Chapter 14 Ethan #3
I lie back and he gets on top of me. I feel a whirlwind of emotions as he lowers himself onto my cock.
I’m in disbelief that this is happening now, finally, years later in a motel under these circumstances.
But it doesn’t feel wrong. I run my hands up his thighs to his hips and hold him tight.
I feel the tension in his muscles, the control, as he takes me inside him.
The physical sensations of what we’re doing take over my thoughts, and I close my eyes and let myself feel him, my body inside his, and I don’t think it’s ever felt this good before. I groan.
Ethan goes very still. I open my eyes and look at him. “Are you okay?”
He looks down at me and blinks. He nods.
I don’t know if I’d say he’s using me right now as he braces his hands on my shoulders and starts to ride me.
Maybe we’re just using each other. This didn’t turn out the way I thought it would.
In high school, maybe there’d been some rose petals and Boyz II Men or something.
We always got so close, but never went all the way.
We barely managed to get halfway naked together because of how paranoid I was.
And a fucking coward.
I’m not a coward right now.
I look up at Ethan. He’s watching me, his blond hair framing his face, and his lock-chain necklace dangling above me, and I can’t believe how good he feels.
I tell him so, running a hand up his stomach to his chest. His face is different now, his eyes.
The connection between us is undeniable.
And it converges where my body joins his.
There’s all kinds of things I want to say to him, and I should because we’re not promised tomorrow. But the words, the emotions, don’t want to come out.
Instead, I grab his dick and twist my hand around it and watch his face flush a deep red. He’d get like this after making out sometimes, flushed and breathless. He’d want more, and I would too, but I was chicken shit back then.
I’m not anymore.
I sit up, sliding my hands up Ethan’s back, and turn us so he’s underneath me. His eyes flutter closed. His head tilts back into the pillow.
He whispers, “Fuck you, Shane.”
I drive into him again. And again. And again.
“Fuck you, Shane.” He wraps his arms around me and pulls me closer and closer. “Fuck you.”
I fuck him as if it’s the last time I’ll ever get to again.
It would have been preferable if we’d both come at the same time, but we don’t.
The condom has desensitized me a little bit, but Ethan’s cock is bare, and it’s caught in between our bodies, in between the friction and the heat, so that his cum pools in between us and his chest rumbles with a deep groan.
I thrust a couple more times before I fill up the condom.
I might have stopped breathing because there’s spots before my eyes after, and my entire body shudders one more time before I pull out.
He’s still got his arms around me, and I rest my head on his shoulder.
It’s a long time before either of us move.
Smoke curls into the air as I lazily watch Ethan smoke a cigarette.
I see what looks like a tattoo of an ankh a few inches below his left nipple. It’s the first time I’ve noticed it, and why? Maybe it’s because it’s small. Or because patches of dark hair curl around it, and around his navel, and trail down to his spent dick.
I reach for the cigarette and take a drag. He watches me. He says, “Do you love Gina?”
I cough a little bit as I exhale. “Not in that way.” I hand the cigarette back to him. “Do you love your boyfriend?”
He blinks. “I lied.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.” He looks over at me, sheepishly.
I get up off the bed and go looking for the disposable camera. I lay down beside him and line up my shot. He turns away from me to stub his cigarette out in the ashtray. “You won’t be able to get those developed. They’ll say it’s porn or something.”
“Then I’ll develop them myself.” I take a picture as soon as he turns back around.
I snap another one as he gets up on his hands and knees and crawls over to me.
I take another one as he positions himself overtop of me.
I get in one more as he takes the camera from me and sets it on the bedside table.
He stares down at me, still on his hands and knees. I run a hand down his chest over to the ankh. “How long have you had this?”
“Maybe a year.”
“Did it hurt?”
“No.”
I reach my head up to kiss it. It surprises him. I feel his body tense.
Then I kiss the base of his throat. Then his chin. Then his lips. I feel his right palm rest against the right side of my chest. I put my hand over his and his lips pull away from mine.
“How long have you had that?” he asks.
“About five years.”
He moves our hands to look. “Your kid’s name?”
“Yeah. Gina’s got it on her left wrist.”
“Did it hurt?”
“A little bit.”
He lays back down beside me. Ice pellets tap against the glass of the motel windows. The TV is still on and The X-Files theme song plays.
Ethan smiles faintly. “Remember Ev had a crush on Scully?”
I smile back. “You said you did too.”
“I was just trying to be like him. So he wouldn’t know that…”
Ethan’s eyes start to water and he sits up. We both sit in silence for a time, watching Mulder and Scully flash their badges at some cops so they can look for a monster. Then he says, almost too softly for me to hear him, “Remember when you drove that Bronco?”
“Yeah. It broke down a couple years ago. That’s when I got my truck. Why?”
He messes with the corner of a pillowcase “Remember when you had some flat tires?”
I think back. The Bronco was always breaking down and having issues in the later years that I drove it.
Then I remember about a year or so after high school, I came out of a store in Lowville and there were three flats on it.
I was pissed, had to get a tow, and Gina had to wake up Mikayla and put her in the car seat to come pick me up.
I just thought the tires had rotted out.
But it sounds like I was wrong. “That was you?”
He doesn’t answer. He puts the pillow on his lap and leans over it.
There’s silence between us for a few minutes. Then I say, “I would rather you have punched me or something.”
“Oh, I would have,” Ethan says. “If I’d seen you before I saw your car.
” He pauses. “But you didn’t deserve that.
It was mean. And dangerous. Like if you’d had your kid with you or something.
I just happened to see it, and I don’t know.
You never answered me. All those emails I sent.
I went to your house.” He shakes his head.
“I know, Ethan. I was an asshole. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
There’s a faint line between his eyebrows that wasn’t there five years ago.
I suppose he’s spent more time frowning than smiling.
The knuckles of his hands are bigger, thicker.
I wonder what he does all day, back in the city.
I’m guessing he goes to his classes. Maybe he parties and there’s got to be some clubs, gay clubs and bars, and maybe that’s where he’s met some guys.
Guys that taught him a new way of kissing; taught him how to put on a condom.
There’s a spot of dried cum near his nipple that I missed when I cleaned us up. I rub my finger over the spot and realize how different things are now. Very different. They way they would have been had we crossed this line years ago.
I’m reminded of that one time the three of us were going to sleep outside. Kind of like a camp out. Ev, Ethan, and I were going to sleep in this big tent they had in the backyard, but it started raining and there were mosquitoes.
Ev fell asleep with the TV on, and Ethan quietly got out of his sleeping bag, stepped over Everett, and crept up the stairs. I counted to twenty and did the same. I went all the way up to Ethan’s bedroom where he was standing by the door, which he closed once I slipped in.
I remember him standing there in his blue plaid pajama pants and a worn-out gray tee with “Camp Eagle” printed on the front. I was sure that between Ethan and me I was the one with the most experience, but I didn’t feel that way right then. I felt…new.
He offered to put some music on, something slow and soft.
Make out music.
He stood in front of me again, running his fingers through his hair and that one strand, that one long strand that always slipped out from behind his ear and just barely touched his lips fell out, and I finally moved away from the door and gently pushed that strand of hair out of his face.
It wasn’t long until our lips collided, and he made this noise in his throat.
He moved me, walked us until we were at his bed, and he fell back, while I fell on top of him.
It wasn’t smooth at all. We bumped heads, we had to scoot our bodies onto the bed so our legs weren’t dangling, and we knocked our knees together.
I accidentally put my hand on the fabric of his tee, which tugged it across his neck as he tried to scoot onto the bed.
We snickered over our clumsiness, even though I was starting to sweat with anxiety over what we were doing.
And being caught.
I kept my ears alert for someone in the hall as I stroked his face and ran my thumb across his plump bottom lip. My hair spilled down my forehead and brushed against his. When I tried to push it back, he told me not to do that. He liked it. Then he lifted himself up and kissed me.
It got heated. And my body reacted. I was embarrassed at first. I don’t know why. I felt his erection through those blue plaid pajama pants. He rolled his hips up against me, as if to let me know exactly what I was doing to him.
We kissed and kissed and kissed. Sloppy tongue kisses with grunts and groans as we awkwardly dry humped each other through our clothes. It felt so good. It felt incredible.
But then two things happened simultaneously.
Ethan stuck his hand down my pants to jerk me off and there was a noise on the steps.
I got off him immediately and we were still and quiet in the dark, listening.
When we both figured out it was just a random creak in the house and not Everett coming up the stairs to catch us, Ethan wanted to continue, but I’d been too freaked out.
So, we both went back downstairs to the rec room to find Everett sound asleep, and we tried to pretend to sleep too.
Or at least I did.
I have a feeling I’ll be doing the same thing tonight.
He sighs and lies back flat on the bed. “I’m sorry if you feel like I used you.”
“Did you?”
He looks at me. “No.”
I can tell he’s serious. I move closer to him and wrap him up in my arms. He doesn’t even hesitate to put his arms around me.
Would Everett have hated this? His gay brother and his gay best friend in bed together.
Or would it have been more like some funny sitcom—Ev accidentally walking in on us, rolling his eyes, and making some kind of wisecrack.
I pull away from Ethan to look at him. “When did Everett talk to you about his ashes being scattered?”
Ethan looks like he’s thinking. “When we were at camp, actually. I guess I was like twelve, and there was this meadow, kind of on a hillside.” He pauses.
“It was really pretty. There were these caverns nearby that we weren’t allowed to go in without any of the counselors.
But we’d go over to them and yell and scream at the entrance to listen to the echoes.
” He pauses again and looks down. “We were lying there one day, just me and Ev, in that meadow after a hike. Just lying there in the sun, resting, and I think it was the happiest I’d ever felt in my life.
I guess because it was so peaceful and so pretty.
Then Ev turned to me, and he just said, ‘Hey, when I die, I want my ashes scattered here.’ I laughed and he laughed.
Because he was just saying, not like predicting, but I never forgot that. I never forgot that day.”
I wonder if Ev even remembered saying that, because it seems like one of those random things you say in passing, in moments, then never think of them again. I’m happy Ethan remembered for him.
“He’d be proud of you for remembering that and doing this. He really would.”
Ethan looks pleased for a moment, but then his expression darkens. “You think he’d be happy about this. About…you and me?”
I remember the last thing Everett said to me, his anger when he saw that picture. “I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I don’t know.”