by John Goode
WE LAY there panting, looking up at my ceiling.
“I’m going to need another shower now,” he said, still out of breath.
Just the mention of being in the shower with him began to get me excited again, but I resisted the urge to roll over and attack him. “So…,” I began to ask when I could catch my breath. “So was that… normal?”
He looked over at me, and when we made eye contact, we both burst out laughing. “You’re asking in general or for me?”
“Both,” I said, rolling over and snuggling against his side.
“Well, for me it was thumbs-up, two thumbs-up. Like, several million thumbs-up.” I moved my leg between his as I curled up as close as I could to him. “In general? I think we might have broken a record or something. You sure your neighbors didn’t call the cops thinking we were killing each other?”
He chuckled as I nudged against him. “Shut up.” He nudged me back. “So then that part, where I was….” He nodded as he got my hint. “So that was good?”
He moved his leg against mine. “That was incredible. I mean, like fireworks.”
“And the part where you were….” And he nodded again. “That was okay?”
He looked over at me. “That was when you ruined me for all other men.”
For half a second I thought he was serious, and it must have shown on my face because he burst out laughing and pulled me close. I jokingly tried to pull away from him, but he kept me close. His face was close to mine, and he said in a half whisper, “That, Kyle Stilleno, was the moment you made me your sex slave. For life.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “No joke, that was incredible.”
I felt the blush go from my face all the way through my body as I hid my face against his chest.
His leg nudged my waist. “And you want more.”
It wasn’t a question.
I just nodded into his embrace.
“In the shower?” he asked.
My face popped up with a huge smile. “Really?”
He grinned and nodded back.
It was easily the best night of my life.
I WAITED for Jennifer to show up while Brad ran ahead and waited with the guys who herded around the bulletin board outside Coach Gunn’s office. That was where he’d post the list for the guys to see who made the team or not. She pulled up about ten minutes after we had. She still looked tired but a little better than she had a couple of days before.
She shook her head and said, “Lemme guess, he ran ahead like a kid on Christmas when he sees a ton of packages under the tree?”
I nodded as we began to walk toward the history building. “You know how he is about baseball.”
We got about five steps, and she stopped. I looked back at her, and her eyes widened in surprise. “Oh my God, you guys totally did it!”
I’d had nightmares like this before I met Brad, but they mostly involved me being naked in front of the class and a lot of laughing and pointing.
“W-what?” I stumbled, trying to figure out how to deflect her question while simultaneously trying to figure out how she’d figured it out. “I don’t know what you mean.” God, that sounded lame, even to me.
She ran up to me and whispered, “You have that ‘I got laid’ look all over your face. Spill.”
I put my hands on my face to see if there was something on it I had missed in the shower. “What do you…?” And then I sighed. “Is it that obvious?”
She put her arm around me and continued walking us toward the building. “No, Brad texted me last night, going on and on about how you rocked his world.” I looked over at her in shock, and she shrugged her shoulders. “What can I say? That boy is in love with you, and he wanted to brag.”
Part of me was upset that he’d told someone else what we had done, but there was a larger part that kept stumbling over her words. “He said that? I rocked his world?”
She got closer and whispered, “His exact words were, ‘If there was ever a chance I would go back to girls, it was destroyed by Kyle tonight.’”
There was a burning heat on my face, but I had one of those rigor mortis grins that everyone The Joker ever killed had. “He said that, huh?” I said, more to myself than asking the actual question.
“He said a lot more, but he swore me to secrecy.” I shot her a look of complete disbelief, and she just winked back at me. “Something about a curve—”
“Okay!” I shouted, causing everyone in the hall near us to look over. In a lower voice, I said, “Okay, let’s just talk about something else.”
Jennifer shook her head as we came on the pack of guys huddling around the bulletin board. “You, my friend, are too easy.”
I stuck my tongue out at her, which just made her laugh even harder.
As we got to the crowd, I pulled my phone out and began to record the scene. I wanted to capture the moment for Brad, who would undoubtedly play it over and over again for the rest of our lives.
We got there just in time to see Josh Walker scream “You made captain!” at Brad and then run toward him and pick him up in a hug. I laughed and filmed as he twirled Brad around like he was a rabbit to Josh’s Lenny. Brad said something to him, and he put him back down. He slapped Brad’s back and said, “Come on, a few months ago you didn’t even know if you were going to be on the team, and now you’re captain. That is epic!”
There was such pride in Josh’s voice that it took me back a second. This wasn’t ass kissing. This wasn’t him just being a dude. He was really, really happy Brad had been made captain and didn’t care who knew it. I looked over at Jennifer and raised an eyebrow as I nodded at Josh. She nodded back. The look on her face made it clear she was surprised too.
“It is pretty overwhelming,” Brad said in his best humble voice. I knew that voice well; it was the one he used when I commented on his six-pack after his workout. He would just shrug and say, “I just try to stay in shape.” He was so full of shit. Brad loved the fact he was in such good shape. It was why he spent so much time working on his body. I wouldn’t call it being vain so much as him thinking his body was all he had going for him. Since there was no way I could dislodge that thought from that walnut he keeps his brain in, I just let him get away with it and promised myself that I would talk to him later.
A few other guys congratulated Brad, and a few gave him death stares, which got my attention fast. Jennifer leaned over and whispered. “Sore losers who didn’t make the cut. That has nothing to do with your boy.”
I relaxed. I didn’t know my protectiveness was so obvious to others. I could see the smile on Brad’s face and could tell this was a perfect moment for him. He was truly happy. Which was, of course, the very moment fate decided to piss all over it.
“Of course they gave it to him,” Tony said from behind us. “His mommy would sue the school if he wasn’t made captain.”
I turned, aimed the camera at Tony, and saw he was there with two meatheads I didn’t recognize. Without looking way, I whispered to Jennifer. “What is with his whole Morris Day and the Time thing? He can’t go anywhere alone?”
“Cowards rarely do,” she said, putting a hand in her purse.
I knew what that meant—her Taser.
I was seconds away from saying something to Tony, but Josh beat me to it. “He got it because he is the best player we got, and you know it. Something you agreed with last year, if I remember.”
The more he talked, the better a person Josh became in my eyes.
Tony took that angry, about-to-fight step all straight guys do when they want to seem like they are about to swing but are really just going to talk shit. It was a bunch of shit; when someone wanted to hit you, they didn’t stop and give speeches. They just stepped up and hit you while you fell to your ass wondering what just happened.
“That was before I knew he liked a different kind of balls,” Tony shouted at Josh.
There was no way this was not going to end up with someone getting hit.
“Hold this,” I said to Jennifer,
handing her my phone. “Keep filming,” I told her.
“Where are you going?” she called after me, but I was already pushing my way through the crowd, away from the fight.
All this reminded me of the first time I met Kelly, and he had attacked me in the quad. We had been surrounded by the same pack of savages, just aching to see some real bloodshed. It was like all of this was just some lame-ass reality show to them, and the two people who were about to fight were arguing about who was going to get voted off the island.
God, I hated shows like that.
It took some effort, but I was finally able to shove my way to Coach Gunn’s office. I knocked on it twice and then pushed the door open. He was sitting behind his desk, the sports section in his hand. He glanced up at me with a look that said, “You better have a good reason for busting into my office.”
“Fight!” I said, pointing outside the door.
He seemed confused for a moment and then pulled a pair of earbuds out and looked at me. “What?”
I was slightly stunned that he owned an iPod, but I let it go. “Fight!” I said again, pointing like I was a damn dog trying to get someone to understand that Timmy was drowning in the fucking lake.
Luckily he heard the shouting and realized exactly what I meant.
He pushed his chair back and stood in one smooth motion. Coach Gunn is more than just a man; he is like a force of nature once he got moving. He was a wide man, and I am in no way calling him fat. He was like a dwarf, a big-ass, axe-wielding, half-drunk dwarf with fists the size of human heads, and when he started moving toward something, it got out of his way.
So I got out of his way.
He barreled into the hall, and the few kids who stood near his office door scattered like roaches in the kitchen startled by someone turning on the light. He had that someone-is-in-trouble face, and no one wanted to be a handy target for all that anger. I could hear Tony talking his shit from where I stood. I pushed past another group of people as Gunn stalked past them to get back to Jennifer.
“Tony Wright.”
He sounded like God. No, he sounded angrier than God. He sounded like an angry, dwarven god who was bent on dishing some epic vengeance. “Did you just call someone a faggot?” Tony looked to his left and then to his right, definitely searching for his backup, but they had fled the second they heard the coach’s voice. The coach grabbed Tony’s arm and yanked him toward him like the football player was a rag doll. “I asked you a question.”
“I-I didn’t say nothing” was all he got out. He looked like a six-year-old who had gotten caught on a stool stealing a cookie.
Jennifer shook her head and pushed a few buttons on my phone’s screen. I was about to ask her what she was doing when Tony’s words came playing back from the speaker. “What did you say to me, you little faggot?”
Everyone stared over at us. Jennifer pretended to be all shocked and asked, “Oh, I’m sorry, was I not supposed to record that?”
Her finger hit the replay button, and she held the video up to Coach Gunn as it played again.
Tony just looked at the ground, sighing as he realized he had not only been caught cussing but had also been caught lying to a teacher.
I looked over at her and said loudly enough so everyone could hear, “In his defense, ‘I didn’t say nothing’ does in fact mean he said something. So not so much a lie as just bad grammar.”
The crowd burst out laughing, and almost instantly the tension that had accumulated in the hallway uncoiled.
Gunn dragged Tony down the hall toward his office. “Congratulations, Wright, you just became the first student at Foster High to meet Kelly’s Laws. If you’re lucky, your name will go up on a plaque with the rest of the intolerant people who will come after you. I’m sure your dad will be so proud.”
From the look on Brad’s face, he wanted to say something to the coach about not wanting to get Tony in trouble, but I stopped him. “If we want the rules to be followed, then we have to let them dole out the punishment.” It was way obvious he wanted to argue with me, but he knew I was right, so instead he just sighed and silently watched Tony get pulled into Gunn’s office.
I was about to suggest getting out of there when Josh threw his arm around Brad’s shoulder and leaned against him. I was disgusted that they looked so good together. If someone took a picture of them, you’d assume it was an Abercrombie ad. “So, Kyle, how does it feel to be the boyfriend of the captain of the varsity baseball team?”
It was the first time anyone on the baseball team had directly spoken to me, and I was kind of stunned by it. I had always been a nonentity to these people. And now here was Josh Walker looking at me, asking me a question in front of them all.
I said the first thing that came to mind. “I guess it means I have to start coming to games.”
He must have liked the answer because he roared, “To the Cowboys!” Everyone else echoed him again and again. By the third time, I was chanting with them.
It was the start of a good day.
BRAD AND I spent most of the weekend looking for a place to be alone.
It had never seemed that big a problem before because we’d spent a lot of time in each other’s rooms making out. The fact that our parents were in the house never seemed to matter, but now it did matter. A lot. There was no way we were going to get naked with a chance of being walked in on, but being naked was all we wanted to do.
We ended up down at the lake Saturday night, but I was way too paranoid that someone was going to come and tap on the window, so we just sat on the hood and made out some more. By Sunday I understood all too well what a bad case of blue balls felt like. I had gone eighteen years without sex, and here it was less than a week since I’d had it, and I was dying. Brad thought I was funny as hell since he had been suffering like this since we started going out.
I gave him several hundred bonus points for not breaking up with me when I wouldn’t put out.
By the time Monday rolled around, I was walking around half hard and looking for places that might double as a place to have sex. I was slowly losing my mind. I was lost in thought, trying not to think about what it felt like to have sex, when Sammy nudged me. “Are you having a stroke?” she whispered to me during class.
I looked over at her, confused. “What do you mean?” I asked her back.
She looked around to make sure no one was looking at us and said, “Well, I know you like school, but you’ve been sitting there looking like a mental patient with that smile on your face. What’s up?”
I felt my face go, like, fifteen shades of red as I firmly reined my libido back in. “Just been… a lot on my mind,” I explained lamely.
She didn’t say anything for a while, and I settled back in and tried to focus on the class. My mind began to wander back to what Brad looked like naked, and she nudged me again. “See?” she whispered. “There you go again.”
I sat up straight, but it was no use. I felt brain damaged.
Was this how straight guys felt? I literally already felt dumber as I walked around wishing I had lower hygiene standards so I could consider grabbing Brad and throwing him in one of the broom closets for a quickie. Did I just really think that? Broom closets and quickies? Oh God, I was like a pair of sunglasses away from calling other guys “brah.” I needed help.
During lunch we all sat on the steps, and I tried not to obsess over the way Brad’s T-shirt had hitched up under his letterman jacket and I could see the back of his boxer briefs in the gap his jeans made. When he got up to throw our trash away, I turned to Jennifer in a panic. “I need to go see Robbie.” Small pause. “Like now.” Her eyes were wide with surprise as I tried to release the death grip my hand had on her blouse. “Can you cut class?”
“I have prom committee, but after that, sure. Everything okay?” she asked, which was a perfectly reasonable question considering I sounded like a serial killer.
“I just need some… advice,” I answered, trying to get the rest of my brain to f
orget what Brad’s skin tasted like when he was sweating in passion….
Stop.
“I can wait,” I told her, feeling like I was a drug addict waiting for my next hit.
After lunch I hid in the library and tried my best to think about anything else but sex. Of course, much like someone telling you not to think of pink camels, once brought up it was all you could think of. By the end of the period, I almost ran to Jennifer’s car and waited for her to meet me.
She still had that concerned look on her face when she unlocked the doors. “You sure you’re okay?” she asked.
I got in and strapped myself in. “When you and Brad were together, was he all over you for sex?”
She paused for a few seconds. “No, not really,” she answered carefully. “But then again, I recently found out that I really wasn’t his type. Why do you ask? Is he pushing you?”
I sighed. “No, other way around.”
“He’s not pushing you?” she asked. “Or you’re pushing… oh.” And she got it. “Oh! You’re like in heat, right?” I scowled at her, but she just laughed. “Okay, now I get it. Yes, the first time Brad and I had sex, he was all over me for like the next month or so. But that is pretty common after a guy’s first time.” She shook her head. “I would have never guessed you’d be all horned up.”
“Me either,” I said under my breath, pouting as we drove toward Robbie’s store.
When we pulled up, there weren’t any cars out front, and I wondered for the millionth time how Robbie could keep the store open when there was never any real foot traffic around. Some Broadway song was blaring when I opened the door. One of these days, someone was going to come in and rob him, and he wouldn’t have a clue that anyone had been in there, the music was so loud.
He was behind the counter, singing along. Thankfully that was drowned out by the music as well.
“I am going to browse dresses while you boys have your talk,” she said, patting me on the back.
I felt like such a pervert.