Chapter 14 #4
Then, as I stood there, speechless, she let go. Without another word, she walked away into the night. I still hadn’t moved a minute later when I heard the iron gate open and shut again as she left the Beaumont courtyard for the street outside.
Okay…
Collecting myself, I walked to Graham’s entryway, following another student inside.
Taking the stairs two at a time, I opened Graham’s door without knocking.
Inside, it was dark except for the desk lamp, lonely in its corner.
Graham was lying on his back on the big bed, his arms out in submission, like Christ on the cross.
“Hola, Miguel.” Kicking off my shoes, I crawled onto the bed beside him, looking down at him from hands and knees. His eyes were red and swollen. “What happened here tonight? I just got hug-mugged by your mother in the courtyard.”
He reached up to catch the back of my head in one of his big hands. Guiding me down onto his chest, he said, “I guess you don’t need to text before you come up anymore.”
“I see,” I said, snuggling up to him. Although I didn’t, really. Did Graham actually tell his mother? That seemed categorically impossible.
“She’s taking notes for three courses for me. She read four hundred pages to me this week,” he said.
“Yeah?” I whispered, hoping that he’d keep talking. Graham’s arm looped around me, his fingers swishing through my hair. I leaned in, wanting this unbidden affection from him almost as badly as I wanted to find out what had happened.
“Just couldn’t lie anymore,” he whispered. “Not to her,” he amended quickly, as if I were dumb enough to think that he could ever really go public about us.
“That’s big,” I said. Because it really, really was.
He only grunted. But he pulled me closer, too.
He buried his face in my hair and took a big breath.
His fingers traveled the length of my back.
Skimming. Caressing. Graham wasn’t always so affectionate, and I was a slut for it.
I burrowed into him. Hug me. Rub me more, my body language said.
And he did. Maybe he felt he’d earned the right to hold me, somehow.
I knew how hard it must have been for him to be honest with his mom.
We lay there a long time, just cuddling. I never wanted it to end. “Rub my head?” he asked eventually.
“Which one?” I joked. But I pushed myself up on the pillow, pulling my big, golden boy onto my chest. And I massaged his scalp with my fingertips, applying gentle force to the skin and muscle under my hands.
“Mmm,” he said. “Cómo fue tu mesa de Espanol?” How was your Spanish table?
“Muy bien,” I told him. Then I asked the question I’d been dying to ask for the past hour. “Qué dice tu madre?” What did your mother say?
He groaned into my chest. “What did she say to you?”
I had to swallow hard before repeating it. Because the words were ones that my own mother would never, ever say to me. “She said that she loves me no matter what.”
“Lo mismo para mi,” he whispered. The same for me.
I traced a few more circles into his scalp. “I know you believe her. But I know that it’s still hard.”
“The rest of my family…” his words were muffled by my shirt. “Ugh. I don’t want to be talked about.”
“I know you don’t.”
“I don’t want them to look at me funny.”
“I know.”
He slid his fingers under the hem of my shirt, his rough hands finding the tender skin on my belly. “I’m a fucking coward.”
My own hands slid down his body then, fingertips breeching the waistline of his sweatpants. “Mmm… did someone say ‘fucking?’”
Chuckling, he hiked himself up, fitting his hips against mine. The weight of his body on top of me made me deliriously happy. “Pretty stupid of me to come out to my mom when I can’t even do the things I’m confessing to.”
I groaned, wriggling underneath his hard body. “Maybe the doctors are wrong about this. I’m sure we can do it without smacking your skull into anything.”
“It’s about exertion,” he said. “This, like, hundred-year-old doctor told me that orgasm would bring on a killer headache. He didn’t say anything about giving blowjobs, though.”
Just hearing the word made me hard. And when Graham’s hands began to work my fly open, I let loose a moan which told him exactly how much I liked the idea.
He started by teasing me — leaning down to drop light kisses in all the best places.
“I don’t think exertion is going to be a problem, here,” I panted.
We hadn’t had sex in ten days. I was going to blow like a land mine if he ever got around to taking me deep.
Graham’s warm breath ghosted over me, and I held my breath.
And then his phone rang.
He tried to ignore it. He really did. He took me in hand as the ringing ceased, and I received a few happy strokes. But the damned phone rang again, and I could feel just how much it put him on edge, especially with everything that had gone down tonight.
Shit.
I put my hands on his shoulders. “I think you need to check that.”
With a sigh, Graham slid off of me, grabbing his phone off the desk. The blue light from the phone’s screen illuminated his wince. “My father.” Then he looked at me on the bed, with my throbbing dick hanging out, and he actually began to laugh.
Smiling back at him, I sat up, tucking everything back into my jeans. “You’re going to have to talk to him.”
The phone was silent again. “I know,” he said, laughing, sounding a little manic. “God, I don’t want to.”
“Just do it,” I told him. “Rip that bandage off.”
He sat down in the desk chair, looking at the phone as if it would lash out and attack him. “Shit.”
“Dial,” I ordered.
With a sigh, he tapped the screen.
“I’m going to brush my teeth,” I told him. Then I went for the door.
“Hi,” poor Graham said into the phone as I turned the knob. “I’m okay, I guess.” His voice shook.
I left him alone then, taking my time in the deserted bathroom.
When I’d run out of reasons to stand around in there, I opened Graham’s door again, prepared to leave if he was still on the phone.
But he wasn’t. He was just sitting on the edge of the bed now, his head in his hands.
And even though I was pretty sure that both Graham’s parents were as solid as they come, the defeated slump of his shoulders gave me a shiver of uncertainty.
Tiptoeing inside, I closed the door behind me. Then I went over to Graham, gingerly, the way one approaches a potentially rabid beast. He didn’t look up. And I realized that he was crying.
That gave me a moment’s hesitation. Because sometimes a man just needs to shed a few tears in private.
But Graham leaned then, until his forehead made contact with my hip.
I put a hand to the back of his neck, just holding him.
“Is he shaken up?” I asked. Because even if Graham’s dad didn’t manage to say the right thing, it couldn’t possibly be permanent.
There’s no way that Mr. Graham would adopt the Rikker Family School of Parenting.
“Not sure,” Graham sniffed. “But I am.”
Aw, Christ. I sat down beside him then and pulled him into my arms. “Did he say the right things?”
“All of ‘em. Not sure I deserve him. Them.”
“Huh,” I said. “Then maybe you deserve your sister? Because she’s kind of a bitch.”
He tried to laugh, but it came out as a sob. “My head is fucking killing me.”
“How bad?”
“A solid seven.”
“You want a couple of pills?”
“Yup.”
I got him the painkillers and a fresh glass of water. Then I removed his socks and sweats, and tucked him into bed. Stripping down to my boxers, I climbed in after him. Graham scooted backwards, fitting his back against my chest. I dropped my arm over his body, and a kiss on the back of his neck.
“I might not be worth the trouble,” he mumbled.
I stroked my hand across his belly, dragging my thumb through the fine hair of his happy trail. “I know you feel like shit right now,” I said. “But you’ve got nowhere to go but up.”
“Hope so.” He was quiet for a few minutes, and I thought he’d fallen asleep. “Rik?” he said, surprising me.
“Yeah?”
“Love you. Always have.”
I was so stunned that I couldn’t do anything for a moment except lie there and replay the sound of his words in my head.
Then I laughed. “Fuck, G. You might even be worth the trouble.” I hugged him a little tighter.
“You’re the second person to say that to me tonight, though. Your mom beat you to it.”
“You’ll have to let her down easy,” he said.
I grinned into my boyfriend’s neck, and then I held him while we both fell asleep.
Graham
Saturday night, Mom and I watched the hockey game on a big screen TV in the lobby of the college conference center where she was staying.
It was trippy, watching my team on television, knowing that I ought to be there with them. The helplessness was almost unbearable. I’d never been more nervous for a game in my entire life.
The first period was non-scoring, and I almost lost my mind.
But Rikker shot one between the goalie’s legs early in the second period, and Mom and I laughed and cheered like a couple of lunatics.
But then Colgate followed up with a goal of their own.
And I was back to being a nervous wreck for the rest of the second period and part of the third.
Finally, a freshman D-man (A freshman! A defensive player!) scored with an assist from Hartley. And the other team never got its mojo back. By the time the buzzer rang, I was hoarse from yelling at the screen.
Mom flopped back against the sofa. “That was exhausting. When is the next game? I’m going to need to prepare myself.”
“In a week,” I said. “There are two ACAA Eastern Seaboard elimination games. If we’re still standing after that, it’s off to the Frozen Four.”
How crazy was that?
After saying goodnight to Mom, I headed back to Beaumont, dialing Rikker as I walked. Since he was in a loud, joyous locker room somewhere, my call went to voicemail. I left him a message, telling him how awesome it was that he’d scored that goal, and how badly I missed him.