Thanks to a fastidious suitemate, though—or, more likely, the dorm’s diligent housekeeper—the bathroom fairly sparkles. From a closet full to bursting with rumpled clothes, George produces a faded red towel. It’s wearing thin but it smells clean, and I’m at the point in my night where I figure a guy who’s been sitting encrusted in his own cum for six hundred miles doesn’t need to be too choosy about where and how he gets himself clean. If the towel’s not straight out of the laundry, I reason, it’s been used by George, which is its own kind of hot, and anyway, I can drip dry if I have to—now that I’m this close to one, I’m literally itching to get out of my clothes and into the shower.
“Go ahead,” George says, jerking his thumb toward the bathroom door. “But I might join you in a minute.”
To show him what I think of this suggestion, I leave the door mostly open while I start the shower full-hot and strip. I lather up with what’s left of the drug store bar of soap and swipe suds over every part of me I can imagine George wanting to put his mouth or his hands.
I linger under the steamy stream of water, practicing arranging myself into sexy come-hither poses for when George raps lightly on the shower door, but soon the thought of getting my eyes—and my hands, and, with any luck, my throbbing hard-on—on naked George drives me from the shower. I towel off the best I can with my body thrumming with the need to get on with it!, and I present myself—skinny and self-conscious but way too anxious to wait—to the oblivious flannelled backside of noisily slumbering George, conked out across the bed still with one shoe on.
So now what? Do I get dressed and go home to Chambers after all? Do I sleep on Henry’s bed? Is it cool to get under the blanket in some strange dude’s bed when he doesn’t know you’re in it? Can I just pull George’s pants down, like I really want to, and introduce myself…?
“Brent?” George mumbles. He hoists open one eye, then smiles at the sight of me. “All clean, I see?”
“Yup.”
“Come ‘ere, then,” he says. He slides around so he’s only taking up like three-fourths of the tiny bed, wriggling out of his clothes as he goes.
I stand. I gape. I will my legs to move, but the glory of naked George demands a moment of appreciation. He’s completely unselfconscious about the puddle his soft stomach settles into, and except for the accidental over-filling of his chest, the rest of his body is similarly oblivious to its butterball status. His shoulders are wide and strong, his biceps firm and melony; his calves bulge from regular, rigorous use, and his thighs are all hairy muscle, his dong nestled stout and proud between them. His ass is fuzzy and plump, paper white and uncommonly wide. His body is strong and fit because he’s young and active, round and bouncy because he’s immoderate and confident. His muscles are muscly, his curves are curvy, and when he pats the bed next to him and says, “Come ‘ere” again, I all but hurl myself against him.
He grins his approval when he feels me hard against him, nuzzles against my neck, damp from my still-soggy hair. He caresses my cheek and kisses my forehead and mutters sleepy, indeterminate words that I take for declarations of praise and longing and then, with a huge, heavy sigh, he rolls over onto his belly, his ass invitingly on offer.
And he falls asleep.
* * * *
Christmas Day dawns sunny and dry. Through the window above where I lay, wedged under George’s sleep-heavy muscle and meat, I see the top of the V of palm trees that mark the entrance to O’Donnell from the quad against a square of cloudless blue. There are no festive lights on these trees, no snow falling scenically behind them.
Here in George’s musty, messy room, there’s no sign of Santa—no stockings have been hung, no presents have been left, there’s no ornamented tree to leave them under. There’s no Christmas music, none of my mom’s traditional scratch-baked cranberry-cinnamon rolls. There are no relatives, there will be no church.
It’s the best Christmas ever.
This is the first morning I’ve ever woken up next to anybody. The first time that my wildest fantasies, of great malleable handfuls of George Cortner, can be satisfied simply by reaching out and taking great malleable handfuls of George Cortner. I’ve roved his body top to bottom with my eyes, my hands, my mouth. I know what his navel smells like, what his feet taste like; I’ve come in him three times in the last two hours and I’m hard again, just waiting for him to stir.
Somehow we spend the day together in that tiny bed. His room has a small fridge in it, and we feed each other hardening pieces of tortilla and filched Commons cheese. We drink three cans of beer, then his roommate’s last can of Pepsi.
We talk about going to the Commons for breakfast, but we fuck until they’re closed to set up for lunch; we plan to go for lunch but we fuck until after they’ve closed to get ready for dinner. We agree we’d just as soon fuck through dinner, but by six-thirty I’m way past working off those nine bites of tortilla, and George is nibbling at me like maybe if he had mayonnaise in the room he’d try and slice me for sandwiches.
“Wanna go eat?” I ask.
George shakes his head no. “I never want to be hungry for anything but you,” he says.
I laugh. “And yet…?”
“If a pigeon landed on that window sill I’d kill it and eat it.”
“I thought so. C’mon.”
I’m less than ecstatic to slide back into yesterday’s cum-crusted, crotch-smelling jeans, so George lends me a pair of Henry’s elastic-waist workout shorts and a tank top that, with a little imagination, can pass for clean. It’s not like I care—the only reason I’m putting on any clothes at all is ‘cause eventually someone between George’s room and the grill at the Commons will step in and make me if I don’t.
The quickest way to the Commons from O’Donnell is through the parking lot behind the dorms that line this side of the quad. This east side of campus is his turf—we walk behind the gym, the pool, and two frat houses—and George surprises me when he reaches for my hand. I hesitate, and he grabs it decisively before we walk on. Well, he walks on. I honest-to-God skip for a good fifteen seconds, propelled by my elation.
We’re thirty feet from the bottom of the stairs that lead to the Commons when a pride of about eight bro-cubs from a rival frat of George’s burst out from an early dinner. Reflexively, protectively, I fling George’s hand from mine. He reaches for my hand again, but I pull it away. He stops and grabs my elbow instead, ensuring I do the same.
He says, “What?”
I parrot, “What?”
“Gimme your hand.”
“Those guys, though.”
“What about those guys? Hey, Clarkson,” he says, jerking his chin at one of them as they gambol past. A kid in a backwards baseball hat returns his greeting—“‘Sup, Cortner,”—without slowing.
“You wanna be holding my hand around those guys?”
“Why wouldn’t I want to hold your hand?”
“Not my hand, as in ‘my’ hand. I mean ‘my hand’ as in a dude’s hand.”
“I have as much right to hold your hand as Clarkson does to hold that Crystal chick’s.”
“Who’s Crystal?”
“This Beta girl nobody’s supposed to know he got pregnant.”
“Seriously? But then how do you know?”
“Kinda not the point, Brent.” As an aside he says, “I’ll tell you when we sit down, though. It’s pretty much a scandal. She’s not the first. I’m saying…” He resumes his non-gossiping tone. “You don’t want a boyfriend who’s afraid to hold your hand, dude. And neither do I.”
He’s right, of course. But wait…
“Boyfriend?”
“Well, I just mean…” He’s suddenly shy. He hems, shuffles his feet. Makes a visible effort to collect his thoughts, then says, “Okay, maybe not boyfriend. It has only been two days. But I was just kinda thinking, you know…I mean, today’s been really nice, right?”
I smile. “Today’s amazing. I don’t have a problem with ‘boyfriend.’ I’m just surprised.�
�
“After what I let you do to me on Henry’s desk?”
Sorry, Henry.
“I just mean, are we gonna be, like, out? Like, as a couple? I mean, if we’re out, aren’t you kind of out?”
He takes a big breath. “Well, so, I kind of came out to Henry right before break. About being gay, and, um, kind of about having a crush on this guy from choir…”
I chuckle along. “Uh huh.”
“And he was super cool, and he was like, ‘I kinda thought so,’ and all, ‘I love you, man.’ And he was basically like, ‘You should come out, man. Be proud. Be you.’ And I was like, ‘but the Pi-Os’ and he was like ‘It’ll be fine. You’re our brother.’ So of course I cried.”
“Of course.”
“And it’s just, I do wanna be with you. Or you know, hang out with you, and see if we want to be together, and I really don’t want to hide it. Any of it. Me, you, any ‘Us’…”
Circling back to where we started, I say, “I’m happy to hold your hand, George. I’m not ashamed, and I’m not afraid. I mean, not so afraid. I just didn’t know about you. No offense or anything.” I take his hand. “You can hold my hand anytime you want.”
Another trio of dudes lopes by. They rubberneck a little bit, but George doesn’t let go of my hand, so I hang on to his. Nobody says anything, and the burst of laughter that follows them through the door into the Commons could be about anything.
“You sure this is how you want to handle this?” I ask.
He shrugs with a thoughtful half-smile. “I don’t know,” he says. “But it’s how I want to try and handle it. I mean, if you’re okay with it. The out thing. The boyfriends thing.”
“I will find a way to handle being your boyfriend,” I tease. “I’m okay with it.”
His half-smile slowly blossoms into a beaming grin. “Cool.”
“Cool.”
He squeezes my hand and we start up the stairs together.
THE END
ABOUT MICHAEL P. THOMAS
Michael P. Thomas is a flight attendant whose passions include the coffee in France, the hundred-yen stores in Japan, and the men in Argentina. His writing is continually inspired by his work with the flying public, who flatly refuse to be boring. He writes gay fiction because when he was coming out, he sure was glad to have it to read.
After misspending his youth in San Francisco, he now lives in his native Colorado with his husband. He blogs at misterstewardess.com, and you can follow him on Twitter @MrStewardess.
ABOUT JMS BOOKS LLC
JMS Books LLC is a small queer press with competitive royalty rates publishing LGBT romance, erotic romance, and young adult fiction. Visit jms-books.com for our latest releases and submission guidelines!
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