Confessions Between Us

by Tina T. Kove

  ‘I didn’t hate it, I guess, but it wasn’t good either.’ I didn’t know how to explain it. ‘It’s something that has to be done though. She was nice, so, yeah.’ Words were hard right now when I’d spent such a short time earlier uttering so many of them. It was like I’d used up my quota of words today.

  I was exhausted, it was that simple. Talking to her had exhausted me and now I was dreading having to go to work. Eight hours of retail… It was hell on the best of days and today was not a good day.

  It had been a good day.

  But it wasn’t anymore.

  ‘Hey…’ He scooted in closer so he was pressed up against my side. ‘Maybe you should call in sick to work?’

  ‘I’m not sick.’ I hated calling in sick even when I was. ‘And it’s only an hour until I start, so that wouldn’t be fair.’ Besides, I would rather go to work than meet all of Andreas’s family. Especially right now when I wasn’t in the right state of mind. ‘I’m working with Adrian today. It’ll be okay.’

  ‘Adrian’s working?’ he asked in surprise. ‘The two of you will be the only ones missing then. Well, other than my grandparents, anyway.’

  ‘Adrian’s family is coming too?’ Now I was even more relieved I was working. ‘They’re not related to Thomas though?’

  ‘They’re not, but… we’re all we have now.’ He tilted his head slightly to the side. ‘When Mum died, my aunt was there for us. When Dad then died, she was there for us and Thomas. I’m sure she would’ve taken us all in of Thomas didn’t want to, but she already had four children. And Thomas was more than happy to take us in, so… Here we are.’ He propped one elbow over my head and rested his head in one hand. ‘My aunt’s been around a lot since, and Thomas and her are really good friends.’

  ‘That’s nice.’ He was lucky to have such a loving, supportive family. And I was lucky to sort-of be a part of it now. ‘I’ll meet them another time.’

  ‘Yeah?’ He leant closer.

  ‘I will.’ I did want to meet his family. I was just nervous about it. Afraid they wouldn’t like me. Terrified I wouldn’t like them. ‘Have you heard from Glenn?’ I asked then, rolling over on my side and putting a hand on his chest.

  ‘No.’ He grimaced. ‘He still doesn’t answer. I’ll take the hint for now and let him be. Vivian’s got it all under control, I hope, and he can’t stay in the hospital forever. He’ll be back soon.’

  I wanted to be as positive as him. He saw the good in everything. I was a lot more pessimistic and I wasn’t sure Glenn was coming back anytime soon.

  If he’d gone so far as to try to end his life, things were bad.

  A lot worse than things had been for me only last month. I’d planned on ending my life… but could I have gone through with those plans when it came to it? I didn’t know. And I never would because Andreas had come into my life that day and he hadn’t left since.

  ‘Thank you.’ I kissed him softly.

  ‘For what?’ He tilted his head quizzically.

  ‘For talking to me that day.’ He hadn’t seen me. It was Glenn who had pointed me out to him. But Andreas had approached me because of that and now here we were.

  Together, happy… or at least as happy as we could be.

  Saturday, March 2nd

  ‘Mmm.’ I moaned as Andreas slid into me.

  He was lying half-way on top of me, pressing me into the mattress. He was going agonizingly slow too and I couldn’t make up my mind if it was too good or just plain torture.

  ‘Feel good?’ he whispered again my ear, lips brushing my skin.

  I could only groan as he buried completely in me.

  He gripped my hip with one hand and angled me a little differently as he pulled back out. When he thrust back in, he did it a little quicker.

  I buried my face in the pillow to stifle my moans. I wasn’t sure if Ben was home or not, but I didn’t want to be heard if he was.

  ‘You feel so good, Alex.’ Andreas buried his face in the crook of my neck.

  He was the one making me feel good, but I couldn’t find the proper words to tell him that right now with my face mushed against my pillow.

  ‘Want me to go quicker?’

  I nodded furiously—and he didn’t disappoint. I came with a groan not even the pillow could stifle not soon after, but he kept going, thrusting into me with abandon.

  Even with a spent dick and in a post-orgasmic glow, Andreas fucking me felt so damn good. I could do this every day, and though we had had sex every day, in the beginning, it had tapered off to every other day and then every third day or so eventually.

  No one had time for sex every single day. Or had the energy to it. But it was so bloody good when we did get down to it and I just wanted it to last forever. I could spend the rest of my life like this, with Andreas’s dick up my arse.

  He pushed himself up a little, bracing both his arms on the bed and spreading his knees enough so I had to spread my thighs. And then he started fucking me again and I forgot everything but the feel of him inside me, of him rubbing against my prostate, of him making me feel good.

  He groaned loudly as he came, buried inside.

  ‘Fuck,’ he muttered.

  He pulled out slowly and I quickly turned around so I could catch him in a kiss before he got off the bed to get rid of the condom.

  His lips were warm and soft, his tongue hot as it tangled with mine.

  I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him back down on the bed with me.

  ‘I’m going to mess you up,’ he warned.

  ‘My arse is already covered in lube,’ I reminded him. A used condom wasn’t going to make it much worse.

  ‘I guess we need to take a shower.’ His tone of voice told me loud and clear he liked the thought of us taking one together.

  So did I. It was one of the first things we’d done together, the morning after we first slept together.

  ‘Mmm, yeah. In a bit.’ I kissed him again.

  He moulded himself against me now, and I hooked my legs over his hips. The used condom pressing against my soft dick was kind of gross, but we were headed to the showers in a moment. I just needed some more kisses.

  ‘Can you fuck off work and just stay here in bed all day?’ He rubbed his nose against mine.

  I laughed. ‘I wish.’ I’d much rather stay in bed all day with him than go to work and deal with people. But work also paid me money, so it was something I had to prioritize. Also, I was too nice to just up and call in sick. I had to be so sick I could hardly get out of bed to make that call.

  ‘Ugh.’ Andreas dropped his forehead on my chest. ‘Work sucks. Why does adulthood include work, huh? We have no time for each other.’

  ‘Next weekend, I promised, hugging his shoulders.

  ‘You’re visiting your brother next weekend,’ he reminded me.

  ‘Oh, right.’ And I was meeting the other Andreas. My cousin. That was going to be nerve-wracking.

  ‘You nervous?’ He chuckled, clearly feeling me tense.

  ‘Yes. Wouldn’t you be?’ He so would. Or wait, no, he probably wouldn’t. He was so chill it was unnatural at times.

  ‘Don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t have any family I haven’t met. I have family you haven’t met though, but I won’t mention that because it’ll only make you more nervous.’

  That was true. But as he had already mentioned, I was already nervous. Not that I’d ever stopped. No one had been here by the time I came home from work last night, but I’d been anxious about it through my entire shift. Cue feeling relieved when I came home to an empty house. Empty except for the people who lived there, obviously.

  ‘Come on.’ He sat back up. ‘Let’s take a shower. Used condoms are damn uncomfortable.’ He took it off and quickly tied it.

  I let him pull me up into a sitting position too. I put my hands on his chest and leaned in for another kiss.

  ‘Okay, yeah, shower.’ All the lube smeared over my arse was pretty uncomfortable too. I was ready to wash
it off. And ready to start a new day. Too bad it involved lots of work and less Andreas, but I’d just have to suck it up and deal with it.

  I wanted to spend all my time with Andreas. Living with him sure helped, but it still didn’t feel like enough. School kept us busy during the weekdays, and I worked every other weekend on top of that.

  I wasn’t lucky enough to have parents or guardians who kept me clothed and fed during school though, so I had no other choice but to work. As soon as high school was over, however, I was off to higher education and getting out of retail.

  At least eventually. I needed to figure out what I wanted to study and what I wanted to work with first. I was still just as blank after the winter holiday as I had been before it.

  I still had some time to figure it out though.

  Hopefully, I would.

  ‘How’s Sarah?’ Andreas asked as we sat down at the kitchen table. ‘I feel really bad I haven’t spoken to her much this week.’

  ‘She’s hurt. And angry.’ I took a spoonful of oatmeal. Andreas had made us breakfast. Oatmeal, brown sugar and plant milk—which had been all that was left in the fridge. It was Maria’s, but he’d been sure she wouldn’t mind us using it for breakfast, so here we were. ‘Mmm, this is good.’ A little sweet, thanks to the sugar, but not too much.

  ‘Maria would be so proud of me for drinking plant milk.’ He grinned. ‘It’s all healthy and shit.’

  ‘I don’t think she’d be too impressed with the sugar.’ Sugar was not healthy. ‘How was dinner last night?’ I hadn’t had a chance to ask last night, as we’d ended up naked in bed. Naked in bed with Andreas was not the time for asking about his family, that was for sure.

  ‘It was okay.’ He shrugged. ‘As usual.’

  ‘Well, work was shit. As usual.’ Fridays were so busy. Every day was busy, really, especially from around three to eight. It calmed down after that, but that wasn’t any better really. During the rush, we were too little people with too much to do, but after it, we had nothing to do.

  ‘Working retail can’t be that bad.’ He took a big mouthful of food.

  ‘It is when you hate people.’ Which I did. For real. People put away their manners and common sense before they entered the shop and just turned into rude, ill-behaved arseholes. As if it was my fault we didn’t have the particular brand of whatever they needed.

  ‘I think I’d be good at it.’

  ‘Well, yeah, because you’re a people-person.’ I wasn’t. Why had I subjected myself to the hell of retail?

  Because no one else would hire me, that was why. An underage kid with nothing on his resume… only stocking shelves at the supermarket would be an applicable job then. As soon as I turned eighteen, I was also expected to man the till. I also got more hours because of that, which meant more money, which was good… but the job was still shit.

  I couldn’t wait for school to be over so I could move on to higher education and get some student loan to live off of instead. If it weren’t for the fact Andreas was heading off to the military for a year, I would be counting the days till summer and then the middle of August when school started back up again.

  As it was, I was both excited and bummed.

  ‘What exactly happened with Peter?’ I asked Andreas then, changing the subject back to what it had originally been about. ‘Why’d he do it?’

  ‘He was drunk.’ Andreas shrugged. ‘He didn’t tell me much, really, but he was drunk and did a stupid thing.’

  ‘Do you think she should forgive him?’ I frowned at him. He sounded like he took it lightly.

  ‘It has only happened once.’ He stared thoughtfully down at his oatmeal. ‘I mean, once is a mistake. It’s when it happens two or three times it turns into a pattern.’

  ‘I—’ What? ‘So I could cheat on you once and that would be okay?’

  He shrugged again. ‘I don’t know. You haven’t cheated on me.’

  ‘I think Sarah has the right to be angry. They’ve been together so long and with one drunken night’s bad decision, he unravels everything. I don’t think I would’ve taken it any better than she did.’

  He put his forearms on the table and leant forward a bit. ‘What if Glenn came back from the hospital, out and proud, and said he wanted to be with you?’ His gaze was heavy on me.

  I dropped my gaze, unable to hold it. ‘I’ve been with you longer than I was with Glenn.’

  ‘That’s not an answer, Alex,’ he pressed gently.

  ‘Okay, so maybe I’m a horribly, hypocritical bastard who somehow thinks maybe I want to have both?’ I swallowed heavily as that fell out of me. ‘Not that it’ll ever happen and I’ll get over any residue feelings I have. I promise.’

  ‘Hey, Alex.’ He reached over the table and took my hands in his. ‘I’m not trying to make you forget about the time you had with him or erase whatever you’re still feeling. If that time was special for you, of course you have some feelings about it.’

  Now I did stare at him.

  This was too good to be true.

  ‘You’re not jealous?’ I licked my lips nervously. ‘That I—that my feelings are so conflicted?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head for emphasis. ‘I am not a jealous guy, Alex. I haven’t told you that before or shown you because there haven’t been any other contenders. I was so sure Glenn hated your guts.’

  ‘I was sure of that too.’ I smiled slightly.

  ‘But I don’t think he does.’ His thumbs stroked over the back of my hands. ‘So if you had your way, you’d have two boyfriends?’

  I flushed bright red. ‘I didn’t—what—that’s not what I—’

  He laughed. ‘What’s that thing called, where a guy has more than one wife? Polygamy?’

  ‘What are you saying?’ I spluttered. ‘You think I want that? To have, like, a harem of guys instead of wives?’

  ‘I’d be part of your harem, Alex.’ His grin was wry.

  ‘You’re teasing me right now.’ I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not.

  ‘I’m not.’ He squeezed my hands tight. ‘I’m not teasing. Okay, maybe I’m teasing a little… but I’m just saying, I want to be with you. In whatever shape or form. As long as you want to be with me too, that is, I don’t want to force you to stay with me if you don’t want to.’

  ‘I want to stay with you.’ Of course I wanted that. ‘I do.’

  ‘And I love hearing that, not going to lie.’ He grinned wider. ‘But if there’s a certain someone who’s got his head out of his arse and can act like a proper, decent human-being again and you want to tap that, I’m not standing in your way.’

  I frowned. ‘Are you... ‘ Was I hearing him right? ‘Are you giving me permission to shag your best friend?’ That was what it sounded like.

  ‘You’ve already shagged him,’ he pointed out. ‘I’m just saying if you want to again… if Glenn can get his head on straight—or, you know, bent, I don’t know what the hell I’m saying. If he can admit his feelings, and you still have feelings, I’d say go for it.’

  ‘But…’ My head was spinning so much I was getting dizzy. ‘I want to be with you.’

  ‘And you are with me.’ He abandoned his chair and came to sit next to me. He cupped my cheeks in his palm and leant in for a soft kiss. ‘But we are spending a year apart and I would feel better if you had someone you can lean on.’

  ‘Glenn is also going to the military,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Uh, no, he’s most likely not.’ He gave me a look. ‘He tried to end his own life. The military’s not going to want him.’

  That was true. They wouldn’t want me either with my cutting and depression—not that that was official yet, but I knew I was sadder than what was normal. Leo had never been like me, not as far as I knew anyway. He was more upbeat, more positive about things. I was a negative dead-weight.

  ‘This is all just hypothetical, you know,’ he said then. ‘Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Glenn does dislike you. I just think that he doesn’t, based on what I
’ve seen during the winter holiday. I do think that if there are feelings, you shouldn’t ignore them.’

  ‘But what about your feelings?’ I was still unsure if he was teasing or being truthful. He couldn’t be. He couldn’t be this understanding. No one would be… right?

  ‘My feelings are very hard to bruise.’ He chuckled, kissing me again.

  ‘You must have opinions about this.’ I pushed him away with a hand splayed on his chest. He did not get to distract me with kisses during this conversation. Though his kisses were very good and very distracting and I wanted to lean in and kiss him again.

  ‘I think I moved in on the guy my best friend’s in love with and I feel like shit for it.’ He sat back in his chair, grin falling away to be replaced by a serious expression.

  ‘It’d been six months since Glenn broke up with me.’ I bit down on my lower lip. ‘He’d been ignoring me since. He hadn’t confessed anything to you. How could you know? You couldn’t.’ Unless he could read minds, which no one thankfully could.

  ‘I should’ve done something when I realised I was wrong.’ He crossed his arms over his chest.

  ‘Done what? Broken up with me?’ I didn’t like this option. ‘When I have feelings for you? Then everyone would be hurting and it wouldn’t serve any of us any good.’

  ‘I don’t think I could’ve broken up with you.’ He sat forward again, leaning in close. ‘I like you, Alex.’

  ‘I like you too.’ I might be in love with him, even. But that was too soon, right? We had only been together for a month and a couple of weeks. It was a lot longer than I’d been with Glenn, so why I had conflicting emotions about him still I didn’t know.

  It didn’t make any sense.

  I had a good, perfect guy right here. Why was I still hung up on the guy who had treated me like air for six months and like shit for the past month plus? It didn’t make any sense.

  ‘Ugh, you guys are disgusting.’ Ben strode into the kitchen and dropped down on the chair Andreas had abandoned earlier.

  ‘We haven’t done anything.’ Andreas turned his head to look at him.