I felt like a piece of trash blowing in the wind. This was a person who Max should be with—someone who was a go-getter like him, someone on his level. Even as a friend, I just dragged Max down. I was a burden, a liability.
And I had always known that I wasn’t as good as Max. But it took on a different quality now that we had slept with each other. There was a newer, fiercer desire in me to have Max approve of me or to feel that I was good enough for him.
Right now, that was the furthest thing from what I felt.
“Excuse me for a minute,” I said, bowing out of the conversation that I hadn’t really been a part of anyway. I headed straight for the back doorwall of the house, slipping out onto the back deck. It was pouring rain, and walking outside was more of a shock to the system than I’d been expecting. There was a small awning on the deck, and two people were huddled at the side of it smoking cigarettes.
I had to get further away. I stepped out off the deck, the cool summer rain instantly soaking through my clothes. I hadn’t brought a cell phone, so there was nothing to worry about with the water, and it felt nice, anyway.
I walked out onto the beach, further and further away from the house. The beach was totally empty despite it being early—people on vacation didn’t tend to lounge on the beach when it was pouring rain. I had the place to myself. As I treaded through the sand, my shoes became mucked with mud, but I couldn’t care. The water looked gorgeous with sheets of rain falling over it, almost as if the wind was sweeping up the seawater itself and sending it into misty torrents.
I sat right down on the wet sand in the middle of the beach, dirtying my shorts. Thunder sounded in the distance, far enough away that it wasn’t dangerous but still felt electric. Ten minutes passed, then twenty, then a half hour, and I just sat and watched the rain lessen and then pick up again, coming in waves over and over.
Max was probably inside, still talking to Joseph, bonding over how similar their lives were. It was nicer here, focusing on the rain, thinking about nothing but feeling all too much.
I didn’t want to numb my pain anymore—it was important to feel it, to know that something in me felt terrible, that the special thing I’d shared with Max now felt like it must have only been a fling.
But honestly, what more did I expect? Didn’t I want it to be just a fling, just an experiment? Max was my best friend, and it wasn’t like I was gay—it had felt amazing to be with him, but that didn’t mean it would be some sort of long-term thing.
But still, I felt in competition with Joseph and felt as if I was truly the losing team. Would Max want to come back to my bed tonight if he had a better option? Someone actually gay, actually similar to him, actually going to be living in New York City.
I picked up a half-broken tiny seashell in my fingers and snapped it in half again.
Maybe it would be better if he went with someone else, anyway. Maybe it was better if last night was a one-time thing, if I let Max live the life I knew he deserved, without me there to complicate things. I didn’t even know what I was doing after this trip, let alone my whole life.
I focused on the waves and the rain, trying to make all of my thoughts lessen and fade away into the background. But even now, with my meditation techniques better than they’d ever been, I still thought too much of Max.
My other thoughts floated away—even the ones of Joseph—but the image of Max’s eyes wouldn’t let go.
8
Max
Something about Owen had seemed off when he excused himself from the conversation. He didn’t seem upset like he used to in the past, when I knew he was headed to the liquor store. This was much calmer, more contained than that.
But it still struck me, sticking me with a barb of worry that wouldn’t go away as Joseph kept talking to me.
And I knew I had to be polite—Joseph seemed nice enough, though he’d stolen me away from Owen. I wanted to follow after Owen as he disappeared into the back room, but I hadn’t been able to wrestle myself out of the conversation.
When Owen was gone for longer than fifteen minutes, though, I started to worry about him. It was my instinct, after all, and had been a huge part of our friendship: me worrying about him when things got tough. I knew things were different now, but I couldn’t help but react the only way that was familiar.
I finally broke off from Joseph and made my way to the other room. There was no sign of Owen. I figured he might have gone back to our beach house, so I headed out to the street in the rain, running the short distance back.
But all I found was an empty house. It seemed like Owen’s parents and Patrick and Taran had gone out for dinner, and Owen was nowhere to be found.
A low-grade anxiety started to form in the bottom of my stomach, and I paused for a moment to breathe as I looked out the big back windows of the house.
And just then, a momentary lull in the rain passed by, and I saw something in the distance: one solitary figure on the beach, sitting in the wet sand, a number of houses down the way. In the heavy rain I hadn’t even seen it, but now I knew exactly where the person was.
I ran out into the rain again, hoping and praying that the person was Owen. And as I drew nearer, I definitively realized that it was him. He was sitting with his knees together under his chin, looking out at the rain, and I came up at his side, making sure not to startle him.
“Owen,” I shouted through the rain as I ran up, and he turned to me.
“Max,” he said, frowning as I stopped at his side. “You’re all soaked. Go back inside. You don’t have to be out here.”
“You’re soaked, too,” I said, looking down at him.
“That doesn’t matter,” he said. “Your nice pants….”
I paused for a moment, looking down at the pants. I’d purposely worn the best pair I’d brought, knowing we would be socializing with strangers. But now I couldn’t have cared less about the pants.
I was worried about my friend.
And so I plopped down on the sand right next to him, feeling the ground sink beneath me.
“Max,” Owen said, in a tone that I knew meant you didn’t have to do that.
“Hi,” I said simply, watching his eyes.
“Hey,” he responded, still looking at me quizzically. “You… don’t have to be out here with me, Max. I know there’s a whole party going on in there. I just needed… I needed a minute.”
“Joseph was kind of terrible, wasn’t he?” I said.
Owen paused, then finally smiled sadly. “I don’t know why anyone would wear dark sunglasses indoors, so yeah.”
“Exactly.”
“But I thought you two were… bonding,” he said.
“I mean, he was easy to talk to—he reminds me of all the guys at my work. But… I don’t want to talk to guys from work. I’m on vacation,” I said. “I don’t know if I want to talk to anyone but you right now, actually.”
Owen drew in a long breath, leaning his head back in the rain for a moment. “Max…” he started, not finishing his sentence.
“What’s up?” I asked.
He bit his bottom lip, saying nothing.
“Talk to me,” I said. “I’m all ears. Something is clearly on your mind.”
He looked my way, then finally nodded. “I just feel like I’m... so obviously not enough. Not good enough to be your friend, not established, not the adult I should be at twenty-six.”
“Everyone goes at their own pace,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with that. You overhauled your life in the last couple of months, and you should be proud of yourself for that. God, I know I am.”
“But… how can I compete? When there are people like Joseph, people who have always been doing the right things, people who clearly deserve… friends like you?”
“Joseph being further in his career doesn’t have anything to do with you. Do you know what he told me after you left?”
“What?” Owen asked.
“That he only got his job because he paid someone to get him an in
terview.”
“God,” Owen said, frowning. “Isn’t that illegal?”
“It most likely is,” I said. “But who cares about him, anyway? You have your own path, your own life. And you’re what matters to me.”
Owen smiled, rain pouring down his face. He nodded. “Can I tell you something?”
“Absolutely.”
He squinted out into the dark, misty distance. “I came out here because I was feeling down about myself, but after spending some time here, I actually kind of love it. Not enough people know how good it feels to just let the rain come down on you.”
“I agree,” I said. “It feels refreshing, almost like a type of massage.”
“Exactly. A summer rain on the beach can be just as nice as the sun.”
“It’s beautiful,” I agreed.
We paused for a few minutes, and after a while, I reached out to hold Owen’s hand in my own. His hand was still warm despite the rain.
“Don’t you just wish you could say ‘fuck it all,’ and we could just live on this beach forever?” Owen said, his voice serene.
I laughed. “It is nice,” I said. “I think I’d go crazy without my work, though. At the end of the day, I do kind of live for it.”
Owen shook his head. “I don’t have anything like that. All I’ve got is… myself. And you, I guess. And my family… and Megan….”
“See?” I said, grinning. “You’ve got a whole lot to love. The career stuff will come when it comes, Owen.”
“It’s just so hard to know what to do,” he said.
I shrugged. “Well, hey,” I said, “I know it’s not your field of choice, but if you are just looking for some cash while you figure it out, my company does have two front desk positions open right now. One of them at my location and the other in Brooklyn.”
Owen furrowed his brow at me, releasing my hand. He shook his head, looking back out at the water.
“What?” I asked.
“Seriously? You think I should… work for your company, as a secretary? It’s not exactly something I could see myself doing long-term.”
“Hey, it’s a job,” I said.
“I guess that kind of job is probably all I’m capable of, anyway,” he said, a strong bitterness coming back into his voice. “Maybe I should just go work at the frozen yogurt shop again.”
I reached out to grip Owen’s arm in my hand. “Hey,” I said, stern. “Don’t fucking say this shit, Owen. You know I think you’re capable of anything you want.”
He rolled his eyes.
“I’m serious; don’t give me that attitude,” I said. I was starting to get angry. “You’re one of the most naturally talented and capable people I’ve ever met. But I know you have to want something in order to do it right. You don’t do anything half-assed.”
He was silent, but his face softened.
“I was just trying to help. I was trying to throw things out there. If you don’t want to apply to a job like that, then maybe another path is better for you. If you don’t want my input, then fine.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I snapped.”
I nodded. He pressed his free hand on top of mine, still gripped around his forearm.
“You’re right, Max,” he said. “I just need to figure out my own way. And I don’t know what that way is, yet.”
“You’ll get there,” I said. “And I’m sorry, too.”
We sat in the rain for another few minutes, and after a while, Owen scooted closer to me, closing the distance between our bodies. He gently rested his head on my shoulder, and I pulled him close. He nuzzled against me and then turned his face up, looking at me.
“Kiss me,” he said.
My eyebrows lifted, and I turned back toward the house. A few more people had gathered on the back deck under the awning, and a couple people were twirling drunkenly in the rain.
“Are you sure, Owen?” I asked softly. “There’s people back there, and I don’t know who it is on the deck—”
“Kiss me,” he repeated, resting his hand on my jaw. He looked so vulnerable in that moment, eyes full of want, as if he needed my kiss like he needed air.
And how could I deny him that? Megan could have been on the back deck—anyone could be there and see that we were together. But Owen needed me.
So I leaned in and pressed my lips to his. The rain fell over both of our faces, but his mouth was warm against mine. He kissed me more sweetly than he ever had before, as if he was apologizing and thanking me all at once.
At that moment I couldn’t have cared less who saw us. I realized that it didn’t matter to me. Let people see us; whether it was Megan or Patrick or Owen’s parents. Because no part of me could deny that this was a good thing, and the exact thing that we both needed.
In fact, I couldn’t even remember why we had to keep anything secret at all.
If the first few days of the beach trip were long and seemingly endless, the rest of the trip passed too quickly like a dream.
For the next ten days, Owen and I shared the same bed every night. We were in various states—clothed, naked, laughing deliriously or holding each other in silence. We explored each other with our hands and our lips. I swore that Owen was the most eager-to-learn person I’d ever met when it came to blow jobs—almost every night he would look up at me with big eyes, the eyes that always had a plan behind them, and he would ask me if he could go down on me.
Every time I still reacted with disbelief. I couldn’t believe that any of it was happening, that this same person I’d known for years now wanted me in this way, couldn’t wait to get his lips around my cock every day.
He told me he wanted to learn, and I saw firsthand that he was an incredible student. Owen’s first blow job had been amazing already, but as he asked for feedback and tried new ways of dancing his tongue across me, he only improved. Sometimes it seemed like he was systematically trying to take control of me—I’d watch him, every day, waiting for the moment when he would be looking up at me from between my legs.
He took to it like a natural.
And in return, I got to suck my best friend’s cock almost every day, too. At some point, I wondered why we hadn’t always done this. What had been stopping us? I’d always figured that Owen had no interest in men, but seeing what he was capable of now, I knew I had been dead wrong.
Of course, everything was kept only between us. Halfway through the trip, when we all attended the Pearlview Beach Summer Fair together, we stayed on opposite sides of the group for half the night and sat nowhere near each other on the bench while we ate food.
But little moments sprung up over the night: we broke off on our own to go watch a few songs by a local acoustic guitarist and then ended up under the bleachers, alone, kissing each other like our lives depended on it. At the Whack-a-Mole stand, I won a little plush fox and gave it to Owen, and he clutched it to his heart, leaning in to squeeze my side in thanks.
But then Taran had appeared nearby, and we were separate again, Owen totally switching back to that other version of him—the one that didn’t look at me quite as much, with as much desire in his eyes. One that didn’t walk so close to me we nearly touched. One that didn’t press himself up against me and kiss me until we could barely breathe.
One of the final nights of the trip, everyone sat around the campfire making s’mores for hours, talking about everything and nothing. Owen and I offered to take everyone’s paper plates and napkins back inside afterward, the both of us ending up in the empty kitchen together.
He pointed to my lip, smiling lightly, and told me I had a little smear of chocolate there. And then his tongue was at my lip, licking it away, and his hips were positioned over mine, nudging me up against the counter. He’d been furtively eyeing me all night from across the campfire, his eyes half-lidded like they got when he was trying to make me come, and Lord, it had been hard to maintain my composure.
And now, in the kitchen, I no longer had to. I planted my hands on his hips, and he rocked them
against me. His hand found its way under the hem of my shirt, sliding up, his fingertips cool against my burning skin.
“Let’s just go upstairs now,” I said, breaking away from his kiss, moaning softly as he moved his lips to my neck.
“Mmm, not yet,” he mumbled, but his pace didn’t slow. I could feel the outline of his cock pressing against me through his swim trunks, could feel its heaviness, and I knew now how good he felt inside my mouth.
“God, Owen, I want you so bad,” I said, shuddering as he sucked a slow kiss against my neck. I dug my hands into his hair, mussing it, smelling the sea salt on him from our hours in the ocean earlier that day.
His lips moved up to the tender skin below my ear, and he nibbled at my earlobe gently. “Max,” he said, his voice low and velvety.
I just groaned a little in response.
“I want to fuck you tonight,” he said softly.
I felt a surge of adrenaline go through my body. Whoa. I had not been expecting to hear that from Owen, maybe ever—I didn’t even know if it was something he would be into. I knew Owen had no other experience with men, and my mind had convinced me that maybe he would only want blow jobs.
Which—to be sure—would have been more than enough on their own. I liked all kinds of sex, but I wasn’t overly greedy.
But now that I’d heard him say it, it was like a spark had been lit inside my mind, running all the way down through my body and straight to my cock.
I started to speak, my voice a little raspy. “You—you do?” I said.
“That’s what I said,” he responded, pressing a harder kiss to my neck. “Only if it’s something you’d want.”
Over the years, I’d told my fair share of sex stories to Owen. He’d always regarded them like any other story, responding with sympathy or amusement. I knew that Owen knew I liked being fucked. I liked both giving and receiving in equal measure. But I had no way of knowing what he would want. For God’s sake, I hadn’t ever thought he’d want any of it.
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