It hits me in a moment of clarity that I don’t want to lie to him anymore. And I’m no longer afraid he’s going to ditch me if I tell him about my infatuation with him. Sure, it might be awkward for a while, but maybe if Chris tells me he’s not interested, I’ll be able to douse the flame and move on.
I pause the game for the second time and toss the controller on the carpet, turn to him with my legs crossed in front of me like we’re in kindergarten during share time.
“We need to talk,” I say and coach myself to be honest. Just lay it on the table. Now’s the time, no more stalling. Real men share their feelings, right? At least, this one does.
“I’m sorry I made you watch that video,” Chris says, perhaps thinking that’s what this is about.
“It’s not that.” I study my hands for a minute, willing them to stop shaking. “I lied to you about a few things.”
“Oh yeah?” I glance up to see his eyes shift away. He looks guilty, like this one time he cheated in Risk by gaming the dice and I caught him. That look.
But I know deep down that Chris is true blue and whatever I tell him, our friendship can handle it, and if I don’t tell him now, I might never do it. Even while I don’t expect him to act on it except to be mildly horrified, I know I can’t continue on like this, constantly thinking about what I should say to him and worrying he’s going to find out I like him because I’m smiling too eagerly or staring at him for too long or whatever crazy nonsense my head has convinced me not to do.
I clear my throat and submerge my fingertips into his plush carpet to have something real to hold on to. “That night in Sebastian. It meant something to me.” I exhale and study him. He still looks caught, but he’s nodding slowly, eyes locked on mine.
“It meant something to me too,” he says softly.
Umm, okay, but what?
“It didn’t seem that way.” I wish I didn’t sound so whiny about it.
He stretches his arms in front of him, then tucks his hair behind his ears and stares at the carpet. “I panicked, Theo. I didn’t know if it was something you wanted, or if you just did it because I told you to.” He looks up and searches my face. “I still don’t know.”
“I wanted it,” I say before I can back out or blow it off. I try to keep my voice even and not falter because I don’t want to sound weak and needy. “I have for a while. I didn’t want to tell you because I wasn’t sure if you were into guys or me and even if you were, I didn’t want it to ruin our friendship.”
He takes a breath that seems to last forever. I watch his chest expand and then deflate. Chris isn’t one to rush his words. “How long have you felt this way?” he asks.
“I don’t know. A year? Maybe longer. I started noticing… things… last fall.”
“Things?” His eyebrows lift, the hint of a grin on his lips.
“You’re going to make me say it?” Chris nods, his smile growing wider. He’s going to make me say it. “Boners, Chris. Huge friggin’ hard-ons. Don’t act like you haven’t noticed.”
Chris laughs for, like, a while, to the point where we’re no longer laughing together, if we ever were. “I thought you might have a medical condition,” he rasps between guffaws.
“Har dee har har.”
When he finally stops, he reaches out and squeezes my shoulder. “I’ve felt this way longer.”
Poof. Mind blown.
“Why the hell didn’t you say anything?” I say in a rush of passion. I’m not going to lie, I’m a little pissed. I’ve been wrestling with this for a while. Completely paranoid. Completely out of my mind.
“It freaked me out, Theo. I mean, it still does.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know, eighth grade?”
I do a little mental math. “Eighth grade? That was, like, years ago.” I can’t even believe this. We’d only been friends for a year or so, and he already had feelings? How did I not pick up on this? Oh, that’s right, all the making out with chicks. “What about all those girls… freaking Kelli Keyhoe?”
He shrugs. His nonchalance is making me crazy. “I didn’t think you’d be into it,” he says, “and I didn’t want to screw up our friendship either. Kelli was easy compared to you.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about. Easy? Like, she’s a slut and I’m not? “What does that even mean?”
He shakes his head and smiles at me with brotherly affection, like he does whenever I say something completely dweeby or weird.
“You’re a little clueless sometimes, T.”
“I’m clueless?” I point to myself, completely baffled and indignant. He’s the clueless one as far as I’m concerned.
“Yeah, I’ve been making moves on you for years.”
“You have?” I ask incredulously. There’s absolutely no proof of that. I mean, I would know. “When?”
“My whole eighth-grade year. All we ever did was wrestle here on my bedroom floor.”
I glance down at the carpet. Chris did go through a phase where he wanted to show me all these wrestling moves. I had an awful lot of rug burns that year. I thought he’d go out for the high school team, but he never did.
“I thought you were just trying to prove how much stronger than me you were.”
Chris gives me a hard look. “By pinning you against the ground over and over?”
It did take an awful long time for him to count to three. How could I not have noticed that? But straight guys do that sort of thing all the time. There’s no way I could have known there was anything behind it.
“Shit.” I look at him. “So, are you gay?”
He shrugs and goes wide-eyed. “I don’t know. All I know is I think about you all the time. Dirty thoughts, T. Really filthy. Like, pornographic. That night in Sebastian….” He sucks in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “All I’ve wanted since then is to get you alone in my tent. I have these schemes to kidnap you and….” He shakes his head, a small smile curving his pink lips. His face looks a little flushed. “You don’t want to know.”
I probably do, in fact. I can’t believe he’s had feelings for me all this time and hasn’t said anything. He tells me everything. “You should have said something,” I reiterate.
“I tried. I mean, I thought you’d pick up on it. Then after that night in Sebastian, you said it was a mistake. I saw you giving your number to Ryanne on the beach and thought there might be something there. Then you started hooking up with Dave.” He shakes his head and facepalms. “What a mess.”
I cannot believe we were both struggling with the same exact thing, in silence, for so long. In fact, I’m a little bitter. The whole Dave fiasco could have been avoided if we’d just manned up.
“So, what do we do now?” I ask him.
“I don’t know. I still don’t want to screw this up.” He lifts his eyes to stare at me, and my gaze drifts to his mouth, thinking about how long I’ve wanted to kiss those lips, how many girls have straddled his lap, draped over him like a flesh Snuggie, how badly I’ve wanted that permission to touch him myself.
“Maybe the reality won’t match up to the fantasy,” I tell him. “Then we could just, you know, move on.”
“You think we should test it?” Chris asks in a deep, gruff voice.
I scoot toward him so I’m kneeling in front of him with my knees spread wide. I reach down and cup his face in my hands while leaning in. Our mouths knock together somewhat awkwardly. His top teeth scrape against my bottom lip. I don’t think he was expecting my advance. Instead of pulling away, Chris grips the back of my head so it’s solidly in his grasp. Our mouths meet again, softly this time. I part my lips a little and his tongue slides across my own, like licking an ice cream cone, then curls inside my mouth. Chris’s tongue is inside my mouth. My brain shoots off a string of fireworks, and I force myself to relax and let him show me what to do. My hands migrate to the back of his neck, where my fingers get tangled in the soft curls of his hair. I forget for a minute that it’s Chris and think Wow, he
’s a good kisser, then wonder if I’m moving my tongue at the right speed or opening my mouth wide enough, if I’m being too slobbery or eager.
Just shut up and enjoy it.
“Come here.” Chris shifts so he’s on his knees with our chests pressed together. His body radiates heat and his chest so fits nicely against my own. My mouth opens wider as our tongues find their groove, making sweet, sucking noises as we kiss. It could be only seconds or several minutes—I lose track of time and my thoughts drift away. There’s only room for the soft press of Chris’s lips against mine, the slow give and take of our tongues as they become better acquainted, and the flame of desire he ignites in my belly.
The rest of me gets all gooey and bendy except for my lone soldier, at full attention and nudging Chris’s thigh somewhat obscenely.
Chris pushes me back roughly, and I think it might be to make me stop, but then my back is flat on the carpet and he’s on top of me, grinding against me. His hands grip my wrists so they’re pinned above my head, his mouth mashed with mine while he makes his little humming noises. He positions himself so his hips are between my thighs, and I spread my legs wider to make room for him.
“Unghh.” I mutter something unintelligible and arch my back as my cock strains painfully against him like an arrow seeking release. Chris’s mouth latches on to my neck while he props himself on either side of me on his elbows like he’s doing push-ups, still thrusting against me.
“Take it off,” he orders and backs off for a moment. I can only assume he means my clothes. I rip off my shirt like Superman, and Chris does the same. His physique is decidedly more in the vein of an actual superhero. I almost come right then at the sight of him, his broad tanned chest and pink, rubbery nipples, his smell flooding my senses like a tantalizing mist. “Everything,” he commands, “take everything off.”
I have no reservations with Chris. Unlike Dave, I trust Chris implicitly. Anything he wants, I’ll give it to him. It’s just that simple.
“You feel so good,” Chris growls as he climbs, naked, on top of me again, riding his dick alongside my own. The heat rises like a fever and radiates out of my every pore as I reach down and grab both our cocks in my hand, jacking us off at the same time in a fervor. Chris’s mouth covers mine and then trails off across my cheek like he’s forgotten we’re kissing. He buries his face in my neck, sucking hard, teeth scraping my skin as he rides me like a dog. I love how wild and unrestrained he is, how perfectly Chris. He doesn’t care about how he looks or the sounds he’s making, which makes me not care either so I’m really able to let loose. Our bodies grind against each other, rough and dirty, trying to get each other off as fast as we can. There’s a sticky wetness on my stomach, and I think I must have come, but no, not quite. Still hard and aching and tender to the touch. Chris climbs off to access the damages, then bows down to finish me off. He’s barely latched on before I explode inside his mouth.
Sad to say, neither of us lasted very long.
“Whoa,” he says and spurts a mouthful of jizz onto my stomach. Like I said before, I’m not very tidy.
He wipes his arm across his mouth and stretches out across my chest, panting in my ear like an animal, hot and breathy. I love the weight of him, love that he’s crushing me into the carpet, his limbs spread over me in conquest. P.S. I surrender.
“Shit,” he says after a minute. The haze of carnal lust clears, and he glances around like he can’t believe what just happened. He sits up on his knees, his muscular thighs still straddling my hips, fine blond hair against tanned skin. I rub my hands along his muscular quads, and he stares at me with a wide-eyed look on his face. “What are we going to do now?”
I recognize this face from the morning after in Sebastian. He’s freaked out. I thought it was because he regretted it, but I realize now he’s truly scared shitless. Thinking you might be gay is one thing. Acting on it is another. I’m so used to Chris taking the lead, so effortlessly, that I didn’t realize he might need me to take the lead on this one.
“I need a shower,” I tell him, pointing politely to the pile of jizz pooling on my stomach, some of which is his and some of which is my own, “and you might want to rinse your mouth out.”
“Screw you, man,” he says and punches my shoulder.
I laugh and grip my arm like it hurt, but it’s only for his benefit.
“I think I gave you a hickey,” he says and turns my chin to inspect it closer.
“Yeah, for a minute there I thought you were a vampire.”
“I can’t believe I did that.” He touches my neck as though needing proof. “It’s, like, bruised and shit.”
“It’s cool. I like it a little rough.”
“You do?” Chris says, stupefied, because somewhere in the last five minutes, he misplaced his sense of humor.
“Maybe. I don’t know. I was just kidding.” I snap my hips to remind him of the plan, and he climbs off me in a daze.
Chris is kind of zoned out while I shower, sitting on the toilet seat, watching me wash up. He wiped himself down with a wet washrag, but I got most of the spillage. After the Dr. Giggles incident, his parents replaced the curtain with a glass door. I’m tempted to invite him in, but I don’t think he’s ready for cutesy couple shit like washing each other’s backs. He looks pretty stone-cold terrified right now, coming to grips with the fact that he also has a taste for cock. Even in South Flaaarida where straight guys wear pink, there’s some real homophobic haters out there. For proof, just check out What’s in Wooten’s mouth?
I turn off the water. Chris’s eyes track me as I dry off and wrap the towel around my waist. Chris is still naked as he grabs hold of the towel and gently tugs. My dick is definitely ready for round two and makes it known rather obnoxiously, but I sense from the way Chris kisses me softly on the lips, he’s looking for something gentler and sweeter.
“Come on.” He leads me back to his bedroom, nods at my junk, and says, “Put that away so I can focus.” He tosses my boxer briefs at me and puts on his own. He sits on the edge of his bed looking sort of dejected, like he just got told he didn’t make the team.
“What’s up?” I ask him while I redress.
“I thought I might be bi, but this is, like, straight-up gay.” He looks like he might be on the verge of a panic attack himself.
“How’s the reality match up to the fantasy?”
“It’s hot,” he says, and I smile, but he doesn’t look too pleased about it.
Chris leans forward, cradling his head in his hands, doing his wrinkled forehead stress face. “I have to tell my parents. My dad….”
He’s definitely panicking now. I kneel down at his feet and resist the urge to touch him. Even though we just did things we’ve never done before, I don’t want to assume he wants my affection or force myself on him. “We don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for. Or tell anyone. We don’t even have to do this again if it’s too much.”
“I want to, I’m just….” He glances up at me, brown eyes wide. “I’m freaking out, T.”
I reach for one of his hands and squeeze his fingers to bring him back to the here and now. “I get it, Chris. It’s a big deal. It’s okay to freak out.”
“I need some time,” he says, and I sense that he needs a little space to process as well. I back away, find my phone and keys, while Chris watches me with a stoned expression on his face.
“Can you take me to the DMV tomorrow after school?” I ask him. My mom could do it for me, but I want Chris there, partly because that’s how it was always supposed to be, and also because I want to show him we can be friends, just friends, if that’s what he wants.
“Yeah, of course.” He stands to walk me out. He’s still shirtless, wearing only his briefs, his junk bulging against the thin material. I bite my lip. This isn’t going to be easy, but at least I no longer have to lie to him or hide it.
“See you tomorrow,” he says absently, then grabs for my shirt with one hand and pulls me in close for another kiss.
My mouth melts against his like warm chocolate. When we finally break apart, Chris seems reluctant to let me go.
“Take care, Boss,” I tell him.
“Don’t let your mom see that hickey.”
“Heard.”
I gallop down the stairs and out of his house. It’s late now and the streetlights are on, bathing the streets in an oily yellow glow. I grab an old skateboard from my garage and take a tour of the neighborhood, thinking about Chris and all the thoughts that must be swirling around in his head right now. I’m not going to pressure him or make any demands. I’ve made my feelings known, and that’s all I can do. I think of Gloria tucking the napkin into my uncle’s shirt and laying out his food for him in preparation for the feast.
I’ve set the table for Chris and served up the meal. It’s up to him to take the first bite.
Headroom, Something that Sounds Dirty but Isn’t
MONDAY MORNING is my first day back at school postouting. To hide the huge gnarly hickey Chris gave me, I wear one of his old polo shirts and pop the collar, like some of the assholes at school who do it as part of their preppy look. I also bring my cans to school, even though you’re not supposed to wear them in the hallways. I need to drown out the static coming my way. Mostly it’s dudes asking me what’s in my mouth and girls giggling when they think I’m not paying attention. A few guys call me a fag, but it’s pretty halfhearted. No one tries to kick my ass or says anything as nasty as what’s online. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.
Right before lunch I’m at my locker, just trying to keep my head down, when someone taps me on the shoulder. I glance over and Ryanne’s holding up her phone. If it was anyone else, I’d ignore them, but I have a soft spot for Ryanne, who always goes out of her way to say hi to me when we pass by in the hallways. I slide my cans around my neck and say what’s up.
When Everything Is Blue Page 16