Chapter Fourteen
Harper
“The hell are you doing, Harp?” he whispered to himself through clenched teeth and restricted vocal cords, his nerves on edge just like his butt on the end of the weathered cushion beneath him.
Harper sat on the couch in the Day Room, a kind of giant, communal living room at the end of each floor.
It featured a cluster of couches, used and battered and dotted with random throw pillows tossed hither and yon with no rhyme or reason.
There was a big screen TV on the wall, and instructions on how to use it posted nearby, but the last thing Harper wanted was more noise after ditching his room after enduring his roommate Parker’s snoring for the last two hours.
He'd ordered noise canceling earphones, but they wouldn’t be delivered until that weekend, and the thought of lingering in that weed smelling, fart blossoming, ear shattering dorm room one minute longer had forced him to flee after enduring it for the two hours since he’d been barred from the room Banks shared with an empty bed.
Harper clung to his breakaway bag, the spare backpack he’d packed for just such occasions, featuring a handful of toiletries plus a fresh change of clothes should Parker’s snoring get too loud to endure another moment longer.
He’d been sitting there for ten minutes, listening to the creaks and the rustles of the sleeping dorm floor, afraid to stay and miss out on what Banks might be doing at that very moment, yet petrified of what might happen if he gave into temptation, strolled across campus and knocked on his door.
He was hard just thinking about it, his heart hammering as it had in the back of that empty theater, Banks stroking him tenderly until he came buckets all over his panting, trembling belly.
He wanted that feeling again. Banks kissing him, jerking him, pleasing him, and so very much more. He wanted all of him, every inch, to explore and tease and please, to be explored, to be teased and pleasured in return.
He hadn’t thought twice about Banks back in school.
Not really. Banks was straight, no doubt about it.
Banging chicks left and right, bro-ing out on the daily with his jock buds and doing all the hetero things that were as foreign to Harper as Harper’s secret life would have been to Banks.
He’d been a poser, a category, a niche, a clique, a walking cliché and, in the process, was to Harper what everything and everybody else had been back at Sagebrush High—background noise, something to be endured until he could graduate, flee to college, and start living his real life. His authentic life.
His best life.
The fact that Banks had shown up on the same campus, even looking for the same thing, was more than just a blessing.
It was a revelation. The things Banks had done to him in that movie theater, the way he’d made him feel, his heart racing, pulse pounding, cock leaking, were as new to him as the stiff confines of his spiffy Pride t-shirt, and just as scary.
It wasn’t the sex that scared him so much. This was, after all, what Harper had dreamed of, and so very much more. No, it was Banks himself that scared the hell out of him. Harper had had boy crushes before. Too many to mention, in fact.
This was something else entirely. Something new and altogether frightening, only because Harper had never felt this way before.
Not about anyone, ever. Not the other cute boys on the swim team, not about the pretty twinks in the jerk-off videos he watched online, late at night, after his mom had gone to bed.
Not about the guy in the Speedo he’d jerked off his first week as a lifeguard.
Sure, his experience was limited, but Harper knew enough to realize that love existed, and that for a guy like Banks Principle, it was strictly off limits.
Despite all they’d shared since that morning—Jesus, he thought, had it only been since that morning?
?—Harper knew he was falling, and falling fast. Not just fast, but hard.
The kind of hard that could only result in broken things—hearts, predominantly, but other things as well.
Broken promises, broken vows and, worst of all, broken friendships.
Sure, Banks was good with his hands. And those lips? Jesus, if they’d nearly made Harper come just from kissing, what might they do wrapped around his leaking cock, thick and wet and tender?
He ached, balls, stomach, heart and everything else, just thinking about it.
But more than Banks and his expert hands and throbbing lips, Harper straight up liked the guy.
Period. His quick wit, his funny remarks, his withering sarcasm, his outlook on life, his cheesy jokes, hell, they even had the same taste in old cult movies.
Banks was literally everything he’d always wanted in a guy, and he’d been right under Harper’s nose the whole time.
And now that they had the run of the campus together, he was both relieved and terrified.
Relieved that Banks seemed to be as into him as Harper was into Banks, but terrified that, once his new friend met some other cute guy—cuter, in fact—that Banks would be up to his old man whore ways, this time just with guys instead of girls.
Harper believed Banks when he said he wanted him to spend the night, but he could also imagine Banks offering the same thing to a new guy every night.
Did he really want to be another notch on Banks’s bedpost?
Was he willing to risk that pain and heartache of losing the first boy who’d ever made him come by watching him slip away when some cuter, more experienced, cockier freshman caught his eye at one of the Welcome Week festivities the next day? Or the day after?
Or the day after that?
How long could he keep Banks by his side with a whole campus full of sexy young hotties vying for his attention?
And what would Harper do the first time Banks threw him over for someone new?
How would he cope with seeing Banks around campus, that big, sinewy arm slung over some other boy’s shoulder, whispering sweet nothings in his ear, making him spew buckets in the back of the campus theater or, worse yet, naked and writhing in his sweaty dorm room?
The thought literally made Harper sick, hunched over and moaning quietly, as he held his stomach in the empty Day Room. He sighed, balls tight with desire and heart already sick with ache.
For the first time in his life, Harper’s heart literally ached.
He sighed, reached for his backpack, and nodded, his decision finally made.
Banks might be hot, but so was the gripping fear that nearly singed the butterflies dancing in his belly, one by one.
He tugged out a spare shirt, rolling it into a makeshift pillow before curling up into a ball on the day room couch and, not for the first time in his sad, pathetic life, crying himself to sleep. ..