“Sure. But hurry up. I miss you.” His confession forced a goofy grin to pull at my lips. As soon as we said goodbye, Alex turned down the music, but kept her eyes on the road.
“Girlfriend?” There was a hint of accusation in her question.
I scrubbed my hand through my hair, trying to figure out what the best approach was. “Something like that, but it’s nothing serious.” Calling what I had with Dylan “casual” made bile rise in my throat. It was anything but that. I just didn’t need to get into it with Alex.
“That’s me.” I pointed to my house and she parked in the road. Scott was still knocked out in the back, curled up like a baby. I was actually surprised he hadn’t fallen off the seat when the car shifted into park.
“So if it’s nothing serious, can we get together next weekend?” she asked nervously. Even if I was straight, what did she see in me?
“No, I don’t think–”
She cut me off before I could finish. “Come on, Shane. It’ll be fun.” She gave me a pouty face look and I rolled my eyes.
I shocked even myself when I said, “Okay, sure.”
She bounced in her seat, but simply said, “Cool.”
After we exchanged numbers, I quickly added, “As friends.” It was a clarification, not a question.
She leaned across the center console. “Sure,” her voice was pitched low and she trailed a fingernail down the length of my arm. I just rolled my eyes, trying desperately to hide my unease.
I didn’t want to go out with her. It was pretty much the last thing I wanted to do, but I didn’t want to turn her down, make her feel rejected, at least not to her face. I had a week to come up with an excuse and call her to break it off. Maybe it would be easier to do over the phone rather than in person.
I thought of all of this as I softly crept into my house and up the stairs to my room, careful to avoid all the spots that creaked loudly when you stepped on them.
Thankfully, I arrived home before Reid, which left me alone in our bedroom.
I flopped back on my bed, slid my phone out of my pocket, and dialed Dylan. He picked up on the first ring.
“Hey,” his voice bathed over me, sending shivers everywhere.
I sighed into the line, “God, I miss you.”
“I miss you, too. So much.” We’d been apart for a little over a month, but the aching pain of him not being here was not easy to deal with.
“How’s the team?” I asked, genuinely interested in how the fall training league was going. I listened intently as he told me all about his teammates, all the while trying to bite back my jealousy that they got his time when I couldn’t. “Sounds like things are amazing,” I added the “for you” quietly, not without a hint of anger. But the anger was all directed at myself.
“What’s been going on with you?” Even though I couldn’t see it, I could hear his smile. The sounds of sheets and blankets rustled through the line. I filled him in on school – not that there was anything exciting going on with that.
We both tiptoed around the topic of my family. I could tell he wanted to ask, but we hadn’t spoken in so long, neither of us wanted to waste the time talking about things that were never going to change.
“Oh, get this. You remember Scott Henderson, from camp last summer?”
“Yeah.” The tone of that single word was icy and curt. “Why?”
“He’s in my sociology class. I actually went to a party with him tonight.” It wasn’t as if I had done anything wrong, but the tension that hung in the silence between us told me differently. It actually took Dylan so long to say anything that I had to pull my phone away from my ear to see if the call had been dropped. “You still there?”
“Yeah.” His clipped tone put me on edge.
“What’s the problem?” I became defensive.
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit, Dylan. I can hear it in your voice. What’s the problem?” Starting a fight with him was the last thing I wanted, but I technically hadn’t started it.
“He’s an asshole, that’s all.”
I huffed flippantly. “Well, it’s not like I have groupies following me around like you or anything.” Now it was my turn to let the tension-laden silence settle between us.
“I just don’t like him, that’s all.” It sounded like he wanted to say so much more, like there was something brewing beneath his words, but he shut up as I cut him off.
“Here’s a newsflash for you. You’re. Not. Here.” I emphasized each word, throwing them at him in the hopes that they would hurt him as much as his absence wounded me.
I heard him take a deep breath – could imagine him running his hand through his floppy, light brown hair. My fingers twitched with phantom pains. “Don’t you think I know that, babe?” There it was again – the soft, tenderness reserved only for me. “You’re right. I’m not there and it’s killing me. I’m sorry I snapped at you over Scott. I just…there’s something about him I don’t trust.”
I was kind of shocked at his quick recovery, but in all the years I’d known Dylan, he was always the diplomat, always the peacemaker. It was probably those characteristics that drew him and me together in the first place.
I had needed someone to listen, and Dylan was and always would be perfect – in every way imaginable.
That last thought forced a smile to split my face. A devilish smirk quickly followed. “Exactly how sorry are you?”
He heard the amused tone to my words because a sexy chuckle followed my question. “Sorry enough to do whatever it is you’re hinting at,” he quipped. He knew me so well and I loved it.
“Are you alone?” He had to be, but just asking it made things feel more illicit somehow.
“Yeah.” I heard him move on the bed before the click and snap of what I assumed was a door being locked registered in my brain. “You?”
I pulled a face at him, even though he couldn’t see it. “What do you think?”
“I think you miss me touching you so much, it’s taking every ounce of self-restraint you have right now, not to shove your hand in your shorts and touch yourself.” His bluntness made my mouth go dry and my cock get instantly hard.
I pushed my shorts down as I lifted my hips off the bed, freeing my already painfully erect dick. “Isn’t that what you want, too?” My words were breathless as I wrapped my hand around myself.
“More than anything.” A low groan rumbled in my ear and I could tell that his hand was just as busy as mine. “What are you thinking about right now? What is it that you want, Shane?”
“You,” I groaned as I stroked myself relentlessly. “Your mouth. I miss the heat of your mouth.” Just the thought of his lips wrapping around my cock forced a bead of moisture to fall from my tip.
“And I miss the way you taste. Just imagine my tongue licking you all over before taking every single inch of you deep into my throat.” For a moment, the only noise shared between us was the breathless panting of our joined pleasure. I was about to explode and he was close, too. I heard it in his commands.
“Make yourself come, Shane. Do it like I would.” His words were laced with desire, with lust.
My hips began to move quickly, without any rhythm as I fucked my hand. I spit in the palm of my hand before tightening my grasp. It was nowhere near the heavenly feeling of Dylan giving me a blow job, but it would have to be good enough for now.
Imagining him doing the same had me racing toward a blinding light. “Dylan…” I growled his name as my balls pulled tight, as tingles went racing from the base of my spine.
“Oh, fuck! I’m coming.” His sigh of relief pushed me over the edge. My heart pounded in my chest as I struggled to pull in enough oxygen. He sounded about the same.
Not knowing when Reid would be home, I cleaned up quickly. “I need to see you.” The gruff huskiness of his earlier words was still there and I loved that I affected him. Drove him as crazy as he drove me.
“Maybe I can get there next week. I can tell my dad it’s a meeting
with the coach or something.” He’d more than likely demand to go with me, but if I dropped it on him at the last minute, he’d have no choice. I hated the pull he had over my life and I was dying to break free.
“We don’t have games next weekend, so that would be perfect.”
A second later, Reid drunkenly stumbled through the door, essentially ending our conversation. “I’ll call you during the week and we’ll figure it out.”
“Okay, babe. Talk to you soon.”
“Goodnight.” Reid must have caught a glimpse of the satisfied look on my face, or heard a touch of the longing in my voice, because as he sank onto the edge of his bed, he stared over at me. A loaded question dangled on the tip of his tongue.
“Whadya get laid or somethin’?” he asked, his words slurring together. I didn’t even want to think about how he’d gotten home. It was up to him to learn some life lessons on his own. I wouldn’t always be here to do that for him.
“Shut the fuck up, asshole!” I grabbed one of the pillows from behind my head and launched it at him, hitting him square in the face.
“You totally did!” He laughed before asking, “Who is she?”
I faltered for a moment, my brain still stuck on Dylan. If there was anyone I could tell, it was probably Reid, but not now. I still wasn’t ready.
So instead of the truth, Reid got lies, the last thing he deserved. I told him about how I met Alex and how we were going out this week. He seemed to buy it; more importantly, he seemed happy for me.
And with thoughts of possibly seeing Dylan in just a few days, I pushed the lies to the back of my brain. I’d deal with them later, because, for the moment, I was happy too.
“You’re running around this place like a chicken with its head cut off.” John, my roommate, poked his head out from behind his textbook, calling out to me from across the room. “You’d think the President was coming here.”
His words made me stop in my tracks. Realizing that I was in fact going a bit overboard, I shrugged. “I just haven’t seen him in a while. Guess I’m nervous and excited, too.”
He jumped down from his bed and closed his book before tossing it on the mattress. “There’s a fine line between excited and obsessive. It’s a dorm room. He’s a guy. You haven’t seen him in two months. He’s not going to care what the room looks like. He just wants to see you.” John held my shoulders, shaking me on each reassurance.
“You’re right.” I sighed and John stepped away, grabbing his hoodie and bag from the hook in his closet. “And thanks for staying at Elise’s this weekend.”
“No problem. But we’re still on for later, right?” He slung his bag over his shoulder and stood in the doorway.
“Yeah, man. Thanks again. We’ll meet you at Elise’s around eight.”
If there was ever a contest for “Best Roommate Assignment of the Year”, I’d have won it with John. He stood at about six-foot-four and weighed about two-twenty-five, but there was nothing mean or rough about him. Despite his multiple championship titles in wrestling, and the promise of a huge college career ahead of him, John was anything but the stereotypical asshole jock.
He was a sophomore and, since plans for an off-campus apartment with a few of his wrestling buddies fell through at the last minute, he was stuck in the dorms. By the time he filled out all the residence paperwork, the only rooms that were left were in the freshman building.
After the awkwardness of initially meeting one another wore off, we found that we got along really well.
I hadn’t planned on telling him I was gay right away, but nothing that big ever goes as planned.
We were eating dinner in the student café when the topic of girlfriends had come up. He brought it up, not me. But as soon as the words were out of his mouth, I thought I should have asked first. Maybe it would have made me look more normal.
“So what’s your situation?” I took a sip of my iced tea, staring over the rim of my glass.
Situation? What the hell did he mean?
Panic invaded my system, thinking that he had somehow figured me out. I put my glass down, took a huge bite of my sandwich, and tried my best to keep my cool. Around a mouthful of food, I mumbled, “There’s no deal.” I swallowed my food, and his hard stare held me frozen in place. Growing defensive, my eyes narrowed. “Am I supposed to have a deal?” My spine straightened and my tone hardened.
His face split wide with laughter. “Dude, you should see your face. Chill out! I was just asking if you had a girlfriend back home. That’s all.” John held his hands up in front of his chest, palms facing out in a mock-surrender.
I slumped in my chair, exhausted already from one short and non-threatening exchange with my roommate. I had to learn how to calm down and just be who I was, unapologetically. Otherwise, I’d have a freaking heart attack before the end of my freshman year. John got up to refill his drink and I gave myself the mental pep-talk I so obviously needed.
When he came back to the table, I bit the bullet and, just like I had told my parents right before I left, I blurted out my truth. “I’m gay.”
I waited for him to curse, or spit in my face. To stand up and call me a homo or a fag while everyone else stared on in glaring contempt. But he just shrugged his large shoulders and took a sip of his water. “And I’m straight.”
I stared at him in confusion. That was it? He wasn’t going to say anything? John laughed as he saw me trying to figure out what the hell just happened. He crossed his arms and leaned across the table, keeping his voice low enough so that only the two of us could hear. “My uncle is gay. He’s really close with my mom and my sisters, and I learned very early in life that you love who you love. Gay or straight it doesn’t matter. So I’m good with it. There’s no need to worry.”
I took a deep breath. “Thanks, man. I was worried. I mean it’s not an easy thing to say.”
John twisted his face, processing what I had just said. “Why not? It’s who you are. And if anyone has problem with it, they’ll have me to answer to.” He made a ridiculous pose, flexing his muscles like a body builder.
“You’re an ass.” I laughed at him, but silently thanked God that he really did seem fine with who I was.
Then why was I still afraid?
“Whatever. But listen, this is college. This is where you get to be who you want to be without having to worry about what the hell anyone else thinks. Just know that I’ve got your back. Besides, in the few days I’ve known you, you seem pretty cool. So who the hell cares if you’re gay? Let it be their problem. Not yours.”
After I came out to him, I resolved not to hide who I was to anyone. Like John said, let it be their problem, not mine. That night, he went on to tell me about his girlfriend Elise who lived in an off-campus apartment. They had dated in high school, and came here together. He had a wrestling scholarship, so for her it was an easy decision to go where he was. Her plans for off-campus living hadn’t fallen through, and didn’t that work out just perfectly for Shane and me.
I closed the door behind John and scanned the room. He was right. Shane wouldn’t care how the room looked, but I could barely contain my excitement. The idea of having a whole weekend to ourselves, without having to hide from anyone, made me happier than I had been in a long time.
Just as soon as I flopped down on my bed, sorting out the million thoughts racing around in my head, there was a light knock on the door. I jumped up so quickly, I nearly tripped over my own two feet as I raced to the door.
My heart hammered in my chest knowing that it was Shane on the other side. But when I opened the door and saw the man standing on the other side, it both was and wasn’t Shane. He’d lost weight; enough to make me have to do a double take to make sure it was really him. Even though he had a pair of sunglasses on, I could see the dark circles under his eyes.
“You look like shit, man,” I blurted out, unable to say anything but the first thing that came to mind. He stepped into the room, his shoulders slumped, his frame weak and frail. The du
ffle bag he was carrying dropped to the floor with a soft thud. After taking off his sunglasses and tucking them into the collar of his grey polo, he looked at me and I saw something more disturbing than the weight loss or the bags under his eyes. Sadness unlike any I’d ever seen pervaded Shane’s usually bright hazel eyes. His gaze fell to the floor.
“Hey,” I tipped his chin up, loving the feel of his prickly stubble, “you okay?” He leaned into my touch and wrapped his arms around my waist, resting his head on my shoulder.
“Much better, now,” he murmured against my neck. We held onto each other for a few minutes, just breathing each other in before we finally closed the door and stepped fully inside.
We moved over to my bed. It was really the only place we could sit. There wasn’t a sofa or anything like that. The room was barely big enough to fit the two sets of furniture a standard double room required.
He kicked off his shoes before climbing onto the mattress. Leaning up against the wall, we sat there quietly for a minute, staring at the trippy tapestry John had hung on the wall behind his bed. I laced our fingers together, stroking my thumb over Shane’s wrist before turning to face him.
“Talk to me, please,” I spoke softly, afraid to scare him away or piss him off. There was definitely something wrong, but I didn’t want to make him talk if he didn’t want to.
Taking a deep breath, he turned to face me, and smiled wide. “I’m good.” His smile took on the dopey lopsided quality I loved so much. “I promise.” He squeezed my hand for an added reassurance and I smiled back.
“So what’s on the agenda for the day?” he asked, a hopeful lilt in his voice.
It was early in the afternoon. There was plenty we could do, but all I could think about was staying in bed with him. I just wanted to be with him. “There are a few parties we could go to. John and Elise want to meet you. Or…”
“I like the sound of or.” He pulled my face to his and attacked my mouth with his. His lips we rough and demanding. I loved every second of it.
Thrusting his tongue into my mouth as he pushed me down onto the bed, turned me on and shocked me at the same time. Our hands were everywhere within seconds. I pulled his lower lip in between my teeth, biting him before licking over the same spot. “So, I guess that’s a no on the party,” I joked between kisses.
Let Love Live Page 9