A Game Like Ours: Suncastle College Book One

by Marissa J. Gramoll

  My breath hitches. There’s something so beautiful about being with him here, like this.

  I move him in and out, pleasuring the hell out of his tip. Flicking my tongue around him. Faster. Licking him makes me so hard, desire making me want to go all the way. Hoping we do, soon. Wanting more. Giving him more. Promising to give him everything.

  He groans and the sound is heaven.

  Lapping his length, enveloping him in my mouth and pumping with my hand. He is mine. I am his. Nothing else matters. We matter. This matters.

  Am I in love with him?

  I look up to see what he thinks. There’s a big ol’ grin on his face. I guess I’m doing this right.

  “Oh yes, Bobby. I knew it’d be you. I just knew it’d be you.”

  The new Diablo came out. I drove Cody to Gamestop to grab it, since I just got my license. We’ve played all evening. Mom ordered some pizza. It’s basically perfect timing because there’s no school tomorrow. We can stay up as late as we want.

  Cody and I have been together, secretly, for a while. Almost a year. Acting normal until we are at my house alone. Sharing these moments in the dark. We’ve gone all the way, several times. Two teenage boys figuring it out together. And holy hell, have we figured it out.

  Didn’t know what love could feel like, until Cody. It’s been really nice to hold him, to touch him, kiss him. His kisses are incredible. He’s always been my best friend. Feels like everything is just deeper now. It’s so natural to be with him.

  “Can you to do somethin’ for me?” Cody tosses his controller on the carpet, fiddling through his backpack.

  “Sure, what is it?” I set down my controller.

  “I need you to keep this safe, okay? Don’t let anyone see.” In his hands is a journal. “Your mom’s not the type to go snoopin’ in your room is she?”

  “No, no, she’s not.” I hold the journal and flip through the pages. It’s all recent dates. Awe, my eyes catch some of the stuff we did together. I made it in his journals.

  “Don’t read it in front of me.” He snaps it closed. “Just keep it safe.”

  “Oh.” I swallow because I feel so weird when he bosses me around like this. If it was anybody else I’d tell ’em to go to hell. But I listen to him. I wanna listen to everything he has to say.

  “There’s somethin’ else too.You’re probably not gonna like it, so take a deep breath or find your zen or whatever other stupid shit you’re into.”

  “Meditation?” I hardly think it’s stupid, but alright.

  “Yeah. You ready?” He’s being so intense.

  Where is this coming from?

  “Yeah, I mean why wouldn’t I be?” My defenses rise because he’s never talked to me like this. I have no clue what is coming.

  “I’m straight now. We can’t–” he trails off.

  “You’re straight now?” I whisper because Mom’s home. “Cody, you’re not straight. We’ve had tons of sex and you love it. You’re at least bi.”

  “I’m straight now.” He sets his jaw. I wait for him to go on, but he doesn’t.

  My throat gets really hot. “But what about us? Don’t you want to be with me?” I’m not sure why I’m pleading for more. I sound pathetic. But holy hell, this hurts.

  “I know Bobby, I know. But it’s time to move on. Shoot straighter.” He holds his hands out like he’s an arrow or some bullshit.

  “Did I do somethin’ wrong?” I’m all choked up but swallow down every bit of emotion.

  “No, no, you didn’t do anythin’ wrong.” Cody looks away from me. “It’s not you at all.”

  “What are you sayin’?” I clench my fists. “If I didn’t do anythin’ wrong, then why would we stop? I don’t understand.” And it’s the truth. How can I wrap my head around what has been our relationship? Maybe he didn’t mean any of it. My pulse races like I’ve run for miles. “Was this all some joke to you?”

  “No.” He’s getting angry. His voice is loud. “This was not a joke to me, Bobby I swear to God it was not a joke. I love you. But we are breakin’ up. I can’t be with you anymore.” He’s gripping my collar, pulling me close to him. The nearness assaults me. All I want is to melt into his kiss.

  “Why then? I haven’t told a soul.”

  “This ain’t about you, okay?” He stands up, shaking his head. Before I know it, he rushes down the hall, hides in the bathroom, and shuts me out.

  My head hurts trying to think about what the hell happened and what I’m supposed to do about it.

  He’s in there for a while, so I go and lay on my bed. My sheets smell like him. I hug my pillow. It’s crushing me, ending this small thing we’ve been doing. What we’ve been building has been stopped too soon. Like I was on a bus, but got off several miles early and have to walk the rest of the way. Alone. In a thunderstorm.

  I shiver, swallowing the knot in my throat, trying to calm my pounding heart. I feel like I got beat up.

  Then he’s there, saying, “Hey.”

  I wish he would come lay by me, but instead he sits on the edge of the bed.

  “It’s better this way, alright?”

  I feel robbed. Cody is the one that I listen to. But I don’t have to listen to this. I don’t need any part of it.

  “It’s not better.” I sit up on my elbows. “I don’t know how you do a one-eighty like this unless you’re somehow repulsed by me or somethin’.”

  “It’s not about you.” He palms his eyeballs. “Dang it Bobby, if it was you, I’d tell you. But trust me, it’s not.” His hand goes to my leg, thumb caressing below my kneecap. Shocks work through me as I fight the urge to swat him away, because I want his touch so bad, even more now that he says I can’t have it.

  “Please, I have to do this. And I know it’s hard to understand, but trust me. I’ve got to be straight now and have a girlfriend.”

  “Oh? And who is that gonna be?”

  “Lexie Hawthorne.”

  Fuck. No. God, no. Why her? The only crush I have.

  I didn’t know I could possibly feel worse in this moment, but shit, I do. It’s like someone took out all my organs and I’m floating hollow inside my chest cavity.

  “Lexie? Really? You think she’ll go out with you?”

  “Oh, I know she will.” His hand is off my leg, leaving me alone in my mess of emotion.

  “How do you know that?”

  “We went out last night.”

  “You already went out with her before breakin’ it off with me?” I feel like I’m falling. He’s going out with the only girl I care about. How am I supposed to make any sense of this?

  He ignores my question, off in some la-la land. “She is so damn sweet.”

  Yeah, I know, Cody…shit…I know.

  “I told her we can go get ice cream tomorrow. Wanna come?”

  “No thanks.” My mouth tastes like I’ve been chewing on tar.

  “Cody! Cody, your dad’s here!” Mom shouts from downstairs.

  His countenance collapses, shoulders slumping, fear in his eyes. “Fuck.” It’s barely a whisper, but I heard it. We are told in Sunday School not to swear. I don’t give a damn, but Cody’s mouth is as clean as a bare of lye soap. His dad getting here made him say fuck?

  He gets off the bed. “See ya.”

  “Wait.” I grab his wrist.

  “I gotta get.”

  And I see it, red eyes filled with feeling. All that we’ve shared, all this time, that he just went and threw away.

  He doesn’t want me anymore.

  Maybe he never did.

  28

  BOBBY

  NOW

  “Look, I’m sorry about everythin’. Can you give me a chance to explain?” Mom sounds sincere since I decided to answer her call. The first time she’s dialed me in months. I’m looking through the Hawthorne’s kitchen for anything that is not a million horrible calories of artificial shit. I’m still sour. But I can’t stay mad at Mom. Hopefully she has some good fucking explanation.

  I si
gh. “I need to come fix the fence, anyway.”

  I leave Lexie at her parent’s house and go to Home Depot. I still remember the color of paint from the many summers it was my job to paint the fence. Cedar Wood.

  With the supplies in hand, I knock on Mom’s front door.

  A woman opens it. The house is a mess still, nothing like when I was growing up. The change is as jolting as seeing the woman my mom left my dad for. I’m still in shock, though I don’t want to be. I want to be okay with this. Nira didn’t do anything to deserve my rudeness, so I make a point to keep that hidden inside.

  “Hi.” I put a smile on my face. It’s not genuine, but I’m trying my best to be open-minded. Maybe in time, I can understand. But now, well, now I’m fucking mad about it. Keep it to yourself, Bobby. I don’t know her at all, but I feel like I’ve seen her on Instagram. Wait. “You’re Nira Hofstettler?”

  Why didn’t it dawn on me last night?

  “I am.”

  “Oh, shit. Well, I’ve seen your stuff. Great stuff.” I set the paint and supplies near the entry table. Unencumbered, I shake her hand with both of mine, nestling Mom’s Christmas gift under my elbow. “I follow all your food-prep recipes. Oh, and that ab workout you did last year.” Am I really nerding out over my mom’s girlfriend? Never thought this would happen. It feels all sorts of surreal. She’s one of the top bodybuilding influencers in the country. I’ve been following her for years. Briar got me into her posts. Crazy to see her in the flesh. Crazier that I didn’t realize last night. Just goes to show that I was not thinking straight.

  “Your mom has shown me a lot of clips of you playing ball. You’re not so bad yourself. Must really apply my videos.” She looks me up and down until I blush.

  “Yeah, they’re good shit.” I smile and it feels good not to hate her, like I thought I might.

  “I know your mom’s been busy.” She leans her head toward the kitchen and heads that way.

  I follow. The smell of cooking comes through my nose. On the table is a better spread than Jesus had at the Last Supper. Protein pancakes. Tons of eggs. Lean turkey bacon. So much fruit it looks like we live in the tropics.

  “I fucked up, and I’m sorry.” Mom holds her hands out with a plate. She’s wearing her Suncastle Knights apron that I gave her my freshman year, on the first Christmas I came home.

  Now I don’t have a home to come home to. I hold my breath. I’m not going to be mad about this. I won’t do that to her. In my hands is a wrapped cookbook I got for her this year. “You may already have it.”

  “Awe, thanks honey.” She sets it on the counter.

  “You didn’t have to do any of this.” I give her the hug I refused to give her last night. Feels good, like maybe I can forgive her sooner than later.

  “I know I didn’t. Now go eat.” She puts her hands around my thin waist and I worry she’ll ask about the twenty pounds I’ve lost that I didn’t really have to lose. The muscle disguises a lot of it, sure. But I don’t want her asking. I’ll get it under control. She doesn’t need to know. She doesn’t inquire, and I don’t tell. Mom is a bit of a health fanatic, herself.

  At the table, I pour some sugar-free syrup on my pancakes. This is so much better than what they have at Lexie’s house. I managed to grab a banana this morning but everything else was processed, fatty, sugary shit. No, thank you.

  “My mom makes incredible healthy food. She’s perfected it like an art,” I rave to Nira.

  “I know she has.” Nira winks at me and I think about how many people pay serious money for a photo op with her at conventions. And I’m having brunch with her because she’s with my mom...

  I’m glad I can eat what I want here and not worry about it. Mom taught me half of what I know about nutrition. She’s always been really supportive of my food goals.

  Hey, I’m eating. I’ll have to tell Crossfit Santa about this. Can’t wait to text Mindy.

  “Thanks for brunch.” I start to stand, but Mom takes my hand.

  “Well, I’d like to explain what happened.” She has a sad expression on her face.

  “Nira happened.” I keep a smile on my face, trying to be as respectful as possible.

  “I loved your father. I really did,” she sighs.

  My heart breaks a little bit, because I notice that she said loved instead of love.

  “But neither one of us had what we really needed.” Mom pinches her lips together, like it’s hard to say this. Nira puts her arm around her and pretty soon Mom is smiling again.

  She looks good. I wouldn’t expect her to look this good when she just went through a separation months ago. But she does. She looks alive. I see something there that I didn’t before. Was she always unhappy with Dad?

  I swallow, the acceptance I started to feel evaporates like a puddle in the sunshine.

  “Where’s Dad now?”

  “He moved downtown.” Mom glances at the table.

  “Did you tell him I’m here?”

  “I haven’t talked to him since he left. That’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t know what he felt about everythin’. I didn’t want to add any more pain to him or you. Now I see that was wrong of me.” Mom sounds heavy, and her tone adds pain to my chest.

  I feel the lump in my throat grow because I know exactly what this feels like. All too well.

  “I’m happy for you.” I take her hand in mine. “I know it’s not easy, and you did what you needed. I’m glad for you. For both of you. Welcome.” I glance at Nira. “I mean it.”

  Mom has tears in her eyes and wipes them away with the back of her hand.

  “You didn’t tell me you had such a sweetheart for a boy,” Nira says to Mom, pulling her close.

  “I do have a sweet boy.” She shakes her head. “My sweet bean.”

  “You haven’t used that one since I was eight.” I chuckle.

  “Yeah, cause you made me promise not to. Wasn’t cool enough to call you in front of your friends.”

  “It wasn’t.” Nira chuckles.

  For a second, it feels nice. But then I think about how Dad used to be the one sitting here and how that will never happen again.

  “I’m gonna get workin’. Thanks for breakfast.” I clear my place, then go out to the back fence. I destroyed it. The shredded fence pieces lay like the broken pieces of my soul, dying on the grass.

  I set the supplies down, but that blasted peach tree stares at me. The last one on the row. Our tree. My hand goes to my cross necklace. I take cautious steps toward the trunk and reach out my hand to touch it.

  I feel that tremor. It stops me, still as a statue, because I wasn’t expecting it now. Or ever. I never know when it will come or what I’ll do with it.

  You’re here, aren’t you? Still with me. I swallow. Always with me? My feet stand right where I did all those years ago, feeling him come toward me.

  I fuckin’ miss you. I want to scream the words. You weren’t supposed to die!

  I crumble to the ground, because I can’t handle all this. I bury my head in my hands like his body is buried under dirt. “It wasn’t supposed to go this way, you know that?”

  That night when he came to my apartment, the night of the accident, he wanted me to be with him. I’ve never let myself really think about it. I’ve tried to forget a million times. I’ve wanted to forget what he did to me. That he left me for Lexie. And he didn’t even love her right, when I would have. All that time. He took her and I couldn’t have either one of them. All I wanted was to love him. To be with him. Or to love and be with her. But I couldn’t have either one.

  “You took that away from us!” My body quakes, trembles working through me. “We never even got a fuckin’ chance.” I curse this world. The one we live in where it’s not okay to be gay or bi or anything that isn’t straight. But we aren’t straight. We’ve never been straight and we’ll never be straight. The world needs to open its fucking eyes.

  People like Cody’s dad that beat the shit out of him for loving me. I can’t take it
anymore. The torment rolls through me because I haven’t allowed myself this fantasy. The one where Cody lived. The one where we had a chance. The one where we could’ve let our relationship be more than teenage boys hiding silently in the dark.

  I still want to love you in the light of a thousand sunshines. In the eyes of a million people kissin’ you on national television after winning the world series. I’d come out for you. I’d take our love out of the darkness and put it in the light.

  I don’t know if I’d still be with him or if I’d have been with Lexie all those years ago. I’ll never know. I can’t know.

  But I know this. I love Cody. With all my soul I love what we had, no matter how brief and painful. I love it. I’m glad he kissed me under this tree. I’m glad that I could give him his dreams, his fantasies. That I could, in a very small way, be the lover he wanted. Even if we couldn’t keep it.

  Instead of stuffing it down deeper in my heart, I embrace it now, under our tree. Embracing my darkness. I try to lie to myself. Try to remember something different because it hurts so bad to recall what is real.

  I’m coming to terms with my loss. My best friend. My lover? I hug the tree and pretend it’s him.

  I think about how that first time felt. I miss him. Shit, I miss him.

  It’s like being in a dark tunnel with no way out. That grief that I’m supposed to be going through holds me prisoner. Stuck, still stuck. Always stuck?

  Hot tears pour out of my eyes. It’s not fucking fair. It’s not okay that he died. It’s not okay that I’m the only one that knows where he was that night. That I’m the reason he was in that car. That I’m the reason he’s gone.

  The floodgates open. I don’t want to be trapped in this prison. I need to be free, to be whole.

  To be his.

  A hand comes on my shoulder, and I flinch, because I think it’s Cody, but Cody is dead.

  “You and Cody sure loved this tree.” Mom puts her arms around me, not saying a word for a bit. I’m a blubbering mess.

  “You cryin’ about Cody or about me and your dad?” She lets out a sad chuckle. “That’s a stupid question, isn’t it? I’m sorry honey. Doesn’t matter what you’re cryin’ about. Heaven knows you’re welcome to more than a few tears with all the last few years have been like.”