Chapter 13
SAM
Cleaning up is perfunctory and quick because I just wanna get back in bed with Ash. Condom in the trash, washcloth for the bits, wipe all the mess off. Done deal. The shower can wait until tomorrow for both of us. I just wanna cuddle.
We pry open the window for some fresh air and lie together beneath the sheet, sweat cooling on our skin. I trace meaningless lines across his fair back as he makes faint murmuring sounds, snuggling into the pillow, which I take to mean he likes it.
My mind is full and empty at once, somehow.
A million things I want to say and do. But they’re all tangled up and tripping on each other in their eagerness to get out first, and for once I’m sort of letting it all percolate instead of acting out.
Not sure how to feel, exactly, that I’ve gone and fucked a man once again, about the idea that I may be—am? —bisexual. It’s just kind of a lot.
I can’t believe I’ve done all this again.
After Gabriel I told myself I wouldn’t, and didn’t need to.
That it was all just a phase, that it didn’t count, that it wasn’t real.
That any time I thought about it, or a guy caught my eye, that it was a fleeting, meaningless thing.
Girls satisfied me plenty. I wasn’t missing anything by avoiding men, was I?
But with Ash in my arms it’s hard to feel scared. He fits here just fine. Bonier and a little taller than I’m used to, but he still fits. He feels good, tastes good, is good.
Maybe I just wasn’t expecting it to feel so intimate.
With Gabriel, we kept it casual. The attraction was mutual, but we were never in love.
We’d fuck and we’d talk, but we lived totally separate lives.
I adored him as a friend and a person, but he was never mine, and I was never his.
He had other partners. And I was still seeing girls, too, til Adriana.
It’s different with Ash, though. Dunno why. No reason for it that I can pinpoint. By all accounts he’s a stranger to me, right? We’ve been glued at the hip for the last few days, but still. There’s so much I don’t know. And I still don’t have a clue what’s going to happen when we get home.
I guess right this second it doesn’t matter what this is all about. No need to overthink it. I just want to enjoy the moment with the pretty boy in my arms.
“Well,” I remark lightly to him, drawing a heart between his shoulder blades with my fingertip, “I guess that answers the whole bottom versus top question for you.”
“What?” Ash laughs. “I do both.”
“Oh. But you didn’t say.” Discussion we should’ve had, probably. Before climbing down each other’s throats. I feel like I’ve committed some unwitting faux pas. “Sorry. I guess I should’ve asked before we…?”
“This afternoon you told me you liked topping,” he says easily. “Made the choice simple enough.”
“So you don’t have any preference at all?”
“Depends who I’m with.” He watches me, his soft blue eyes sleepy and sated. “What I’m in the mood for.”
My brain decides to torment me with a very specific mental image of Ash between my legs—of Ash inside me. Saliva floods my mouth and I have to swallow quick and change the subject. “Seriously though, you good?” I wind one of his silky blonde locks around my finger. “Not too sore?”
He turns his head to look at me, arms folded on the pillow. “M’fine. You think you’re the biggest dick I’ve had?”
And there it is: a flare of jealousy, hot and unexpected, in my chest. It catches me off guard the way it burns to life so quickly. I immediately feel sick with it. “Yes,” I assert with a goofy grin, trying to make a joke of it. And then I quickly add, “But don’t tell me if I’m not.”
His mouth twitches. “Okay. I won’t.”
Really?! “Aww. You won’t even lie for me? Aren’t you supposed to tell every guy that they’re the biggest and best, no matter what? Even if it’s not true.”
“Maybe,” he says, clearly amused. “Probably.”
“Wow. I see where I stand with you.” Am I hurt? Yeah, a little bit. Here I’d been prepared to tell him he was the best fuckin’ thing I’d had since…well. Maybe ever, if I was totally honest. Couldn’t remember the last time sex felt so real.
“Is that what all your girls did?” Ash asks. “Told you that you’re the biggest?”
“Yes,” I say sullenly. “Well, some of them. The ones that weren’t scared of a little foreskin.”
“Must be why the turnover’s so high.” And before I can retort he wiggles and rubs his face cutely into the pillow, smiling at me. “You were good, Sam. Really, really, good. I loved it.”
We’re good again, just like that. And of course I can’t help but kiss him after that glowing praise—his lips are still a little puffy from all the kissing, but so are mine—and the tips of our tongues just touch before I let it break.
“You were good, too, butterfly,” I whisper to him, rubbing my nose against his, and he smiles at me again. “Really, really good.”
And then I drop more kisses on the back of his shoulders, and his shoulder blades, and, as he begins to relax beneath me, those scars too. I wait for him to tense but he doesn’t. He’s languid and loose and totally at ease.
“Hey, I’ve got a question,” I murmur.
“Oh, boy. That’s not good.”
I laugh. “C’mon. The last time I asked you something it turned out really well.”
He lifts his head and looks at me over his shoulder. He’s adorable, hair all tousled from fucking, and I’m sorta obsessed with the way he smells right now—like sweat, and sex, and a little bit of me—and just in general he looks so good.
“So what’s the question?” he says. “Or you just gonna stare at me like a weirdo?”
“I’m not staring.” And I pepper him with more kisses as if to prove that. Back up his shoulder and then his cheek, and then one last, lingering kiss on his lips. “Do you ever have seizures?” I ask him. “Y’know, like. During.”
“Yeah, sometimes.”
“Really?” I lay back, propping my head up on my hand. “What’s the other person do? Stop, right?” I try to picture it happening to us. I would definitely stop. “Like, just a pause, or do you pick back up again? Unless you’re not up to it, I guess.”
“I dunno. Sometimes.”
“Sometimes? Sometimes what? Sometimes you keep going?”
“I mean, sometimes they stop.”
“Sometimes they stop?” I echo in disbelief.
“Yep.”
I stare at him, horrified. “Are you saying you’ve come back to them still pounding away? They actually don’t notice?”
He begins to toy with a strand of his hair, avoiding my gaze. “Yeah, I mean, I guess so. They come and go so quickly, and a lot of times it’s just while I’m laying down or something, so…”
“I literally cannot imagine fucking you and somehow not noticing if you faded out for half a whole minute, Ash. That’s insane. What kind of people do you date, anyway?”
“I don’t.” His tone’s become curt. “I told you that. I don’t have boyfriends or anything.”
“So just random hookups?”
“Some of them are repeat offenders, but sure.”
This sort of bugs me, even though I have no right to judge. I’ve had enough strange myself. But that’s different, isn’t it? He’s gay. He’s with guys. Isn’t that so much more risky than what I’ve done?
I don’t voice the thought. It’s not the time.
I’m enjoying myself lying here with him and I don’t want to ruin it with the bullshit of reality.
It’ll come soon enough, anyway, like a freight train barreling through.
Sobering enough thought, so I derail it before it can ruin everything, shunt it right off the tracks.
I sit up. Ash gives me a questioning look as I take his hair in my hands and then he relaxes once more, head sinking back onto his arms. He watches me as I begin gently working out the tangles, a faint smile on his lips.
“You like doing that,” he remarks.
“I guess I do.” I begin plaiting a small section of his hair. “When I was younger I thought I’d do hair when I grew up, since I enjoyed it with my sisters so much.”
“And then?”
“And…I dunno. Kind of a girly profession, isn’t it?”
Ash raises his eyebrows. “Male hairdressers exist.”
“I know.” I shrug one shoulder, undoing the small braid as deftly as I’d done it. “But they’re like…gay.”
“Really, Sam? Did you forget that you just fucked me in the ass?”
“I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. It’s just the machismo of it all. Or lack thereof.”
“You seem plenty macho to me. I don’t think doing hair is gonna make you less. Actually, I can’t think of anything more macho than fucking a man in the ass. Seriously, what’s more manly than two guys getting it on?”
It gets a laugh out of me which makes him smile, rolling onto his back and squirming closer to me.
When he opens his arms I accept the invitation, snuggling into him, and yeah, it’s sort of hard to doubt or be scared of what or who I am when something feels this good. It doesn’t matter here in this moment.
Ash likes me, whatever it is that I am. That counts for something.
“Sam,” he murmurs against my ear, “if you know what you want to do, you should do it.”
I sigh. “I don’t know what I want to do. There’s nothing.”
“Not the hair thing?”
“Not anything. Or maybe, you know, fuck it, I’ll just be like one of those pilots that tow banners all friggin’ day. How about that? That’s badass enough. Everyone thinks pilots are cool, right? Super macho.”
“More like super dangerous,” Ash observes.
“Oh, man. I don’t know.” I bury my face in his neck. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”
I feel his lips touch the top of my head. “Alright,” he says. “No skin off my nose.”
It’s stupid, but the comment kind of hurts my feelings anyway. Guess I do want him to have some skin in my game.
Early the next morning when I rouse to consciousness, I am alone.
Well, not entirely. When I roll over Ash is there, within reach, naked and tangled in the sheets as he sleeps.
There’s a split-second where I’m utterly confused—it wasn’t that hot in the room, not to the point where we should both be naked in this bed—until the memory of the night before comes wafting back and a fresh onslaught of arousal with it, delicious and warm.