Chapter 55 Elliot
Elliot
I’m not entirely sure why I feel the need to ask Stuart for permission to go out, but I do, and it really, really pisses me off.
Not only am I an adult who doesn’t need permission to do shit, I’ve been doing more or less as I please since I was fourteen, when our housekeeper, Joyce, retired.
My mom is super cool, and she’s never minded what I get up to as long as I don’t get into trouble.
Stuart is the polar opposite. He watches everything I do, just waiting for me to fuck up so he can get the last word in.
Dinner tonight is a stilted affair. We have lasagna with a green salad and use the black-and-white checked placemats. We both have a glass of ice water with our meals. Stuart is rambling on about my dad, even worse than usual.
“…and even though we don’t see each other all that much these days, we’re still close. It wouldn’t matter if we lost touch completely. We’d still never do anything that would upset the other. Neither of us would.”
Ugh. God. Make it stop.
I try to tune him out by focusing all my attention on the way his lips move and ignoring the sound coming out of them. That proves to be a bad decision. His lips move slowly, carefully forming each word, pouting as they press together and then abruptly parting as he expels sound.
Something about it takes me back to the way he looked this morning.
He stormed out of the living room after our habitual smoothie debate.
It looked like he was in a race to get away from me, which made me furious.
He muttered as he walked. I followed him, thinking I would give him a piece of my mind, but now I’m not sure that was my intention.
When I got close to the study door, I started tiptoeing and hid out of sight, listening in to see if he’d say something about me again.
“Someone needs to spank the skin off this boy before I do it myself.”
The words have been ringing in my ears since the second I heard them.
Part of me feels shocked every time I think of it.
Deeply shocked. The kind of shock that makes you feel hot and cold at the same time.
The kind of shock that makes you question your sanity and wonder if you really heard what you heard.
The rest of me is a hot mess of confusion and a bunch of other things I’m trying really hard not to think about.
Does he know what I’m into?
How the hell would he know?
I’ve always been kinked. It’s something I’ve always been aware of on some level.
It’s something I’ve always known, even when I didn’t really know what it was that I knew.
I have no idea what made me this way. I’ve spent years wondering what happened to kink me like this.
I wish I knew, but suffice it to say, a quick scroll through my internet search history would be more than enough to convince anyone that my preferred flavor isn’t vanilla.
I’ve never told anyone that I think about things like this.
Things I want. Things I need. Things that make me feel like I’m drowning in shame.
Things that make me want to feel shame. I’ve always held it close to my chest and thought about it late at night when I’m alone in the dark.
I’ve always thought these things were just for me.
Things to think and want and feel on my own.
In fact, I’ve gone out of my way to keep it that way.
Since this uptight asshole planted the seed, my world’s been turned upside down.
Possibilities and scenarios I’ve spent an awful lot of time trying to hold at bay have flooded my consciousness.
My subconsciousness too. I’ve been sleepless and restless, woken by fever dreams and unable to get comfortable or stay still.
It feels like something has woken inside me, something that’s always been there but has lain dormant until now.
Now that it’s awake…it wants.
I could barely think straight at work today. My manager, Dan, stopped by my cubicle after the morning meeting to check if I felt okay. I told him I had a headache, which was, if not the whole truth, at least truth adjacent.
“…ah, we had some good times, Jeff and I…”
As Stuart prattles on, I drop my gaze from his mouth to his forearms. Flexed muscle is wrapped tightly in tan skin.
Even though I’ve been begging myself to stop doing this, I follow the haphazard line of the vein running down his arm to hand.
He reaches out and lifts his glass to his mouth.
His knuckles are deeply lined, his nail beds are soft pink, and his nails are neatly trimmed.
His hand envelops the glass, circling it with almost comical ease.
I do the same thing I’ve been doing all week. I watch and watch until Stuart does something that requires him to stretch his palm out.
Then I imagine that palm making contact with my flesh.
The second it happens, I suck a ragged breath in, and my mouth goes so dry that my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
In a desperate attempt to shake it off, I tune back into the predictable whirr of his voice.
“…you know, your dad was the first person I ever told I was gay…that’s how close we were.”
He looks at me in a way that makes me feel like he might be able to see through me, like he has the unlikely ability to read my mind. It’s such an unsettling thought I decide to ask him a question to throw him off the scent.
“Oh yeah? How did he take it?”
“Bear in mind, it was very different in our day. A lot less accepting. There wasn’t a single openly gay kid in our whole school.
Hell, the only gay person I even knew was my mom’s uncle, and no one really talked about that, but Jeff was great about it.
I’ve never forgotten it. I was so scared to tell him I almost felt sick when I thought about it for too long.
I looked up to your dad. I don’t mind telling you that.
I really did.” Stuart gets a glazed look in his eyes.
“He couldn’t have reacted better. He just put his arm around me and told me he had my back. ”
“Yeah, I’ve got to hand it to Jeff. He’s not a homophobe. A crap dad, yes, but a homophobe, no. He was totally cool when I told him I’m bi.”
Stuart shifts in his seat and looks at me like he’s trying to mind-read me again. “Are you bi? I didn’t know that.”
“Well, bi, pan, something like that. I just want to bone everyone, basically.”
He looks like he’s getting amped to give me a long lecture about how cool he is with me being bi. I’m not sure I can handle that right now, so I ask the next question, even though I have a weird, churning feeling in my belly when I think about it.
“So, did you, like, have a crush on my dad or what?”
His mouth drops open for a millisecond, and then he says, “Oh no. No. It was never like that between me and Jeff.”
I chuckle, watching him squirm in his seat. I’m not used to seeing him flustered, but I’m here for it in a big way. “Why not?”
“He’s not, uh, Jeff’s, uh, not my type.”
I’m living for this conversation and want to ride this wave to the shore.
I want to see how uncomfortable I can possibly make him.
“So you’re saying you happen to be the single, solitary gay dude who managed to get through the whole of high school without developing an epic crush on his straight best friend? ”
I raise a dubious eyebrow until he concedes, “I did have a crush on this guy called Tommy Polanski. And yeah, he was straight, so I guess I didn’t escape completely.”
Hmm, interesting.
I hear the clear inner murmuring of common sense suggesting I nip this line of questioning in the bud.
I choose to ignore it.
“So what did Tommy have that my dad didn’t?”
“Um.” His voice cracks and comes out sounding so hoarse I’m pretty sure the sound he just made could be comfortably classed as a croak.
Oh my God. Stuart Wiseman just croaked.
I love this for me.
He clears his voice and starts again. “Tommy was just more…” He waves his hands around a little, ungracefully indicating something smaller or shorter than my dad.
“Ah,” I say. “Was Tommy a little twink? Is that your type?”
“No,” he replies quickly. “It’s not about that. It’s not about physical characteristics exactly…it’s more, um, like a personality type…an attitude, I think you’d call it.”
An attitude.
Yeah right.
I’m about to go for the jugular when he clamps his hands together decisively and looks weirdly excited. “Welp,” he says, “how about you choose a show for us. I’ll get some ice cream and we can eat on the sofa. Let’s get the show on the road so we can both have an early night.”
“Nah, can’t. Heading out. I’m meeting some friends for drinks.”
His face falls. It literally drops, cheeks and mouth sagging loosely, and then he exhales sharply.
“All right,” he says, though I definitely don’t remember asking him for permission. “Yeah, sure, okay, go out and have fun. Just make sure you get home by a decent hour.”
The way he says it makes me feel like he’s taken sandpaper to my skin. I feel the familiar prickle of rage trickling up my spine. “What do you mean by a decent hour, Stuart?”
“Oooh, how ‘bout eleven?” he suggests as if that’s the height of reasonableness.
Eleven?
E-fucking-leven?
Is he joking? What even happens before eleven?
“Yeah,” I drawl, “‘fraid that’s not gonna work for me.”
His lips press together and he tucks his chin down. “It’s nonnegotiable, Elliot.”
It’s what now?
The fuck is going on here?
“I, er,” I splutter.
“Look, it’s a weeknight, and I need to get an early night. And so do you.”
I ignore the part about me needing an early night because it feels very close to him giving me a bedtime, and that’s so ridiculous that I don’t even know how to respond.
I also do my best to ignore the fact my dick seems hell-bent on making itself part of this conversation.
“You don’t have to wait up for me. I told you I don’t mind. ”