Chapter 8
“I think we should get a place.”
“Okay,” Ryan agrees over the phone.
I’ve been hiding since our talk this morning. I don’t have class today since it’s Sunday, and it’s my day off, so there is no escape.
Only my locked door between me and him.
“Right now, I mean. As soon as possible. Tomorrow, even.” Ryan laughs, and it does nothing to my heart. Why couldn’t it have been that way with Mike?
“Finally realizing you’re in over your head? What’d he do this time?”
“I can’t do it anymore. All of it. Maybe we could sneak me into your place. Not tell the RA? Just until we find somewhere else. Man, I don’t know how we can even afford a place. I’m gonna have to pick up so many hours—”
“Hey, it’s okay. We’ll find something. Maybe your brother could help out a little bit. I’ve got some cash saved up from working over the summer. We got this.”
“Okay. Yeah. You’re right. I’m sure Nate wouldn’t mind helping.”
“I know of a few places available right now,” he tells me, and that takes a massive weight off my chest. “We should be able to get in by the end of the week if we hurry.”
“Thank god.”
We hang up after making plans to meet early tomorrow to go look at places. I shoot a text to Nate, hesitantly asking if he’d be willing to help.
I hate asking Nate for money.
It’s already bad enough that he had to spend the last twenty years taking care of my sorry ass, and now I can’t even make it as an adult without his help.
Fuck my life.
I take a nap, watch two movies, and try to do some homework that gets so tedious that I have to stop.
And it’s still only six.
I wish I had my guitar right now. I wish my hand worked right to play it. Because being trapped in your room all day with nothing to do is not for the weak.
I am weak.
So I go downstairs.
It’s fine, I tell myself. I don’t even know if he’s home. He could’ve been gone all day. I haven’t heard a peep out of him since this morning, and usually Sundays are party days. Maybe he found somewhere better to go.
When I make it downstairs and still don’t see him, I start to think that I stayed upstairs all day for nothing.
But when I round the couch to sit down and play some Xbox, I find him, curled up on the couch, eyes heavy, staring at the TV that isn’t even on. “Hey, you good?”
“Oh, hey,” he says, sitting up with the big goofy smile that would be ridiculous on anyone, but on him, it’s ridiculously cute. “I’m great. This weed is really good, wanna try some?”
He gestures to the bowl on the table, and oh. I get it now.
I sit down on the couch when he sits up, curling up into a ball. We can do this. I can hang out. Talk to him. It’s all good now. I’m moving out at the end of the week. I don’t have to worry about the long-term effects of him anymore.
The sadness that thought leaves behind goes unacknowledged.
“I’ve never—” I look at the bowl again.
He gasps, covering his mouth in shock, way too dramatic for what I said. “You’ve never smoked weed? Oh my god! That’s why you’re so uptight!”
“I’m not uptight,” I defend, but he’s already standing up, running up the stairs faster than I’ve ever seen him move. He comes back down with a box that he opens on the table and begins to pull out a bunch of actual drugs.
“What the fuck, dude?!”
“Relax, it’s all recreational.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“Oh, you will, though. Just a sec.” He pulls out a bag that makes me scrunch up my nose when he opens it, along with a little piece of paper. “I’m gonna roll a joint, that’s easier for beginners.”
I stand up, fully prepared to go back upstairs and lock myself in my room again because he has clearly lost his mind. “I’m not a beginner because I’m not starting.”
“Sit down.”
Against all of my better judgment, I do.
“Good. Now, I’ll get it started because all this excitement has totally killed my buzz.” He pulls a lighter from the pocket of his hoodie and lights the joint he rolled like second nature, inhaling deeply and exhaling.
“Your turn!”
“No way.”
“Come on, please. You owe me.” He holds the joint out, and when he says that, it’s pointed. I can see it in his eyes. It’s either this, or he’s gonna bring up what happened last night.
Why did I leave my room?
“Fine.” I take it from his fingers and look at it, a stream of smoke floating up from one end. It seems pretty self-explanatory.
I put it to my lips a suck in the smoke.
I’m not expecting it to burn.
It hits the back of my throat hard, throwing me into a coughing fit I’m not sure is gonna end. Mike, the asshole who didn’t warn me about that, doesn’t even look concerned for my life.
He just laughs, damn near rolling around on the couch.
“I hate you,” I tell him, trying to catch my breath. “I’m never doing that again.”
“Nooo, come on, try again. I’ll help you.” He gets up on his knees and moves across the couch until he’s kneeling beside me, balancing himself on my shoulder.
I hate being touched.
Especially without permission.
But something about Mike…
I don’t know, the dude seems completely harmless. I don’t honestly think he could do anything to hurt me. That’s all it is. The only reason I don’t pull away from his touch.
The only reason I like it.
“Open up.” He holds the joint up to my lips again, and god help me, I let him put the joint back in my mouth, even though I know what’s coming.
“Now, pull in until it hits, breathe it in, and hold it in your lungs, and then exhale,” he instructs, taking the joint back when he decides I’ve had enough.
I follow his instructions, and he watches my lips as I blow the smoke out.
I watch him.
We take turns hitting the joint, and I’ve started to get more comfortable with it. Not coughing my head off every time, to Mike’s disappointment. “That wasn’t funny,” I tell him, passing the joint that’s almost down to the filter.
“It was,” he argues, taking another hit. “Are you feeling it yet?”
I try to take stock of how I’m feeling, but I don’t get very far, because all of a sudden, the thought that I’m actually high is hilarious.
“I think you are,” Mike says, giggling along with me.
“Nate would kill me if he knew what I was doing right now.”
“He’s a prude.”
More laughter.
That’s how it goes for the next hour. One joint turns into two, and both of us saying stupid shit, and uncontrollable laughter. I don’t know if I’ve ever had this much fun with another person.
At some point, Mike lays his head on my shoulder, and I don’t have any reason to tell him not to right now. “Hey, Alex?”
“Hm?”
“Why do you hate me?”
“I don’t hate you,” I tell him, watching him twist a hair tie around his fingers.
He shrugs, and I look up to find him already watching me with fuzzy eyes and a little pout. “It seems like you do. Is it because you’re homophobic?”
He narrows his eyes, and I can tell that he’s completely serious right now. Even through the haze of two joints, he’s serious, and he thinks that I’m…
Homophobic.
“No.”
“Really? Because it seems like—”
I say it flat out. No dancing around it. And I’m sure I’ll regret it later, when the high wears off, and I remember that I’m supposed to be keeping it down. Ignoring my feelings. But right now, I say it.
“I’m gay.”
“You’re—”
“Gay.”
“But—”
He looks at me for a long time, and I’m not sure that he believes me, even though I have no reason to lie about that. I wish I were. It would have made my life a lot easier.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He sits up fully then, pinning me in place with a glare that has no business being that cute.
“It’s not exactly something I go around telling people, dude.”
“But think about it,” he says, and the next thing I know, he’s throwing a leg over my lap to straddle me.
“What—”
“We’ve been living together for almost a month.” He’s so close. He’s getting closer. And my brain isn’t moving fast enough to know what to do. My hands are hovering near his hips, wanting to land there, but—
“We could have been fucking this entire time.”
His lips crash into mine with no warning. In hindsight, the straddling me and the coming closer and the words were all the warning, but my brain is still hanging back around, why didn’t you tell me.
Mike kisses like he does everything.
Comfortable, loose, and way too much for me, tasting faintly of weed. I try to keep up with his lips, when he cups my jaw a certain way to get me to open my mouth, allowing his tongue to slide against mine.
While my brain is still catching up, my body is all in.
I grasp his hips, pulling him closer. He makes an approving sound against my mouth, rewarding me with a nibble to my bottom lip that goes straight to my cock, pressing against my zipper.
I’m lost in the way his body feels, his mouth on mine, the little sounds he keeps making. I know I’m not keeping up with him, and I don’t even care. I’m just along for the ride.
He pulls back from my lips, and I must make some sort of protesting noise, because he laughs again, but this time, it doesn’t feel like he’s laughing at me.
That makes no sense.
It takes me a second too long to realize that he’s sliding down my body, landing with his knees on the floor. “What— What are you doing?”
He reaches for my zipper, unzipping it halfway before I reach for him, pausing whatever he’s planning on doing. “What does it look like? I’m gonna suck your dick. Let go.” He tries to free his hands, but I don’t let go.
I hold on tighter.
“You can’t… I’ve never…” I don’t even have to finish before his eyes are on my face, wider than my own last night when I found him with a man. And I’m realizing slowly that maybe admitting that wasn’t the best idea, considering how he acted when he found out I hadn’t tried smoking weed.
“No one has ever…?”
My face has to be at least ten shades of red right now, the fuzzy feeling from earlier fading fast with Mike on his knees in front of me. I shake my head, staring up at the ceiling.
“Let me.”
“No.”
“Alex. Let me,” he says again, and something about the way he says it makes me look down at him. He doesn’t look all that fuzzy either. His eyes are clear with intent, and I have no idea why, but I find myself nodding, letting him unzip my pants and take out my cock.
He strokes me once, twice, three times, watching, his lip between his teeth, too slow to do anything but tease. I shift under his hand. “Dude, get on with it, Jesus Christ.”
Jason never touched me like this.
He said it was too gay.
Mike doesn’t seem to care.
“I knew you’d be big,” he says, the only warning before he takes me into his mouth.
I try not to move.
And that’s easier said than done, because I’ve never felt anything better in my entire life. The tight wet heat of his throat, the way he swirls his tongue. He definitely knows what he’s doing.
I never knew what I was doing.
All I know is, it doesn’t feel good to be where he is, but he wants to do this for me, so I’m going to stay still for him.
He pulls back, looking up at me, still stroking the same rhythm that has me leaking from my tip. He licks up every drop. “What the fuck,” I moan, and he smiles, proud of himself.
“You can touch me, you know,” he says conversationally, like my dick isn’t in his hand.
“I know.”
My hands don’t move from the fists they’re in at my side, clenched tight enough that it hurts, but I can’t pay it any attention right now.
Mike watches me with a curious expression, his eyes flicking to my fists, unmoving, before he makes a decision. He stops stroking me for one terrible moment, to unclench them, and put them in his hair.
He goes back to using his mouth, up and down, taking me as deep as he can go, while my hands rest in his hair, unmoving.
I’m not going to force him.
Or choke him.
I’m not going to hurt him.
A strand of hair falls in front of his face from the movement, and I brush it back, holding it in place, feeling his hair between my fingers.
When he does something especially good with his tongue, my hips shift a fraction, and he makes a sound that vibrates through my entire body.
I’m not going to last.
I’ve barely touched myself in two years, and this is the best thing I’ve ever felt in my life, and “Mike—”
He pulls back, stroking me quickly. “Gonna come?”
I nod, pushing my hips up into his hand as I tip over the edge, harder than I have in years.