SULLIVAN
Chapter Eleven
The most complicated thing I can think of is the one thing I refuse to say to Knight.
I like everything about him. I like the way he feels and smells.
I like the sound of his voice and the clothes he wears.
I like his abs and his dick and his hair and even his beard.
I like the way he kisses and the way he’s perfect and smart and can cook.
I like how much he likes me, and that he comes on a hair trigger. I like the taste of his cum. I like that he looks at home anywhere and even that he lives in a mansion with his whole family who I’d probably like too if I didn’t hate everyone but him.
And Chelsea. I don’t hate Chelsea.
Will she hate me for this? I want to care, but I can’t.
Every time I try to care—to feel bad about it, I think of Adrian’s hands on me.
She wouldn’t be mad about that. She’d probably call the police, and the only difference here is I’m making the rules, and why would she begrudge me that when Knight is the only one in my life who allows it?
The only person besides her I even trust?
The cleft my dick has managed to find between his unrealistically firm ass cheeks is warm and tight, even through the thin layer of his pants.
“I can’t cook like this. I can’t even open the meat,” he says, breathless.
“No one ever taught you how to multi-task?”
“Can you multi-task?”
“Not really.”
“Then don’t be weird about it.”
I laugh again, buzzed and horny and bordering on needy. While I still can, I pull away from him, turning to lean on the counter and face him while his shaky hands pick up the sealed package of chicken again.
His cheeks look hot, and his lips are bitten and wet. “Anything you want to confess?” I ask.
“I might need to finish my drink first.”
“So, finish it.”
He gives me a long look before picking up the glass and knocking it back like any good jock should. I ask if he wants a refill.
“Sure.”
“Don’t get too drunk.”
“Why not?” he asks.
“I might need your consent for something at some point.”
“Can I consent now?”
“Don’t you want to know what you’re consenting to?”
“I mean, you’re a lot more confusing than algebra, but I’m pretty sure you’re gonna actually try to fuck me tonight.”
“Try?” I say. “I was planning to suggest.”
“In exchange for?”
“Dinner. Drinks. Four quizzes. But for selfish reasons, too. Unless you don’t think you’d be into it.”
He glances at me, sweeping his gaze up and down my body, which is almost as long but much slighter than his.
I don’t get the sense he’s judging my size, though.
It feels more like he’s taking the measure of me.
Like—as a man. Having only ever felt like I was being treated as a boy, this assessment makes me feel more confident in my skin than I ever remember feeling. “I’d be nervous,” he says. “And weird.”
“Not if you drink exactly the right amount of alcohol.”
He smirks and looks back down at the meat, now open on a cutting board. “Maybe.”
I run a hand down his muscular back. He stills. “Can I rub your back?” I ask.
“Can I rub yours?”
“Maybe later. I might need another drink first.”
“Want to explain that?”
“It would take so many drinks, champ. There’s not enough vodka.”
Knight makes a noise of disappointment and shakes his head, but he lets me keep running my hand up and down his back, occasionally squeezing one of his shoulders. He’s so fucking strong. I forgot to say I like that, too.
“So, what else can you tell me about you?” he asks as he starts slicing the chicken into strips.
“I don’t know, but I have a question for you.”
“Of course you do. Okay.”
“Have you ever hooked up with a girl?”
He slides a glance my way, and I lift my brows. I totally understand he’s gay, but he’s also deep in the closet, and he’s about to be college famous. Maybe even famous famous. “I’ve never had sex with a girl if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I’m asking about anything. Kissing, blow jobs, touching, hooking up.”
“It’s kind of hard to avoid without being an asshole, but I do my best. To avoid it, I mean.”
“Is that an answer?”
“It’s more of an answer than I get out of you most times.”
I let out a short laugh and allow my hand to slide over the upper curve of his ass on my next pass down his back. He sucks in a breath, his knife work pausing momentarily.
“Kissing, minimal touching. One blow job,” he says.
“And how was that?”
“The blow job?” he asks.
“The blow job, kissing a girl. How’d it feel for you?”
“Like something I didn’t want to be doing.”
“So why did you?”
“Because people are usually watching. Not the blow job, but—”
“So how did that happen?”
He winces, like the memory of it is uncomfortable. “It wasn’t one of my finest moments.”
My eyes narrow, and I’m greedy for more information. “Tell me,” I say because I know he will.
Lo and behold, his shoulders drop, and he sighs.
“This girl was kissing me at a party and asked me to dance with her, but she didn’t end up taking me to where everybody was dancing.
She took me into a room and started taking off her shirt, and then she was trying to take off my shirt, and I kinda freaked out. I told her to get on her knees.”
“And she did?”
He nods.
“That was bold. Were you even hard?”
“No,” he says quietly.
“What’d you do?” I ask just as softly.
“Told her…” He swallows like he’s recounting something truly traumatic, and maybe it sort of was. “I told her something about how she obviously wasn’t doing it for me or whatever. She cried.”
My hand stills on his lower back. “She did not.”
“Yeah. It was pretty awful. I wanted to fucking kneel down with her and give her a hug and be like—it’s not you—I don’t even like girls, but I didn’t do that. I just left her there and got the fuck out of the house.”
“Did you see her again after that?”
He shakes his head. “That happened right after spring break. I didn’t go to any more parties after that.”
“I’m sure she’s fine.”
He laughs harshly. “Yeah? Because I’ve got two sisters, and I can pretty much guarantee if something like that ever happened to one of them—well, number one I’d kill anyone who did something like that to either of my sisters—but they would not have been okay. Not for a while. I mean, would you be?”
“It’s pretty hard to hurt my feelings,” I tell him.
“Why’s that?”
I want to say because I don’t have any. It feels like that most of the time.
But they’re in there somewhere, buried under a stack of the other issues I deal with.
They tend to come out more around Knight, though I’m trying hard not to show them.
“It’s not like I live or die based on whether I can get someone off. ”
“What do you live or die by, then?”
“I mean—if someone I respected told me I was trash at a violin solo, I’d probably need to be medicated for a few days so I didn’t do anything crazy.”
“You’ve never fucked up a solo?”
“Never,” I say evenly.
“Really?”
“Literally every single one of my fingers would have to be broken before I allowed myself to miss a single note or have a piece sound anything less than perfect. It’s like the one thing I can always control.”
“Wow.”
“What?” I ask. Is that so crazy? “Like you’d let yourself screw up a play?”
“I’ve got no control over most of what happens on the field. I can call whatever I want, but what happens after the ball gets hiked is in a lot more hands than mine.”
“Do you get yelled at if something goes wrong?”
“Depends. Sometimes. Sometimes I even deserve it because I didn’t think fast enough or see something I should’ve seen. I’m still learning. Still improving. I hope.”
Not that I ever thought I was cut out for team sports, but now I know I’m not. “Anyway, don’t beat yourself up too much about that girl. If you do see her again, just pull her aside, say you were drunk, and you’re sorry. It’ll go a long way.”
“Or she’ll think I wanna do sex stuff with her again.”
I laugh out loud. “Sex stuff. You’re fucking adorable.”
“Why don’t you go attempt an algebra problem and let me cook.”
“I have a better idea. I’ll teach you some Rachmaninoff.”
I play violin while Knight does something with the chicken in a skillet. Sitting at the head of the table, facing him as he works, I improvise a soundtrack to what he’s doing. It takes him a while to realize this, at one point asking, “Is this an actual song?”
To which, I answer with my usual, “Does it sound like an actual song?”
He shakes his head at me dismissively while looking back down at his pan with a tiny smile curling the edge of his mouth.
Then, a few minutes later while he’s been staring at the pan, poking it with a wooden spoon for three minutes and I’ve been bouncing back and forth over the same three low notes, he huffs and says, “Okay, I get it. That’s annoying. ”
I respond with some very severe Beethoven. That gives him an erection, and I like that a lot.
When he’s done cooking, he insists I make my own plate, so I put my violin back in its case and join him in the kitchen.
I’m hungry but not starving. I give myself a large helping of the salad and look at the chicken more than once, wanting meat for the first time in a while.
Then, I make each of us another screwdriver since he finally finished his second one.
We sit across from each other at the table while I eat and try to figure out if he’s nervous or not.
I probably would be more nervous if I didn’t have such a good buzz. “Are you the baby of the family?” I ask.
“Yeah. Two older sisters.”
“Then how’d you manage to become such a perfectionist? I thought that was supposed to be an eldest child thing.”
“My whole family is like this. It’s not just me.”
“Do you have a fear of failure?”
“Fear? I don’t know. Maybe. It’s more like an undercurrent of push, push, push.” He punctuates this with small hand gestures, pushing the air toward me in three beats. “Failure isn’t really an option. Pivoting is, but I don’t want to pivot. So, no, I don’t think I’d call it fear.”
“But there’s pressure,” I note.
“Sure, but only in my own head.”
“Why’s your head so mean?”