Unraveling Josh

by Edie Danford

  I shifted around on the couch and looked over at the chair by the window where my clothes were. Maybe it was time to get out and regroup—

  “Size matters,” he said suddenly, surprising a laugh out of me. “So I’d estimate the beast’s length to be at least eight inches fully erect. Probably nine? But what about girth?”

  I snorted. “Girth? Like circumference? I have no idea.”

  He looked down at my crotch. “Hmm. Some measuring needs to happen, I think.”

  “No way.”

  He laughed. “Come on. It’ll be fun. I think I even have a tape measure somewhere.” He cast a glance over at the pile of unpacked boxes. “I wonder where the hell it is.”

  The thought of Josh Pahlke using a tape measure to measure my dick was pretty hilarious. But also embarrassing. My cock was probably my favorite appendage, but I had hang-ups about being in complete control over how I shared it.

  “I don’t want to be measured,” I told him, probably more loudly than necessary. “One size up has always been fine in the past.”

  “Okay.” He put his big hand on my thigh and caught my gaze. “Hey. I didn’t mean to make you feel weird. Your dick is awesome because you’re awesome, not the other way around, you know.” His fingers played with the terrycloth nap of the towel. He looked down at the pattern he was tracing for a moment before asking, “Did you get crap about it from guys when you were growing up? Locker room bullshit?”

  I cleared my throat, wishing he weren’t so damn perceptive and nice. “Some. I got over it, though.”

  “I’m sorry. I hate that kind of shit.” His eyes were such a soft brown. And his voice was so kind. I felt my cheeks heat. I didn’t want him feeling sorry for me and I didn’t want this conversation to go this direction. At all.

  “It’s not a big deal.” I laughed, trying to pull his attention from the downer topic. “Ha. I said ‘big’. Get it?” I waggled my eyebrows.

  “I get it.” He looked into my eyes for a couple seconds, then leaned in and kissed my cheek. “You’re cute as fuck.” He glanced down at the screen again. “Okay, so I’ve been up-close and personal with your cock several times over the last twelve hours. I’m almost qualified to make an educated guess.” He gave me a sidelong glance and winked. “I’m saying ‘Latex-free Super Magnums’ will be the perfect fit.”

  “Okay,” I said, sandwiching his hand with mine on my thigh. I liked the way his warmth was seeping through the damp cotton. I also liked the way he seemed to know the perfect tone to hit with me. Kind, but not too syrupy. As if he understood adding crunchy-salty to the mix was a good thing with me. “I’m sure they’ll be everything we both ever imagined.”

  “Yes. My imagination has been getting…bigger lately.” Now his cheeks were getting pink.

  “That’s always a good thing, right?”

  He nodded. “Hell yes.” He turned his hand so we were palm to palm and our fingers twined. “I think that’s a very good thing. I spent the summer feeling boxed up, confined. The idea of coming to Ellery seemed like it would only make those feelings worse. Now?” He smiled, his eyes going completely melty. His big shoulders rolled. “I feel looser than I’ve felt in a long time. I think you’ve…unkinked me.”

  I conjured my best, sexy-confident half smile. It probably looked a little shaky because he’d just sent a huge quake through my insides. How could I be Mr. Casual when he kept saying shit that seriously rocked my world? I’d wanted to make him feel loose and happy and satisfied—sex was perfect for that. I’d wanted him to think of me as a sex god. But, Jesus, I hadn’t wanted him to think…to think that I… To think. That was the problem right there. He was thinking too damn hard. And so was I.

  “How much does a box of Latex-free Super Magnums cost?” I asked, getting back to the business at hand.

  “I’m buying.” He licked his lips. “And I’m paying extra for express shipping.” His smile was goofy—sort of proud, sort of guilty.

  God. And he thought I was the cute one? This guy had always been dangerous for my sanity.

  “Josh…”

  “Yeah?” He pulled his wallet off the coffee table and got out a credit card.

  “You, um, know that I don’t do exclusive. Right?”

  He fumbled the wallet. It landed on his laptop’s keyboard.

  Oh shit. The look on his face made my stomach clench. His smile froze and then, after a split-second of his whole expression looking totally lost, it faded.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. The smile came back, but now it was a little tight around the edges. “I kind of figured that out about you the first time you smiled at me at that party in Boston. And—” He glanced down at the screen. “—that’s why I’m ordering condoms.”

  “Okay. I was just making sure we were thinking about this the same—”

  “Shit.” He extracted his hand from beneath mine. “I did it again, didn’t I? I totally put you on the spot. I wasn’t even thinking about it that way…thinking about how all this”—he gestured at me and then the bed—“might be a one-off. I don’t want it to be. At all. But that doesn’t mean you automatically feel the same way.”

  I had to stare at him for a good ten seconds to make sure he was being sincere. Josh Pahlke was insecure about me wanting to spend more time with him? I inhaled slowly.

  Well, yeah. What had I expected? I’d just told him point-blank I couldn’t be exclusive. He might be Josh Pahlke, but he was just as vulnerable as any other human. Maybe more so—he was utterly fearless about letting me know his feelings and that opened him up for all kinds of pain. And he didn’t even seem to realize it. Or care. Josh didn’t hold his cards close to his chest, and now he was dealing with me—a guy who’d trained himself to clutch his cards so tightly he’d had them goddamn inked into his skin.

  I looked down at our twined fingers and kind of hated myself. Because he deserved more. And God how I wanted to be the guy he could give him more. But…

  “So for me…last night was fucking awesome,” he said, bumping my shoulder again. “Right? I’m hoping you felt some of that too—”

  I stopped him by clasping his neck and pulling him down for a kiss. I kept it up until he was breathless. “Yes,” I said, pulling back. “I want to get together again. Last night was very fucking awesome.” I cupped his jaw and looked into his rich caramel eyes. “But I’m not cut out for the boyfriend thing. I don’t want that and I don’t—”

  “It’s okay. You don’t need to explain.” He nodded. “I get it. And I appreciate you being upfront about it.”

  I ignored the new knot in my stomach and carded my fingers through his damp hair. “So,” I said, wanting to see his real smile come back full force. “How long do you think express shipping will take?”

  His lips twitched. He keyed something on the laptop. “Two business days.”

  “Excellent. So you’ll be all up in my business on Wednesday?”

  His cheeks were adorably pink. “Yep. Be ready. Because if there’s one thing I actually have experience with, it’s giving a blowjob.” He tossed his credit card and wallet onto the coffee table.

  I pointed to the screen. “All done?” I asked.

  He nodded, shutting the cover and putting the laptop next to his wallet. I noticed a bulge had begun to form under his towel. Those were feelings I knew exactly how to take care of. I unknotted the towel at my hips and climbed onto his lap, straddling him.

  He put his hands on the uppers slopes of my shoulders, running his fingers slowly up either side of my neck. “Got anything planned for the rest of the day?” he asked.

  “Nope.” I was tracing the pale lavender and pink marks on his neck and collarbones with my fingertips. He’d told me not to let the marks bother me—that it looked much worse than it felt. I still wasn’t sure whether it made me feel proud or sad to have marked up his ultra-sensitive skin. Probably a little bit of both. “You have plans?”

  He leaned forward and nibbled on my nipple, letting the tiny silver bar play
over his tongue. “Maybe,” he said.

  “Have you ever spent an entire day naked?” I asked.

  He laughed and lifted the hair away from my neck. “‘Your very flesh shall be a great poem…’” he recited. “Beautiful.” He looked up at me and I wanted to tell him he was beautiful. That he’d been part of my inspiration for getting the tattoo, for choosing to embrace the power of my body, back when I’d been so unsure about myself. But those memories were all wrapped up in shit that was heavy and ugly and uncomfortable. Right here, right now—alone in this tower with Josh all to myself—I wanted to be free and beautiful and easy.

  “No,” he said. “I’ve never spent an entire day naked.”

  I rubbed my hands over his hair—so thick, so soft. It glinted red, gold and brown in the beams slanting through the narrow window overhead. “Want to try it? With me?”

  “Yeah. I do.” There was that beautiful smile that made me want to fricking sigh. His hips shifted under my ass.

  Before I bent to kiss him, I said, “I knew you’d rise to that challenge.”

  Nick—six years ago

  THE DAY WAS gonna be hot as hell. Too hot for playing soccer, for sure. And yet here I was—at the Lake Woods athletic fields a good forty minutes early, hoping to watch Josh Pahlke arrive and perform his daily warm-up routine. Sometimes it was just jogging around the field, sometimes it was basic stretches—but it was always inspiring, and not necessarily in a lust-hazed way. The way he moved in the early morning light was gorgeous, and seeing his grace and speed and comfortableness with his body—and knowing he was gay and smart and kind and had conquered this little part of the world just by being himself—filled something in my soul as much as it tended to fill my dick.

  I sat on the grassy rise closest to where the soccer camp folks congregated—a spot with a good view of the parking lot—and stretched my legs in front of me and winced at my knobby knees. My skin was pasty-pale and when I got too much sun it got blotchy instead of mocha-licious tan, like certain other guys’ skin.

  After slathering myself with sunscreen—I’d insisted my mom get me unscented because I didn’t want to smell like a goddamn tropical flower—I watched the parking lot for a while, willing Josh’s Wrangler, or his bike, to come tooling down the drive. The sun was making me drowsy and the lack of action in the lot was boring. I opened my backpack, retrieved my latest book find and flopped down on my belly.

  My favorite librarian at Lake Woods Public, Ms. Masters, had insisted I check out Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. I was more interested in poetry that might have been written in the last couple of decades, but I was working on a summer Honors English project on Emerson, and Ms. Masters—who rarely steered me wrong—had said Whitman was related and a “can’t miss” for me.

  Still feeling skeptical, I squinted down at the worn, off-white pages. The first few lines weren’t bad. Pretty good actually. They had a good conversational style. Free-form and not too old-timey. Five pages later I was getting that tingle in my belly that said I might’ve stumbled onto something I’d not only be able to use for my paper, but something I might really love.

  I continued to read, but the bees were lazily dive-bombing my bottle of juice and the grass smelled thickly sweet and the words kept blurring on the page.

  When I opened my eyes, I realized two things very quickly. My face was stuck to the book and, coming ever closer in my line of vision, were two pairs of tan, athletic, ultra-masculine legs. I recognized one pair right away. Josh.

  Shit. Fuck. Damn—

  I sat up. Too fast. My sweaty skin wouldn’t release from the page and the paper tore. As I scrabbled to figure out whether a scrap of poetry was stuck to my face, my glasses went screwy on my nose and I shoved them up hard enough to make my eyes water.

  I heard laughter. Not necessarily ridiculing laughter. But still…laughter.

  My whole body went fire-ant-sting hot.

  Josh stood there smiling down at me. The guy with him stood a little bit behind him… Oh, Jesus. Really? What had I done to deserve this?

  Josh had shown up with Austin Harmon.

  A new and improved version of Austin Harmon. Austin usually wore his blond hair longish on the top—he’d always been a bit vain about the thick waviness of it. But today it was buzzed close to his head. And from the looks of his calves, quads and biceps he’d been working out a lot lately. He looked…good. Great, in fact.

  A tremble started up in the backs of my knees and the insides of my elbows. I’d contacted Austin after I’d accidentally outed him to my mom and my little sister. I’d felt obligated to let Austin know. My mom was good friends with his mom and even though she’d promised not to tell, I didn’t trust her despite the fact I’d earned her promise by threatening to do bodily harm to myself—a threat I’d regretted a gazillion times since because as soon as I’d made it, I’d been forced to see a goddamn therapist twice a week.

  Austin hadn’t responded to my message warning him of impending parental disaster. Now he was standing here—next to Josh Pahlke—pretending like I didn’t exist. My brain felt like it had been hit with a lawnmower.

  “Hey, man. How’s it going? Didn’t mean to startle you. You’re one of the Nicks, right?” Josh’s deep, kind voice did nothing to soothe my nerves. There were three guys named Nick at camp this summer. Today was turning into a day when I hoped he’d get me mixed up with one of the other two. “Interrupted your nap, huh?”

  I nodded. “No big,” I croaked. I fumbled with the book, shutting it fast, hoping they wouldn’t see the sweaty, ripped page. I scrubbed at my hair with my hand, only to realize today was a day when I’d put a lot of product in it. Stupid. My eyes watered more as my fingers got tangled in stiffened goop and pulled sharply on my scalp.

  I clambered to my knees, my arms jerking, my insides flailing so uncontrollably the flails were seeping to my limbs and every other body part. My juice spilled. I watched in horror as the liquid gushed through the grass toward my library book.

  I made an awkward grab, but Josh—moving as swiftly and gracefully as ever—reached down and scooped it out of harm’s way.

  As I rose to my feet, I glanced at Austin. He was staring at me, blank-faced. His blue eyes traveled impassively down my body—from my blue hair, to my Yeah Yeah Yeahs T-shirt, to my plaid cotton shorts, to my beat-up Adidas. It was at that moment I realized I was sporting a semi—whether it had popped because of my brief nap or from the sight of all my fantasies and nightmares standing together, I hadn’t a clue. Didn’t matter. I clasped my hands over my crotch, no hope for appearing casual, just going on desperate instinct.

  Freak, Austin mouthed, before slowly casting his blank gaze beyond me to the fieldhouse.

  I cast a frantic glance at Josh. His attention was absorbed by my book. “Hey! Walt Whitman!” He looked at me, all impressed, his wide eyes like sweet, glossy caramel. “Are you reading this for real?”

  He held the book up to Austin. “Have you read any Whitman in Colchester’s class yet?” he asked him. “It’s crazy good.”

  Austin smiled big at Josh, with perfect teeth and twinkly blue eyes and all that shit he knew how to work—the opposite of the blank-faced stare he’d given me. “No, man,” he told Josh. “Not yet. You know how I feel about poetry, though.”

  “Yeah.” Josh gave him a lopsided smile—the one that if he ever gave me I was sure would bring me literally to my knees. “Another area where we need to correct your miseducation.”

  Austin stuffed his hands into the pockets of his slick athletic shorts and kept it up with the smile. Oh Jesus. Were they…flirting? Were Josh and Austin more than friends? If they were, I didn’t know who I would hate more.

  Austin. No question.

  I gulped convulsively and picked up my bag, escape now the only thing on my mind. I knew turning tail and running would make me seem exactly what Austin had called me—a freak—but I’d reached my limit for awfulness for the day.

  “Could I have it please?” I hel
d out my hand.

  Josh’s eyebrows rose, but he gave me the book. My gaze fixed on his forearm. He had a birthmark on the inside of his wrist. It added interest to his already interesting appendage. God. It was just skin and bone and muscle.

  Why did it make me want to touch, explore? What turned it into something beautiful? Was it like poetry? Most you could ignore but then some combinations of words just hit your brain right and became something more than words?

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” I hadn’t meant to snap at him. I knew he was just being nice. Clueless, but nice…

  I clenched the book tightly, turned and jogged toward the parking lot and my bike. I made pretty good time—hell, I was probably moving faster than I had for any game or practice—but right before I reached the bike rack, a big hand came down on my shoulder.

  I spun to face Josh. My bag swung out from my shoulder and nailed him in the gut. He didn’t flinch, just took a calm step back.

  “Easy, easy.” He hadn’t given up his hold on my shoulder and he squeezed lightly. I shuddered and he dropped his hand. “Just checking to make sure you really are okay. Where are you off to? You’re not going to stay for practice?”

  “No.” I stepped toward my bike and began fumbling with the lock. “I, uh… I stayed up late last night. And I’m way tired. That was why…” I waved my hand toward the grassy ridge where Austin was standing, hands in his pockets, looking down at us. “I think I just need to go home and get some rest.”

  “Okay, man. Hey, I’m sorry if I made you feel weird.” He gazed down at the book I still clutched in my hand. He smiled. “Whitman’s great, right?”

  God. That smile. That voice. “I haven’t read much of it,” I confessed.

  “Read it all,” he said. “Promise me, okay?”

  I nodded. I’d been wrong earlier. I’d thought that if I’d ever be the recipient of that crooked smile of his, I’d drop to my knees. I didn’t drop. I cast a quick glance at Austin and held on tight to my bike’s handlebars. “Maybe next week after you’ve read it,” Josh was saying, “if you have some time—we could talk about it. Did you know he revised Leaves of Grass dozens of times? I took a class that compared a bunch of editions he released over the course of thirty years. The library at Ellery has a couple of copies annotated by Walt himself.”