Chapter 13 #2
“Yeah, but I feel high, Andrei. Don’t you get it? I never thought you were…” I stumbled over the labels, suddenly too afraid to utter the word. “What are you exactly?”
He bit his lip. “I suppose I’m gay.”
“Right,” I said, nodding. Then, another thought. “And is this the first time you’re telling that to anyone?”
Andrei swallowed. “Aloud?” He tried to laugh. His eyebrows lifted pleadingly, and I stepped forward. It didn’t matter. We had stuff to talk about. We had a whole lot to unpack. But I also knew that look. I knew the way his gaze searched for me, and his eyebrows trembled upward when he needed me.
My arms wrapped around him like an invisibility cloak so he was safe to break down or simply take a breath.
“Nobody knows?” I asked quietly after a light shudder had passed through Andrei.
Even in all this mess, I felt more relieved and closer to him than I had in weeks.
The burden of the secrets was behind us.
I couldn’t even imagine the torrent of decisions and conversations this required, but I didn’t care.
It was all outside this little shield of ours.
He shook his head as I released him. “Nobody who matters.” He shrugged and tucked his hands into his pockets. “I…I was with a few guys last year, but it didn’t feel like it mattered that some stranger knew.”
A wave of jealousy swept over me. Tell me their names, I wanted to growl, then caught myself being ridiculous and let it pass.
As if I hadn’t been texting him photos while chatting with girls.
As if he hadn’t been my wingman for years, keeping me company while I flirted around and left him holding my beer.
“Your family,” I said.
He shrugged. “I never thought about telling them. Didn’t seem like it mattered.”
“And me?” I asked.
He smiled sadly and moved over to his desk. He picked up the can of beer and drank from it, then set it back down. “I couldn’t tell you, Griff.”
“But we…” I blinked, feeling the warmth of his lips still lingering on mine. “We just kissed. You wanted that, right?”
He laughed then. His eyes gleamed with joy as he looked over my face. “Are you kidding me? Yes, Griff. I wanted it.” He licked his lips, then shook his head. “This is silly. How long have you…?”
“Dunno,” I admitted. “Seven or eight…days.”
He threw his head back and laughed aloud. “Oh, the life of torment.”
I stuck a finger into his ribcage. “Don’t laugh.
It was hell.” My other hand moved over to grab a fistful of his hoodie, and I pulled him close to me until our bodies touched.
“I thought I was gonna lose you, Andrei.” I stared at him and the unfiltered, untamed excitement in his eyes.
“I thought it was over for us, and I just…I couldn’t live with that. ”
His gaze moved over my lips, rising along the bridge of my nose, flicking to my heated cheeks, and finally meeting my eyes. “What happened seven or eight days ago?”
I looked away in a sudden sweep of shame, then forced myself to look into his eyes. “A few weeks back, I read some of the stories.”
He sucked his teeth. “Bad idea.”
“It was your idea,” I said, pulling him a little closer until I could feel his leg between mine.
My grip on his hoodie loosened, and I opened my palm, pressing it flat against his chest. “I’d never thought of you that way.
Never. But when I saw how people fantasized about you, about us, I…
” I sighed, struggling to find the right words.
And when I couldn’t find a better way to say it, I just used the simplest ones.
“You turn me on, Andrei. It’s crazy and hella scary, but you do.
” My hands pressed against his chest harder as if I wanted to feel his heartbeat beneath the layers of clothes.
“I didn’t think you felt the same way. Maybe I should have seen it, but I never did.
And when I realized what you do to me whenever you’re around…
” I shook my head, losing the rest of what I meant to say.
It was pointless.
These were only words on the wind.
What mattered—truly and completely—was that we had kissed just a few minutes earlier. We had kissed with freedom and desire.
“I didn’t think I’d ever hear these words,” Andrei said softly. “You…you’re straight.”
A single bark of laughter broke out of me.
“I mean, I get it, but you were straight since I met you,” Andrei said.
“And last week, when you were out, I went to shower and found your boxers in the laundry basket,” I admitted, my face burning hotter than ever. “And some devil possessed me, and I pressed them against my nose. Fuck, you’re cringing. Don’t do that. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“I’m, er, not cringing,” Andrei said, his eyelids drooping a little and his lips parting. “You sniffed my boxers?”
Embarrassment opened like a bottomless pit in my stomach. But I wasn’t going to kiss him again while lying by omission. “I did.”
“And?” A whisper, if even that.
“And I…came. Hard.”
Andrei’s eyes closed, and he swayed a little closer to me, his leg moving deeper between mine, his chest pressing against mine, and his hands moving to the sides of my waist. “That’s…”
I prepared myself to hear the scolding I deserved.
“…incredibly hot,” Andrei said. “I never did that. Never dared. But fuck, I had opportunities, and it crossed my mind.”
“You don’t need to ask for permission,” I said.
“Oh, I think we can come up with better things to do,” Andrei said, then went silent. He looked at me from beneath a frown. “Are you into that? Or am I rushing ahead?”
“I…don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never done it. Except in my head. And I think I’m into that. Probably.”
He bit his tongue, then lifted his chin. “I don’t care either way, Griff. And I realize that I am rushing ahead. You know how risky this is.”
“I know. If anyone finds out…”
“For us, Griff,” Andrei said, his fingers curling with tension as he held on to me. “If it goes south, we’re screwed. All the years we’ve known each other, ruined. All the stuff we still want to do, gone.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that,” I said, panic kicking in. I’d only just kissed him once. I couldn’t stop.
His eyes were wide and glowing with his inner light. “What I’m saying is, if we’re gonna do this, let’s do it right.”
I nodded with vigor. “Yes. Right.”
He looked at me.
I figured it was still my turn to speak. My head shook in confusion. “How do we…do that?”
He laughed in that sweet, short way of his. “Maybe you should just kiss me again.”
Oh, I thought, relief bringing me to him in a single, wonderful heartbeat.
My mouth pressed against his, the kiss searing us both all the way down to our hearts.
I kissed him like I’d never kissed anybody else.
I didn’t know where the difference lay, but I knew it felt that way.
It felt right. It felt like this was exactly where my mouth needed to be and who I needed to kiss.
I silenced the welling questions and just pressed on, parting my lips in Andrei’s rhythm and kissing him deeper and hungrier as the moments passed us by.
We stood there, frozen in time, in an instant so glorious and wonderful that I didn’t need to know the end of this story.
I could have stopped it right there and then, stopped it all, and I would have been content.
It didn’t matter what lay ahead. It didn’t matter the road we’d covered to get here. Only this kiss meant something, and only Andrei in my arms.
He was like heat and delight folded into one, squirming in my arms to get closer, to kiss me better, to touch me more. I wrapped myself around him like he was some small and fragile thing instead of an ice devil nearly the size of me. But I’d known him long before he had become a ruthless athlete.
My Andrei. Right here, pressed against me, sliding a little higher, revealing he was just as hard as I was, struggling not to moan out loud. He kissed me again, his nose resting just next to mine, his lips moving softly, savoring every sensation.
When he pulled back, it was just enough to speak, and his forehead pressed against mine. “Are you sure we’re not making a mistake?”
“If I say yes, will you keep kissing me?”
He chuckled. “Griff, if you didn’t understand this already, I don’t think I’ll be able to explain it.”
“Go on,” I said, hands feeling the sides of his ribcage.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to stop kissing you either way,” he said, pulling his head back and looking into my eyes. “Even if I wanted to.”
And that was all I needed to hear.