25. Hank
HANK
Apart from the birth of my son, the next few days are some of the happiest of my life.
Nick and I see each other every day. We meet for lunch on Monday and then give each other blow jobs in my truck.
We have dinner on Tuesday and then have sex in my bed.
We go to a movie on Wednesday afternoon and do lots of heavy petting in the theater but wait to have sex on my couch after. A man could get used to this.
I was nervous about having sex with a man. Would I be good at it? I never received compliments from women. But judging from the sounds Nick makes under my touch, I think I’m a natural at gay sex.
I have a busy week at work, but every time I work on a plumbing project, Nick is in the back of my mind.
Those quiet times under sinks and fishing through pipes, his face and voice keep me company.
I find myself working faster just to get to see him.
There’s a spring in my step, my toe constantly tapping with a fun song.
For the first time, I’m not watching someone else live this amazing life. I’m the one living it.
When I get home, Nick is waiting in my living room. I’d given him the garage code. Seeing him on my couch, his gorgeous face beaming at me, makes my dick stand at attention. Hell, all of me is standing at attention.
“Hey, I have a shepherd’s pie in the oven,” he says.
I hang by the doorway. The salty, savory aroma of dinner wafts through the house.
“You cooked dinner?”
“I picked up a frozen one from the grocery store. But I put it in the oven all by myself.”
I know this should be weird. We’ve only been together a few weeks, and already Nick has my garage code and is cooking dinner in my kitchen. Insert lesbian U-Haul joke, right?
But it feels right, like when you try on a great pair of shoes. Nothing about this feels rushed, only natural. Nick doesn’t feel like an addition to my life, but rather a necessary component.
I stand behind him and massage his shoulders. Nick always seems tense, one particular knot in his blade refusing to come undone.
“If you put something in the oven, that counts as homecooked in my book.” I dip my lips to his for a sweet kiss, inhaling his masculine scent under the aroma of dinner.
“It needs another forty minutes to cook. What time are you picking up Brody?”
“Five.”
“Will he like shepherd’s pie?”
“It’s meat and potatoes. The boy may be a genius, but he has a very simple palette.” I hop over the couch and lunge at Nick for a more passionate kiss. “Since we have forty minutes…”
I scoop Nick into my arms and slide my tongue between his lips. He opens his mouth and his legs for me, his hard cock pressing into my stomach. You’d think that after sex every single day this week, the urgency wouldn’t be there. But that’s the beauty of sex. It never gets tired.
We have a little over a week until he has to go home. Too bad he can’t stay for Christmas, but he’s unable to budge his plans. We’re making good use of every minute together.
I pull the dark green sweater off him while he unbuttons my plaid shirt.
“I haven’t showered yet. I smell like pipes,” I tell him. Nick, by contrast, smells like a department store (in a good way).
“It’s hot. Very rugged.” He runs his hands over my chest. I used to be a little embarrassed that I don’t have a flat stomach and defined pecs like Nick.
Yet Nick seems sort of addicted to my lumps and curves.
Everything I disliked about my physique he’s obsessed with.
I’ve never felt hotter than I do when I’m with him.
I could walk around Sourwood in my underwear.
He shoves his hand down my pants and grips my aching cock. I jerk into his palm. Fire blazes in his pupils.
“Upstairs,” he grunts out.
We get up from the couch without untangling from each other. I walk backward and make it up the first three stairs before tumbling down. Nick stays stuck on me. We manage to continue kissing through the fall.
“Whoops.” I get us back up, then we continue on, barely making it to the foot of the stairs before collapsing again.
“Let’s stay,” Nick says. I love how there’s a Jekyll-and-Hyde quality to Nick. He can be classy and reserved, and then out comes the ravenous Mr. Hyde with delicious fantasies, dark shadows dancing in his eyes.
“Fuck me in the hallway,” he says with all the confidence of a man who knows exactly what he wants.
“Fuck yeah,” I utter back.
The hallway upstairs is barely wide enough for one person, let alone two grown men who apparently cannot keep their hands to themselves.
I back into the wall with a soft thump, laughing under my breath as Nick kisses me again—warm, eager, a little breathless like he’s still surprised this is allowed. The old floorboards creak beneath us, the house settling around us like it knows a secret.
We don’t make it to the bedroom.
We shed our clothes in a trail that leads halfway down the hall. He’s in his underwear, hair falling into his eyes, cheeks flushed pink in a way that has nothing to do with the winter cold outside.
“Sorry,” he murmurs, though he clearly isn’t.
“Don’t you dare apologize,” I whisper back, voice already gone rough.
He moves again, slow and searching, and my brain short-circuits completely.
I’ve spent my whole life being the big guy, the dependable one, the friend people lean on—but right now I’m the one holding on, dizzy with how much I want him.
Every small movement feels like a confession neither of us has said out loud yet.
Nick slinks down and pulls my pants to my knees. He kneels on the top step, me lying flat in the hallway. He takes my cock in his mouth before I even know what’s happening. I watch his bearded cheeks puff out as his mouth bobs up and down like my dick is a candy cane.
“Damn.” I press his head down to gag on my cock for a second.
He moans, face full of cock. His cheeks flush with vibrant color when he comes up for air.
“Get over here.” I use two fingers to gesture him to me. He knows what I want.
Nick takes off his pants and sits on my face, his smooth ass blocking out the light above us. I open him wide and lick a stripe down the center to his pink hole. I grunt against him, his skin hot to my touch, his hard cock quivering and leaking pre-come on my chest.
“You taste so good. You taste like…man.”
“Feels so good, Hank.”
He leans forward, giving me better access to spread him apart while he returns his mouth to enveloping my cock.
I swirl my tongue around his opening while my dick fills his mouth.
He clenches under my touch; the soft hairs at the top of his thighs tickling my face.
I rub my thumb against his hole while I slick it up, eager to stretch it wide.
He stands up and runs to the bedroom, coming back a few seconds later with lube. We decided that we no longer needed condoms since we’re exclusive and have had embarrassingly inactive sex lives before we met each other.
Nick coats my dick. I’m so hard, I don’t know if I’ll last more than a few seconds.
He sits on my cock, his face going through the initial discomfort all the way to absolute pleasure as he lowers himself down. His skin is flush and alive as he zeroes in on me with his eyes wide as saucers. His heat pulses against my dick.
His forehead rests against mine for a moment, breaths mingling. The hallway light behind him makes his eyes look impossibly dark, soft in a way that hits me straight in the chest.
Nick bounces on me, throwing his head back with abandon.
I love the feel of his thighs against mine, of his weight on me, of the rough feel of his hairy legs.
I’ve memorized his chest hair pattern by this point.
His stiff cock thwacks against my stomach, leaving a trail of precome in its wake.
I lift my hips and get super deep inside him.
He rakes his eyes over my body. My plaid shirt is still on but open.
He runs his hands over my chest and stomach, ruffling through my chest hair, nothing but lust in his eyes.
“You are so fucking hot, Hank. I can’t fucking stand it.”
I may never get over that, no matter how many times Nick says it.
I realize, somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, that I’m not just fooling around anymore.
I’m falling. Fully. Hopelessly.
My hands slide up his back, pulling him closer as he smiles down at me—open, happy, real—and the world narrows to the sound of our laughter, our breathing, and the quiet certainty that I don’t want this moment to end.
I hold Nick in place and jackhammer into him. Heat builds in my core as I feel him tighten around my cock. His cries sound like pleas as he shoots out come across my torso. Not as voluminous as the first time, but just as powerful. I jut my hips up and fill him with my release.
“I love coming home to you,” I say.
“And coming in me.” He smiles as he kisses me, hair falling in his eyes.
“That, too.”
Soon, we won’t have this anymore. These moments will only exist in memory. No more easy days of sex and hanging out. We’ll have to plan trips to see each other. But we’ll make it work.
We’ll make it work.
We get showered and redressed right as the timer goes off.
Nick puts foil over the shepherd’s pie to keep it warm for dinner.
We cuddle on the couch to watch a random Hallmark movie that’s on; as the sun begins to set, I go to pick up Brody.
I kiss him goodbye, which turns into a mini make-out session.
Now I get that whole thing in Brokeback Mountain about wishing I knew how to quit someone. I don’t think I can with Nick. He is the world’s most nicotine-packed cigarette. In a good way, of course.
When I was a kid, I hated when my parents tried to have serious conversations with me while we were driving.
What was it about driving that made parents unleash awkward questions or confess uncomfortable pieces of family history to their kids?
Car rides were how my parents asked me if I was practicing safe sex or using drugs.
It was where they told me about Uncle Dale having a drug problem.
But now, as a parent, I get it. In a car, you have to face forward, so you avoid eye contact. It’s one of the few times when you’re alone with your kid. They can’t escape to their room.
And so it’s in the car that I let Brody know what’s going on with me and Nick.
“Brody, if I were to use the word bisexual right now, would you know what I’m talking about?”
“Uh…yes?” Teens never get tired of showing their parents how embarrassed they are by everything we say.
“Good. That’s good.” One less thing I have to explain to him. “Well, I haven’t talked about my sexual preferences with you, but I’ve discovered that I am sort of bisexual.”
“Um…okay?” He squirms under his seat belt.
“And you know my new friend Nick? Well, he isn’t just a friend. He’s…more than a friend.”
“I know.”
Fortunately, we’re at a stoplight, so I can whip my head to look at him. “You do?”
“You and Nick are hooking up.”
“How do you know that? How do you know what hooking up is?”
“Dad, I’m seventeen.”
“I know, but still. You’re my little boy.
” I take a breath and remember all the awkward conversations I’ve had with Brody.
I had to explain to him the horrors of puberty.
I had to break the divorce to him. I had to clear up (or lie about) rumors he heard about his mom’s infidelities. We’ve been through a lot.
We don’t have a Gilmore Girls relationship, but we’re not that far off. So why am I so nervous?
“You two seemed very flirty when we were looking at Christmas lights. Plus, you went out to dinner with him, and that’s usually what people do for dates.”
“Sometimes, I forget how smart you are.”
“I don’t think this has to do with intelligence. It’s pretty obvious.” Brody shakes a hand through his hair. His teenage annoyance is a relief. It makes this conversation feel normal.
“So like, how do you feel about this? Your dad is bisexual.”
“I’m fine with it. Half of my teachers are queer.”
“They are? Which ones?”
“My drama teacher, my history teacher, my French teacher, my chemistry teacher, my gym teacher, the principal.”
“Holy cow. A lot’s changed since I went to South Rock.” I knew there’d been progress, but it sounds like there’s been capital-P Progress.
“I think it’s cool that you found someone. Didn’t expect it to be a guy, but whatever. I don’t need details. How are you feeling, Dad?”
I do a double take at his inquiry. Of the many questions I thought he’d have, that wasn’t one of them.
“I’m feeling good.” A big grin takes over my face at the hint of thinking of Nick. “I’m feeling really good. But who cares about me. What about you? You’re going through a lot of change. Your mom’s getting married. Your dad has a boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Uh, well…yeah.” I get tongue-tied like I’m the one in the passenger seat answering questions from my parents about whether or not I inhale.
“This sounds serious. Is it serious, Dad?” Brody begins to sound almost worried.
“I think it’s headed that way. We haven’t talked about what things will look like when he goes back to Baltimore, but we will eventually.”
“Isn’t he going back next week?”
“Yeah.”
“So shouldn’t you have that talk, like, pretty soon?”
For someone who’s so academic, Brody’s shockingly adept at romantic situations. If saving our environment doesn’t pan out, he should be a therapist. Or at least host a dating reality show.
I’ve been putting off asking Nick what happens after Christmas, but the clock is ticking. I know things are still new between us, but they feel right. I can’t let this guy slip away.