by Anna Martin
Dylan raised an eyebrow at him. “No.”
Steve laughed. “Okay. You know you can talk to me, though, right? I don’t care who it is.”
It had taken a long time for Dylan to be able to label his sexuality. Their family therapist had said constant positive reinforcement would be good for both of them, even if it felt uncomfortable sometimes. Or most of the time.
“Sure,” Dylan said. “We need to go grocery shopping.”
Steve nodded, used to Dylan’s deflections. “I have time this afternoon.”
“Good. I’ll drive.”
Chapter 5
Saturday night, Frankie was out babysitting for one of her regulars, and James and his dad had taken control of the TV room. The room was dark, and they were marathoning season four of Breaking Bad, a family favorite, since his dad could geek out and talk through the science.
James had been hitting Candy Crush pretty hard when his phone buzzed with a Snapchat.
Is it cheesy if I say I have the house to myself and do you want to come over?
He pressed his lips together to try to hide the smile that was threatening to explode across his face.
I thought you had plans?
Steve had to cancel. He’s going to dinner with a client or something.
“Who are you texting?” James’s dad asked.
“No one,” James muttered.
I can be there in 30 mins?
The reply was almost instantaneous. Sure. Have you eaten? I can order food.
Nah, I’m good thanks. See you soon x
“And I’m going out,” James said, hauling himself off the sofa.
“It’s pretty late, James.”
He looked over at his dad. “It’s eight thirty.”
“Jeez, I’m old. Okay. You’re going over to Anthony’s?”
“Nope,” James said as he shoved his feet into battered Vans sneakers. “Got a hot date.”
“Sure you do.” His dad laughed. “Home by midnight.”
“Dad…,” James whined.
“Midnight,” he said again. “You can pick your sister up on your way if she needs a ride.”
“Fine,” James said. He grabbed his keys from the hook next to the front door and shrugged on a jacket. “See you later.”
James wasn’t sure if he should be offended that his dad had laughed at the “hot date” comment. He dated. Or he could date, if he chose to. He was dating now. It wasn’t his fault his dad had decided James was joking and inferred he was going to Anthony’s place to hang out.
His dad definitely didn’t need to know that James was going to a college guy’s house to hopefully do some pretty good making out.
Dylan’s neighborhood was quiet when James drove through. He guessed it was too cold for anyone to want to be walking the streets. They lived in the middle of California, so it didn’t get stupidly cold, but it was February. James was looking forward to spring.
He parked on the street in front of Dylan’s house. By the time he got to the front door, Dylan was there, pulling it open to welcome him inside.
“Hey,” Dylan said, offering James a soft smile.
“Hey. How’s it going?”
“Good. I’m glad you could come over.”
James finished struggling out of his jacket and toeing off his shoes. He grinned, tilting his body toward Dylan, hoping….
Dylan leaned in and brushed his lips over James’s. Just once. Just gentle.
The first floor of the house was still and dark—no flickering from the TV—and cold too.
“I was upstairs,” Dylan explained as James looked over his shoulder into the house. “I can show you around if you want.”
“Only what you want to show me.”
Dylan leaned in and pressed his face to James’s neck, nosing at the soft shell of his ear. “I want to show you my room.”
“I’m okay with that,” James said, his voice cracking a little.
He felt Dylan’s smile against his neck, and then Dylan grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the stairs.
James took in details of the house as he was dragged through. It smelled like the fabric softener Dylan’s clothes smelled of, and like the spiced candles Frankie burned at Christmas, and something else. There were three floors, Dylan’s room was a loft conversion with a bathroom next door, and though it was big, it felt empty.
That was stupid, James thought, because it was empty; he and Dylan were the only ones here. But it was more than that. It felt like… like the house was meant to have lots of people running around it, and there was just a man and his adult son living there.
“Why do you still live with your dad?” James asked.
Dylan stopped tugging on his arm and shut the door to his bedroom behind them. When he gestured to the bed, James took a seat and shuffled back to lean against the headboard.
“Hmm?”
“Like, you could have moved out, right? For college?”
“I could,” Dylan agreed, turning to face James and running his fingers down James’s arm. “I only moved in here a few years ago, though. I wasn’t ready to move away for college. And I wouldn’t have gotten into a state college anyway. My grades weren’t good enough.”
“Oh.”
“Plus, I like living here. My dad is more like a roommate at this point. We hang out.”
James nodded. “That’s nice. Where is he tonight?”
“We have a roommate agreement not to discuss that.”
It took James a moment to figure it out, and then he blushed. Dylan laughed.
“Oh.”
“I think that was one of the reasons he wanted to adopt a teenager.” Dylan’s eyes sparkled with mischief, dark brown and gold. “I’ve always been fairly self-sufficient. He can go out with his buddies and shoot pool or have a few beers or whatever, and I can take care of myself.”
“Isn’t that….” James struggled for a word that didn’t sound insulting.
“No,” Dylan said before he found it. “I need my own space. I always have. That’s why group homes were such hell. I’m a bit of a loner really.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I don’t mean it in a bad way,” Dylan said. “I’m just comfortable with my own company, that’s all.”
They settled back against the pillows, and James let himself look around.
Dylan kept his room really tidy, with hardly any clutter on the floor or on the shelves. He didn’t have a desk in his room, but he wasn’t an academic student, so maybe that was normal. There were hardly any books, and Dylan didn’t have a TV in his room or a computer. A small laptop peeked out from under the bed, but apart from that, the room was almost impersonal.
James wondered what, if anything, he should take away from that.
“So, do you have plans for college yet?”
James could tell it was a serious question, even though Dylan’s tone was light. James didn’t blame him. It would suck to get into a relationship with someone who was going to move to the other side of the country before the end of the year.
“Me and Anthony are going to UC San Diego.”
“Oh.” Dylan sounded surprised. “That’s….”
“Close? Yeah.” James grinned at him. “Frankie hasn’t decided where she’s going yet. But Anthony’s—I told you about Anthony, right? He’s my best friend.”
“Yeah,” Dylan said.
“Right. So his mom had breast cancer last year. She’s fine now, in remission; it’s all good. But he decided last year he doesn’t want to go far away for college. You know. Just in case she needs him.”
“Does he have a dad?”
“Yeah, but he’s military. Navy. He never wanted to drag his family all over the country with his work—he wanted Anthony to have a settled home life, you know? So he gets posted other places for months at a time. It made Anthony really close to his mom. Not that he’s not close to his dad. But when he said he wanted to go to San Diego, that worked out fine for me, you know? My grades are good en
ough, so….”
“Have you decided on a major yet?”
James shook his head and traced a pattern on the blanket on Dylan’s bed. “Not yet. I might go into teaching.”
“Why do you say it like that?”
“My dad is a teacher. I don’t want to—ugh.”
“What?” Dylan laughed. “I think that sounds cool. I’m sure you’d be a great teacher.”
“Thanks,” James mumbled.
“What age?”
“Kindergarten, maybe? I was reading something in one of my dad’s teaching magazines about how there’s a real lack of male teachers for younger kids. I guess it’s seen as a caring profession, so traditionally female, or some shit. But male teachers can be really beneficial to young kids.”
“I don’t think I had a male teacher until I hit middle school.”
“Right? It’s unusual. I don’t know, though. I might change my mind when I’m at college.”
“It’s good to keep your options open. What’s Anthony studying?”
“He got accepted into some engineering program. He’s super smart.”
“So are you.”
James scoffed. “Not like Anthony. And Frankie is the talented one. I’m just….”
“You’re good enough to get accepted at UCSD. I only got my GED.”
“But you’re doing a doing job.”
Dylan smiled. “Yeah. I wish I’d gotten better grades. I would have loved to do something like engineering. I’m good at poking at machines and figuring out what’s wrong with them. I fixed the washing machine the other week, and Steve looked at me like I was some kind of mechanical messiah.”
“You fixed a washing machine?”
“Yeah. One of the belts in the motor was damaged. It cost me about a dollar fifty to get a replacement part. Steve was already looking at a replacement unit that was, like, over four hundred dollars.” He shook his head. “Stupid.”
“Wow,” James said. “I wouldn’t even know how to start.”
“I used to take things apart all the time when I was a kid,” Dylan said. “It drove my foster mom crazy. She’d come home and the toaster would be in pieces all across the kitchen.”
“Did you put it back together again?”
“Not the first one.”
James laughed. “The first one?”
“That one I sort of broke when I was taking it apart. The next one—the replacement—that had a back that was much easier to take off.”
“So it made sense that you’d want to be a mechanic.”
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” Dylan said. James decided to thread their fingers together, mostly out of curiosity. Their gentle touches weren’t interrupting the flow of their conversation, instead they felt empowering. “A couple of years ago, I didn’t think I’d even get my GED. Steve had to really push me. Otherwise I’d probably be working in a supermarket or something.”
“Well, that would suck,” James said. “I don’t go to the supermarket unless my dad makes me. It would have made it much more difficult to meet you.”
He was incredibly pleased when Dylan leaned over and kissed his cheek.
“So…,” Dylan started slowly, “are you dating anyone else? At school?”
“What? No. Dude, I am not a popular guy in school. I’m the guy whose dad is a teacher, so no one tells me anything about stuff that’s going down in case it gets back to the principal. And the last time I thought someone was interested in me they were actually failing my dad’s class and thought I could change that. Which, you know, I can’t. I haven’t—”
He realized what he was about to say and cut himself off.
“You haven’t what?”
“Ugh. I haven’t really dated anyone from school. Or anywhere else. Not, you know, seriously or anything.”
“Okay. I just wanted to check. I’m not dating anyone else, in case you were wondering.”
“Okay,” James said softly. “Thanks for telling me.”
Dylan’s neutral expressions were so stern, it was like a revelation when he smiled. James decided it was one of the nicest smiles he’d ever seen.
“Wanna make out for a while?”
“Oh hell yes.”
Dylan was laughing as he gently nudged James onto his back and got a knee between James’s thighs. James fought to keep his breathing slow and regular, because if he was honest, he’d never really done this before. He’d never been seduced before, and now he was starting to realize how incredible that experience could be.
Handing over all control to Dylan was easy. Dylan was bigger than James, stronger, and older and had more authority in all sorts of ways. It was almost relaxing, letting Dylan be the one to initiate the touching, the kissing, the slow, easy roll into each other.
From this position, being the kissee rather than the kisser, James was able to run his hands all over Dylan’s strong back and shoulders and down over his impressive biceps. He even ventured into chest territory, smoothing his hands over Dylan’s pecs and down his sides. Abs were difficult from this position and though James really wanted to ask Dylan to take his shirt off, that posed two problems. One, they would have to stop kissing for James to ask and for Dylan to do it. And two, James was already incredibly turned on, his erection straining against his jeans, and Dylan’s shirt coming off would possibly be all it took to tip James over the edge into an embarrassing situation.
He hadn’t been keeping track of time; keeping track of Dylan’s hands and lips had been far more important. Even so, when Dylan flopped onto his back with a soft groan, James thought both no time at all and too much had passed while he was occupied with Dylan’s lips.
James chanced a look over. Dylan had buried his face in the crook of his elbow.
James glanced lower. Dylan was definitely turned on too.
He touched his lips. They felt sore and puffy, possibly a little bruised from Dylan’s stubble. Oh God, apparently that was almost enough to make James embarrass himself too.
“Why did we stop?” James asked, his voice croaking.
“Because I need to take back my self-control.”
“Oh.”
“Before I rip your clothes off and do something we’d both regret.”
“Oh.” That definitely didn’t come out in James’s regular voice. He cleared his throat. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think I’d regret it.”
Dylan chuckled darkly and pressed a palm against his crotch.
“Just… fucking behave, James. I’m trying to treat you right.”
“Oh.” That was a nice feeling. Dylan cared. Fucking hell, Dylan cared.
James patted the bed blindly until he found his phone, then cracked an eye open to check it for messages. There were two, both from Frankie, both sent within the last thirty minutes.
Dad said u had a date, lol
Dont need picking up—have a ride home
That meant James had at least thirty minutes before he needed to be home. If he didn’t have to pick Frankie up, it would only take ten or fifteen minutes to get back. He had a great idea what he could do before he needed to leave.
Monday had been a bitch of a day, and James was already in a bad mood when he got home from school. He shut the front door as quietly as he could, not wanting to have to deal with anyone else in the house.
“James.”
James winced hard. “Yeah?”
“Come here.”
Shit.
James was late, but his dad already knew he had been given detention, and they’d talked about it, so he didn’t think that was what he was going to be grilled about.
He toed off his shoes and left his jacket and backpack in a pile next to the stairs. His dad was in the dining room, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. He did a lot of his grading work in there since it was at the back of the house and mostly quiet. Then again, it was also where all their big family discussions happened.
“Hey, Dad.” He tried for levity. It didn’t work.
“S
it down.”
Double shit.
James took a seat opposite his father and rocked the chair back onto two legs.
“James, I got cornered in the staff room by a colleague earlier. You want to explain what’s going on?”
He really didn’t. “There’s nothing going on.”
“Then why did you get a D on your economics paper? Jeez, James, that’s not like you.”
“I got a D?”
“Yeah, kid, you did. And you wrote a social sciences essay—”
Oh fuck, he knew what was coming.
“—entitled ‘Vaccinate Your Fucking Kids.’ Wanna explain that for me?”
“We had an open essay assignment. To argue something that we were passionate about.”
James watched carefully as his dad pulled his glasses off and rubbed his hands over his face. He looked tired. That made James finally feel a tiny nudge of guilt.
“It was a good essay, James.”
James stopped short. “What?”
“I read it. It’s really good. You’re going to get an A on it when you resubmit it with the profanities taken out.”
James opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again.
“Pick your battles, kid,” his dad said, shaking his head. “Search and replace and reprint it, pick up that A, and thank Ms. Matthews for not failing you. Because she had every right to.”
“Okay.”
“You’re going to rewrite that economics paper too.”
“Dad—”
“Don’t argue with me. You’re going to rewrite it, and you’re going to get at least a B on it, or you’ll rewrite it again. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” James muttered.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on? Is it drugs, James? A girl?”
“No.”
His dad sighed again. “Come on, kid, you’re not like this. You know you can tell me stuff.”
“It’s nothing.”
He waited it out, one moment stretching uncomfortably into another.
“Okay. Go start your homework. Dinner’s at seven.”
James nodded and left without arguing.
At dinner, James picked through his stir-fry, only half listening to Frankie enthuse about the contemporary dance class she was taking. She was top of the class, as always.