CORY’S TRUCK commercial ran three weeks later. We spotted it during the evening news on Channel 7. Cory, Beth, and I sat frozen, soaking up every nanosecond of Cory’s time in the spotlight. We had shared the restaurant commercial in a three-way orgy of unbridled ego several weeks back, but this time around it was Cory all by himself. Center spot. The star of the show.
He was terrific. Butch, handsome, sexy. He stood in the back of that damn truck like a god. If I had the money, I’d have run right out and bought a Dodge Ram 1500 HFE EcoDiesel half-ton pickup on the spot.
Beth and I pounded Cory with congratulatory slaps on the back. We hugged him until he was a rumpled mess. His smile was so wide his dimples were a foot deep. Beth shook up a beer and drenched him with it while I went around after her with a towel, wiping up the mess.
All the while Cory took turns laughing like a hyena and looking all solemn and humbled at the very same time. For every hug bestowed on him by Beth and me, he bestowed just as many back on us.
He stood and cradled his beer like an Oscar statuette. “I’d like to thank the Academy,” he announced grandly. Then he got serious. “If it wasn’t for you guys, I’d still be sitting in Missouri living another life and wishing I was someone else.”
When he said it, his eyes never left my face.
That night in bed was the first night Cory and I did not make love. We merely lay in each other’s arms for hours, talking. So many times that night I wanted to tell him things I had never told anyone, but I just couldn’t do it. The words hovered in the air around us like phantom sparrows. I could almost hear them. But they remained unsaid. By myself and by him.
When we finally slept, my dreams were uneasy. The only comfort I had through the long cool night, was the bliss of lying in Cory’s arms. For even on that night, as he had done every other night since we had joined forces in my bed, Cory held me close from night to morning. I had forgotten how it felt to sleep without his heat against me. Without his warm breath stirring my hair. Without his heavy satin cock lying soft or hard upon my leg, filled with promises. Promises kept and promises yet to come.
In my dreams I said the words. Almost every night. While I slept, I screamed them to the sky. I whispered them to the wind. I tasted them on my tongue. I heard them in my ear.
Awake, I remained mute. I couldn’t bring myself to utter them. Not even to myself.
Then one night, the words finally came. By an incredible stroke of serendipity, they burst forth in a hushed whisper in third-row orchestra seats in a darkened theater, with music and laughter filling the air and Beth up onstage in front of us, tap-dancing her little heart out like Ann Miller without the big hair.
Remembering it all later, I would think—how fitting. After all, a theater is the place for magic. A theater is the place where dreams come true.
Sometimes maybe even real ones.
IT WAS a month after the debut of Cory’s truck commercial.
Beth’s tap dancing had improved a lot. Cory and I sat in the audience watching her tap her way through the Coronado Playhouse production of Me and My Girl. Beth had no lines—she was strictly chorus, but she held her own. Cory and I were proud of her. Not only did she have a three-week run ahead of her, but she was actually very good in the role. I was trying hard not to be jealous.
While the show proceeded onstage, Cory and I and two or three hundred other people sat in the shadows behind the footlights, humming along to the tunes, gaily tapping our toes to the music. It was community theater, of course. The sets were sparse, the costumes Spartan. Yet every soul onstage, including Beth, gave it their all. Their love for the work shone through, brightening the less than stellar wardrobe, the lackluster backdrops, sprinkling it all with showbiz magic. They brought the music to such merry life it rattled happily through the rafters above our heads. And through our hearts.
Cory’s knee rested snugly against mine. The moment the overture began, Cory scooped my hand in his and claimed it for the rest of the night. At the top of the first act, just as Beth began working her way up to the number’s big finale with the other dancers, Cory’s index finger began stroking my palm.
I felt him tense just before he leaned in toward me and, in a puff of sweet breath, whispered three quiet words.
“I love you.”
I gazed over at him in the flickering stage lights and saw a lone tear streaming down his cheek. The show was a comedy.
By the time he looked away, then turned back to me, his eyes were afloat in tears. He clutched my hand all the tighter, tore his gaze from mine, and refocused his attention on the stage. In profile, I saw the tears continue to slide down his cheeks. He let them fall, unhindered, as if he had earned every one of them. And maybe he had.
The show forgotten, I sat there watching him, remembering his three little words. It was the first time in my life I had ever heard those words directed at me from anyone other than my mother. Hearing them now, my heart drummed a thundering tympany.
I lifted Cory’s hand and pressed it to my lips. He glanced at me and licked a tear from the corner of his mouth. His face was solemn.
“I love you,” he whispered again, as if maybe I had missed it the first time. There was pain in the way he spoke the words—a gentle plea of torment.
A quiet sob welled up inside me. I hiccupped.
I whispered back, “I love you too. I always have.”
With my heart racing, my throat constricted, and trying to ignore the old man sitting next to us who was listening to every word we said, I thought, There now. That wasn’t so hard, was it? I said I love you. The world didn’t implode. My teeth didn’t fall out. I actually feel better for it. So I guess that’s it, then. I’m in love. Officially. And believe it or not, the man I love actually loves me back. He told me so first. Holy cow. But still Cory looks so sad. Why does he look so sad?
We sat through the next five minutes of the show not knowing what the hell was happening up on the stage. Finally, Cory tugged me to my feet, and we awkwardly weaved our way between the seats and past the legs of annoyed strangers to the aisle, where we made a hurried exit from the theater. Beth wouldn’t miss us. She was too busy being a star.
Cory solicitously laid his hand to the small of my back as he ushered me through the lobby and onto the street. Once there, under a streetlight with a gazillion people traipsing back and forth, Cory pulled me into his arms and kissed me. Sort of like John Wayne kissing Maureen O’Hara in The Quiet Man. Romantic, you know? Assertive. Brooking no opposition. I was putty in his arms. But then, I always had been.
“Let’s go home,” he said. “I need to hold you. I need to feel you in my arms. I need to know you’re really there. You’re really mine.”
“I’m yours,” I said, pushing my face to his throat. Ignoring the people on the street brushing past. Inhaling his scent. Trusting his heart. “I think I’ve always been yours.”
He stared down at me, his handsome face strobed by passing headlights. He trailed a gentle thumb across my lips as his eyes burned through me. The pain on his face was gone now. He was simply trying to understand. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know. I just couldn’t.”
The worry in his eyes disappeared. He offered me a kind smile. There was love in it. I could tell. “I knew it anyway,” he said. “I knew it before you did.”
“You were always smarter than me,” I mumbled into his chest. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you what you wanted.”
He stroked my hair, pulling my face closer to his chest. “You’ve never failed me once. Don’t ever think you have. You’ve given me everything. You’ve made me happy. You’ve made me love my life. You’ve made me love myself.”
“Have I really done all that?” I asked, my lips brushing his shirtfront.
“Yes,” he said, and after casting his glance up and down the street as if trying to remember where we’d parked the car, he took off at a brisk clip in the right direction, pulling me along behind him, trapping my arm in his, never letting me break the connection.
Twenty minutes later, a little breathless, we stood face to face at the side of my bed. Our clothes were scattered on the floor around us. We were naked. His arms were wrapped tightly around me, and our two cocks, already hard, lay squeezed between us, nuzzling up against each other.
Cory’s lips found my mouth. They found my throat. A tremor ran through me as he lowered himself to his knees in front of me and took me into his mouth. I rose up on tiptoe, the muscles in my legs quaking. Clutching his head as he stared up at me, I slid my cock in and out of that loving portal. His hands stroked my ass as his tongue and lips worked magic.
Just as I began to see stars, he released me and pressed his moist lips to my stomach while my cock lay pulsing against his cheek, wondering why it was suddenly being ignored.
Nestling his chin over my belly button, he once again gazed up at me as I stared down at him.
“Did you mean what you said back in the theater, Malcolm? Do you really love me?”
I stroked his temples with my fingertips. My hands were still shaking. His mouth had brought me this close to coming. I wondered if he knew that.
“I think I’ve always loved you,” I said. “I think I loved you before you ever came to California. Before you ever came into my life. Before I even knew who you were.”
His dimples flashed. “That seems highly unlikely.”
I stepped closer, pressing my dick to his cheek. A drop of precome smeared his skin. He tore his eyes from me for a brief second, just long enough to kiss away another drop as it seeped from my cock.
Only then did his eyes find me again.
“I didn’t know who you’d be,” I said. “I didn’t know when you’d find me. I just knew maybe love was waiting somewhere for me. I was afraid to believe it. I was afraid to hope. But the minute I saw your green eyes, I think my days were numbered. The magic in all of this is that you actually love me back. At least you say you do.”
His warm hands slid along my back and hips as he laid a kiss on my stomach. I felt his hard cock nudging my knee down below.
He found my eyes again. “I was infatuated by your picture. But I’ve loved you, I mean really loved you, since the first time we made love. You were so—amazing. So open. So fearless. So sexy. So giving. Your body is the exact type of body I’ve craved. Your skin is exactly what I’ve dreamed of tasting. Feeling. Holding.” He closed his eyes and pressed his face into my stomach. “I can’t hear it enough. Tell me again, Malcolm. Tell me you love me again.”
“I love you,” I said, and pulling him to his feet so that his long body slid upward against mine, I whispered on a trembling breath, “Let me show you.”
He allowed me to ease him around and lower him onto the bed. He lay back, staring up at me with a growing heat in his eyes as I eased myself down on my knees between his legs, coaxing them apart to give me room.
His fingers dawdled in my hair as he watched my mouth slide along his thigh, his hip, across the fuzz on his belly, and finally plant gentle kisses along the length of his cock. It bobbed of its own accord with every lingering kiss. When I could wait no longer, I slid my tongue across the ridge of his corona, oh so slowly, before climbing higher and pressing a kiss to his slit, gathering up the smear of crystal moisture there. It tasted sweet, that moisture. It tasted like I knew his orgasm would taste later. I was an expert at the taste of this man beneath me. Just as he was an expert at the taste of me.
With his smoldering eyes burrowing into mine and his body beginning to tremble beneath me, he watched me tuck his cock between my lips and take it in as far as I could. His back arched into me as his fingers stroked my hair. Every now and then he would grip my hair almost frantically as my mouth brought him closer to where I wanted him to go. Closer to coming. Closer to filling my mouth with his juices. Closer to hearing him cry out as he burst into orgasm beneath me.
Again, his back arched into me. I gently cupped his heavy balls and cradled their softness in my hand as my mouth consumed his iron cock above. He gripped tighter at my hair. Tugging. Steering me. Lifted his knees and clamped them around me. He began to shake. His breath grew uneven. He gasped. He laughed.
And the moment he laughed, he laid his warm, gentle hands to my cheeks, holding me in place as the come tore out of him. Filling my mouth. Splashing across my tongue. Just as I wanted. Exactly as I wanted.
I closed my eyes, savoring every drop, every shudder, every scrape of his skin against my face, every cry that he didn’t bother trying to stifle because he wanted me to hear them. Until he was drained. Until I had taken everything from him I could.
The moment he collapsed beneath me, spent, he turned his attention to me.
He patted his chest. “Straddle me,” he said, his voice ragged. “Come up here.”
He slipped his hands in my armpits and pulled me up. Tucking his arms under my legs, he directed my ass down onto his chest. When he had me exactly where he wanted me, perched on his sternum, my balls against his chin, he tilted my stiff cock downward until the head of it rested atop his lips. He kissed me there. He kissed me there and licked away the juices I had spilled as I pleasured him. When I was clean, when his lips were shiny and moist, he slipped my dick into his mouth. All the way in. As far as it would go. He gazed up at me with his nose in my pubic hair, his eyes alight with hunger. It was the same heat that had burned in my eyes only moments before. His hunger was the same as mine. His craving was exactly my craving.
I stroked his wild hair while his mouth did magical things and his hands played everywhere over my skin until I was shaking like a leaf. I dropped my head back and closed my eyes as his broad, gentle hands slid up my torso to caress my neck, my throat, my face.
At the first sensation of come bubbling inside me, frothing, climbing, seeking a way out, I leaned over him and rose up onto my knees to better control my thrusts. Cory slid his hands over my ass and clutched me to him, eagerly taking my dick as deep as it would go.
The heat of his mouth was a heavenly fire. The movements of his tongue, his lips, his hands, sent my nerve endings sparking and firing. My whole body tensed as he sweetly ravaged me. I was lost to everything but my own urges and the feel of this wonderful man beneath me. Showing me his love, just as I was showing mine.
When I came, he pulled me even closer. His clever hands stroked my back, holding me in place. He swallowed every gush of come that shot across his tongue. While I flailed around above him, spilling myself into him and trying not to scream while I did it, he held me in place and urged forth every drop he could claim. My knees shook and spasmed against his ribs. My fingers tore at his hair. My hips thrust uncontrollably forward, always into him, into his heat.
And through it all, he stared up at my face while his eyes crinkled with humor. Watching me. Enjoying my loss of control. Claiming everything I gave him as his rightful reward. I was his. His eyes told me so.
When I collapsed over him, exhausted, he clutched me tight, letting the final shudders of my waning hunger weaken of their own accord. Letting his strong arms protect me, holding me safely in place while my thundering heart slowed. His warm hands slowly stroked me into peaceful silence, his hot mouth still gently coaxing from me those final drops of passion, the ones that usually come unattended. Too late for the show. But not this time. This time they were tasted. This time they were savored.
Only then, only when I lay calm above him, drained and sated, did Cory release my cock from his mouth and let it slide over his chin to rest against his throat.
He eased me up until I sat over him once again, and with his hands on my chest, he gazed up and licked his lips.
“Be my lover,” he said. “Please, Malcolm. Be mine completely.”
I nodded. Once. Lost in his pleading eyes. Voiceless, bereft of speech in the wasteland of exploded passion.
He smiled and eased me onto the bed beside him where we both stretched out and snuggled into each other’s arms, easing tangled muscles, stretching knotted spines. It was there, lying at Cory’s side, that I knew in a sudden burst of realization I had found everything I ever wanted. Everything I thought I would never have. Safety, peace, contentment. Love.
I pressed my face to his chest and gave a final ecstatic tremble.
He laid his hand to the back of my neck and held me close until my trembling passed.
I closed my eyes, safe against the man I loved.
And the man who loved me back.
I slept. And for the first time in months, my sleep was dreamless. My dreams weren’t relegated to the shadows anymore. They were meant to be lived in the light. With the living.
Cory was my dream. I no longer needed the others.
Sometime in the night, I burrowed into his arms, feeling more at home than I had ever felt with anyone before. In my contentment, a smile teased my mouth. I kissed his side, the wales of his ribs. I breathed in his scent as I mumbled quiet words onto his velvet skin.
“I hate it when my mother’s right.”
Cory stirred, his voice gravelly with sleep. “What? I missed that, babe. What did you say?”
I snuggled closer, cooing him back to sleep. “Never mind.”
THE NEXT morning we faced Beth hand in hand, a united front for the very first time.
She eyed us with a softening sweetness lighting her face. “I see by the sappy expressions on your faces that you’ve done it, then. You’ve made a commitment.”
“Malcolm’s my lover,” Cory said, his face beaming proudly, his ears as red as I had ever seen them.
All I could do was nod. I was still a little speechless.
“It’s about time,” she said.
Apparently I wasn’t entirely speechless. “Don’t get all emotional about it,” I groused. “And by the way, you were great last night. I hate your guts.”
She mellowed a bit at that. “Thanks.”
Cory leaned into me and whispered, “You were great last night too.”
Beth did her barfing routine and stuck a finger down her throat, but behind it all I think she looked pleased.
Since Cory was her brother, and she knew I was sort of a slut, she apparently had a few more questions.
“Is this an exclusive arrangement you boys have forged? I mean, have you agreed to never cheat on each other until the day you die of old age and all that?”
Cory stared at me. I stared at him. Then I turned to Beth. “Sure. Why not? Why would I go out for Vienna sausage when I have knackwurst at home?”
Cory nudged me with his hip. “Is that like a dick-size reference?”
I batted my lashes and made a little O with my mouth. “Could be.”
“I’m going to be ill,” Beth said.
Deciding maybe the subject of dick sizes might get around to mine, and since I was bound to come up short if anyone tried to compare me to Cory, I thought it prudent to change the subject. I pointed to the item Beth held in her hand. It looked like a script. In fact, it looked like two scripts.
“What’s that?” I asked.
She gazed down at what I was pointing at. She brought her gaze back up to me and got a crafty smirk on her face.
“How would you boys like to tread the boards together?”
“Sure,” I said. “We’d love it. What’s the catch?”
“No catch,” she said, handing us a slip of paper. “Be at this address at four o’clock tomorrow. Be prepared to strip.”
“Strip?” Cory asked. “You mean like naked?”
Uh-oh, I thought. We’re back to dick sizes again.
Beth smirked. “Afraid so, big boy. It’s Diversionary Theater. A new gay play. A musical. It rehearses for a month and runs for two. It actually pays cash money to the actors. They are looking for a hunky farmhand type and a swishy little wienie boy. You two are perfect.”
“Which one is who?” I asked, although I figured I already knew the answer.
Beth didn’t bother explaining. Even Cory politely refused to comment. They both chuckled, though. I wasn’t too sure I was thrilled about that. However, the big strong hand that slid down the back of my lounging pants and caressed my ass rather lovingly made me forget about it quickly enough.
Cory eyeballed me. I eyeballed him back.
“How’s your voice?” he asked.
“Not much range,” I admitted. “But I can basically carry a tune. How about you?”
He looked a little green around the gills. “Cross a bullfrog with a duck and give it a bronchial infection and you’ll be pretty close.”
“Hmm. Maybe your looks will carry you through.”
He brightened. “You think?”
“No. But once they see your dick, we’re in. They won’t care if you can sing, talk, walk, or possess opposable thumbs.”
Beth dropped to her knees and stared Rosemary in the face. “These two are making me sick again. It’s becoming a habit.” That out of the way, she gazed up at us. “They also need a stagehand.”
Cory’s face fell. It was like somebody dynamited Mount Rushmore and Thomas Jefferson’s head went sliding down the cliff. Cory shuffled his feet. He sucked on his cheek. He tugged at his ear. “I prefer to be onstage. Maybe even be a headliner,” he said quietly. “You know. The star. Like in the truck commercial. I’ll audition with Malcolm and take my chances. I’m not working backstage. No way. Uh-uh. Never.”
Beth and I gaped at each other. “We’ve created a monster.”
She shrugged. “It was bound to happen.”
The three of us did a round robin thing, staring at each other in turn. Finally I broke the silence. “Guess we’d better see what this script is all about, then,” I said.
Cory grunted. “Yep. I guess we’d better.”
“Sex first?” I asked.
“You bet.”
Beth slapped herself in the forehead and stormed off screaming, “Actors! Queers! Brothers!”
I turned to Cory. “Your sister isn’t very romantic.”
“The batteries in her vibrator are low.”
“I heard that!” Beth screamed from the other room.
Cory’s hand was still moving around inside the seat of my pants. Now something else was moving around inside the front of my pants. I was pretty sure it was my dick.
“I love you,” I said, turning into his arms, trying not to think about Beth’s vibrator.
“I love you back.”
“Let’s fuck.”
Cory beamed. “Okay.”
So we did. Quite strenuously.
Later, with that immediate need sated, we settled in, naked in each other’s arms, to read the scripts. After all, this was Diversionary Theater. That’s probably how we’d be auditioning. Naked. We might as well get used to it.
Since I read faster than Cory, I completed the first read-through before he did. By the time I finished, I was bug-eyed. Yes, even I can be shocked. In the process of realizing what we might be getting ourselves into, I had frowned in dawning horror, gaped in disbelief, chuckled more than once, and finally redevoured the pages just to make sure I had really read what I thought I’d read.
With immense satisfaction I turned my attention to Cory, who was flat on his back beside me in the bed, the script held aloft over his head. He hadn’t come to the weird part yet. I could tell by the nonchalant expression on his face.
I waited patiently, hugging him around the waist, idly tweaking his nipple with my tongue, watching a final drop of after-come ooze from his beautiful cock before I scooted my face down along his belly and lapped it up for dessert.
It was about then that he stiffened in the bed. Not from my attentions, but from what he was reading. He sat up, dumping my head in his lap, which was fine with me. There was no place I would rather my head end up.
He gaped down at me. “Did you read this?”
I had his cock in my mouth by now. So sue me. I’m a slut. “Umm-mmm.”
He cupped my cheeks in his hands, eased his dick from my mouth, and twisted my head so I was staring up at him. I thought he looked a bit flabbergasted. Handsome—maybe even a little turned on—but flabbergasted.
“This script—” he began.
I cut him off. “Remember when I said the next time you are called upon to act you might very well be dressed as an armadillo and quoting Shakespeare?”
He went from flabbergasted to befuddled. “Uh, yeah.”
“Well, this time it might actually be worse. You still up for it?”
He stared down at the script in his hand. He stared from the script to my face. He stared from my face to his cock, which was slowly lengthening against my nose.
“But this one scene—”
“I know. It’s experimental theater. You game?”
His dimples slowly deepened on each side of his mouth. He licked his lips and showed me some teeth when a smile erupted.
“It could be worse,” he said. “At least we’ll be getting paid. And I’ll be the one with clothes on.”
“Not in scene seven,” I said.
He frowned down at the script. “Oh. I haven’t got that far.”
“I didn’t think so.”
THE DIVERSIONARY Theater was in a downtown loft with supporting stanchions awkwardly placed throughout for people to have to crane their necks to see around. While they were craning their necks, they had crappy metal folding chairs for their asses to grow numb on. The patrons who knew the theater well brought pillows with them to sit on. The patrons who really knew the theater well brought neck braces and hemorrhoid medication.
It had been an amazing four weeks. The auditions had gone swimmingly. To Beth’s utter amazement, as well as our own, Cory and I were cast in the lead roles. Cory would play the part of the hunky farmhand (just as I suspected he would), and I was cast as his love interest, the little wienie boy, which was no reflection on my manhood per se. It merely meant I wasn’t exactly butch. Or big. Or manly.
Beth called it typecasting. Beth is sometimes a bitch, or have I mentioned that already? With a month of rehearsal, most of it in the buff, behind us, it was finally opening night. After flouncing around naked for a month with our fellow cast members, blocking our moves, memorizing our lines, tweaking the choreography for the song-and-dance numbers, all embarrassment at our constant state of undress had been put to rest long ago. Well, most of it.
Diversionary Theater sported no curtain for there was actually no stage. The play was performed in the round, on a bare patch in the center of the floor, surrounded by all those uglyass folding chairs with the craning audience members perched uncomfortably on them trying to see around the fucking stanchions.
Radio City Music Hall on welfare.
It was almost time for opening night to begin. Backstage (which was actually another room separated from the “stage” by a couple of doors) was a madhouse. There were naked men everywhere, and dicks flopping all over the place, including my own. Oddly enough, the biggest and most beautiful dick on the premises, which belonged to Cory, was the only one not on display. That’s because he wore a pair of battered bib overalls, with the side buttons undone to show a goodly expanse of very attractive hip. His broad shoulders were bare and beautiful, his muscular fuzzy arms a dream. Strangely, with all the naked men all over the place, most eyes in the place gravitated first to him.
But was I jealous? Hell, yes! Half the cast members, each and every one as gay as a maypole, hated my guts for being lucky enough to have latched on to Cory before they did. It was a nice feeling. It had taken me twenty-six years to realize how much I enjoyed being envied. Cory accepted the ogling with his usual calm grace, amused, I think, and flattered too, maybe. But every time he caught me bristling at some queen who was giving him the once-over, he would scoop me into his arms just to let the rabble know where his devotions truly lay. I ask you, how could anyone possibly not love a guy like that?
Still, tonight I envied Cory. He at least got to start the show with clothes on.
The orchestra consisted of a bow-tied music teacher on electric keyboard and an old man with astigmatism on drums. Period. Just as I suspected, upon first seeing Cory stark naked at auditions, the salivating director gave him holy dispensation to speak his songs rather than sing them if he liked. Even the music teacher thought it was a good idea. In fact, Cory could have signaled the lyrics to the audience in semaphore if he wanted. Neither the director nor the music teacher were fools. They knew what sold tickets. And a naked Cory Williams would undoubtedly sell bunches.
As the overture began and the theater darkened, Cory and I stood at one of the doors leading backstage and peered out. Spotlights lit the stage area, and the rest of the place fell into shadow as the house lights dimmed.
“Lookit,” Cory hissed, pointing a finger through the door at a woman in the front row.
I followed where he was pointing. It was my mother. She was sitting beside the newly surgically enhanced Gerald, who was appearing rather pleased with himself, I thought. Even my mother appeared pleased. And friendly too, for her hand never left Gerald’s thigh. Apparently the pecker enhancement surgery was a success. My mother had never looked happier.
On the other side of my mother sat Beth, perusing her program. She looked happy too. Maybe she had replaced her batteries.
I cringed and was almost floored by a sudden burst of stage fright. I grabbed on to Cory’s arm like a drowning man. “Oh God. I’ve never felt so naked in all my life.”
Cory laughed. “Don’t worry. She’ll love the show.”
“Who? My mother or Beth?”
“Both of them.”
I cringed again and threw in a groan for good measure.
Cory slipped an arm around me, tugging me close. “This is everything I ever wanted,” he whispered in my ear. “Right here. Tonight. Thank you, Malcolm.”
I twisted into his arms, laid my head to his brawny chest, then immediately pushed myself away. The last thing I wanted to do was step out on that stage in front of my mother and a bunch of peeking, craning, sore-assed strangers with a hard-on.
I patted Cory’s cheek from a safe distance. His dimples flashed. He knew exactly why I was imposing a gap.
The overture was winding down. The theater was darkening even more. Voices out there in the shadows began to grow hushed with expectation. The actors behind us tensed, hopping around on their bare feet, dicks bouncing, adrenaline beginning to surge, concentrating on their blocking, hoping they wouldn’t make complete fools of themselves when their first big song-and-dance number began and they had to perform it stark raving naked.
That first big number would come up after Cory and I finished our little opening shtick. Just a few lines, hopefully grabbing a few laughs, getting the audience in the mood for what was about to be sprung on them by the playwright, who, it seemed to me, should have been locked away in an institution for the rest of his life for what he was about to inflict on all of us poor actors over the next two hours. But hey, it was a job. Cory and I were acting. We had exactly what we wanted. And we had each other.
I felt that old tingling begin in the soles of my feet. Nerves. Another little surge of stage fright stuttered through me. More than a little, actually, since for the first time in my life, I was going out on a stage with my dick blowing in the wind and my roommate and my mother sitting in the front row staring at me.
But I was also going out there in the arms of the man I loved. I studied Cory’s face beside me, wondering if he had butterflies. Wondering if he was scared. He appeared calm. He seemed to be having a good time. His lips were moving quietly, and I knew he was rehashing his lines in his head.
My heart began to race. My palms were sweaty. Opening night jitters. Then Cory turned his warm green eyes to me, and I fell into them, lost and breathless. The bustle around me faded into a hushed distance. I reached out and trailed a fingertip over the cleft in Cory’s chin. He smiled at me, his eyes filled with love.
“You ready?” he asked softly.
I nodded. “Let’s do it.”
As the final notes of the overture echoed down to silence, Cory lifted my naked body into his arms and flung me over his shoulder, ass up, just as the script demanded. Giving me a kiss on the hip for luck, he stepped out onto the stage in the glare of the spotlights.
A collective gasp filled the room, and from the front row, my own mother announced proudly in the dark, “That’s my boy! The one with the pretty butt!”
Then the show began in earnest. I had no doubt whatsoever that every moment of it would be a wonder. Every single moment. Just like our lives together would be.
The house quieted.
Cory delivered his first line, brave and strong.
I delivered mine and the audience laughed.
Cory and I immediately relaxed, easing ourselves into the play. Losing ourselves to the magic.
Yep, I thought. Every. Single. Moment.