He pulled back, and I almost pouted.
“Where do we go from here?” he asked quietly.
I placed my other hand on his hip “Well, we can’t go back.”
“You wanna do this? With me?”
“I’ve imagined doing this for years. And the reality is so much better.”
He chuckled but he didn’t lean forward. I got the idea he was waiting for me to make the first move.
So I did, the touch of my lips on his sending waves of desire coursing through my body. He opened his mouth and I dove inside, finally getting to know Landry in the way I’d always wanted. He moaned, a little one in the back of his throat, and I tugged him closer. He hooked his legs over mine and around my hips, then wrapped his arms around my neck. I gripped his waist, kneading the skin through his T-shirt.
I pulled back, wanting his skin. “Take your shirt off.”
With a quick crossarmed move, he was bare-chested. I raised my hand and he smiled, so I started at the base of his throat and ran my fingers over his prominent clavicle, down between his pecs, brushing my nails over his nipples.
“Did you think about doing this?” His voice was soft and husky.
I swallowed, my eyes on his abdominal muscles where my fingers traced the line of hair leading into his mesh shorts. “Yes.”
“Tell me.”
I hooked a finger in the elastic and ran it along the inside. Then I let it go with a snap and trailed my fingers up his side, along his ribs. He sucked in a breath. I knew he was ticklish there. “I imagined this. Just like this. You sitting in front of me. All the time in the world. Me touching your skin. I imagined it’d be soft, but hard underneath. I . . . I knew you’d smell good. I knew this would turn me on.”
Landry’s chest rose and fell. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “What else?”
I wanted him to take his shorts off. I wanted him naked. I wanted to take my time touching him, but telepathy wasn’t working. “Can you . . . take your shorts off?”
He smiled, but it held a hint of nervousness in it, too, so when he rose, I grabbed his wrist. “Lan.”
He froze.
“You want this, right? I mean, if you don’t, it’s okay. We’ll be okay, I don’t want to make you—”
“Jus.”
I stopped talking.
“I want to do this. I’m just nervous because it’s . . . you.”
I frowned. “Why are you nervous because it’s me?”
He looked exasperated. “Because, dumbass, I never wanted anyone else.”
I wanted to answer, but my mouth dried. Because Lan was up on his knees taking off his shorts, nodding at me to do the same, so I did. Then we were both on our knees, naked. And I thought I’d died. Because everything before me was everything I ever wanted. In a blue-eyed blond package.
I realized I hadn’t touched him before. He’d only touched me, even though I’d felt his cock alongside mine.
And fuck, his was beautiful—cut and about the same size as mine, but a little thinner.
“Go ahead.” His instruction was soft and encouraging and I knew what it meant.
So I reached out and wrapped my fingers around his cock and stroked. He leaned his head back, his mouth falling open while I adjusted to the rhythm of jacking off someone who wasn’t me.
“Lay back.” His command was gentle.
“Wha— why?”
He shifted his hips back so I had to let go. I didn’t want to. But he smiled and pushed on the front of my shoulders. “Trust me.”
Of course. I’d always trust Landry, so I slowly lowered myself to the bed, watching him. He pecked kisses along my jaw and sucked the skin on my neck, then moved down, lower, his fingers and tongue touching my chest and abs.
And then his mouth hovered over my cock. “Okay?” he whispered, and I could feel his hot breath on the tip.
I swallowed. “Okay.”
Girls had given me blow jobs. Small hands and full lips and hair I had to hold back to see what they were doing. When I came, I always closed my eyes and pictured short hair, a five-o’clock shadow.
This time I couldn’t look away as Landry gripped the base of my shaft and slid his mouth over my cock, lips stretching around the head and then down to meet his hand. It was tight and hot and wet and fuck, I had to strain not to pump my hips.
He looked up at me, those lips curving into a smile as he tongued the sensitive spot on the underside of the head all those college girls missed. He swirled his tongue in a circle and then went down again. I fought to keep my eyes from rolling into the back of my head.
And then he choked.
Or gagged, or something, but the sound split the silence like a siren in my brain.
I pulled my hips back and scooted up on the bed as Landry released my cock and caught his breath. “What the fuck? Are you okay?” I grasped his chin and raised his head to meet my eyes. His were watery and his cheeks were flushed, either from arousal or embarrassment or both. He tried to duck his head but I wouldn’t let him. Embarrassment.
“I think that’s my fault, I pumped my hips—”
His brows turned in. “I know how to deep throat, Jus. And you’re not that big.”
I dropped my hand from his chin and shoved his shoulder playfully. “Seriously? I’m sitting here naked with your saliva on my dick and you’re insulting it?” I leaned back, bracing myself with my arms behind me, knees open and bent and looked down at my cock. Which was still as hard as iron. “I think you need to apologize to it.”
“I’m not apologizing to your dick. I gagged because I couldn’t breathe through my nose.” Landry blew out a breath and crossed his arms over his chest in a pout. “Fucking allergies.”
He looked ridiculous, sitting there naked with his hair askew and his nose red and his lips wet that I couldn’t do anything but throw back my head and laugh. I laughed until I started coughing and then Landry collapsed between my legs, his head on my stomach, laughing along with me. It was like the time in seventh grade when Landry slid down the banister of my basement stairs, but it ripped out of the wall halfway down and he went flying off the side and somehow landed perfectly on the recliner. Then he proclaimed, I meant to do that, sending us in a fit of laughter.
So it was like that, but now we were twenty-two-years old, in an RV, in Missouri. And naked.
“Lan?” I said, when our laughter subsided.
“Yeah?”
“My dick is still waiting for its apology.”
He chuckled, cupped my balls, and then ran a finger slowly up my shaft. “I’m so sorry, Justin’s penis, you’re perfect and not small.”
I laughed again and shoved him off of me, then rolled on top of him, rubbing my thumb on the underside of his wrist where I held his hand by his head. “He said you can make it up to him by talking more about this deep-throat business.”
He rolled his eyes.
“You can just say the words ‘deep throat,’ actually. That was hot.”
Lan smirked. “Deep throat.”
I pumped my hips into his and waggled my eyebrows, which set off his laughter again.
“You just open your throat and breathe through your nose,” he said. “It’s kind of hard if you have a strong gag reflex.”
He made it sound so easy but I was pretty damn sure it was anything but. “I have no idea if I have a strong gag reflex.”
His face changed, and a little breath hitched at the back of his throat. His hips shifted. “Why don’t you see?”
I took the dare in Landry’s eyes and lowered myself to his groin, pressing a kiss to the equal sign tattooed on his left hip.
I’d been with him when he’d had it done, the summer before we went to college. It had been his first tattoo.
His breath hitched as I scooted lower. I’d never been this close to another guy’s cock. I gr
asped the base like I’d seen him do to mine and bent to take his cock in my mouth. His skin was soft, God, so soft and smooth and he tasted hot and a little like bitter salt. I realized right away the whole area was too dry, so I licked around his head and down his shaft.
Landry’s cock jerked and he moaned. “Am I doing okay?” I asked.
“Fuck, Jus.” His blue eyes bored into mine. “Unless you bite, it’s hard to do this wrong.”
I bared my teeth in a growl and he laughed, but the sound strangled off into a groan when I lowered my head again to take him in my mouth.
I didn’t know what I was doing, obviously. He was big and it was hard to breath, but I knew what felt good when I got a blow job so I tried to replicate all the moves—tonguing that vein on the underside, rolling his balls in my hand—and I apparently was doing all right because Landry was moaning and his hips were moving.
He warned me in a tight whisper he was coming and I planned to pull back. Everything in me told me to pull back because I knew what happened next but then the part of me in charge of my muscles told me to stay, so I did, as he came in my mouth. I kind of sputtered but I swallowed. It was bitter, oh so bitter, and I grimaced, but at the same time, knowing I did that for Landry filled me with triumph. I pressed a kiss to his hip and then raised my head.
I thought I saw a sheen to Landry’s eyes, but it passed with a blink. He sat up and kissed me, not hesitating to plunge his tongue in my mouth, while he reached down, grasped my cock, and stroked until I came on the sheets between us.
We touched foreheads, breathing into each other’s mouths as the air cooled around us. My head swam, treading water, trying to reach the point where I could touch and grasp that I’d just had another man’s cock in my mouth. And it’d been Landry’s. I used to lay awake in college, watching porn on my phone under my sheets, wondering what it felt like to be with a man. Would he be hard? His skin soft? His leg hair prickly?
What would he taste like?
And now I knew. And not just any man. Landry.
“Justin,” he whispered.
“Yeah?” I said, my voice hoarse.
He pulled me down so I lay next to him, our legs tangled together, his hand on the back of my head. “That was incredible.”
A flush of heat warmed my cheeks and I brushed his lips with my own.
His smile dropped off and he bit his lip. I tensed, because a nervous Landry made me nervous.
“What does this mean?” he asked, then added haltingly, “For us. For the future.”
I swallowed, unsure if I could speak past the lump in my throat. In the turmoil that had been our lives in the last couple of weeks, I hadn’t let myself think past this road trip.
But there was a future—one where I worked for my mom and played straight. Weeks ago, I had thought that future would involve Landry as my best friend, but now I wasn’t that stupid to believe we could go back to that. It was all or nothing. What was I ready for?
My silence froze the air between us and Landry’s eyes hardened to icicles. “You have to be kidding me—” he said through gritted teeth, rolling away from me, taking away his warmth and the only place I felt like myself.
“Landry, stop.” I grabbed him and wrapped my arms around him so his back was to my front, and I tucked him against me so he couldn’t move. He struggled, but I was stronger, and when I gripped his hair and pressed my temple to his, he finally sighed in resignation and went still.
“You gotta give me a moment to fucking think, Lan. And not expect the worst.”
His body trembled despite the heat in the RV, and I tightened my arms. “I don’t expect the worse, but with you Jus, I can’t do this. I can’t spend this summer with you . . . really with you and pretend the fall isn’t going to happen. I won’t avoid the subject.”
I never expected he would. “I know. This all just happened a little fast and I haven’t had time to deal with it. I am now, but give me some fucking time. Did you really think I was just going to continue my plans in the fall? Go back to us being nothing but friends?”
He didn’t say anything. The trembling continued.
I turned him in my arms and gripped his face. “Seriously?”
“I don’t know . . .” He bit his lip. “No, okay, no I didn’t. I trust you but I know how your mom is, and I can’t say I’m not worried.”
He was worried? That made two of us. “I know. Just let me get used to this. Get used to us. And I’ll start thinking of a plan for when we get home.” I reached for his hand. “I can’t go back. To just being friends.”
His face softened, but there were still clouds in his eyes. “Me either.”
I pressed his face into my neck and nuzzled the curls above his ear. “Just be patient with me, okay?”
His voice was muffled against my skin. “Okay.”
***
June 2
[Picture]
Onondaga Cave was very cool. We saw tons of spiky rock things that have some special name I can’t remember because I didn’t pay attention in geology in high school.
We also got real showers at a campground and could wash our clothes. Yay!
Thanks for all the well-wishes you have all sent to Justin. I read them to him and he cried like a baby. Okay, not really, but he might have teared up at one or two. Thanks a lot, because it meant the world to him.
This blog is really taking off. I’m getting over one hundred hits a day. I can’t believe it! Thanks for sharing our journey. Next stop is Minnesota. I hope I pick up the accent.
5 Down
7 To Go
—L
Comments
Trenton: I bet he did cry.
Mia: Aw, we love you, Justin! Take care of yourself. I’m only a phone call away.
Chase: That cave is awesome!
Chapter Ten
The Chippewa River Bottoms was a hardwood forest along the Chippewa River in Wisconsin. The weather was mild and we walked to the bank, taking in the fast-moving river and several kayakers out for the day. My dad had told me we’d kayak on this river one day, and we laughed about the time we went kayaking back at home. I’d struggled to get into the damn thing and tipped it over, along with myself, into the water repeatedly. I heard my dad’s laughter ringing in my ears and smiled.
It was early morning, the sun just cresting over the tops of the trees, so I got a great sun flare shot with Dad’s urn in the foreground. I tossed a handful of ashes into the river, and they quickly dissolved to be whisked away downstream.
We played catch with a baseball and our bare hands along the banks of the river. Landry preferred his sports to involve no balls and lots of running, but he knew how to throw—I’d taught him the way my father had taught me—and he was always willing to help me practice.
When I was a freshman in college, Landry met me after practice one day. He’d been talking about teaching his young cousins how to throw, and some fuck-up junior outfielder turned his back to us and told a teammate Landry probably taught them how to” throw like a girl.” Before I could say anything, Landry grabbed the baseball from my hand and beaned the junior right between the shoulder blades. The guy’s only injury was his wounded pride, and I laughed so hard I fell over.
“Did you like coming to my games?” I asked him now, tossing the ball in one hand lightly before throwing it to him.
He caught it and shrugged. “Course I did. You in tight pants.”
I rolled my eyes but I still blushed. “Whatever.”
“Your teammates were mostly nice. I liked Tomás.”
I caught his returned throw and ran my fingers over the red seams.
“Oh,” Landry said. “Actually, meant to tell you, he commented on the blog and said if we’re going through Illinois to stop by.”
I looked up. “Really?”
Landry shaded his eyes against the m
orning sun and squinted at me. “Yeah, he said he lives near Chicago?”
I nodded.
“What do you think?”
“I’d love to see him. He likes you, too. You wanna do that?”
“Yeah, I think it’d be fun. I’ll send him an e-mail.”
“Cool.”
***
We had a late-morning snack of granola bars and sat side by side near the bank, wrists resting on our bent knees. The sun shone off Dad’s urn at our feet. I checked and no one was around, so I leaned my head on Landry’s shoulder.
“What’s your favorite memory of my dad?” I asked.
Landry brushed a kiss into the top of my hair and didn’t talk for a minute. “I think it was in high school. Remember we didn’t think he was going to make your senior night for baseball? And then he marched into the stadium with those huge helium balloons—a bat, a mitt, and a baseball. And afterward he gave you that autographed photo of Mike Schmidt.”
I laughed. “That was pretty awesome.”
“But it wasn’t even all those things he bought, it was the fact that he showed up. He missed out on that big bird migration thing he’d been talking about. Just to see you stand on a field and throw a baseball.” He sighed. “He knew being there mattered.”
My mom had made a big deal the whole month before senior night—our last home game—bitching about how Dad couldn’t take the time out of his schedule to come. He’d told me he’d try to make it. And I’d hung on to that try like a lifeline. My mom hadn’t heard that word.
And then he’d shown up, his smile huge, carrying these tacky balloons for me and a bouquet of flowers for mom. She’d taken them with a tight-lipped smile, but I was elated.
He stayed the whole game, then took Mom and me and Landry and his family out for ice cream. I could still hear my dad’s laugh that night, see Landry’s tongue as he licked his cone.
“What’s your favorite memory?” Landry asked.
I picked up a twig from between my feet and drew random circles in the dirt. My brain flipped through memories like a photo album—Dad and I playing catch; his finger pressing mine on the shutter release to take a shot of a squirrel in the backyard; him slapping Sally on the side before he climbed in and drove away.
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