Chapter 20
MYLES
Saturday. And this is the third morning this week that I’ve woken up like this.
Hard as hell and turned on to the point that a couple rough thrusts of my dick into my fist are all it takes to have me blowing all over my hand, clenching my eyes shut and panting as toe-curling waves of pleasure rock through me.
It takes me a while to come down enough to think straight, and when I do, the first thing that registers is that I came so much and so hard, I didn’t manage to catch it all in my hand this time.
God, I really need to start keeping a box of tissues by my bed. That or make myself wait to jerk off until I’m in the shower like an actual adult.
I’m halfway through trying to swipe away the mess with my other hand so I don’t drip on my way to the bathroom, when I freeze.
Out of nowhere, little bits and pieces of a dream are coming back to me. And What. The. Fuck?
First off, it’s weird enough to realize that it was a dream about another person that apparently put me in the state I woke up in.
Jerking off is all well and good, and I’m sure I probably do it as much as the next guy.
It feels awesome, and I get horny like most other people.
It’s just not usually any particular person or even the idea of one that makes me that way.
Most of the time, like ninety nine percent, it’s all about sensation.
I’ve only ever actually been sexually attracted to two people.
Rachel, when she was my girlfriend senior year of high school, and two or three years ago, this woman, Sandra, who I hooked up with several times after the two of us became friends over the year we both spent WWOOFing our way through the south of France.
Yeah, I definitely enjoyed everything I did with each of them, but it never hit me anything like that dream I’m only just kind of remembering did; like there was this aching, scorching need boiling under my skin and I just had to satisfy it before it burned me alive.
Fuck, I’ve never felt like that, period.
Honestly, that really is what’s throwing me off the most about the whole situation here. Because why would some person in a dream get me that worked up when nothing, not even in real life, has ever come close before?
The other thing that’s definitely messing with me though? I’m pretty damn sure the other person in my dream wasn’t a woman.
I don’t remember enough of the dream to have the whole picture, but the snippets that are still burned into my memory are vivid as hell and more than enough to give me a general idea.
My hand stroking over flat, firm pecs, not soft, round breasts. Something hot and rigid and very suspiciously like a hard cock thrusting against my thigh. My name, moaned into my lips in a low, masculine voice.
Doesn’t matter that I’ve just come all over my hand. My dick gives a throbbing pulse of want, just at the thought of those half-memories.
I’ve always found women aesthetically attractive. For me, even though I’m pretty much guaranteed not to want more than just to look, it’s easy to look at a woman and know she’s beautiful.
Another man though?
If I’m being honest, yeah, sometimes I have thought the same about other men. It’s just never been as strong though, and I’ve never found myself getting caught up in wanting to look more like I occasionally do with women sometimes.
Except for…
Hell no. I am not going there.
Shoving at the handle of the faucet a little harder than can be good for it, I shut off the sink that I’ve probably been letting run way longer than I’d needed to wash my hands.
The last thing I need is to go and mix up that weird, crazy dream with the already honestly confusing weirdness that keeps cropping up in my head every time I’m around Charlie.
Especially not after everything went and got weirder and more confusing than ever last weekend with our apparently not to be discussed nighttime cuddle fests.
Obviously, none of my Charlie confusion is anything like what I felt from my dream. There’d be no confusion about that.
Absolutely nothing is black and white or obvious about whatever’s going on in my head when it comes to Charlie.
I’ve always wanted to be close to him. But not in a sexual way. Those moments recently when maybe I’ve felt some random twinge of something else at the same time? It’s just been a coincidence. Not specifically anything to do with him.
What I feel around Charlie’s different. This pull to be as near him as I’ll let myself. Just like when we were kids, simply being around him—or god, when he touches me—feels so good. Just in a warm, safe, amazing way that feels like it’s all I could ever want.
Like this weekend. On my couch.
The need for closeness with him, which I’m apparently well on my way to giving up resisting, probably comes from the fact that Charlie’s the only person who feels like family who’s ever touched me with any kind of closeness or affection. Needless to say, my dad was never the touchy-feely type.
Add in how infrequent (as in two people, spread out over the past eight years) my physical relationships with anyone have been, and touch just isn’t something I’ve gotten a whole lot of…ever.
The other truth though is that I’ve always looked a little more and a little longer at Charlie than I’ve ever looked at anyone else. He’s just always been hard not to look at. For me, at least.
And yeah, it has gotten harder ever since we both ended up back in Riverside.
Probably because I missed him like a missing part of myself all those years we were apart. So doesn’t it make sense I’d have ten and a half years’ worth of looking to get out of my system?
But any kind of sexual attraction? No, nothing like that. Charlie’s my friend. My person. I don’t want him though, and I never have.
Like I said, the last thing I need to do is get myself all tangled up between the fact that I may or may not be having some sort of sexual awakening (that apparently could extend to not being straight demi like I’d always assumed I am but possibly bi demi or whatever else is going on with me), and the fact that I can’t get enough of being around the one person who’s always mattered most to me in the world.
Especially when I have—I tap my phone to life—fuck, just two hours before I’m supposed to pick that person up for an entire day together.
I want this to be perfect. After the way Charlie gave up last weekend for me, I want to give him something in return. I want him to love what we’re doing today.
Ever since the two of us started really spending time together again, he’s been telling me how much he wants me to show him some of my favorite places I only found after he’d left Riverside, when I’d finally gotten my driver’s license and spent every moment I could away from my dad’s house, trying to numb the empty hole Charlie’s absence had left in my heart with the comfort of the forest.
That’s gotta be the reason why my foot that’s not covering the gas pedal won’t stop nervously jiggling up and down and my heart’s going about twice as fast as normal.
And why I tried on three different flannels before picking the one I’m wearing now, which is weird, because why the hell would Charlie care what I’m wearing?
Especially after he so recently got done spending two and a half days straight with me sweating through a beat-up old t-shirt and sweatpants, all sniffly and coughing and blowing my damn nose every five minutes.
And why does the fact that he saw me like that suddenly bother the hell out of me?
The answer is that I’ve gotten myself all worked up and so damn anxious that, yet again, I’m not thinking straight.
And yeah, maybe it’s also got something to do with those bits and pieces of last night’s fucking crazy dream I just can’t get out of my head.
Not that the dream had anything to do with Charlie specifically, but because it’s got me all kinds of mixed up and so out of whack, nothing seems to make much sense at the moment.
Charlie’s already waiting outside when I pull into his driveway, and my stomach does a strange kind of flip at how he practically bounces over to the truck door.
Ever since he left on Sunday night, we’ve only seen each other at the school.
The days we each spent sick mean we’ve both been working like crazy all week to catch up on everything we each got behind on.
Him on grades and lesson plans, me on Dad’s house.
It’s the least time we’ve spent together in over a month, and after a whole weekend together, the contrast sucked.
Before Charlie can open it for himself, I’m reaching across the passenger seat, popping the handle on the door to open it for him, which leaves me leaning awkwardly into his space for a moment before I can right myself as he climbs into the cab.
“You didn’t have to come pick me up,” he smiles, slipping into his seat and slamming the door closed behind him as I click my seatbelt back in place.
“Yeah I did,” I grin at him, taking a moment to just soak in how good it feels to be near him again. “There’s no way you’d want to take that,” I gesture at his shiny Prius, “on the road we’re going on today.”
“Are you calling me fussy, or just my car?”
“Uh,” I pretend to think as I throw my arm over the back of the seat to look over my shoulder so I can reverse down the driveway and out onto the highway.
My fingers brush against Charlie’s hair on the way, and an odd prickle of awareness runs up my arm at the feel of it.
How can hair be that soft? And why does that make me feel like there’s something I’ve forgotten but really should remember? “Both?”
“Mean.” Charlie leans across the empty middle seat between us and swats at my shoulder with an open hand. “I highly object to that.”
“He says fussily.” I flash him a smile that I’ll deny is intentionally provoking until the end of time.
His scandalized little gasp and another swat on my shoulder only make me smile wider, and for some reason, it’s ridiculously hard not to keep trying to wind him up more.
“So where are you taking me?” he asks, settling back into his seat.
It would be weird to be disappointed that it seems like he’s not going to be smacking me again anytime soon, so obviously, I’m not.