Chapter 9 #3
He straddles my lap and leans over me, sliding his tongue in my mouth.
It repeats in my head over and over—I swallowed Harvey Laden’s cum and he swallowed mine.
I wrap my arms around him and pull him closer, kissing him hard.
His hands are in my hair, and his dick, still hanging out of his pants, rubs against my abdomen.
We could fuck like this. I grab his ass and lift my hips against him.
He climbs off me and stands over me. His face is flushed, and his blue eyes are hazy.
“Damn.” He laughs softly. “Good stuff.”
I sit up. “It was. It is.”
“We should do that again,” he says.
I feel a little dizzy, but in a nice way. My limbs feel like Jell-O. “All right.”
His smile is slick. He grabs my towel from his bed, lays it over his shoulder, and goes into the bathroom.
A few seconds later, I hear the shower cut on. I consider joining him, but I get into my bed, under the covers, and I’m asleep in a flash.
“Don’t you think?”
I whip my head over to Jack, sitting next to me in the Adirondack chair. “Huh?”
He smiles. “I was just saying it’s a nice day today. Not too hot.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
The smoke from his clove cigarette wafts my way in a breeze. “Something else on your mind?”
Even though I heard him, I still say, “Huh?”
He laughs. “Guess I’ve got my answer.”
“Sorry.” I sit forward in the chair, resting my elbows on my knees. “I was just thinking. I got a phone call from the producer of my new show. It sounds like they’re going to give me the job. And they hired this talented actor for one of the main roles, Brad Vick.”
Jack takes a drag and nods. “Well, that’s wonderful. Congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
“You don’t sound too happy about it.”
“I am,” I insist. “It’s just that… well, I guess there’s just a lot to think about.”
“I see.”
He doesn’t, though. Because it isn’t just Brad Vick.
It’s also that Harvey is jealous of Brad Vick, because Harvey and I kissed, and then we sucked each other’s dicks the other day.
It’s all been very strange and confusing, honestly.
I doubt Jack, Timber, or Canyon wanted me and Harvey to get along that well.
It’s been on my mind, though, mostly wondering when it might happen again.
If it should happen again, because what are we doing?
I can still see where I punched Harvey and where he punched me—faded, but still there.
Am I just this pathetic and horny? Is he?
Something is different between us, though.
No doubt about it. I should’ve kept my mouth shut when we were trapped in that shed.
Now I know things about him, and he knows things about me.
I can’t bring myself to hate him anymore, to hurt him in any way.
We’re both on a tightrope, hoping the other won’t shake the line enough so we both fall.
And it’s definitely something I can’t talk to Jack about. I don’t think the guy is homophobic or anything. It just seems like something Harvey and I should be keeping to ourselves.
Especially since I don’t know what it is, and I’m sure he doesn’t either.
“I brought the script with me,” I say. “For the pilot. They want me to do a reading when I get back. A monologue or something. I want to make sure I do it right so they don’t regret hiring me.”
“You said you’ve worked with them before. They must know your talent well.”
I shrug. “Still, though. I don’t want to screw it up.”
Jack nods again, gazing at the water. “That’s understandable.”
I give him a quick glance. “I guess I worry about that. About people regretting giving me a chance.”
He keeps looking out at the water. It’s hard to tell if he’s listening. He sits there sometimes like he’s forgotten I’m here.
“My parents took a chance on me when they adopted me.” I shake my head. “And now I’m in rehab.”
Jack turns to look at me.
“They’ll say they’re proud and all. I don’t know. I guess I just don’t see how they could be.”
Jack crosses his ankle over his knee. “It takes courage to admit when you need help. That’s something to be proud of.”
“But that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because Phil wanted me to come here before he’d offer me the role on the show.
If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t have done anything like this.
” I find a rock and toss it into the water.
“I’d still be doing everything I was doing before.
Even after… going to the hospital. I didn’t want to stop with the pills and coke.
I just wanted to wallow in self-pity, I guess. Alone.”
After a moment, Jack says. “That’s quite a bit of self-awareness you’ve got there.”
“Maybe I should be the shrink.”
He laughs. “Maybe. But you understand yourself. Better than a lot of men your age. You should give yourself some credit.”
“It’s funny you say that because I’ve always felt I didn’t understand myself. Why I do things. Say things.” Suck certain dicks. Kiss certain mouths. “Sometimes it’s like I can’t even control myself.”
Jack is quiet for a while before he says, “What do you want to do about that?”
I look at him. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve named the problem. Now where do you want to go with it?”
“I don’t want to go anywhere with it. I don’t want the problem at all.”
“But you can recognize it now, can’t you?”
“I guess so.” Harvey’s face flashes in my mind for a second. “I don’t want it to be a problem, though. I don’t want to give it that name.”
“What name do you want to give it?”
I think about that, glancing at Jack, knowing I have an answer in me. Maybe I just don’t want to say it yet.
“I’m not sure.”
When I get to the picnic area, I find Harvey laying under a tree by the river with a long strand of grass in his mouth like he’s Huckleberry Finn.
“That’s cute,” I say, approaching him. “All you need now is a straw hat.”
He grins at me. “How’s it hanging, Hollywood?”
I sit next to him. “Want me to show you?”
“If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
I take note of him lounging beside me in his cut-offs, tight tee, and the grass between his lips. “I guess bumpkins are always showing each other their junk.”
“When in Rome.” He gazes at the river. “I don’t feel like working today anyway.”
I study him for a couple minutes. If we hadn’t had such huge egos and attitudes, maybe we could’ve been friends. He’s funny. Sometimes. Not completely stupid.
He catches me watching him. He turns on his side and smiles wide. “You want to come home with me? I can teach you the horizontal polka.” He winks.
I laugh, my face flushing. I wonder, if we’d never been such bitter enemies, and I’d seen him out at places like Studio One, if his flirting would have worked on me. “Gonna sneak me into your daddy’s house?”
He twists that piece of grass between his teeth. “He’s got a pool. A wall to hold onto for support.”
I wish I didn’t blush so easily. “I guess as long as we’re quiet.”
“Me? Sure. You?” He sits up, scooting closer to me. “Not so much.”
I don’t know where all his bravado comes from, his self-assurance. It’s an act, I think. He knows he’s attractive, he uses that, and why wouldn’t he? I would too if I looked like him. But I know there’s more to him now. I’ve seen it. I wish I could see more of it.
“Guess this means you don’t hate me anymore,” I say.
“I never did,” he says.
“Bullshit.”
“It’s true. I guess you don’t hate me anymore.”
“No, I don’t.”
He watches me for a moment, and that vulnerability flashes in his eyes again. “So all that stuff about me fucking everything up? Ruining things?”
“Were things I shouldn’t have said. You’re not who I thought you were.”
He stares at me. “And who did you think I was?”
I shrug. “The spoiled son of rock star, I guess.”
His expression flattens for a moment, then a grin spreads across his face. “Wow.” He laughs. “Spoiled, huh?”
“It always seemed to me like you got everything handed to you. Because of your dad. There are a million guys out there who would love to make a record, but it was like you cut in line just because of your name.”
“You weren’t one of those guys.”
“No, but… I don’t know. I had to work hard. No one’s famous in my family. Not that I know of.”
He turns away and watches the water. “Yeah, well, it was fake. All of it. The singing. The guitar playing. Everything.”
“What do you mean?”
He turns to me. “I mean I was putting on a mask and becoming someone else. None of that was real. Some studio backup singer sang all the songs. They showed me where to put my fingers on the Les Paul. I was just there to look good and get the girls riled up.” He chuckles to himself.
“You know what’s sad? I wanted to know how to do that stuff.
Sing and play a guitar. It was interesting to me.
Not to make my dad happy or anything. Just to have something to do. To be good at something.”
“Well, you were really good at it. I had no idea it wasn’t you.”
“Great, thanks.”
“Come on. I don’t mean it in a bad way.”
He sighs. “All we were were products. You know that, right? In the magazines. And then you get too old. I guess there will always be another teenage boy out there to exploit.”
I shake my head. “I didn’t really see it that way. I liked it, actually. I hated it when it was all over.”
“I liked it too. Sometimes. But that’s not the point. Everything they did—the photos, the contests, the Bad Boy–Good Boy comparisons between you and me—wasn’t for us. They were just… taking. It was always meant to be temporary.”
Those last words bring a faint feeling of dread. Of things being over. No more. That can’t be how it is for me. I don’t know what he’ll do, but it can’t end like that for me. It just can’t.
“So, you see,” he says, lounging on his side again. “I’m the Bad Angel. And you’re the Good Angel.”
I mimic his posture. I vaguely remember them doing something in Teen Street where my picture had a halo with white wings, and his had devil horns with black wings. “I don’t like that.”
“It’s true.”
Without even thinking I reach out to touch his face. His body tenses a little, his jaw clenches. My fingertips graze the faded bruise around his eye, his cheek, his neck. “Were you wrong about me?”
He snickers. “No, I was right about you.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“You’re insufferable and temperamental.”
I grin. “Really?”
“But I can dig insufferable and temperamental.” He takes my hand in his. “Keeps me on my toes.”
“How can Good Angels be insufferable and temperamental?”
He reaches out to touch my face, his fingers sliding across my nose. “All the other things about them makes up for it.”
“Like what?”
He smiles softly. “I’ll think about it. I’ll let you know.”
What the hell are we doing? I can’t decide if I want to hug him.
Or hook his knees over my shoulders and fuck him good right here under this tree.
I don’t get to reflect on it for long, though, because he closes the inches between us and kisses me.
It’s careful and uncertain at first, but then it gets heated.
He rolls on top of me, and I change my mind.
I’d rather he hook my knees over his shoulders and fuck me good under this tree.
He might be thinking that too, from the way he rubs his crotch against mine.
We don’t get to do any of that, though, because we hear Canyon’s truck. We get up, go over to the mess we’ve made, and pretend we’ve been cleaning it up this whole time.