Superhero

by Eli Easton

  “Yeah? You want company?”

  “Always.” He held up a fist for me to bump. If we were home I’d have knocked it aside and hugged him. Owen needed a big ol’ honking hug. But we were in the school parking lot so I did the macho thing and bumped it.

  “Emily’s going to be wondering where we are,” I said.

  “Yeah. We’d better go in.”

  In the cafeteria they had a table set up for the anti-bullying club. Owen went over while I told Emily what was going on. We ended up spending most of lunch at that table. They had flyers to order anti-bullying T-shirts, hats, brochures with tips on how to stop bullying, and a sign-up sheet. They were going to meet once a week. Owen and I signed up. The girl at the table was beside herself with excitement to have Owen Nelson interested. After about ten minutes she asked if he’d consider being an officer, and he said sure. Funnily enough, she didn’t ask me.

  I noticed some of the wrestlers and football players eyeing Owen at the table and not looking too thrilled about it. I almost flipped them off then remembered that I’m, like, twenty pounds shy of the right to be cocky. I kept my finger to myself.

  As I watched Owen dedicate himself to that cause so seriously, I started to feel all warm and melty. I’d known him for nine years, and I still sometimes forgot what a big heart he had. My own flipped over in my chest, and I guess I must have been staring at him with absolutely no filter, because when I turned my head, I saw Emily. She was watching me with this sad, pitying expression.

  Damn. My face burned with a wave of mortification.

  I told Owen I’d see him later and went back to my locker. I switched my books and ditched into a restroom on the second floor. It was empty, what with everyone still being at lunch and all. I went into one of the stalls and sat down, putting my face in my hands. They were shaking.

  That look on Emily’s face…. In her face I saw what I’d never fully admitted to myself—the humiliatingly pathetic hopelessness of my love.

  On Halloween Owen came over, and we watched a couple of old Hammer movies starring Christopher Lee. Owen was usually on a strict training diet that consisted of eggs and protein powder and semitrucks full of broiled chicken and green beans—basically, nothing remotely yummy. But wrestling season didn’t start until Thanksgiving and I managed to tempt him with a bowl of chocolate ice cream with marshmallow topping. I was his best friend; that was my job. My parents were out at a Halloween party, so we had the place to ourselves. Owen had this goofy werewolf mask he liked to put on when he answered the door for trick-or-treaters. The screams that wafted into the living room? Priceless.

  There was something I wanted to talk to him about, but I didn’t work up my nerve until we were Hammered out and had gone to bed.

  “Hey, Owen.”

  “Hey, what?”

  “Um… I’ve decided something. I’m going to come out at school.”

  Owen rolled over to face me. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow, Jordan. That’s… a big deal.”

  “I mean, it’s probably not going to be the news of the century. It’s not like I’ve ever dated a girl in my entire life. But I wanted to make sure you’re okay with it. Everyone knows you’re my friend.”

  “What are you talking about, Jordy? You know I don’t care.”

  “I’m just giving you a heads up. At least you have Emily. That should help douse a few pitchforks.”

  He was quiet for a minute. “You can’t douse pitchforks.”

  Damn. “Yeah, fine. Typo. Delete.”

  He scooted closer, lying on his stomach and facing me. He put a hand on my shoulder. “You know I’m behind you 100 percent. I’ll back you up with my fists if I have to.”

  I snorted. “Oooh, I quake, O mighty ninja. But the brotherhood of the gay violence believes in not. Besides, your coach would string me up if I damaged his star.”

  Owen laughed. “I’m not easy to damage, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “True. Well… thanks.” I stared up at the ceiling. I couldn’t really look at him when he was so close, in my bed, and being so fucking wonderful.

  Since the infamous “pool incident” before seventh grade (yes, it lived in my head in double quotes), Owen was careful to stay on the far side of the bed, his back to me, and I did the same. It was like one of those fifties sitcoms where the pretend-married couple puts up a pillow barrier to make sure there’s no hanky-panky. You couldn’t see our pillow barrier, but it was there all the same. Except right now it didn’t seem to be.

  “So what made you decide to do this now?” he asked.

  “As opposed to waiting ’til we graduate? That would be easier on you.”

  “I told you I don’t care. God, you know that. I’m just wondering. Is it the anti-bullying stuff?”

  I couldn’t help myself. I turned on my side to face him.

  “I figured it would be a good time. There’s so much attention on bullying right now. Probably fewer assholes will be willing to be openly hateful.”

  Owen nodded. “Yeah. At least not where anyone can see them. You need to be careful, though, Jordy. Don’t put yourself in situations where you’ll be alone. Stick close to me. Swear?”

  I nodded, and then I rubbed my eyes tiredly and just looked at him. There was nothing I could say to that monumental heap of selflessness except thanks. And that went without saying.

  His face was only a foot away from mine, me on my side and him on his stomach, propped up on his elbows. The lights were out, but my curtains were open, and there was enough light from the streetlamp outside to see his face pretty well—and all the rest of him. He always wore a tank top and briefs to bed. His shoulders and pecs were bunched up from being on his elbows and the tank top was stretched tight. His blond hair was a little long, and his blue eyes were dark in the dim light. He looked so hot. I started to get hard. Stupid me.

  “There’s another reason,” I said.

  “Yeah?” He arched a brow.

  I sighed. “I want to meet someone. You have Emily. Kids are always macking in school…. It’s not fair.”

  He laughed. “Poor Jordy. ‘Nobody wuvs me!’”

  That was just fucking annoying. “Shut up! I’m horny and frustrated, and I’m sick of it, okay? You don’t know what it’s like. You could sleep with anyone you wanted, Mr. High School Heartthrob.”

  Owen got serious. “I’m just teasing you. Don’t blow a gasket.”

  I pouted. “Whatever. My point is, no one’s going to come shopping if the ‘for sale’ sign isn’t on the door.”

  He tried to hold back a guffaw, but it snorted out his nose anyway.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Instant Jordy classic, right there! I’ll have to work that into our next issue.”

  “Shut up,” I said, but I couldn’t stop a smile. “I’m serious. I’m tired of thinking about sex all the time and not getting any. Me and my right hand need to part ways. It’s pathetic. Best years of my life, and I’m wasting them.”

  “You’re sixteen!”

  “I know! And I’ll be sixteen for approximately six more months and then never again! I want to enjoy it while it lasts.”

  Owen looked at me for a long moment, then sighed. He flipped over onto his back. I didn’t move, and he was closer to me after the flip. My hands were folded up in front of me and his bare right shoulder was an inch from my hand. I wanted to reach out and touch it, just to see if his skin felt as smooth as it looked, to test the give of his muscles. But I couldn’t do that.

  “I’m a virgin,” Owen said, looking up at the ceiling.

  “Oh. You guys haven’t….”

  “No. I like Emily, but I’m not sure we’re, like, forever, and I don’t want to do that with her and then break up.”

  “That’s… big of you.” I was thinking that Emily was probably not thrilled with Owen’s streak of gallantry. Not that she was a slag or anything, but she was kind of liberated about stuff. I never got the impression she i
ntended to stay a virgin ’til marriage. But what did I know about het romance? “You guys do other stuff, though, right?”

  Owen shrugged. I knew he wasn’t going to tell me the nasty deets and really, I didn’t want to know. I was jealous enough as it was. What went on between he and Emily was one of the few things we didn’t discuss, and I guess we both knew why that was.

  For a while we said nothing, and I shut my eyes. I almost fell asleep, curled toward him like that, nearly touching his arm.

  Owen

  I could feel Jordy’s breath on my shoulder. It just ghosted there, like it was alive or something. Puff. Puff. He was so close to me I could feel his body heat. He was going to sleep. I turned my head to look at him. His eyes were closed, so I let myself stare.

  Sometimes I had the weird idea that Jordan was getting more beautiful by the week, kind of like his growth spurt had been, only this was a beauty spurt. His hair was long right now, and it was a mass of chestnut-brown curls. He’d never had acne like most guys do, and he had really nice skin, pale and clear. He had full lips with a sassy sort of curve to the upper one that made him look like he was secretly smiling even when he wasn’t. His lashes were really long on his cheeks.

  I looked back up at the ceiling.

  It was true, what I’d said about Emily. Even though we’d been dating for a year, we hadn’t done the deed. It’s not that I didn’t want to. I liked making out with her fine. But I wasn’t compelled to go further than that. I never lost control. I was afraid to. I mean, condoms break, right? I liked Emily well enough, but I didn’t want to marry her. So I was paranoid about getting her pregnant. You hear horror stories like that all the time, and there were always a few girls pregnant in the junior and senior classes. I would never allow anything like that to threaten my wrestling career. A few times things had gotten heavy enough that we’d brought each other off with our hands. But usually, it didn’t even get that far. It wasn’t worth the blue balls.

  Besides, I was busy. I studied hard to get good grades. I did a lot of training, even in the off-season. And I was jealous of the time I got to spend with Jordy. That was my reward for doing everything else right. Emily and I went out sometimes, usually Friday nights. But mostly we saw each other in school. In school, we were always with Jordy. We were like the Three Musketeers.

  I turned my head to look at him again. His lips were parted as he breathed deeply, almost asleep. I liked Jordan so much it scared me. And sometimes it confused me. It was like someone had knocked my head, hard, on the mat, and for a minute I wasn’t sure which way was up or who the guy was standing there in my singlet. Stunned is the right word for it, I guess. Sometimes I felt stunned by life, like something had gotten me on my back and I was three seconds from the count and I don’t even remember how I got there.

  “Jordy?” I said.

  “Hmm?” I’d woken him up.

  “What stuff do you think about?”

  He barely opened his eyes. “What?”

  “You said you think about sex a lot. What do you think about? When you think about, you know, being with a guy?”

  He blinked at me stupidly. “What…? Why do you want to know?”

  “We talk about everything else, don’t we? It’s okay, it’s not going to gross me out or anything. I’m just curious what one guy thinks about when he’s thinking about another guy.”

  Jordy stared at me for a minute, and then he rubbed one eye. He does that when he’s uncomfortable.

  “Um… I think about kissing. A lot. I think I really like kissing. You know, with tongue. I think that’s hot.”

  “Yeah,” I said. Something tickled low down in my stomach. I turned my head to look at the ceiling.

  “And pressing against someone. Their weight on me, having someone lying on top of me with nothing between us, skin against skin.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. And I’ve been reading about stuff on the Internet—stuff two guys can do with each other. There’s this thing called…. Are you sure you want to hear about this?”

  I glanced at him. He looked doubtful. I shrugged and tried to act casual, even though my pulse was racing. “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “You’re sure.” He said it flat, like he didn’t buy it.

  “Yes!”

  “Double swear on your mother’s grave sure?”

  “Jordy! It’s interesting! You know I’m no homophobe. Who else is going to tell me these things?”

  “Fine. So there’s this thing called frottage. One guy lays on top of the other guy, naked. And you can use lotion or something to make it more slippery if you want, and you just rub against each other like that. Or one guy can wrap his hand around both dicks and sort of do a double jerk, except you’re right up against each other, rubbing the heads against each other as you jerk off.”

  “Um….” This conversation was probably the worst idea I’d ever had in my life. I was able to picture everything Jordy described, in freaking 3D. And it was turning me on—like plugging into a power grid sort of turning me on. I felt hot all over and my dick was starting to throb. “Okay, I think that’s—”

  But Jordy was in la la land. He ignored me. “But you know what I really think about all the freaking time? Sucking someone.”

  Fuck.

  I tried to block the images in my head and the lust I was feeling to regain some strategic ground. Why the hell had I started this? Had I wanted to do this to myself?

  Had I?

  I tried to sound cynical. “No kidding. You really want to do that?”

  “Hell, yes!” Jordy was very enthusiastic.

  “Why? I mean I get why the other guy would want you to, and I guess you have to do the tit for tat thing if he does it to you, but you seriously want to?”

  “God, yes. It’s so hot.” I snuck a peek at Jordy’s face. He was all lit up like he was talking about the latest issue of Aquaman. “I mean, first, the idea of another guy’s dick really turns me on. Sort of like when you think about breasts, I guess. And having it in my mouth would be as close to it as you can get. You can feel it and smell it and taste it…. Don’t you feel that way about girls?”

  The thought was jarring somehow in the intimacy we’d built in the dark. I wasn’t sure what he meant. “About their breasts?”

  “No, you know—oral sex. Have you ever done that with Emily?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to?”

  Honestly, the thought was a little intimidating. “Not really.”

  “Oh. Has anyone ever done that to you?”

  “No.”

  “Right. Well, guess I’m a disgusting pig, then.”

  “You’re not disgusting, Jordy. I’m sure it’s normal—I mean, for a gay guy.”

  We fell silent. I knew Jordan was turned on, too. I could hear it in his voice. He was breathing hard and there was this weird tension in the air, so thick it was almost choking me. The way he was turned on his side, he was lying close to me. I couldn’t feel his dick, but I knew it was there and it was hard. I imagined I could feel the heat of it almost touching my leg.

  And he probably knew I was turned on, too. I didn’t look down, but I had to be tenting the blanket. Geez. This was really insane.

  I was so freaking tempted. All it would take would be for me to roll onto my right side, and Jordan would be mine. Just roll toward him, and he would know what that meant, and he would kiss me. We could take off our clothes, and I could pin him down into the mattress and rub against him, like he’d said. That would feel so good. Jordan would suck me if I let him. He wanted to. And I wanted him to. God, so fucking bad.

  I sat up in a hurry and swung my legs over the edge of the bed. I had to go jerk off. Right now.

  “Need to use the bathroom,” I said. My voice sounded like someone had ground it with sandpaper.

  I started to stand up, but Jordan grabbed my upper arm. He was stronger than you’d expect. “Don’t go,” he said.

  “Jordan…,” I warned him, but I sat back
down. I was poised on the edge of the bed, ready to flee.

  “I know what you’re going to do. Let me.” His voice was low and deep, rough like mine. Damn, it just made me harder.

  “I can’t. Don’t you get it? I don’t want to lead you on.” It came out harsher than I intended.

  “It doesn’t have to mean anything. We could both just see what it’s like.” He rubbed my arm with his thumb.

  “I’m not gay,” I said. It sounded pathetic. I tried again. “I don’t want to hurt you. I never want to hurt you, Jordy.”

  “Then don’t go.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, because that was the reason why I had to go. I shook my head. But I didn’t stand up. I didn’t pull away.

  “Look,” Jordan said. “I know where we stand. It’s not going to make me expect anything.” He had that slightly trembly tone to his voice that he got when he really wanted something and was trying not to show it. He was still rubbing my arm. His hand slipped down my waist, slowly, and then onto my thigh where it felt hot and heavy. And then—then he removed it. He stopped touching me. I knew that had cost him.

  I wished he hadn’t stopped.

  I should have left. But instead I just sat there. I was so hard it hurt. I had never been this turned on with Emily, maybe because this was so… forbidden. It was insane. All the nights Jordy and I had slept in the same bed, and I never really thought about it. But at that moment, I wanted him to touch me so bad it felt like I was dying. Was this what it felt like for Jordy all the time?

  And that was what pushed me over the edge. Because if this was what it was like for him, at least I could give him this.

  “Okay,” I said.

  He didn’t say anything, but his hand reappeared and slowly rubbed my thigh. I felt him lean his head against my back. He was shaking. His fingers rubbed farther and farther along the inside of my thigh, over my boxers, teasing. It felt so good. I held my breath and looked down. His hand was so much bigger, his fingers so much longer than Emily’s. He had really nice hands, large but still sort of delicate—an artist’s hands. His fingers rubbed circles to the left of my hip, getting larger and larger. And then they slipped lightly over my hard-on.