Chapter 9 #4
“Stowe tomorrow?” Skippy asked between gulps. Then he refilled the glass from a pitcher they’d acquired somehow.
“I dunno,” I said, wondering if there was time for snowboarding.
Probably not. “I’ll have to see when Graham wants to get back.
” I snagged Skippy’s water glass from his hand and brought it to my lips.
But I’d only managed a sip when his fingers closed tightly around my wrist, his eyes going wide.
I didn’t understand why he’d object to my getting some water. “You have a whole pitcher,” I argued.
But water was not Skippy’s problem. “What did you call him?”
Oh, fuck. I tried to shrug off the question, shaking his hand off me and draining the glass.
But Skippy wasn’t having it. “You cannot be serious. That’s your Michigan guy?
” He took the empty glass from my hand and set it down.
Then he took my face in both of his hands.
“You cannot get involved with a guy who fucked you over when you had three broken ribs and internal bleeding.” His dark eyes glittered with righteous indignation.
For a second time, I pushed his hands off me. “Guess what? You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore.” Fuck, that sounded bitter. And we both knew it.
He blinked at me for a beat. “Rikky, Jesus. Be careful.”
“Yes, Dad.” Even though I knew he really did care about me, I still didn’t want to hear it. We can’t all have a Skippy and Ross love story, with a cute apartment and a poodle curled up on the rug. Their Instagram selfies were so cheerful that I could hardly look.
From a few feet away, Ross was watching us, a wary look on his face.
I was too pissed off to say a polite goodnight to either of them.
I gave Ross a kind of salute, and Skippy a look of irritation.
Then I made my way back through the dancing bodies toward the door.
Graham pushed it open when he saw me coming.
Outside, the temperature had descended to negative freeze-your-nuts-off, but it felt good against my sweaty skin.
As we approached the truck, I noticed that there were two gay couples bookending it — one making out against the car parked behind us, and the other lip-locked beside the car parked in front of us.
It was hook-up o’clock, because Guerrilla Night was drawing to a close.
We climbed into the truck. When my door slammed, one half of the couple in front of us raised his eyes to check if we were about to run him down. But his partner, a short little guy, grabbed his jacket and pulled him back into the kiss.
Graham sat in the passenger seat, just staring at them.
Rubbing my cold hands together, and still distracted by the argument I’d had with Skippy, it took me a minute to realize where Graham’s thoughts were probably headed.
Kissing in public had been lethal to our friendship.
And here we were, literally surrounded by men who weren’t afraid to let the kisses fly.
“Welcome to Vermont,” I said.
He said nothing. His eyes were still trained on the couple in front of us. I flipped on the truck’s headlights, which illuminated them. But I couldn’t tell if Graham was really watching, or if he was far away, inside a memory.
Either way, I knew what we had to do. “Come here,” I whispered.
He gave a slow shake of his head. “Bad idea.”
But it wasn’t a bad idea. It was a powerful one. Five years ago, two boys had kissed in a car. And a bunch of assholes turned that moment into a life-altering disaster. But right now, two grown men could kiss in a car. And then go home to play one more game of RealStix like it was no big deal.
I stretched one hand across the seat to take Graham’s. But he wouldn’t look at me, even when I gave his arm a tug. “Come here,” I said. “Or I’m coming over there.” The truck had a bench seat, so it would be easy to make good on that threat.
He looked at me then, a warning on his face.
“It’s just a kiss,” I whispered, rubbing his big hand in mine. “Do this for me.” I pulled him toward me again.
He came almost willingly.
Slowly, we eased closer, our eyes locked on one another, until I could feel his breath on my face.
I closed the final inches between us, just ghosting my lips over his on the first pass.
I saw his Adam’s apple bob nervously. So I was gentle when I cupped the back of his head, pulling him in.
I pressed my lips to his, tasting musk and beer. Mmm… My kiss was slow. Appreciative.
After several beats of my heart, he relaxed into the kiss, melting for me. I licked into his mouth then. If I was only getting a kiss, I wanted to make it a good one. On the first wet slide of tongue against tongue, Graham made an achy little sound in the back of his throat.
Heaven.
Leaning in, I wrapped him in my arms. This wasn’t like the frantic, tequila-soaked mashup after the Saint B's game. This time, I could feel us both holding tightly to our control. And even though my body wouldn’t have minded an escalation, we both knew that it wasn’t going to happen.
This kiss was all about heartache. It was deep and sweet and sad.
My chest fluttered with disbelief that I was holding him, and kissing him.
Each moist slide of his lips against mine undid me a little more.
It was possibly the best kiss I’d ever had.
But eventually, the car in front of us roared to life, its taillights bathing the truck’s cab in bright red glow.
With the moment broken, Graham eased back, and I let him go.
As the other car pulled away and drove off, the sound of its motor faded.
We were left alone with our own silence.
Graham put his elbow on the window and looked away from me, already lost inside his own head.
So I cranked the engine. As I let the engine heat up, I rubbed my own lips together.
They were swollen and tender from Graham’s stubble.
I began the drive home. There was a nearly full moon tonight, which lit the snowy fields outside Burlington with an otherworldly, bluish glow.
“Some of that music was pretty dubious,” Graham said eventually.
“Yeah,” I chuckled. “If you want to be queer, you have to be okay with dance tunes.”
“One point for being straight, then,” he said.
I didn’t even reply, because that was such a sad way to think.
We pulled up to Gran’s brightly lit house. Graham looked up at the house, and then over at me. In the dark, he studied me. “Rik,” he whispered. “I had fun tonight.”
“Me too, G.”
He moved then, hitching across the seat to reach me. “One more,” he breathed. “For old time’s sake.” Then he turned my face toward his, capturing my mouth in a kiss.
Stupid or not, I just went with it. If you stripped away all the confusion and the old heartaches, I’d had an almost perfect day.
And this right here was pretty much all I’d ever wanted from Graham.
I wanted his friendship, and then I wanted him to reach for me at the end of the night.
So for those few minutes, I had everything.
The kiss got heated. Graham’s hands wandered over my chest, and I wrapped my arms around his big shoulders. The size of him was a real turn-on. Hell. Everything about him was a real turn-on. The more we kissed, the harder I got.
I let my mouth wander down his gorgeous jaw. And I’d begun tasting the skin on the side of his neck when he let out a big, frustrated sigh. Reluctantly I sat back, checking his face.
“We’d better go in,” he said. “Your grandmother is going to wonder why we didn’t come inside.”
Slowly, I passed my palm over the whiskers on his cheek. “G, if she’s not asleep, she’ll just assume we were making out in the truck. And she won’t think less of you for it.”
But we both already knew that didn’t matter to Graham. Without another word, he opened the door and got out. The idea of someone suspecting us was a barrier that he simply could not get past.
When I jumped out of the truck, I had to adjust myself inside my too-tight jeans. My body really wanted to get Graham alone. The problem was, there was no place on Earth alone enough for Graham.
Graham
The next morning I woke up with a start, briefly confused about where I was.
The sun shone through an unfamiliar window.
I pulled my phone off Mrs. Rikker’s sewing table and saw that it was almost ten.
That wasn’t terribly surprising, because I often slept late.
More interestingly, after falling head first into the guest bed at around one in the morning, I hadn’t woken up even once.
Weird. Usually I spent part of the night tracing the ceiling beams, going a few rounds with the demons in my head.
Sitting up, I shoveled my drowsy limbs into my clothes. Then I followed the voices into the kitchen.
“He lives,” Rikker said when I shuffled in. He was standing at the counter, grating cheese into a pile on a wooden cutting board.
I cleared my sleepy throat. “Sorry. I slept hard.”
On her way between the open refrigerator and the stove, his Grandmother patted me on the arm. “Nothing to be sorry for. You’re on vacation.” She set a dozen eggs on the counter and opened the carton. “Do you eat eggs, Graham?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Rikker reached over his head and fetched a mug, which he filled with coffee from a pot in front of him. This he handed back to me without comment. Then he picked up the cheese grater again.
I took a deep gulp of the coffee and began to feel almost human. “Can I do anything to help?”
“Just stand there lookin’ pretty,” Rikker drawled. Then he flashed me a wicked grin.
I pulled a face. But God, that smile was disarming. When he aimed it at me, I would probably do anything he asked.
Anything except the one thing that mattered. Anything except love him the way he deserved.
“If you boys are here for another two hours, I can send you back with meatballs in tomato sauce,” Grandma Rikker said. She was cracking eggs into a mixing bowl.