CHAPTER 20 #2
‘I think I was scared,’ Jeremy continued.
‘I was consumed with hatred for my ex, and also, I’m just a bit …
selfish,’ he admitted unhappily, looking at his own hands, head slumped.
Sam went to say something, but he subsided when Jeremy held up his hands.
‘I genuinely feel so sorry and so … awful. All I can do is promise that you’re my priority now, if you’re willing to give me a chance.
No more Brian, no more spite plan. Who gives a shit about the reunion?
The only thing I want is to prove how important you are to me, because I think we might be something special.
Sorry, I’m speaking weirdly because I’m trying to be serious.
Sometimes I make too many jokes when I’m nervous. ’
Sam just took his hand, gently. ‘I’d like that. I like you a lot, Jeremy.’
‘I like you a lot too, Sam,’ Jeremy said.
Jeremy had already thrown the ‘love’ word around at the rally earlier, in the heat of the moment, but this felt somehow more intimate, more real, to confirm that they just …
liked each other. And it was true – Jeremy knew that he both liked and loved this guy who he’d started out thinking he absolutely hated.
‘So … what now?’ Jeremy asked tentatively.
Sam looked thoughtful, wincing a little and staring into the sky at the settling dusk. ‘Well, I think we should probably take things slow, rebuild trust. I’d like to take you on a date, perhaps – how does axe-throwing next month sound?’
‘Oh … yeah,’ Jeremy answered. ‘That would be … great. Thank you.’
Sam held his eye for a couple of moments longer before he started chuckling. ‘I’m sorry, I was absolutely messing with you.’
Jeremy gasped in outrage, slapping Sam lightly on the bicep.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ Sam said. ‘I promise that’s the last time I do that, but you’re being so repentant, I had to.’
‘God, how did I end up dating such an evil man?’ Jeremy mused. ‘Uh, are we dating?’
‘Yes, we are dating, Jeremy. That makes me happy,’ Sam said, moving closer on the bench and grabbing Jeremy by both his arms. ‘And I have an idea of what we should go do now too.’ He leant in close, his lips next to Jeremy’s ear, the hint of stubble from his cheek scratching his neck with a delicious rasp, and with a voice low and husky, Sam said, ‘We’re going to go back to my house, I’m going to take all your clothes off, and I’m going to fuck you until the sun rises. ’
Jeremy breathed out raggedly and just nodded.
One perfect week later, Jeremy woke up, scratching irritably at his nose as something coarse rubbed against it.
His eyes widened suddenly as he feared a cockroach crawling across his face, too long a veteran of Sydney share houses.
But it was just a strand of Sam’s deep chestnut hair, the head to which it was connected being buried deep into the side of Jeremy’s neck and shoulder.
Nestled in like a koala to a tree, decided Jeremy, aware that when he thought about Sam, his mind dripped slowly and pendulously like spilled golden syrup.
He could feel Sam’s deep, heavy breaths, warm against his skin, but as he shifted, those breaths become shallower and quicker.
Jeremy marvelled at how good this closeness felt, and how after only a short time he felt so entirely in tune with Sam’s body.
Imagine knowing intimately what the change in tempo of someone’s breaths meant.
And imagine not being furious about it – Jeremy had always been someone who needed space in bed and in his life, hating to be crowded.
He detested the feel of a sweaty arm or leg against his own, had often in the past lain in some hook-up’s bed, eyes open, waiting until it was early enough for the trains to run again.
Instead, he craved Sam’s skin at all times, like some kind of touch-starved baby ape separated from its mother by poachers.
He gently ran his fingers through the lock of hair, moving it away from his face and mouth while also trying not to wake him, and enjoying the smooth feel of it, the warmth that came from Sam’s body.
He wanted to let Sam rest – they’d had a long night with little sleep.
This kind of marathon, all-night affair sounded like a sexual endurance test, but it wasn’t all sex.
It was intimacy; it was laughter and jokes and teasing.
After feeling Sam lightly kiss his ankles, he’d asked seriously if feet were an ‘interest’ of Sam’s – and Sam being Sam had answered he’d be open to it, leaving Jeremy confirming he only was if Sam was, until finally they realised they were being so polite that they were trying to convince themselves into a mutual foot fetish neither of them actually wanted.
They’d laughed harder than Jeremy could remember laughing in recent memory.
He found Sam took a kind of innocent joy in lightly roughhousing, pinning Jeremy’s hands back against the headboard, picking him up and depositing him on the bed in a breathless tumble, lifting him and wrapping Jeremy’s legs around his firm torso as they stood in the stream of the shower together.
But there was always so much gentleness behind those moments of strength, a velvet hand inside a firm steel glove.
They were still navigating each other, the borders and bridges of how they liked to be touched and loved, and Jeremy had found himself shivering involuntarily at the way Sam had fixed him with deep, intense eye contact when he asked huskily, ‘Is this okay?’ Then after Jeremy had enthusiastically nodded, Sam had flipped him over, bringing his mouth low, Jeremy feeling the shock of a hot tongue circle and then dip inside him.
The sex was broken up by long and intimate talking.
Jeremy was obsessed with Sam, every moment of him, every new way of seeing his body, every new fact he learnt about him.
The fact he’d spent half a year living in rural Italy on high-school exchange was impossibly romantic, and hearing him casually speak Italian did strange things to Jeremy’s stomach.
It made him very glad that he’d not persisted with his pasta-making classes, shuddering to imagine serving that mess of glue and string to someone who had been taught by a real nonna when he was sixteen.
Jeremy felt his smile die a little as he thought back to that time of activity-based insanity when he’d first met Sam, who he’d been, and what had driven him to it – and he decided to move on.
He wasn’t that person any more, and his life was very different – it was all about Sam now.
He looked down, startled out of his musing, to see an eye cracked open sleepily, looking up at him through a curtain of messy hair.
He felt Sam’s head shift so he could see Jeremy more easily, and just as Jeremy was about to say ‘Good morning,’ he felt a hand softly cup his dick, and when he responded, begin to stroke.
‘Well,’ Jeremy said, already breathing hard, ‘that is a good morning.’
An hour later and they were in the shower again, trying to keep their giggles to an acceptable volume – but every time they looked at each other, one of them would start laughing even louder.
The joke, such as it was, stemmed from Sam’s housemates, who had begun to make their displeasure at Jeremy’s constant presence (and, to be fair, frequent nocturnal noises) known, and had interrupted their early-morning acrobatics by banging on the wall separating their bedrooms. To Jeremy’s utter surprise and delight, Sam had paused thrusting for a second, rolled his eyes at Jeremy lying supine beneath him, and then pounded on the wall right back at them.
‘Some of us fuck for longer than two quick minutes on a fortnightly basis, Henry!’ Sam had shouted, before realising what he’d done and raising his hand to his mouth in horror.
Jeremy could not stop laughing, wriggling away from Sam’s attempts to cover his mouth, screaming as Sam mouthed ‘shhh’ at him.
It was one of the reasons they’d moved things to the bathroom, but while it didn’t share a wall with Ruth and Henry’s room, they were running the risk of committing the second cardinal share-house sex sin – using all the hot water.
After pushing the boundary of how long two people could remain in a communal showering area, and Jeremy discovering just how much water you could accidentally inhale when you suddenly gasped and cried out under running water, Jeremy and Sam reluctantly got dressed.
With his hair still wet and his face still flushed, Sam took a deep breath and told Jeremy he’d be back.
He was going to attempt mediation with Ruth and Henry.
Jeremy felt completely fine about hiding in Sam’s room instead, throwing himself onto the bed fully clothed.
Sam walked back into the room a little while later holding two cups of coffee and making a sheepish face.
‘How did it go?’ Jeremy asked, taking the hot mug thankfully.
‘At one point, Ruth threatened to not only get the landlord involved, but the ombudsman. I’m not entirely sure what an ombudsman does, but I am concerned.’ Sam sighed dramatically but was clearly still stifling a chuckle.
‘Shall we go back to my place today?’ Jeremy asked, wrinkling his nose.
His housemates were fine with Sam and the sex, but they were all suddenly dating too, and the other night there had been a literal line outside the one bathroom.
It had felt more like a sauna than a place to hole up with your new lover.
‘Let’s … get out of here,’ Sam said suddenly. ‘Let’s go! Let’s leave the city!’
Jeremy sat up. This was a bold new direction – only a few nights earlier he’d suggested going to a restaurant two suburbs away and had been roundly mocked. ‘I’m intrigued,’ he said cautiously.