It was only a little past midnight, so there was still plenty of sleep time to be had before they headed out on their trip the next day. However, although Jake was tired, he was too emotionally wound up to sleep. He plopped down on the sofa and stared into the darkness of the living room, troubled by the state of tumult in which he found himself; a best friend who was desperately in love with him and refused to give up on their bromance and a fiancée who was suddenly no longer fit to be married. Jake loved them both too deeply to simply walk away, but the immediate future was very opaque and full of uncertainty, and he felt afraid. Afraid the chosen love of his life, the one with whom he wished to marry and spend the rest of his life, might die prematurely from some mysterious, godforsaken illness and ruin their future together, and frightened by the desire he still had for his longtime beau and the power their impassioned love still had over him.

  By the next morning when Jake and Kirby packed up and headed out together to meet up with their other friends for Vegas, they acted as if all was back to normal between them and did not address the drama of the night before. They wordlessly agreed to temporarily suspend their turmoil for the sake of keeping up appearances with their bros who were in a party-rocking mood and eager for some mischief in Sin City.

  The gang arrived in Vegas late Friday afternoon, after a fairly uneventful, but booze- filled drive on a chartered luxury party bus from LA. The guys had rented a couple of suites to accommodate their party, including The Kingpin Suite at the Palms Casino Resort, which came complete with two bowling lanes, pool table, full bar, and twenty-four-hour butler service, among other amenities. Kirby picked the suite along with Will and Paxson (aka “Pax”), who helped to arrange everything. Jake’s parents agreed to pick up the $10,000 a night tab for the two suites while the guys covered their own incidentals, including any auxiliary entertainment, like strippers, which the Doyles didn’t care to know the details of. Boys will be boys and their son was a grown man who no longer needed their permission on his choice of amusements or those of his friends.

  The partying and hooking up started not long after they arrived at the hotel. Their suites afforded them VIP access to two nightclubs at the Palms where they spent most of Friday evening. The group later split up with four of the guys heading to the floor of the casino to play Black Jack while the other six, including Jake and Kirby, headed up to one of the suites along with three girls they all met in the club. Of the guys who opted for the suite with the three young ladies, all of them were single and unattached, except for Jake.

  What started out as a game of strip poker eventually turned into a bacchanal, once most everyone in the game was down to their last article of clothing or already completely nude. Jake, who was initially resistant, got suckered into playing but Kirby had been in from the first hand. A pretty good poker player, Jake only ended up having to remove his shirt to reveal his bare chest. Kirby, on the other hand, allowed his inner exhibitionist to reign and seemed to relish the opportunity to lose one round after another so that he could strip down butt naked to parade his sculpted frame and ten inches of glory for all to see and ogle over. He was half drunk by that point in the evening anyway so any inhibition was left to the wind. By 2:00 a.m., word of their little party somehow got out and three girls had become five girls, one of whom literally tackled Kirby down to the sofa not too long after his briefs came off. Seemingly determined not to let the night end without a taste of his chocolate pop stick on her tongue, she led Kirby away to a more private place, and he was not seen or heard from again until after the break of dawn a few hours later. Jake, on the other hand, managed to extract himself from the room as the action between the four remaining girls really started to heat up with the groping of random body parts and provocative lap dances that resulted in exposed boners and bouncing tits al
l over the place. As the only guy in the room who was to be married, Jake had no intentions of joining in the fun.

  The guys all reconvened by the pool for lunch at noon on Saturday. Everybody looked and felt a little rough after partying into the wee hours of the morning and sleeping in late. When they started swapping stories about their exploits from the night before, a hot topic of discussion was Kirby’s whereabouts after he disappeared with the blonde bombshell who had tackled him down to the sofa. They had left the suite shortly after 2:00 a.m. and he did not come back until around 7:00 a.m. Kirby was in his element being the unapologetic player that he was, bragging with machismo and cockiness about his score.

  “Man, she took me back to her room two floors below us, and I fucked her all over the place. On the floor, on the bed, in the shower, on the bathroom sink. I tore that shit up, man,” he said, laughing. “She was on my tip the whole time and kept begging for more. Then her roommate came back to the room around 5:00 a.m. We had taken a break and were lying on the bed talking when she walked in on us. Someone must’ve been banging her too ’cause she looked kind of messy. She wasn’t wearing her shoes and her hair was all crazy. At first, she hopped right in the shower, but when she came out, she wanted to get in on the action and decided to join us. So I had both of those bitches working my dick. It was wild, dude. They were like taking turns and shit, and then I had one pussy on my dick and the other pussy on my mouth at the same time,” he said as the guys whooped and hollered in reaction.

  As Kirby continued to talk, only Jake wasn’t laughing along. He just sat silently and listened. His face grew flush as he became increasingly repulsed at Kirby’s behavior and what he perceived to be over embellishment. At first, he’d felt mildly relieved to see Kirby having fun the night before, playing strip poker and wandering off with one of the girls. Perhaps that was his way of accepting the fact that Jake was getting married and that their relationship could not continue to be the same as it was. By hooking up, Jake saw that as a sign that Kirby was putting himself back on the market as a newly single man who was ready to begin moving on. But then, listening to Kirby describe what he’d done with the two girls with such bravado, Jake started to feel a sense of betrayal and jealousy.