I was gagging as he pulled away from me and then he had my shirt up. I knew better than to let him reach for my pants, so when he started to, I went for his pants instead. He held my head as I took him into my mouth, and when he came, I swallowed as quickly as I could to avoid that taste as well.
He went for my pants again though, but I pulled back. "I...uh..." I didn't have a good explanation for why I didn't want him to do anything to me. "I like to give," I said lamely.
"Nice." He kissed me again, a bit rougher this time. He kept kissing me and then he turned me around.
*~*~*
It was almost Christmas before I heard from Ansel again. I was surprised to hear anything from him at all, and at first I didn't know if I wanted to open the text at all. But in the end I did open it and I did read it. Because I did still care about him. As much as I'd tried not to. As much as I didn't want to. I still missed him.
Can I see you over Christmas break?
It was a simple request, but definitely not one I was expecting from him. I'm living with my parents. I'm taking online classes. You can see me whenever. I was going to leave it at that because, really, that was enough. But I had to add more. He'd been my best friend. I wanted to tell him more. I missed you.
I missed you too. I was such an ass. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry too.
*~*~*
Ansel was going to stay with us for the last half of December and through the first week of January. A full three weeks with him. I had no idea what to expect when I borrowed my mom's car and picked him up from the airport, but he was still Ansel. He had a beard now and his arms were covered in thick hair and he was still a mountain compared to me. But none of the past few months mattered at all when he hugged me, lifting me off the ground. I clung to him harder than I ever held onto Charlie. He held me there with my feet in the air and I dug my fingers in his thick hair and for a few moments we were back in high school and back to being best friends again.
Then he put me down and he took my hand and I led him from the airport. "I'm glad you texted," I said as we got into my mom's car.
"I am too." He smiled at me, but it wasn't the smile he'd had as a teenager. A lot had happened since then and his smile showed some wear and sadness to it now.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
He snorted. "What isn't?"
I drove us toward my parents' house and stopped for ice cream at the same place we'd stopped at so often as teenagers on the way back from school. I didn't have a flatbed truck like he used to, but I did have a back seat and we sat back there with our knees touching and ate our ice cream. He took up most of the back seat and I wished I knew how to get us back to before everything had gotten so messed up.
"Tell me about what's going on with you," he said.
We weren't best friends anymore but he was staying with us for three weeks and I didn't know how much to tell him or even where to start. "I'm dating a guy. Charlie. My parents think he's twenty-four."
Ansel gave me a sly grin. "How old is he really?"
"Thirty-one."
"Do you love him?"
I shook my head. "I like him. But I don't love him."
Ansel went silent for a moment as he ate his ice cream. "I cheated on Steven."
I would have never expected him to say that. "Why? I thought you liked him."
"I did. But then I was mad at him for something, and he didn't see the point of why I was mad, and I wanted to hurt him. So I did it. And it was stupid. And I screwed up."
"Because Steven got mad and left you?" I guessed.
Ansel scrunched up his nose. "No, but that would have been a lot easier if he had. The whole truth? Tom was saying crap about you, and Steven was agreeing with him and saying that if I was ever bad in the sack like you were, he'd drop me too, so I told him that he wasn't that great either and he told me to go find better. So I did. I went to this sex shop in Springfield, and I hooked up with a guy in one of their viewing rooms. I feel like crap for doing that. I'm such an asshole."
I stared at him for a long time. Then I was crawling across the seat and hugging him. I clung to him as tightly as I could. "It's okay. You're not an asshole. It was just a mistake." We hadn't spoken in months but when I held him it was like no time had passed at all. It was just him and me and I was clinging to him.
"Someone could see us," he warned me.
"That someone could either not care or they could go to hell if they do," I argued. He hugged me tighter after that.
I'd had plans that night with Charlie, but I cancelled them. I sent him a text. He didn't text me back.
When I got Ansel home, we didn't talk about how I was lying to my parents about Charlie's age. Instead there were hugs and my mom kept commenting on how tall he was. And I kept holding his hand. It was like I couldn't seem to let him go.
We only had the couch and that's where he was supposed to have slept that night, but he made his way to my room around midnight. He was nearly silent as he crawled into bed with me and wrapped his arms around me.
"Do you like sex any more now that you're with Charlie than you did before when you were with Tom?" he whispered.
"I hate it. I only do it to keep Charlie around, and I never get hard or anything. Why?"
He went quiet and gave me a big hug. I didn't know why he was asking, and maybe it didn't really matter. We went to sleep, and he was out of my room by the time I woke up, so my parents never knew we'd spent the night together with him holding me for hours.
*~*~*
My parents loved having Ansel around. He cleaned up after himself, he didn't stay up late and he helped cook. I knew how to bake a few types of cookies from when I was in the cooking club, but I'd never realized he knew how to cook. It was like having my own chef as he made us Thai curries and butternut squash lasagna and a dozen other things I barely heard what they were because I was inhaling them too quickly.
"I didn't know you could cook like that," I said as we laid out in the grass behind the house one evening. We were cold, because it was December after all, but being outside with him felt good and I was just barely warm enough with him there beside me to share heat with.
He laughed and took my hand. I wished I didn't have gloves on so that I could actually touch him. "I learned from my mom. She used to buy tons of cookbooks and go through them to find recipes she wanted to try. My dad was always too busy to help make dinner so I helped her and we made something new at least a few times a week."
I knew he probably loved them a lot. I was sure he did, and I couldn't imagine not having my parents in my life anymore. "Do you ever want to go back to them?"
"And say what? Hey, Mom, Dad, I'm still gay so I guess you still hate me but no worries, it's cool, I'm still the fuck up you thought I'd turn out to be. No thanks."
He sounded bitter, and pissed off. I turned onto my side so that I could see him better but he wasn't looking at me. He was staring up at the stars and I saw tears forming in his eyes. He tried to blink them away but there they were anyway, just waiting to fall. "You're not a screw up."
He smirked. "You still can't cuss."
"You're not a fuck up then. Fine." I hated cursing.
He turned his attention fully to me and wiped at his eyes. "I live in a shitty apartment, I'm single and I dropped out of college. Face it, Jonah, I screwed up."
I pursed my lips. He made it sound so final, but it really wasn't. "We could get a place together next semester, you could go back to school."
"Would you date someone who cheated on their boyfriend because he was mad at him?"
I knew my answer without even having to think about it. "I would, as long as they didn't expect me to have sex with them."
Ansel put his arms around me and pulled me in close to him. "That's a really shitty thing to say. Do you even really like Charlie?"
"Maybe. I dunno. He's not mean. He doesn't hit me. As far as I know he's not cheating on me. I hate that he smokes pot and doesn't ever use enough lube, even though I
've told him to use more, but I like some stuff. He doesn't care that I don't get hard. He might even like that maybe. I don't really know. It's like he can have the sex he wants without having to worry about what I want or whether I'm into it or not."
"So you're a sex toy."
I frowned. And I wanted to argue with him, but he might have been right. "I'm not outgoing like you, or brave like you. And I was lonely. I needed someone, and Charlie's better than being with a guy like Tom."
"Your hand is better than a guy like Tom," Ansel argued. I knew what he was trying to say, but it really didn't apply to me. Ansel sighed loudly and tried again. "You deserve to be more than something for some asshole to stick his dick into."
I wanted to be more than that, but everyone put so much emphasis on sex. "Everyone else wants sex and I can't. I barely put up with it. I suck him off or I lay there while he's on top of me and it's just... I'm doing it to keep him around and that's all it is. I don't love him, and if there was a better guy banging down my door to be with me, I'd dump Charlie in an instant, but there isn't. And after Tom left and you left—"
"I never left you," Ansel interrupted me.
I got up on my elbows to look at him again. "You did though. You're here now and I love having my time with you, but when the next Derek or Steven to comes along, you'll be gone again. Charlie may not be great for me, but at least he's around and with him I'm not alone."
Ansel rolled over on top of me and hugged me tightly. Then he kissed my cheek and then my lips, just as we'd always done. "You're right. And I'm sorry for being a shitty friend. It won't happen again."
"It's okay," I mumbled. I liked having him there. I liked that he was holding me. And I really liked having him kiss me. If Charlie saw us like that he'd be pissed, and maybe that should have been a big clue to me that I needed to get Ansel off of me, but I didn't want to.
He kissed me again, but not like we always had. This kiss was slower and he ran his tongue over my lips. I opened my mouth and he touched his tongue with mine. I should have stopped him. I should have pulled away or reminded him I was dating Charlie. But instead I wrapped my arms around him and I hung onto him as he kept kissing me on the frozen grass.
Eventually, my conscience came back and I realized I couldn't do this without at least texting Charlie to let him know we were over. "I'm texting Charlie to break up with him."
"Because he's a shitty boyfriend?"
I shook my head. "Because I was kissing you."
"So if we hadn't just kissed you would have stayed with him then? Forever?"
I probably would have. Or at least until he'd gotten bored and broken up with me instead.
When Charlie replied, it was almost immediately, and made me wish I'd just deleted the message without reading it.
"Hey…" Ansel said, noticing the change in my mood and reaching out to touch my shoulder.
"Most of the guys out there are just like him. I'm never gonna find someone who doesn't mind never having sex." I sighed, feeling miserable.
"Never at all?"
I really didn't want to. "Not if I can help it."
"What about kissing?" he asked, as if he wasn't quite sure of the moment that had just passed between us.
"I like kissing you," I admitted. "I've always liked kissing you."
He kissed me again, a nice slow kiss. I knew when a guy wanted sex from me, but Ansel wasn't just some guy that wanted me. He was my best friend and so I kept my hands on his shoulders as I pushed him away.
"Ansel? What do you want?"
"You."
I'd been afraid of that. I bit my bottom lip. I didn't want sex to be something that I gave him to keep him around too. I cared about him so much that would devastate me.
"What do you want?" he asked, repeating my words back to me.
"You to be my friend without needing sex from me to keep you around."
He froze above me. "Is that..." He looked between us, maybe he even noticed that he was hard and pressing against me, but he turned to the side so he was no longer touching me like that. "I get that you don't want sex. I get that you don't like it and that it doesn't turn you on. I'm not asking you for sex at all. I'm sorry."
"Then what are you asking me for?"
He looked just as confused as I felt. "You're my best friend. The one guy that's always been there for me. I want to be with you."
"I'm not having sex with you," I reminded him.
He kissed my cheek. "I don't expect you to. I just want someone to love me as I am."
"There's someone out there who can do that too," I argued.
"There's someone right here in my arms who does already."
I glared at him, but I didn't argue with him about that because I did love him. He was my best friend. "I can't have sex with you. You know what that means right? Sex has always been a big thing for you. I won't share you, I won't have you cheating on me, and I won't be having sex with you just to keep you. I can't do that anymore. Not with you. Please don't ask me to."
"Because if I asked you, you might?" he guessed.
I nodded. "Not just might. Would. If you said I had to have sex with you just to keep you around I would. I'd hate it, but I'd still have you here."
He held me close and he kissed my cheek. "That's fucked up. I'd tell you not to ever do that for anyone, but since you're going to be dating me, you won't have to. And I promise, no cheating, no screwing around. Not on you. I've loved you for years. I'm not going to hurt you."
"You have not." My heart beat fast in my chest. Surely he was just saying that.
"I came out to you first and I kissed you," he reminded me. "Tell me you don't love me too."
I had loved him since those afternoons spent on his truck with the ice cream. I'd loved him since that first party where he came out to sit beside me and I still loved him now. "Why didn't you tell me then?"
"Because I didn't want to risk losing you."
That was a stupid reason. "You nearly lost me anyway."
"I know. Can we try again? Can we start over and date like we should have from the beginning? Just you and me? Just like we were in high school when we couldn't wait to get out of here and go to college in Springfield where we were going to be all grown up and independent?"
I really wanted to, but it was too late for that. Far too much had happened for us to go back to how we were when we were eighteen and thought everything would be perfect once we left for college. "No, but we can move on from here." I took his hand in mine and I kissed him.
FIN
About the Author
Caitlin is the author of many books including some Rainbow Award winners. While most of her books include shifters, she does write a little of everything. She was first published in 2012 and since then hasn’t stopped writing. When she’s not writing she enjoys gardening, hanging out with her dogs, and watching movies with her husband. She lives on a small farm in Missouri.
Website: www.CaitlinRicci.com
The Ace and the Bear Page 5
