by Seth King
“Thomas,” I say soon, very darkly.
“Yes, Wade?”
“I…I want to know what sex feels like with a guy.”
“Are you…are you really asking me that?”
“Yes. Fuck me, Thomas.”
He deliberates for a long time. Then I take his cock in my hand, which I think speeds up the process.
“Okay,” he finally says. “I’ll try things out. But I don’t want to fuck you. It’s Valentine’s Day. I want to make love to you.”
As I pant, Thomas grabs a condom from his bedside table. Wow, he certainly had them handy. A twinge of jealousy runs through me.
“Expecting hookups this trip, were we? All we did was come up here for a ski team contest. I wasn’t even thinking about sex.”
“Ski bunnies,” he shrugs, blushing. “I didn’t know this was coming. Just shut up so you can get fucked, okay?”
“For once I won’t object to that statement, since you mean it quite literally…oooh.”
I inhale as he inserts a thumb into me. Then I moan as he lightly moves it in and out. Damn, I could get used to this. A little too used to it, really.
“Do you feel open enough?”
“You’re supposed to know that,” I say through clenched teeth. “How am I supposed to know?”
“Good point. Just get ready, then.”
I clench my stomach as he slips on the condom. And I don’t feel awkward at all, because even after our estrangement, being with him in any context at all is just like breathing – I don’t even have to think about it, it just happens. He takes a tub of coconut oil, which he puts in his hair every morning, and rubs it all over my hole.
“Don’t worry, I’ve jacked off with this in needy moments, it shouldn’t burn your ass. It never did for me.”
“So…you’ve played with your hole before?” I ask.
“I – fuck, I really gave that one away, didn’t I?”
“It’s fine. I’ve done it, too. And Thomas? Happy Valentine’s Day. Looks like you’re getting laid, after all.”
“Ha. And all I had to do was get into a fist fight. Twice.”
“Shut up and fuck me before I change my mind – or sober up.”
“Okay, okay…”
I hold my breath as he positions himself.
“Wade?” he asks. “I’m really glad this is happening. And at least you’re getting a real Valentine’s gift now.”
“And what’s that?”
“Dick.”
He pulls me forward a little, and his tip makes contact with my hole. And, boom – I am no longer a virgin. I am no longer the same.
Fuuuuck.
“Does it hurt?” he asks, pausing.
“No, it just feels like…being entered?”
“But I’m half an inch inside of you.”
“And I was a virgin, dumbass! And you’re big! So just slow down and cool it.”
“Fine, fine…you know I have no experience at this…”
“Just pretend I’m a chick, then.”
“Good idea. I’ll just pretend I don’t see that thing between your legs.”
I giggle.
“Okay, get ready,” he whispers, his face red and pained. Then he pushes in a few more inches. I gasp and roll back my hips, inadvertently pushing me back even more onto him, impaling me in the most delicious way.
“Fuck,” I moan.
“What? Hurt?”
“In the best way. I’ve never felt anything like this. Fuck me, fuck me harder.”
And he plunges in again. I see us in the mirror, and I drop my head to see it from another angle. Whoa. To see it sliding in and out of me – it’s too much. It’s so sexy that he’s this turned on by me. It feels wrong because of who he is – not hid gender, but our history – but it feels wrong in an electric way. It also doesn’t hurt that he’s an athlete who happens to have the body and ass of a porn star…
My toes curl, my throat burns with need, even my skin is warm and over-sensitive. It’s just so…physical, it’s making me crave him more by the second. Is this why virgins fall head-over-heels for the first person they sleep with? Anyone would fall in love with this. It feels so much more right than our arguing does, than our hatred ever did. This just feels, bizarrely and inexplicably, like home.
He grips my hips and starts fucking me a little harder. Then he slaps my ass. I moan, then try to look like I’m annoyed.
“Hey, I never signed up for the porno treatment.”
“I’m inside you, and you love it. I don’t think you can complain too much.”
“True,” I smile.
“I like how you can take it hard, though. Interesting.”
“Well I’m anything if not a trooper. Now please cum, so I can stop feeling like my insides are exploding again and again...”
I grip him harder and start drilling, and his eyes roll back. I get closer, closer, closer…
And then it comes. My whole body goes numb as I fall into him, and I squirt onto my abs. And then, as I am still climaxing, I do the strangest thing: instinctively, I lean forward and kiss his sweaty head. And he does not recoil from my kiss.
And then he does something even stranger: he kisses me back.
11
Something happens after that. Something golden and glittery wraps around us and lifts us, makes us soar. He holds me tight, I hold him tighter. I kiss him, he kisses me back. Tentatively, but still – he is kissing me. I can never go back to how it was. There can only be tomorrow.
“Thomas,” I whisper soon as we lay in front of the fire, wrapped up in one another.
“Yes?”
“What happened before, over the last few years – it can’t happen again. I feel that already.”
“Okay?”
“I want to know you forever this time,” I say, wine-soaked and overrun with emotion. “The past can’t happen again. Watching you go on via social media pictures, following your life on Twitter – I will go insane.”
He reaches down and grabs my hand, twisting our fingers together. It feels delicate and tender and natural all at once. “Okay.”
“And?”
“And I don’t know what to say yet. I never expected this to happen. Last week we couldn’t be inside the same room.”
“Because we wanted to murder each other, and also-”
“Fuck each other’s brains out. I know. I’ll admit it now. God, even being next to you right now is hard, because I want you again.”
I just lean into him for a while as the fire, which he just replenished, crackles lazily.
“What are we going to do when we get back home?” I ask soon. “Being…together in a world like ours, the sports world…”
He holds out a hand with more force than I’d expected. “I know. Look, I know. Just don’t go there yet.”
“Well, I can’t lose you. Not again. I’m keeping you. It’s the world that’ll have to deal with it.”
“Why do you say it like that?” he asks.
“Because…because I never knew I could feel like this.”
He fights a smile, but it comes anyway. “Kiss me, then.”
“Okay, fine, if I must.”
We kiss for a while. He escapes to pee, and while he is gone I steel myself for something. Then I drink more. I burp. I take a deep breath. If I don’t make a shot at this, I’ll never forgive myself.
“Thomas?” I ask when he comes back.
“Yes?”
“You know I…you know I love you, right?”
He just breathes. Then he frowns. “Well, obviously. I’ve known you since…well, since I can remember. Even before then.”
“But it changed.”
He gulps. “I know it did. For me, too. I’m scared.”
“I think I loved you and missed you so much…”
“Yes?”
“Like, it made me want to cry sometimes,” I say, my eyes wet. “Sometimes, during the phase when we were blood enemies, it would just make me want to cry for no reaso
n at all. Even though you lived five miles away.”
“Why?”
“Because I was just…overwhelmed.”
“Cry, then. Cry. I’m here right now.”
I look directly into his eyes. “But for how long?”
He averts eye contact again. “I don’t know. The thing is…”
“Yes?”
“How do I say this?” he sighs. Soon he clears his throat. “Okay. In my head, I always saw it as…well, we hooked up because we were young and horny, and then we were confused and freaked out, so we recoiled from each other. But obviously, I’m rethinking that now. When did…when did you first realize you thought of me as more than a friend? Do you remember?”
“Of course. One time in particular, you got caught making fun of that awful teacher Mr. Gaetz who kept saying lowkey racist things, and I was terrified you would get expelled and I would stop seeing you every day. I almost threw up with nerves.”
“What? Why?”
“Because…because I treasured being around you, and I thought it was all going to be taken away. I would get so nervous around you, like I swallowed the sun. I still do.”
“Sometimes I feel that way, too. Like I never know to act, or who to be.”
“What if we hooked up for a deeper reason? What if we were already drawn to each other all along?”
He sighs. “I don’t know how to answer that. I just don’t know. We were so young, so clueless…”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?” he asks. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“It’s just that…you know, this isn’t a ‘maybe’ thing. After today, I will not be able to go back to how it was before. You don’t know how hard it got. Because if you did, you’d be begging me to stay.”
“That’s actually very good point you made. We’re getting a real shot at fixing our friendship, and maybe we’re fucking it all up. Why? Why risk ruining our oldest friendship, permanently, if it doesn’t work out? What if it gets weird?”
“But…on the other hand, imagine we could go home and pick up where we left off. Imagine…imagine we could be best friends, and maybe do this fun stuff at the same time, too. Just imagine…”
He looks away. Fuck. This isn’t going well. For a moment I get that hateful feeling again, the annoyance – the little irk I’d feel whenever he’d come around. But I remind myself all those moments were lies. I loved him. And that’s what I hated. I hated the love. I just have to work with him on this.
“We already ruined it,” I say soon. “This is our last shot at saving it. You know that. There has to be a reason this happened, why we were both left behind. Listen to what the world is telling us.”
“I’m trying to,” he says, and something in his eyes changes. I know this is the moment – if his walls are going to come down at all, this is when it will happen. “What are we doing?” he asks, sounding dazed, as he stares into my eyes.
“We’re-”
“No, really,” he interrupts. “What are we doing? Life’s so short. What are we doing?”
“I don’t know,” I breathe soon. “But wherever we’re going, I trust it. Will you make love to me again?”
“What?”
“If…if this is the only night, will you help me make it count?”
He nods, and soon my mouth is around him again.
And so the night never ends. If anything, the connection only grows stronger and more wild. We start rolling around again, but quickly it turns into full-blown sex. I just can’t get enough, and I want to try every position while I can. Who knows – I might never get this chance again. He bends me over the coffee table in front of the fire, I turn on the steam shower and get pushed up against the wall, we fall onto the couch and fuck each other’s brains out until the wall clock displays an ungodly hour. But we can’t stop.
Every moment passes like an hour and a millisecond at the same time. Several times I start crying silently. But I’m not really sad, just…overwhelmed. Full. I’ve never had sex like this. I’ve never even felt any emotion like this, actually. I feel like I am standing on top of the highest mountain in the world, and the mountainsides are collapsing at the same time. I don’t know if I’m exhilarated or just scared shitless – or both, at the same time. Is this makeup sex, or breakup sex, or hate sex, or love sex? What is anything at all?
We finally finish off in the kitchen, against the counter. I can’t get enough, but I can’t take any more, either. I’ve never experienced stimulation on this level.
“Cum, babe,” he whispers, pinching one of my nipples, which no female has ever done to me before. I lean my head back, grunt, and then…
I am shaking with the most intense, and long-lasting, orgasm I have ever experienced. When I recover we make our way, as one mass, to the living room couch, in front of the TV. We gather some blankets from the couches and slide to the living room floor, in front of the fire. I let himself wrap his body up into mine, breathing him in for every second I was without him over the last few years.
Then we drift off to sleep together, accompanied by the sounds of the crackling fire and the whirling gusts of snow outside, gusts that are ushering me to a place I was never even brave enough to dream about before…
12
I’m so blissed-out from the sex, I don’t even know when the border comes between being awake and being asleep – I just know that soon, I am dreaming. ‘
First I see Ernestine, except she is sitting on a bench in a park I’ve never visited before. It seems like one of those town squares in Savannah, Georgia, but then again it’s warped and distorted like most dreamscapes are.
“Sit down,” she says in that mellifluous voice of hers. It is both scary and wonderful to see her again. And her dress is beautiful. We were never very close as neighbors, but I made sure to greet her every single morning, since I know how everyone else on our street treated her. In fact, she’d called the cops just three weeks before her death, after some teenaged boys rode by on bikes and screamed “faggot” and “fairy man” at her.
“Seriously, sit down,” she says. “It’s good to see you again. You were always so friendly.”
“And you, too. Where are we? Where have you been?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she says, waving me off. “Sit.”
I sit next to her and just look at the oak trees. The sunlight is so bright, I have to shield my eyes.
“It’s bright, isn’t it?” she smiles. I note to myself that, for the first time, her makeup has been applied perfectly. She looks so happy.
“Sure is,” I say a little nervously – I’ve never been around a dead person before.
“That’s what happens when you get a taste of the light,” she winks. “It’ll just keep getting brighter and brighter until it swallows you up. But the first taste is the most important. Remember this feeling, kid. Remember it for the long haul.”
I pause and wonder what she means. Before I can respond, though, the dream fades into something else.
Soon I am having the same dream I’ve had a hundred times before – Thomas and I are on the trampoline in my backyard a few weeks before we lost touch forever. In my recurring dream, I will look over and notice every time that he is suddenly gone – he’s simply disappeared while we slept there. The cold will descend then, harsh and unforgiving. Every time it is the same. Every time, he leaves.
But this time, everything is different. I look over, and he is still there. I reach out for him, and my hands feel his warm flesh.
I call out his name, and he calls back.
Yes, this time, everything is different.
This time, he stays.
But in the back of my mind, the question still nags at me.
What will we do when we’re sober?
June 2014
Thomas backs away, terror in his eyes.
“Thomas, what’s wrong?”
“We…we shouldn’t have…don’t you know what happened to Ernestine?”
I try to play cool. “Um
, yeah, I do. What does that have to do with us, though?”
“They killed her. They…they murdered her. She’s fucking dead. Because she was different.”
“So…what?”
“Maybe this was a mistake,” he says, sliding back into his shirt. “Maybe…maybe I gotta go.”
“But…your parents are out of town. You’re supposed to be staying here. When are you coming back?”
“I’m not,” he says, and then he is gone. And something tells me he won’t be back anytime soon.
Monday, February 15
13
I wake up on the floor, in front of the sooty, dying fire. At first I just sort of lay there, my mind blank. But then I freeze as yesterday starts filtering back into my head. Our fight…my near-fall over the cliff…our heart-to-heart in the ski resort lodge…and then everything else…
How should I feel about this? Should I feel bad? Was it all a mistake?
Or was it the beginning of everything new?
I look over for Thomas. He’s not here with me. Oh, shit.
I prop myself up and look around. He’s standing over at the window, staring off at the mountains with a cup of coffee in his hands.
He turns around. His eyes find mine, then they skip away just as quickly. “Just got back from walking out to the parking lot,” he says with a stuff formality that breaks my heart. “Snow plow already came through. We should be good to go.”
“Okay…”
He gulps. “And…we should talk.”
Everything in me stops.
“Yes?” I ask, my heart beating in my ears. I don’t know what he wants to talk about, but I do know that question is never, ever a good thing.
“So. Yesterday was…and last night was…”
“I know.”
“And I really enjoyed…”
“I know. So did I.”
He gets this dreamy, torn look. “But, yeah. After we fell asleep I had a dream, and it was so realistic. I was…I was Ernestine, actually. I was inside her body. I was her on that morning when she got shot – I could see the oil stains on her driveway, I could even smell the exhaust on the car when it drove by with the gun…”