14. Goodbye #3
A glorious few minutes of making out passed, and Gus felt Bridger’s hand slide down along his chest and stomach to grasp his stiffening member over his briefs.
Gus gasped in pleasure, and Bridger chuckled with lustful joy into their kiss.
He squeezed Gus’s dick and began to stroke it over the material.
Gus released a low moan of delight, and Bridger caught his lip between his teeth.
They parted briefly, and Gus relished Bridger’s gleeful expression. Their eye contact was electric.
“Can’t believe I’m about to do this,” Gus’s skater boy said.
Gus stretched forward and kissed Bridger, hard.
Bridger slipped his tongue into Gus’s mouth, savoring the taste of him. Then his kisses moved to Gus’s chin, to his neck, the hollow of his throat, slowly trailing down his body. He lingered on Gus’s nipples, slid his tongue down his stomach, pressed his open mouth lithely against his pelvis.
Every muscle in Gus’s body quivered.
When Bridger reached below Gus’s waist, he pulled at the band of his blue briefs. With a nervous smirk and a raised eyebrow, Bridger looked up at Gus, who nodded.
“Yes. Please, yes,” Gus said.
Bridger ripped the briefs down Gus’s legs. He reached back between Gus’s bare thighs and squeezed his exposed penis again.
“You are… really fucking sexy,” Bridger laughed.
Then Bridger slid down and took all of Gus into his mouth.
Gus gasped.
Oh! Oh…
The boy couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t live because this was better. This was all the ecstasy of loving and being loved, all the pleasure of needing and being needed.
Gus struggled to focus as Bridger kept going but hummed in joy when he glanced down to see Bridger thoroughly enjoying himself.
He couldn’t wait to inspect every single inch of Bridger with his own mouth in time.
It was a night of firsts—flashes of skin, the laughter from mess-ups, the intoxicating slick of sweat sheening their tangled bodies.
The attic bedroom brimmed with their deep intimacy, their unbridled pleasure.
All night long, until morning dawned, the boys played and explored each other’s beautiful bodies.
~
Angry, depressed, and now even more drunk, Max entered his small family home after leaving his birthday party and slammed the door behind him. His mother’s boyfriend, Jay, who was sitting on the couch, spilled his beer on himself in shock.
The drunk men started to scream at each other, just like most other nights. Max’s mom walked into the room, covering her ears as she attempted to stop them. She was pushed away—by which of them, it wasn’t quite clear—and started crying.
Around them, bills were piled up on a counter. Stacks of skateboard products sat unsold in boxes along the walls.
“—a faggot, that’s all you are,” Jay finally screamed. He slugged Max across the chin.
Max clutched his bruising face and stormed off, slamming his bedroom door.
The boy sat on his bed and clenched his fists, seething with anger. Jay resigned himself to screaming at his mother instead.
Max lay back on his mattress and stared blankly at his ceiling.
Taped-up posters of pro skateboarders and far-off cities there taunted him, their promised escape plan an impossible fantasy.
Clutching his pillow, Max turned to the end table on his left.
There, on the nightstand, sat an old framed photo of him as a child with his mother and deceased father.
Max had never noticed this portrait in the house while his dad was still alive.
But the day after his father was gone, it stood out, another frozen memory of the man he refused to let anyone take from him.
Max had come to cherish this photo like a holy relic, always keeping it near.
It was the forgotten past peace of his true family that welcomed him to sleep each night.
Taped to the portrait were two unframed pictures: one of Bridger, one of Tara.
The only two people Max had thought actually cared about him anymore.
Young, pretty Tara wore his red snapback in her high school graduation photo and Bridger was flipping off Max’s camera with his signature smirk of wild rebellion.
These two images never failed to make Max smile before.
Now both brought him pain. Tears streamed down Max’s cheeks.
He was forever trapped in this life without them.
Why does everyone leave me?
This town, this home, this life. It was all his prison.
“FUCK!”
All his pent-up rage carried him from his mattress, and he chucked his skateboard across his bedroom. It bounced off his dark walls and crashed into the outdated Dell on his desk. The screen cracked. The machine fell to the ground, dead.
Max screamed at the top of his lungs.
He screamed until nothing else could come out.
Heaving with exerted energy and burning with self-loathing, Max smacked his own forehead again and again as tears leaked down.
Fuck this. Fuck me. I’m so fucked up. I’m fucking broken. What is wrong with me?
Jay pounded on his bedroom door.
“What the fuck is going on in there?”
Luckily, Max had locked him out. He had locked everyone out.
As both poundings continued. Max’s tear-stained face morphed from anger to apathy.
He stared blankly across his room. Everything became nothing.
And nothing hurt most when you were alone.
Max lowered himself back into his bed. He pulled up his covers, closed his eyes, and wept as his mom’s boyfriend continued to bang on the door and shout even louder.
But he heard nothing anymore. Nothing at all.