Chapter 4
I wake with the taste of him still in my mouth.
The ceiling comes into focus slowly, the same bare plaster I stared at as a kid. My clothes are twisted around me, denim stiff against my legs. I don’t remember falling asleep. I remember lying in the dark, touching my mouth like I could press the memory deeper into my skin.
Across the room, Dominic’s already sitting up, back against the headboard, watching me. His hair’s a disaster. His eyes are shadowed, he slept as badly as I did.
“We should talk about it,” he says.
Not hesitant. Just raw, like the words scraped their way out of a throat that held them back all night.
I sit up, rub a hand over my face. I don’t know what to do with my hands, my body, the three feet of floor that suddenly feels like a canyon and a thread at once.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’re not freaking out.”
His eyes hold mine. No smile, no easy charm. He looks like he did in the parking lot. I want to cross the room and put my hands on him. I want to stay exactly where I am. Both impulses tangle in my chest until I can’t breathe.
“I’m not freaking out. I’m… something else. I don’t know the word for it.”
“Me neither.”
Three feet apart, morning light pooling on the floor between us. I’ve spent my whole life with words, I’m a speech therapist, helping other people find their voice. This has no vocabulary I’ve ever learned.
He swings his legs over the side of the bed. Bare feet on the floor. An old t-shirt, boxers. I notice the shape of his thighs, the dark hair on his calves. I’ve been noticing for years without letting myself see.
“Let’s get out of here,” he says. “Go for a drive.”
The high school looks smaller than it should.
We park at the edge of the football field and walk through the gate. Chain-link rusted, grass patchy at the edges. The bleachers rise on one side, same weathered aluminum, same peeling paint, exactly where we used to sit until the janitor kicked us out.
Heat presses down. Sweat beads at the back of my neck. We climb to our old spot, halfway up, the best view of the field. The metal’s hot through my jeans.
We sit. This silence isn’t last night’s… not the loaded quiet of the truck, the bedroom. It’s a continuation. Same conversation, paused and resumed.
“I can’t stop thinking about it,” Dominic says. A bird startles off the scoreboard. “The kiss,” he adds, like I might’ve forgotten. Like I could.
“Neither can I.”
He turns. Sun behind him, haloing his hair, eyes dark and hungry. No hesitation now. Just want.
“I’ve never done anything like that before. With a guy. But I can’t stop thinking about you.”
He leans in. I meet him halfway.
The kiss is gentler than last night. More certain. His mouth is warm, familiar in a way that makes my chest ache. My hand comes up to cup his jaw, the stubble scratching my palm. His fingers find the front of my shirt, not grabbing this time, just resting there, like he’s anchoring himself to me.
Then he moves. One hand pushes against my chest, guiding me back until my shoulders hit the metal railing. The aluminum is hot through my shirt, burning the skin between my shoulder blades. I gasp, and Dominic swallows the sound.
The railing is hot through my shirt. The sun beats down on the top of my head, my shoulders, the exposed curve of my neck. Sweat drips down my spine. And Dominic is on his knees in front of me, and I can’t remember the last time I felt this alive.
The bleacher planks are old, splintered, and I want to tell him to stop, that his knees will be wrecked, but then his hands are at my belt and every thought in my head goes silent. His fingers fumble with the buckle. The metal clinks. The sound is obscenely loud in the empty stadium.
He unbuttons my jeans. The zipper rasps down. My cock is already hard, pressing against the front of my boxers, leaking through the fabric. I’ve been half-hard since I woke up, since the taste of him on my tongue and the memory of his mouth on mine.
Dominic frees me. The air hits my bare skin, hot and close. Then his hand wraps around my shaft.
I gasp. The sound tears out of me, raw and broken, and I bite down on my own lip to keep from moaning.
His palm is warm, the grip uncertain at first. He’s never done this before.
Neither have I, not with another man, not like this.
But the way he touches me, tentative and reverent, makes my hips jerk forward.
He tightens his grip. Strokes up. The slide is dry, the friction sharp, and I hiss through my teeth. His thumb swipes over the head, spreading the moisture beading at the tip, and the sensation is so good it borders on pain.
“Like this?” His voice is thick, rough.
“Yeah.” The word comes out strangled. “Keep going.”
He does. His hand works me with a rhythm that starts clumsy and finds its confidence.
The wet sounds of skin on skin fill the empty bleachers.
The sun beats down on the top of my head, my shoulders, the exposed curve of my cock.
Sweat drips down my spine. I grip the railing behind me, the metal burning my palms, and I watch him.
Dominic on his knees. Dominic with his lips parted, his eyes dark, focused on the place where his hand meets my body.
The memory of us in this exact spot, teenagers with our whole lives ahead of us, collides with the present.
We came here to talk about football and girls and the future.
We came here to be boys. Now he’s on his knees, and I’m falling apart under his hands.
“Dominic.” His name is a warning.
He looks up. Our eyes lock. His grip tightens, his stroke quickens, and the combination of his gaze and his hand and the impossible heat of the moment sends me over the edge.
I come with a broken moan, cumming in thick pulses.
The orgasm rolls through me, wave after wave, and Dominic doesn’t stop.
He works me through it, milking every last drop, his hand slick and warm and unrelenting.
My legs shake. My vision blurs at the edges.
I sag against the railing, held up by nothing but the metal and the force of his attention.
When he finally releases me, I’m spent. Boneless. He rises, his knees red from the planks, and steps into my space. His mouth finds mine, soft now. Tender. He tastes like salt and heat, and I can feel my own cum still warm on his fingers as he cups my jaw.
“I’ve wanted to do that for longer than I knew,” he says against my lips.
I don’t know how to answer. There are no words for the way my chest feels, full, and a little bit like something that finally got to stop holding its breath.
So I kiss him instead. Until the sun shifts and the shadows lengthen, until the janitor’s truck rumbles into the lot and we have to pull apart, laughing, breathless.
We go home.
The drive is quiet. Not the silence of two people pretending nothing happened, the silence of two people who’ve finally stopped. The radio plays low. Dominic’s hand rests on the gear shift, and I watch it, remembering the feel of those fingers wrapped around me.
The silence is different now. Full instead of empty.