Chapter 31 Boyfriend
Boyfriend
Josha
Today is already different.
Zombie’s morning rumble comes from someplace to my left, and the warm weight on my chest is a muscled arm, not the troublesome furball. When I turn my head, soft stubble tickles my jaw, and full, parted lips leak drool on my shoulder.
The rightness of it is overwhelming.
I skim my fingers down his spine, midnight memories percolating from the shroud of sleep. God, he was a beautiful disaster last night. And the way he coated my cock and clenched around my finger and the plug when he came…
It should have been my dick inside him.
I don’t know why I didn’t fuck him, when he was practically begging for it.
I’ve dreamed about it for so long there’s something momentous and terrifying about taking that final leap.
But in the pale green morning light, my fears feel far away, lulled by his nearness and the sleepy, youthful tangle of his limbs.
My brain might insist it’s been less than a week, but my heart wants to believe he’s always been mine.
My body doesn’t give a fuck—all it knows is yes.
I bet his sweet hole is still slippery and pliable from the toy. I bet I could roll him over and slide right in—fuck him to wakefulness like he did to me a few hours ago. I doubt he’d mind.
But he’s barely slept the last few nights, and I’m loath to disturb his peaceful slumber, even as my dick strains against the sheet. Besides, our first time should be unforgettable, and I want to watch his face when I finally sink inside him.
When.
Not if.
Not only in my secret dreams.
I can wait for when.
If I stay in bed, I’m going to lose the battle with my better nature, though.
Carefully extracting myself from his embrace, I force myself to get up, take a shower, and make breakfast. The huckleberries are starting to ripen, so I kill some time picking and cleaning a couple of handfuls to add to the pancake batter.
I slide a sheet pan of bacon into the oven and brew coffee and flip pancakes while the kitchen fills with classic breakfast aromas.
When I carry the makeshift tray—another sheet pan draped with a dish towel—into the bedroom, I catch Gem emerging from the bathroom, wearing nothing but his ink.
“Get back in bed,” I say, holding up my offering. “I’m being romantic.”
“What time is it?” he asks, slipping back between the sheets to sit cross-legged with his back against the pillows.
“Almost eleven.” After handing over the tray, I climb up to settle on top of the covers, facing him so we can share.
“Shit. Why didn’t you wake me up? Shouldn’t you be at the lot by now?”
“Probably.”
“You didn’t trust me alone?” His wry, lopsided grin makes my heart ache.
“That’s not it,” I protest with a shake of my head. Not all of it.
He pops a whole pancake in his mouth, arching a skeptical brow.
“Your mom gets home tomorrow,” I blurt. “I wasn’t sure…I thought you might—”
“Need a babysitter?”
“Want some company.”
“I always want your company. So you’re playing hooky for me today?”
“Something like that. I should really be setting up the sound booth. I told Hals it’d be done by the time he got back, and I haven’t even started, but maybe you could help me later, and then it won’t take as long.”
“If you haven’t started, that means all the gear is in the box truck and the cables are still wrapped?”
“Exactly. And Cheyenne was in charge of tearing it all down after the Christmas party because I was in Bakersfield with my mom, which means they’re tangled as shit. Hals never makes her do it right.”
“Poor Josha. You know you don’t have to do everything yourself, right?” Shoveling another pancake in his mouth, he fishes his phone off the nightstand and starts typing.
“Only if I want it done right,” I mutter. “Who are you texting?” Surely not Hals or Cheyenne.
“Ellis. He and your hula hoop chick can haul everything into the tent and unfuck the cables. Then we can go run them later and hook everything up.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about you and Ellis being on texting terms after he took you to buy a butt plug, but it’s hot watching you be all bossy.” I lean in to steal a huckleberry-flavored kiss. “Who’s the prodigal son now?”
The blush that spills over his cheeks takes my breath away.
“There,” he says, tossing the phone onto the bed. “I’ve bought us a few hours. What should we do with them?” He pops his barbell at me with a smirk that’s pure sin. Ignoring the heat that flushes up my neck, I snag a piece of bacon from the plate.
“I took a look at your bike and started that list. There are a couple of things we can grab at O’Reilly’s, so I thought we could run into town. Maybe hit up Mendo Market for a late lunch.”
His face brightens at the mention of his bike, and his knee bounces, forcing me to grab the sheet tray so it doesn’t slide off his lap.
“God, I can’t wait till she’s roadworthy again. I’m gonna take you down the coast with your boner digging into my ass the whole way and then pull over and get you off a hundred feet above the ocean.”
Umm…yes, please?
Until now, the Bonneville has occupied the part of my brain that catalogs problems to fix, connected to Gem only by the vague sense of gratitude that he survived its hazards.
With those words, a new, very distracting association bursts into being—Gem in those tight black jeans, straddling the leather seat, with power thrumming between his muscled thighs, inked fingers wrapped around the throttle.
I can feel his abs under my hands and the vibration of his ass snugged against my crotch.
Will it always be like this—him able to strike me dumb with the slightest innuendo, ready to abandon all sense to follow this raging desire?
I’m suddenly grateful we didn’t hook up in high school.
I never would have graduated. At this point, only years of practiced self-denial are keeping me operating as a functional adult in his presence.
What the fuck was I about to say?
Oh, right—I was about to ruin the mood.
“So…I have an idea. It’s not nearly as fun as yours, but there’s an AA meeting at the Mendo Comm Center today at noon and an Al-Anon meeting at the same time that I was thinking of trying. Maybe it would help? With tomorrow, I mean. If you could say you’d been.”
I’m fucking this up. He’s silent for way too long, picking at the bacon while I try not to beg. I need him to want this for himself, and not only so he can face Shilo having taken this step.
I need his promises to be more than words.
“You’d do that for me?” he finally asks, and the tremulous skepticism in his voice unravels all my budding uncertainty.
“I’d do it for us.”
The meeting isn’t what I’m expecting.
The room in the community center is familiar from when I used to pick Jeremy up at the after-school program here, and too large for the small circle of chairs set up by the floor-to-ceiling windows.
There are only seven of us, including one girl of about sixteen, whose fierce posture and exhausted eyes trigger a wave of sore sympathy.
The others are all middle-aged or older, and everyone is friendly and welcoming without prying.
I knew the experience would be personal, but I thought there’d be a lot more talking about the addicts in our lives.
That maybe the wiser among us would offer helpful advice.
Instead, it’s a mundane sharing of daily struggles and small triumphs.
Only two of their stories reveal the relationship that brought the speaker to the meeting—one woman’s son is about to come home from treatment, and another woman talks about a phone call with a cousin in recovery.
The rest are self-reflective musings or anecdotes, like the man who’s having trouble with a coworker and whether or not the teen girl’s parents will let her foster a shelter dog.
The primary comfort seems drawn from the ritual of the readings and the simple sharing of space.
After a while, I stop worrying about how Gem’s faring down the hall in AA and start to see the appeal of companionship without the potential for conflict.
Despite, or maybe because of, our common ground, no one has a stake in anyone else’s drama, and the result is weirdly like a group therapy session without the therapist.
As a first-timer, I’m not expected to participate in the formal sharing part of the meeting, but right before the end, I’m invited to talk about why I’m here.
Although posed without judgment, the question looms enormous with their eyes on me, taking up all the space in my lungs.
Lulled by the casual intimacy of the setting, I’d forgotten they were strangers.
Now put on the spot, I’m abruptly reminded.
I feel like an asshole, struggling for an honesty that won’t break me.
Can I tell these people what I haven’t even told my family?
That the thing I’ve wanted since the day I realized who I am is finally within my grasp?
How do I explain that I’d do anything to stop it from melting between my fingers like it has so many times before?
“Why” strips me naked, when I’m already flayed too close to the bone by the events of the last week.
The real question, though—the more manageable one—is “Who are you here for?” After almost an hour of listening to their stories, I know the correct answer, so I scavenge the truest version I can:
“Someday, I hope I’ll be able to say I’m here for myself.
But today, all I’m trying to do is support my, um”—everything—“boyfriend?” My cheeks flame as I stumble over the word, crumpling the phone list in front of me with a nervous twitch of my hands.
“He’s trying to get sober.” Why did I call him my boyfriend?
He’s been my best friend for half my life—how hard would it have been to stick with that?
No one comments on my uncertainty, but my stomach continues to tumble through the chorus of “Thank you, Joshas” and the closing announcements, and I can’t escape the room fast enough after making my clumsy goodbyes.
It’s not a big deal. There’s no reason to be freaking out. Blame it on the sixteen-year-old girl with her sad eyes and the boy the same age who used to whisper “Gemiah Farrel is my boyfriend” into his pillow and feel his whole body flush at the pretend words.
The fact that I spend another fifteen minutes perched on a playground picnic table waiting for Gem to emerge from his own meeting doesn’t exactly calm my agitated state.
I’m thumbing through the tracking app on my phone, half convinced he snuck out after we split up in the hallway, when a pair of jean-clad legs appears between my knees.
“Hey,” I say, searching his face for any signs of distress and finding only beauty. Tension eases from my shoulders even as my blood quickens in my veins.
“Hey.”
“How was it?” Maybe I’m not supposed to ask. What’s the etiquette for something that’s whole point is anonymity? And is he going to feel pressured to invent some life-changing revelation? Did he have a life-changing revelation, or was his experience as baffling as mine?
“Fine.” Sidling closer, he tips his head in a half shrug. “Good, I guess. Scary. Humbling.” He fiddles with a small token before placing it on my thigh like a gift. “They gave me a twenty-four-hour chip.”
I pick it up and turn it over in my fingers, then offer it back. “That’s good, right?”
Pocketing the metal disk, he gives another shrug, this time with a rueful quirk of his lips. “It kinda feels like a participation trophy.”
“You were hoping for MVP?” I smile to soften the sting. “I don’t think they give those to rookies.”
“I guess not.” He leans in, bracing his forearms on my knees. “How was yours?”
He smells like cedar and sunshine, and his proximity makes me as dizzy as ever.
“I called you my boyfriend. I mean, not you by name,” I hasten to explain. “I was supposed to say why I was there, and I panicked. I’m sorry. I know we haven’t discussed labels or—”
“Rocket.” He stops my rambling by placing his hand over my mouth, then trailing it down my throat along my rapid pulse. “You can call me whatever you want.”
“You’re not mad?”
He laughs, startling and genuine.
“I like boyfriend,” he says. “It sounds real. Like you’re serious about me.”
My doomed heart lurches in my chest.
“Did you think I wasn’t?”
“Maybe you’re using me for sex?” His tone is teasing, but his eyes dart to mine and then away, betraying him. I make a small, disbelieving sound in my throat.
“Because I’m such a notorious fuckboy?” Curling my fingers through his belt loops, I tug him close enough to nuzzle into his neck. “Thank you.”
His attempted scoff becomes a groan when I kiss the pulse point below his ear, and when I whisper “I’m proud of you,” his breath catches and his hands tighten briefly on my hips.
“Then I think you should reward your boyfriend with a grilled chicken swiss,” he says, trying vainly to hide his pleased grin, “before you make him take you back to work.”