Chapter 8 Ash
ASH
I awake first to sunlight filtering through the threadbare curtains, warming my face. And second to the sensation of an arm around me and a hard cock pressed firmly against my ass.
It takes me a few good minutes to process all of this.
Where the hell I am, firstly; why there is a dick crammed against me, secondly; and finally, who it belongs to.
There’s a split-second of my stomach twisting in panic, thinking that the events of the past few days did not transpire and I’m back in Providence, in some crummy motel, in bed with some trick.
(But relief too, a little: that Mr. Bigshot isn’t dead, that I didn’t fuck up, that I’m not a big, horrible criminal. Dread that I have to go back to that life, but the rest…)
That’s all untrue, of course. The crummy motel is somewhere in North Carolina, not Rhode Island, and the man at my back is no trick. It’s none other than Sam, owner of the fat hog currently wedged between my cheeks.
Which is interesting.
And the thing of it is, I don’t mind. In fact, I don’t mind so much that I’m afraid to move at all in case it wakes him up and spoils the moment.
I like it here, with his cock pinned between us, his strong arm around me, the feel of his chest rising and falling at my back, and his heart beating a steady, reassuring tattoo between my shoulder blades. His face is hidden in my shoulder.
What I would do—if I could pull it off, if he wouldn’t wake—is turn in his arms and squeeze my face under his jaw.
Rub it against the stubble and breathe him in—he smells like stolen hotel soap and beneath that, the faint, pleasant musk of sweat—and, maybe, hitch my leg over his hip.
Press myself against him because now I’m hard, too.
I don’t do any of that, though. Cuddling me while unconscious is no indication of what he actually wants or desires.
Even if he was exceedingly nosy the night before about it, it doesn’t mean anything.
He’s an exceedingly nosy person in general.
And I’m not about to jeopardize my ride to Miami, anyway. Mere hours in the scheme of things.
Still, though, it feels nice to be held. Really, really nice.
Some measure of insanity really must’ve taken me when I actually let Sam in on the fact that I’m gay.
That was, in all honestly, real fuckin’ dumb of me and it could’ve gone sideways so fast. I have no idea why I’m trusting him like this.
Why I even feel like I can. Just because he’s nice?
Just because he beat the shit out of someone for me? Just because he’s looked after me?
Those are things that no one else has really done, though. Mike and Julian have done their best, of course. We all look out for each other in the capacity that we can. I trust them, for the most part. But there’s an element of selfishness, too, looking out for number one. When shit hits the fan.
Of course, I have no reason to believe Sam’s different. Or better.
Sort of funny. I’ve been deemed a fag at first sight by people who thought that longish hair and a vaguely girlish face made those things true, but just as often people made no assumption about me at all.
I have been hit on by girls, mostly by the kinderwhore types in their distressed babydoll clothes, the Courtney Love lookalikes.
I wonder if something gives me away—some core part of me that I’m not aware of, and in what way.
How to hide it, secret it elsewhere in the name of safety.
In terms of business, it’s served me well enough.
The occasional older woman might try to solicit me, but for the most part, it’s men who gravitate toward me—who know.
There’s a point where hiding it becomes more exhausting than convenient, though.
Because people make assumptions anyway, and it’s not like protesting saves you.
They believe what they want. If the man at the diner had wanted to bash my brains in for what he saw in me, what would I have done?
My preservation instinct is a broken thing, blipping to life only occasionally.
More often than not I showed throat and dared someone to rip it out.
So what’s the whole reason of going to Miami, then? If I don’t care. To preserve my life, to live out loud. What’s this all for?
Deviation. A fuck this, a last ditch effort. Because my old life has become unbearable. Because throwing it away seemed unthinkable, now, with Ben gone. The better of us both.
And yeah, I know there’s no afterlife or place to watch me from, but it feels correct anyhow.
Give it a shot, at least, and if I fail, I fail.
Then I’ll know there’s nothing left for me here or anywhere else.
Nothing much more to keep me going except for whatever primordial shred of monkey brain that says you must live.
Certainly there would be no one to mourn me when I went, when it happened.
Maybe my roommates would spare a tear or two?
But they’ve got their own lives, branching off without me.
The owner of the tattoo shop we live above wants to occupy the apartment, so Mike’s moving in with his boyfriend in January, and Julian’s going to work for his stepdad’s construction company. And I’ll be in Miami, I guess.
Sam’s arms pull me back to the present, to the now, as they tighten around me suddenly, his face sliding alongside mine until our cheeks press together. He rubs once, like a cat, and his stubble scrapes pleasantly along my skin.
He must think, half-asleep, that I’m his girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, whatever.
I don’t really care—I could, in fact, just let him do this for a good deal longer—but I also don’t want him to wake up and freak out.
Not inclined to become the next gay panic case.
I run my palm carefully along his forearm and squeeze it. “Sam,” I say, reluctantly.
“Mmm?” He squeezes me and his thigh slides in between mine. My saliva deserts my mouth as every single nerve ending in my body lights up at once like a Christmas tree. “Hm?”
“Wake up.” I manage this request just barely. “We need to go.”
“No we don’t. The wake-up call hasn’t come yet.” His voice is husky and rough with sleep. It’s awfully sexy.
“They do those here?”
“Yeah.” He sorta digs his chin into the crook of my neck and I bite back the sound I want to make, the urge to arch my back. It is a goddamn effort. “I asked when I checked in.”
“That must round this place up to a full star, right?” My voice is small. Doesn’t really help the joke land.
Sam’s generous, though. He rumbles a laugh against my ear. “What time is it?”
“Dunno.”
He lifts his head. Turns, I guess, to look at the clock on the nightstand behind him.
“Ten more minutes,” he informs me, and then he buries his face in my neck.
His leg is still between mine and he shifts his hips in such a specific manner, dick sliding against my backside, that it feels like it’s on purpose.
It has to be. Is it? What the fuck is he doing?
My heart is thudding so hard that he must feel it. To me it’s as thunderous as an earthquake, jolting me just as violently. It’s only his arms that keep me pinned still against him. “Dude,” I say. “You’ve got your full body weight on me.”
“Want me to fuck off? I will if you want.”
“Um...” Is this a test? Am I supposed to say yes? People don’t usually ask me what I do or don’t want, and it’s new and strange. Cautiously, I opt for honesty: “No?”
“Okay then. Go to sleep.” He snuggles into me.
But I can’t go to sleep, of course fucking not, because for one, he’s basically dry humping me; and two, he’s apparently aware that he’s doing it; and three, I don’t know how people just go back to sleep when they know something shrill and loud is going to launch them right out of it in the next few minutes anyway.
The latter being the least pressing of these issues, but it’s worth mentioning.
That’d be pretty fuckin’ gay.
This is pretty fuckin’ gay.
My breath is so loud in my ears. I’m so aware of it.
It seems impossible that he isn’t, too. Aware of this and me and what he’s doing, and how it’s making me feel.
My body’s responding, opening up, ready.
It’s a practiced kind of thing—well-trained and finely honed.
That’s just how it has to be for me: I have to be able to perform.
But this time, I don’t have to think about it. I don’t have to make myself.
I feel like I should do something about it—be doing something about it. Is he gay? Is he trying to tell me something? Was he trying to tell me something with all those questions last night?
Although maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised. He could be trade. I meet men like that often enough, though they aren’t nearly as cute.
The phone’s shrill ringing rails through my thought process.
Sam lets go of me and moves away, picking up the phone, thanking whoever’s on the other end, then hanging up. He stretches, back cracking audibly, and says, “Good morning.”
That’s the end of that. Abruptly. Like nothing happened.
Like none of it ever was.
When I emerge from the bathroom, taking perhaps longer than I had any need or right to (and no, I wasn’t jerking off—I just needed some space), Sam’s already dressed with the road atlas spread across the bed.
“I used your toothbrush,” I inform him. “So you know.”
He glances up at me with those gorgeous dark eyes of his.
The shaft of morning sunlight striping the bed falls across his face, illuminating one iris reddish-brown.
He actually hasn’t bruised up all that bad from last night’s altercation—a little darkness by his eye, and there’s a scab on his lower lip, but that’s all.
He took those hits like a champ. “That’s fine,” he says, like it really is okay with it.
“I’ve been using it this whole time,” I confess.