Chapter 2 #4
The long looks — and sitting a little closer than necessary while we watched movies — that went on for two years.
And then one Friday night during our first month of high school, we were tussling over the remote control.
In order to win the fight, Graham put his knee across my thighs to hold me down.
And then he stretched his long body toward my arm, where I was dangling the remote as far from him as I could.
It was then that I realized Graham was on top of me.
Finally. And without thinking, I put my free hand on his chest.
I’ll never forget the wild jerk that his body made under my hand. And then he was staring down at me, cheeks flushed, breath coming fast. I lifted my chin an inch, and that’s all it took. Graham dropped his mouth onto mine.
Our first kiss was hot and sloppy, and it lit my body up like a flare.
Yes. This. Yes. Yes. Yes. It was all shock and awe for maybe two minutes. And then Graham’s mom called down from the top of the basement stairs. “Hey, Guys? Do you want popcorn?”
Graham jerked back onto his own end of the sofa. “Uh, sure,” he called.
Then he got up and switched the TV over to video games. And we played Call of Duty until the popcorn was ready.
We didn’t speak about it after that. Not one word.
But the following week, I thought of almost nothing else, and wore a perpetual boner every time I saw him.
And the next time I went to Graham’s, my hands sweat through two rounds of whatever video game we were playing.
Then Graham’s mom yelled down that she was going to the grocery store, and could Graham think of anything they needed?
“Nope,” he called up to her.
We heard the sound of shoes clicking a couple of times across the kitchen floor. Then the door to the garage, and finally the sound of her car’s engine backing out and driving away.
There was a beat of silence in the basement. “So…” we both said at exactly the same time.
“Jinx,” I said.
Graham gave a nervous laugh. “The jinx machine is out of order. Please put in another quarter.” He wore a lopsided smile, and his cheeks were flushed red.
“Dork.”
Two seconds after that, Graham had tackled me, pushing me down on the couch. He moaned on the first kiss, and I felt that sound everywhere.
There is nothing so explosive as two horny, fifteen-year-old boys finally getting a taste of something they both crave.
As we made out, Graham rode me with his hips.
The motion, and the feel of his hard body pressing down on me was better than any of the fantasies I’d cooked up every half hour since our first kiss.
It was probably only five minutes later when Graham closed his eyes and gasped twice. And just the look on his face took me there, too. I locked my arms around him and hauled him down for one more kiss — wet and dirty and more satisfying than I’d ever dreamed.
And by then, I’d dreamed plenty.
Forty minutes later, Graham’s mom came home to find us playing a round of Realstix hockey on the XBox. She would never have noticed that a couple of paper towels were newly buried in the bottom of the family garbage bin.
So it began.
Our make-out sessions were always fast and frantic, because privacy was scarce.
There was never any nudity involved, because that would have been far too risky.
But there were athletic pants, with their handy elastic waistbands.
And I didn’t need more, not with the sublime feel of his long fingers sliding down my stomach and onto my groin.
He was sometimes slow and teasing, and often fast and rough. I wanted all of it. All the time.
We were exceedingly careful. Looking back on it, I’m amazed at our discipline.
Fifteen year-old boys aren’t known for their caution or diligence.
That same year, I probably lost three pairs of gloves and locked myself out of my own house once a week.
But Graham and I never touched each other if another person was inside his house, or scheduled to be there within the hour.
And even then, we learned to make out and listen at the same time, often leaping apart at the smallest sound. We were never, ever caught.
Until one awful day in August, before the start of our sophomore year, just after I got my driver’s license. Freedom was our downfall.
We’d driven to a seedy part of town to find a comic book shop we’d heard of.
But that was really just an excuse to be alone together.
After I parked the car, Graham put his hand on my leg, just because he could.
We were together, and we were out in the world in a car.
Two huge freedoms in one afternoon. So after a cursory glance out the car windows, I leaned across the gearshift and kissed him.
Smiling, he grabbed my face in both hands and licked into my mouth. We were probably only there for ninety seconds. Maybe even less. But immediately after we stepped out of the car, everything went very, very wrong.
There was shouting, and the pounding of feet behind us. We both ran. I thought we were going to get away. But then I looked over my shoulder to count our pursuers.
That mistake changed my life.
I tripped. And then came the horror of pitching toward the asphalt, and the terror of those feet pounding closer. A second later, the first kick landed at my ribs. The second one nailed me in the cheekbone, and I heard my own scream.
Curling up into a protective ball was my last conscious act.
Much of the next few hours were lost to me. I woke up in a hospital room with my arm in a sling, stitches on my face and a snug bandage around my chest. My mother was crying, and my father was on the phone.
“Where’s Graham?” was the first thing I tried to say.
“Why?” my mother sobbed.
Telling her the truth turned out to be my second big mistake.
For the next five days, I would lay in that hospital bed wondering what had happened to him. Every time someone walked past my room, my eyes would flick to the doorway. Each time I expected to see Graham.
He never came.