by Renae Kaye
I stepped back from the window and waved to the departing car before turning back to examine my very drunk… what? I didn’t know what he was. Just a friend? No longer a friend? More than a friend? I really hadn’t a clue, but I was determined to find out.
~~~~~~~~
Chapter Twelve
What do you do when the man of your dreams confesses he loves you?
If you’re me, you haul him to his feet and tell him to sober up.
“But I luvf you,” Callum protested when I propped him up against the wall so I could open the door to the house.
“I know you think you do. You’re feeling merry. We’ll talk in the morning.”
I got him through the door and on the way to my bedroom. “I meannit,” he slurred. “You’re the bess man for the job.”
“What job?” I asked with a remarkable lack of curiosity. I sat him on the bed, where he swayed for a moment before stabilising. I knelt on the floor in front of him and began removing his shoes.
“The job ovf bein’ my boyf’iend.”
I laughed in spite of myself. “You mean the job I’ve applied for and you’ve knocked me back from so many times?” I was sure he wouldn’t remember this conversation in the morning.
He looked devastated. “I’m sorry ’bout that. I was a duck.”
I blinked. “A duck?”
“Yep.” He nodded in an exaggerated manner. “That’s the abbreviation for a fuckin’ dick.”
I was surprised he managed to get the entire word “abbreviation” out. I ignored that he’d applied the word abbreviation incorrectly. I also ignored what he said, and instead concentrated on removing his shirt and trousers. He helped eagerly, then looked disappointed when I tucked him into bed.
“You’re not comin’?”
“Not tonight,” I said, shaking my head. “Close your eyes for a moment. I’m going to lock up the house and turn off the lights, then I’ll be back. Just sleep tonight, Callum. We’ll talk in the morning.”
He was asleep when I crawled in beside him, but I was wrong in thinking he wouldn’t remember the conversation in the morning. He didn’t have a hangover, which annoyed me greatly. Instead he was cuddling up to me, starting something by massaging me through my pants and sucking on my earlobe.
“You still interested in the job?” he whispered to me.
My fuzzy brain scrambled to catch up. What job? The hand job he seemed to be intent on giving me?
“Definitely interested,” I murmured, moving my legs so he could reach interesting places.
He licked my neck. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. And thank you.”
Callum had pushed down my pants and freed my hard cock to his attentions. “No, thank you,” I whispered.
His exploring mouth had reached my chest and I arched my back, signalling my encouragement.
“I’m glad you’re not mad at me,” he said as his lips found my nipple. Mad at him? “I’m sorry I put you through all that.” I decided I’d work out later what he meant, because his mouth was heading south. “I really am a dick.” Dicks were good in my opinion. My dick was feeling very nice since Callum was breathing on it. “Or actually, you should say I’m a duck.”
A duck? My brain struggled again as Callum drew me into his mouth. Morning blow jobs were the best. Something tugged at my consciousness though. A duck? Where had I heard that?
“A duck?” I puffed out.
“A fucking dick,” he clarified.
The conversation of the previous evening came rushing back, and I remembered what he’d said to me. He was offering me the job of being his boyfriend.
I heaved Callum off me and scrambled from the bed, pulling my pants up. It didn’t hide my erection, so I hauled the quilt to me and stood at the side of the bed looking like a dork with the quilt pulled up to shield the lower part of my body while the majority of it remained on the bed, covering my equally aroused friend-with-benefits, who had a moment ago asked me to make it “official” by becoming his boyfriend for real.
I didn’t know whether to be insulted, outraged, or flattered. All I knew was I was excited. Was that the right reaction?
“Hang on,” I said in confusion. I wanted to pace, but that would mean giving up the quilt, so I just stood there and tapped my foot. “Let me get this straight, you want me to be your boyfriend? For real?”
Callum had an expression on his face that was part smirk, part grin, and a larger part confidence. I told myself it wasn’t attractive. But when he lay back and placed both hands behind his head, exposing his pits and bringing my attention to the fact he was shirtless, my cock didn’t really listen to my logic. My cock liked Callum. But, I reasoned with my cock, looks are not everything. Not if he’s a dick. Or duck.
I glared. “Did you or did you not just ask me to be your boyfriend?” I demanded.
Callum moved his legs and drew my attention to the fact I had hauled the quilt further over towards me which exposed his bare hip. Which meant he was completely naked.
“Yep. And you agreed,” he drawled lazily.
“Do you think,” I said incredulously, “that after having a date with you, only to be told you wanted to be ‘just friends,’ then having you message and ring me about all the other guys you’re dating, then having you pick me up outside the hospital and introduce me to all your friends, and then hanging out with you and even having you bomb one of my dates, then having you sleep with me in what can only be described as ‘friends with benefits,’ then you get so squeamish that you can’t invite me to a wedding….” I trailed off, unsure of where I was going. I took a big deep breath and tried again. “Do you think that after you did all that, you can come into my bed, ask me to be your boyfriend, and I’ll agree?”
Callum didn’t lose his smirk. “You forgot the bit where I finally owned to the fact that I love you.”
I frowned fiercely. “I think that makes it worse.”
He raised his brows calmly. “You don’t want me to love you?”
“Of course I want you to love me,” I burst out. “But do you think it cancels out all the other stuff? Do you feel sorry for any of it?”
Finally his expression changed, this time to one of contrition. “I feel terrible about it,” he said quietly. “Remember, I’m a fucking dick. I’m crap. But I want to make it up to you. How about… hm… a year? A year of me making it up to you. After that year, we’re square.”
I held on to my anger while the words “nose,” “cutting,” “spite,” and “face” played through my head. Could I trust him? I sighed deeply.
“I want to believe you, but….”
Callum sat up eagerly. “But what?”
I blinked, then asked, “Why?”
“Why?”
“Yes. Why. Tell me why you want me for your boyfriend.”
I held my breath, afraid this was going to cut.
“For a start, I love you. I couldn’t admit it to myself until recently, then I was so scared that you didn’t love me back. I knew what love was—or so I thought. I was looking online for my perfect love. He was going to be the one. I would know that immediately from the first date.” Callum looked down, unable to meet my eyes. “I had a lot of fun on our date. But I didn’t get that zap or that perfect moment or that sensation when everything around you is mute so you can concentrate on that one person. So I thought you weren’t the one.”
He kept emphasising the one with a deep voice. I was sad he didn’t think I was the one from our date. I had certainly thought he was.
Callum raised his chin to meet my eyes. “But you were great,” he said. “I knew I definitely didn’t want to lose touch with you.” He gave a self-conscious shrug. “I’m really sorry you had to sit through listening to me talk about all those other guys. I didn’t know how hard it was for you until you mentioned you were meeting that guy for pizza. And then suddenly I was angry and furious and hurt and… and someone else just took over me. I really am sorry for bombing y
our date. But I can’t say I’m not happy with the result.”
I’d long forgiven him for it. “I know. You apologised before, and I’ve accepted that.”
A ghost of a smile came back to his face. “And then you and me started….” He gave a happy sigh. “You don’t know how confused that made me, Ed.”
That was not what I expected him to say.
“Confused?” I asked, mildly outraged.
He flopped back on the bed and grinned at the ceiling. The action dislodged some of the blankets around his waist and nearly uncovered him. I didn’t know if I was disappointed or not about that, so stared at the area simply to make sure.
“Confused,” he confirmed. “You were… perfect. I mean, I didn’t expect you to get on so well with the boys, but you did. You fitted in like you’d always been there. Yes, we had to do things a bit differently around you, but the boys didn’t care. The wine thing and the no-gay-slurs thing was about the only thing they had to change, but it wasn’t a biggy. You were fun, intelligent, and kind. You came to basketball and I loved to hear you cheering from the stands. I would glance up and see you clapping for me and I would feel like I had to try better and impress you even more. I valued your opinion on things. I would see or hear something at work and think that I had to remember it to tell you that night. Or I would hear about a movie and think to ask you if you wanted to watch it with me. You were on my mind all the time. And then came the sex.”
My heart had begun to beat rapidly. “The sex?” I prompted.
He swivelled his head to look at me. “Yeah. I kept waiting for it to be bad. Or to become routine and boring. But it didn’t. We clicked. You were great in and out of bed. I thought about you all the time. You fitted in with my friends.” He paused and grimaced. “But I was still waiting for the zap.”
I got an odd feeling in my stomach. “It didn’t come?” I asked softly.
He shook his head. “No. Something worse came. You talked about breaking it off to date other guys, and I felt like I’d been hit by a freight train. I didn’t want you to date anyone else.”
“Because you didn’t want to give up the sex?”
Our eyes met across the room. “Because I didn’t want to give up you. I wanted all of you. I wanted the sex, but also the other parts. I didn’t want to not know what you and some other guy laughed about over pizza. I didn’t want my life to go back to what it was without you. I wanted to have you there in my house, in my bed, in my car, in my life… and with all your attention focused on me so that I could be free to… love you. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t care about what the boys would say about my boyfriend. I didn’t care about the one. I didn’t care about loving someone who maybe didn’t love me. I just wanted to shout to the whole world that Callum loved Ed. I even seriously considered buying one of those T-shirts online that say ‘I’m His’ with an arrow.”
My heart was in my throat and I dropped the quilt so I could crawl onto the bed, kneeling next to him.
“You’d have to buy two shirts, Callum,” I whispered. “Because I was yours from the first date. I got the zap badly.”
He took a big shaky breath, as if I had said something that meant a lot to him and he didn’t know how to handle it. “You got the zap?”
I nodded. “I couldn’t believe you didn’t.”
He looked apologetic. “Are you mad that I didn’t? Perhaps I was just insulated by glass or some other non-conductor, and you had to smash my defences before the zap got through?”
I smiled. “I’m not mad at all. How could I be mad at the man I love when he tells me he’s finally in love with me too?”
“You love me even though I’ve been a dick about it?”
“Yep. But I do think you’ll have to do penance,” I teased with a grin.
“Penance? Like prayers to your goddess Kylie, or a year’s worth of blow jobs?” he asked, the smile spreading across his face.
I fell even more in love with him that he knew and recognised my faith in Goddess Kylie. “I think more along the lines of proof,” I mused. I wondered how far I could take it. I tapped my chin. “You’ve kind of shied away from the public gay stuff. Afraid people will judge you. Afraid Justin, Brendan, and Rhys will judge you. Well, I think I’ve managed to convince Justin to bring the others to the Pride parade in Northbridge this year, to show their support. So how about a hugely public kiss in the middle of the crowd to show everyone how you feel?”
Callum surged upwards and flipped me onto my back, crushing me to the bed with his weight. I didn’t complain.
“Ed? It’s a deal.”
~~~~~~~~
Chapter Thirteen
What do you do when the guy of your dreams kisses you in the middle of a crowd?
If you’re me, you kiss him back.
We took the train into the city, agreeing to meet everyone on the parade route, opposite Connections nightclub. There was a real sense of excitement as Callum and I walked towards our destination. We were holding hands—something I’d told Justin we had to think about before doing on every other night bar this one.
This night was for pride. This night was for acceptance. This night was for—
“Whoa. Look at that,” Callum murmured as a group of sailors in white uniforms pushed past us and rushed on.
I took a long look. “I would say, going by the tightness of their pants and the fact that their shirts were unbuttoned to their navels, that they’re not real sailors.”
Callum was looking everywhere, his eyes lighting on scenes that made my heart skip a beat. Two women dressed as Harley Quinn held hands as they walked ahead of us. A group of young men in tight pants and tank tops gathered around a streetlight, looking for someone the way we’d recently come. Two older gentlemen in their sixties gently strolled the pavement arm in arm, one of them wearing an outrageously bright T-shirt in bright rainbow colours, the other sedately clad in a suit. A group of thirty-somethings, chattering madly, both male and female, together and wearing rainbow accessories. A man on stilettos. A woman in leather. An older woman leading a younger woman on a leash. A woman wearing a T-shirt saying, “I’m proud of my gay son.” Two women dressed identically in red shirts, black skirts, and rainbow braces, pushing a stroller through the crowd. The tall woman wearing a flag of pale blue, pink, and white stripes as a cape. The man with a beard in a unicorn onesie.
“Ed! Callum!”
I grinned and waved madly at Todd and Tammy. They’d been for a meal at some restaurant and were first at the meeting spot. Soon we were joined by my other friends, who were coming along to the night in support. Allan and his girlfriend, Peta, were there, as well as Tim, Donna, Lynette, and Roy. Lynette had been the one to introduce me to Mark—and his alter ego Allotta Moxie, the drag queen—and Mark was apparently appearing in drag on one of the floats. We were going to be excitedly watching out for him.
The parade’s path had been sectioned off with temporary waist-high barriers, and we eagerly found a spot as we grinned and chatted. We could hear music in the distance—Goddess Kylie, if I wasn’t mistaken.
“Ed!”
I turned at my name and saw Rhys trotting towards us. My heart burst with pleasure. The boys had made it. It meant a lot to me—but even more to Callum. Rhys was dressed pretty much how he always was—jeans and a black shirt. I spotted Brendan following Rhys through the crowd. He was wearing slacks and a Chicago Bulls shirt. But Goddess Kylie came through in spades with Justin. As he slipped his way around a couple of women, I saw what he was wearing. He was dressed in a black T-shirt that had a white stripe through it—black-and-white stripes to symbolise heterosexuality—but imprinted on the front was a large rainbow A—an A meaning “ally,” and rainbow coloured to denote it was an ally of LGBT.
It was perfect.
I greeted them all with a hug—it was a hugging type of night.
“Hi, guys. Thanks for making it.”
Callum was grinning from ear to ear. I introduced the boys to my friend
s, if they hadn’t met. Justin immediately fell into conversation with Tim, who was explaining his shirt, which stated “This person is proudly pansexual.” Brendan was straining to see over heads to see if the parade was starting. Rhys was checking out the group next to us—a bunch of girls in very short skirts, knee-high socks, and with brightly coloured hair.
I finally felt content. Everything was right in my life. I leaned back into Callum’s embrace and whispered, “Do you think we should tell Rhys that this is Pride night and there’s a good chance the women he’s checking out are lesbians?”
Callum chuckled. “Don’t ruin his dreams.”
“Okay, I won’t.”
He squeezed me tight. “Happy?”
“Yes,” I whispered. He bent down and captured my lips with his. And not a single soul was shocked.
~~~~~~~~
Coming February 13, 2018
Read on for a preview of
Come Into My World
On a Night Like This #3
By Sean Kennedy
~~~~~~~~
Chapter One
I hated being closeted.
But I was trapped. I made that decision for me a long time ago, and I’d been caught within it ever since. A foolish response to a question that could have easily been answered truthfully, and I wouldn’t be so miserable now, four years later.
I was a typical reality television star whose career stalled once their season was over and a bunch of newbies came in for the next. I was probably still considered a minor—very minor—celebrity, but I wasn’t getting invited to any red carpet events. Maybe the occasional event at a local council fair day. And I did it. It was a paid gig, and I needed as many of them as I could get.
But back in the day? I was on the cover of television magazines and there were a few fan websites dedicated to me. Those websites stopped being updated when they had someone else to focus on the year afterwards, and I was relegated to being “Hey, aren’t you…?” or, even worse, “Hey, weren’t you…?” as if I’d stopped existing and a lower-ranked clone took my place.