Chapter 6
David woke up first, foiling my plan to rouse him with a blow job. Whereas I had to drag myself up every morning at oh-dark-thirty and relished my sleeping-in days the way a sailor treasures leave, David was downright chipper at six-thirty.
“It’s okay. You sleep longer.” He kissed my shoulder. “I usually go for a run, then come back and shower.”
“How about you get your workout here? Then we shower together?” I held the covers open for him to crawl back in. Round two last night had left me boneless, my usual nerves too blissed out to overthink things like usual.
“What did you have in mind?” He slid back in beside me, fuzzy legs rubbing against mine, sending heat straight up to my groin. He rested a hand on my chest.
Last night, we’d ended up rubbing off together a second time. And that was lovely, long and slow and oh so sweet, with lots of kissing until he’d finally wrapped a hand around us both and stroked us over the edge. But right now, sleepiness and leftover good juju from last night had me a bit bolder.
“You feel like fucking?”
“Didn’t we . . . ah, you mean . . .” His face turned dusky red.
“It’s okay if you’re not ready.” I stretched to kiss him. I could feel his heart thumping under my palm.
“That really what you want?” Cupping my face, he gazed into my eyes like he expected to find deception there.
“I’m dying to feel you in me, but I can be patient. Whenever you’re ready.”
He inhaled sharply, his eyes going hotter. Yeah, he definitely wasn’t repelled by the notion. I rolled so I was more on top of him and could kiss him easier. Nipping at his lips, I let the kiss build slowly, licking my way into his mouth, sucking on each lip in turn. This was more than enough, and I tried to tell him that in my kiss. Frot and oral and David could make me a happy guy for a long, long time.
“I want you,” he whispered as he pulled back. “But I . . . uh . . . don’t have condoms.”
“I do.” I scampered off the bed before he could change his mind and retrieved my wallet from my pants. I’d come prepared. Hope and hard-up dick sprang eternal. By the time I got back to the bed, David had retrieved a bottle of lube from his nightstand. The idea of him beating off with a slick fist had my blood rushing to my already painfully hard dick. Condom in hand, I straddled his waist.
“How do you like it?” he said against my jaw. “Want it to be good for you.”
God, he was sweet. “You on top.”
Not that I was adverse to playing cowboy, but I really wanted to be surrounded by David, to feel him straining above me, to grab his shoulders and pull him close like I was never letting him go. For once in my life, I knew exactly what I wanted, and it was him.
“Show me what you like.” He grabbed the lube with one hand and my hand with the other. His near reluctance worked like an odd aphrodisiac for me, made me more assertive than usual. Raising one leg up, I worked some lube around my rim.
David’s eyes never left me as he knelt in front of me. He watched me for a few seconds, then his finger joined mine. “This okay?”
“Yesss.” My breath whooshed out as the tip of his finger penetrated me. Together we worked me open, and I had to keep reminding myself not to hold my breath. This strange, intimate space made me afraid to breathe lest I disturb this beautiful new landscape we were charting together.
“Now?” he asked, his hand trembling as he withdrew it.
“Please. Want you.”
His thighs were tight against mine and I could feel the tension in his muscles as he slowly pressed forward.
“Don’t . . . want . . . to hurt you.”
“You won’t.” I breathed around the tight pinch, trying not to let it show on my face. David’s expression was so earnest, eyes wide, mouth open—like it would kill him to stop, but he’d do it in an instant for me.
It wasn’t my body he was at risk of hurting; it was my heart. It felt like my heart beat in time with his thrusts. Beat for him. Like he was my sole reason for existing right then.
The rub against my gland was exquisite; David’s thrusts found the right angle effortlessly. Everything about the fuck was fluid—his motions, our kisses, my hands running up and down his back.
Sweat pooled between us and our breath came in synchronized pants, both of us pushing toward release even as we tried to make it last. We didn’t need words or even eye contact; our bodies followed each other like this was a dance they’d long since memorized. I reached for my cock at the same instant he did, and David laced our hands together so that we both stroked me off. The pull of our hands, the pressure of him slamming against my gland; it was all too much.
“Ooooh. Fuck.” I came in thick ropes that squished between our fingers. I was still shuddering when David’s hips stuttered, pushing deep a final time as he came too.
“Robby.” Head thrown back, his face scrunched up, he gave a helpless shout. The sight was so intensely erotic that it made my cock pulse again, made a deep aftershock wave pass through me, the afterburn of my orgasm intensified by the sight of his.
After a nap and a mutual shower that ended up in more sex, we finally had pancakes about the same time we usually had our Sunday brunches. I liked this sans shirts version way better. We sat at his tiny table and I educated him on why his drip coffeepot had to go and he told me about the huge breakfasts his grandparents would host.
He insisted on doing the dishes, and no longer powered by last night’s lust, I took a moment to peruse his place. The small living room ended in a pass-through to a galley-style kitchen that had a breakfast bar open to the living room. The room was pretty much spotless—David’s clean-freak routine had ensured that. The whole place felt sterile as naval barracks; there wasn’t a lot of David’s personality to spot. No wall art. No bookshelves.
“You play the Xbox much?”
David looked up from the sink and I nodded at his flat screen TV, which had both a DVD player and a game console attached. Below the TV were several pull-out drawers, the kind that could hold a whole library of DVDs out of sight.
“Some.” He looked up from the dishwasher. “Just downloaded a really cool snowboarding thing. Wicked runs and neat soundtrack.”
“SSX Tricky? I love that game.”
“Yeah? We should play sometime.”
“Want me to cue up a game?”
“Sure.” There was the sound of the dishwasher kicking on and then David joined me. I reached to turn on the console but stopped, my hand hovering above the on button. Next to the DVD player were the only other personal items in the room: three framed photos. One of a smiling female version of David and two toddlers—dark hair, long noses, reluctant smiles. Definitely the sister and her kids. The second photo showed the same kids but older, more like five and seven, with David, holding up a giant fish.
“You fish?”
“Not lately.” Like me, his eyes weren’t on the fishing photograph; they were glued to the third photo. Blond dude, couple of years older than me, David off to one side. They weren’t touching in the picture or even looking at each other, but I knew instantly who it was. Dead boyfriend whose name I didn’t even know. He looked like a young Brad Pitt playing a sheriff’s deputy. All dark blond hair and blue eyes and sun-kissed skin and an all-American smile. Cockiness radiated from him like a search beam. He probably had no problem telling David exactly what he wanted.
Next to me, David’s eyes were distant, and he chewed on his lip. I didn’t want to think about where his thoughts had gone, but I had a pretty good guess. I’d been feeling all smug about the sleepover and giving David something he hadn’t had before, but now that smugness turned into self-doubt. Didn’t really matter that the dude had apparently treated David like shit; the David in the picture practically glowed with love and happiness, eyes crinkled, no worry lines like my David had. David had loved the jerk, and nothing, not even me, could ever make that loss okay.
“I should probably get dressed.” My voice felt all tight and thin.
“Yeah.” David’s voice sounded faraway. I crossed quickly to the hallway, not able to stand there doing some sort of weird penance a second longer.
“I should probably think about heading out.”
“Wait. You don’t want to play?” Catching up to me at the bedroom door, David grabbed my shoulder. He touched my face tentatively, like he hadn’t spent the night becoming intimately acquainted with its contours. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine. It’s later than I thought and . . .” I was scrambling and David’s raised eyebrows said he knew it too. I pulled away to go hunt down my shirt.
“I’m screwing this up, aren’t I? Just like last night.” David sat on the edge of the bed.
“No, you’re not.” As much as I was frustrated and confused, I hated the sad puppy look on his face, the way his eyes turned down and his chin drooped. I shrugged into my shirt. “I just got cold.”
Cold feet was more like it. The picture of the dead lover had been like ice cubes landing in a perfect cappuccino, ruining the cozy, snuggly feel of the morning. Now, though, I wanted that feeling back. I wanted that look off his face. Wasn’t his fault I had issues about the ex.
“It’s okay.” I went and sat next to him on the bed and took his hand. “I’m pretty sure I’m screwing this up too. I just . . . you must have loved him a lot. You looked so different in that picture. Happier.”
“Crap. I knew I should have put the pictures away—”
“You don’t have to hide that part of your life from me. I want to know more.”
“You really want to know about Craig?” His foot swung back and forth over the gray carpeting.
“I do.” I squeezed his hand. Much as I already hated the dude, I was desperate to know the whole story, to finally open the part of David that had been locked away. My blood felt like it had been run through a milk frother: equal parts anticipation and wariness.
“He was closeted. I thought I was happy with what he could give me. But I wasn’t.”
I nodded. I’d figured as much.
“Like he didn’t even think of us as a couple per se. Never used that word. And what we did . . . we were friends, sure. But it wasn’t dating. He saved dating for women. I tried to get over him in college. But I just kept ending up back in the same place.” He gave a bitter laugh, his fingers tensing. “He even got married briefly. And I . . . I was an idiot.”
“No, you weren’t. You loved him.” It killed me to say it, but I could tell from the flashes of pain in his eyes it was true.
“Yeah. Yeah, I did. We were kids together. Played baseball, hung out—he was my best friend. And it was a tiny little town and I didn’t see a way for us to really be together. Not when it first started, at least. And later . . . we’d kind of already established bad habits.”
“I get that.” Lord, did I ever. Brian and I had created a whole slew of bad habits from the start of our relationship, not the least of which was me following all his stupid rules about making sure his family didn’t find out he was gay.
“Anyway. It wasn’t like what you and I have. No standing dates. No public outings. Never any touches where people could see.”
It warmed my chest to have him admit that what we’d been doing was different from whatever he and the asshole had gotten up to. I nodded, encouraging him to keep talking.
“It was all so damn ironic how he went. All that work he’d done to keep us a secret.” He shook his head.
“How . . .” I’d assumed it had been a line-of-duty thing. Some noble exit for Sheriff Perfect.
“In bed.”
“Say what?” My face did the whole cartoon bugging-out thing.
“Well, not in bed.” He was beet red now, but he kept going. “It was one of the first nights we’d had together in weeks. And he’d had a headache when he arrived and kept saying he felt sick. But it had been a while and I was all ‘I know how to make you feel better, so we . . . uh . . .”
“I get the picture.”
“Anyway, right afterward, he pukes. Doesn’t even make it to the trash can. Just falls to his knees. Grabs his head. And it’s bad. I can tell right away that it’s heading to a bad place.”
So could I. Wrapping an arm around David, I pulled him closer.
“I start to dial 911, but he stops me. Says he doesn’t need the ER. But he can hardly get the sentence out. Tries to make noises about how we have to get dressed first, but he’s barely making sense. I call it in because I’m just so fucking scared.”
I kissed his forehead because I didn’t know what else to do. Despite the sunshine filtering in, the room felt chilled, bathed in hospital-grade antiseptic. My nose tingled and my hand trembled against David’s back. I would have given anything to be able to take away his pain.
“Somehow I managed to get boxers on before the EMTs arrived, but Craig was still naked . . . and they knew. I could tell they knew as soon as they walked in. Small town. I’d gone to high school with two of them. They weren’t going to keep their mouths shut.”
“Assholes.”
“Damn right. And it didn’t matter. Craig flatlined on the way to the hospital. Brain aneurysm. He was dead and the whole damn town knew how, when, and where he’d died within hours.”
“I’m sorry.” They were the most useless two words ever, but I had no idea what else I could offer him. “I get why you wouldn’t want to try sex very soon—”
“I didn’t. Not for the longest time. To be honest . . .” He played with the edge of the comforter. “I wasn’t sure I could have sex again. Wasn’t even sure I could get off.”
“Not even . . .” I made a vague gesture below my waist. I had a hard time imagining a planet where I didn’t jack off regularly, but David’s story was all kinds of fucked up. I could see where he’d be messed up for a long time. My heart felt too big for my chest, a deep ache for all the agony he’d endured.
“Even . . . doing things myself felt awful. But then I met you . . . and that problem cleared up in a hurry.” He stammered through it, but I suppressed a smile. I’d inspired him to jack off. More than once. Apparently, he wasn’t made of steel after all—just an ice-encrusted man in need of a good thaw.
“That’s why you didn’t want to . . . do stuff sooner?”
“Yeah,” he whispered. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings if I freaked. Like I freaked last night. Mainly because I didn’t know the protocol. I just assumed you’d leave.”
“Because he always did?” I hated Craig for stealing David’s trust, for taking advantage of his placid good nature. Everything I loved about him, Craig had taken advantage of. Deep rage built behind my sternum, threatening to erupt in angry words. I had to swallow hard.
“Yeah.”
“I’m . . .” I’d run out of things to say. I shrugged. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. I keep feeling like I’m a step behind—like there’s a manual for being in relationships and I haven’t even cracked the cover—and when I saw Craig’s picture just now, all I could think of was how much we missed out on.”
“It’s okay to be angry.” Lord knew I was angry enough for both of us.
“I know. That’s what Mel and my grief counselor both tell me too. I’m not sure if I’m angry so much as . . . sad and confused. But I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You feel what you need to feel.” What did I know about grief? I would be pissed, but I wasn’t David. And if David’s sadness made me feel smaller, I didn’t think it was intentional. I’d just have to work past it. Same as him. I wanted to trust in us both.
“And sometimes I’ll realize that I’m just assuming things because of how things used to go. Like, I could have just introduced you as my boyfriend last night.” He said it slowly, like he was still figuring something out in his head.
“Of course. Um . . . Carol and a few of the others totally guessed. Is that terrible for you?”
“No. I . . . I wanted that.” He grinned sheepishly.
“Me too.” I kissed his head again, relief coursing through me. “I want to be boyfriends. I want to meet people who matter to you. I want to hear about what matters to you. Even Craig.”
Eyes widening, he cocked his head to one side, studying me. “Is that why you seem . . . off sometimes? Because you’re not sure we’re boyfriends?”
I nodded. It felt rather petty now, in light of everything I’d learned in the last few minutes. Here I was, all concerned about labels, while David wrestled sumo-sized guilt and grief.
“I . . . I think I want that too. But it all feels so strange. And I feel like I’m lost in the Sawtooth Forest without a map. I don’t know how to be a good boyfriend for you. But I want to try.”
“You just have to be you.”
“I’m still . . .” He made a vague gesture in the direction of the living room. “Still working some things out. About Craig. About me. Can you be patient with me?”
“We’ll figure it out together.” I leaned in and kissed him, a feather of a kiss across his lips, before retreating. “Now about that game . . .”