Kyle From High School

by Jeremy Jenkins

  Kyle From High School

  Jeremy Jenkins

  1

  Phil

  “You wanted to talk to me about something?”

  Kyle peered back at me with one bright green eye.

  I stopped in my tracks.

  “Yeah, I wanted to ask you what the hell’s going on between you and Julie.”

  I scrunched up my face. “Julie?”

  He nodded.

  My eyes traced his jawline.

  A muscle near his ear flexed.

  “Nothing,” I said truthfully. “We were just talking—”

  Kyle rushed me and pinned me against the wall with a thud.

  “Didn’t look like just talking.”

  I struggled under his grip, but the guy was huge.

  Kyle’s massive hands pressed against my shoulders and glued me to the wall.

  His face was an inch from mine. “If I so much as smell you talking to my sister like that again, I’ll rearrange your face, Phil. You got it?”

  I looked from eye to blazing emerald eye.

  Irritation flared within me. Who the hell did he think he was, giving me commands like this?

  I shoved one of his hands off and shuffled from his grasp. “What the fuck is your problem, dude?”

  He turned to look at me over one shoulder, an expression of absolute disgust on his face. “My problem is you.”

  “Why do you care if I talk to your sister all of a sudden?”

  “Because, I know what you do. I’ve known you for what, our whole lives? I’ve seen the way you… you do that thing you do.”

  I tugged on my shirt, straightening out the wrinkles. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

  Kyle gritted his teeth. “You’re a manipulator. You play with people for fun. I’ve seen it happen time and time again.”

  I frowned to mask the hurt and tugged on the shirt cuffs circling my forearms. “That’s quite an accusation. I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

  “Don’t gaslight me,” Kyle said. “I see through your bullshit. You can’t just pretend it doesn’t happen, because I’ve seen it happen. I know who you are, especially around girls. I know what you do. Just… don’t do it to Julie. Don’t talk to her, don’t date her, don’t. Just don’t.”

  “Or what?” I sneered. “You gonna have your daddy solve it for you?”

  But Kyle didn’t react. He didn’t fly off the handle. He just fixed me with a look of pure loathing.

  And I think that hurt the most.

  “Julie’s off-limits,” he said in a flat tone.

  The vanilla lights from above cast long, spidery shadows on his face. The shadow from his eyelashes stretched down his cheekbones and warped as his jaw flexed.

  Something inside me—a competitive instinct—reared its head. I suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to… to make him angry. Get him to look at me; to really see me.

  To recognize that I wasn’t someone to fuck with. To make him understand that I held all the cards, and he was nothing but a piece in my games. Kyle was pulling all the power of the conversation toward him. I could have pretended it didn’t affect me, but that would have been a lie. I needed to make Kyle understand that his words and threats didn’t mean shit to me—I was the dominant one, the real alpha. If he wanted to ‘rearrange’ my face or whatever, he needed to understand that I would ‘rearrange’ his life from the shadows.

  And I’d be fucking his sister the whole time while I did it, just to spite him.

  Kyle held my gaze, his eyes blazing with verdant fury.

  A smile curled on my face.

  I had to make a move.

  March a pawn forward?

  Cut diagonally with a bishop?

  Push a rook forward to trap his king? Or…

  Or jump out of the shadows with a knight.

  So I leaned forward and kissed him.

  His lips were firm and soft, and for a second there in his surprise, he…

  He yielded to it.

  But then he pushed me away. “Dude, what the fuck?”

  I wiped my mouth with my forearm, panting.

  Fuck. Why did I do that? Maybe to see what his next move would be; to see what would happen.

  To see how he’d react.

  I expected him to lunge forward and beat the shit out of me. I expected him to walk away, maybe; rejoin the house party, pretend this never happened.

  But in his eyes, I could see that he understood I’d gotten some kind of leg up on him. I was the one with the reins now, and I could feel them in my fingertips. However, I didn’t know what kind of animal they were attached to.

  It was terrifying, but it was thrilling.

  Kyle’s eyes flicked down to my lips.

  I could tell he wanted to regain control; flip this physical conversation around so that he’d have the advantage—

  He grabbed the back of my neck and pulled my face to his for another kiss.

  His lips were firm this time, trying to direct the way the kiss would go. Trying so desperately to be the one in control—

  I was one-hundred-percent straight, and I was only doing this for power. But feeling that desperation from him; that kiss, it was like he bowed to me.

  And that, above all the sensations or the fact that this was so wrong, was what made me so hard my dick could cut diamonds.

  He deepened the kiss and slipped his tongue into my mouth, trying so hard to regain the upper hand…

  But the writing was on the wall: I was a better kisser than him.

  Our lips danced around each other as we made out.

  A competition; nothing more.

  My chest pressed against his, and I had a stupid, fleeting thought about how his chest was harder than what I was used to. Usually when I got in situations like this, there were soft breasts underneath me that I could play with and squeeze. But Kyle? He was all abs and manly hardness.

  And it felt…

  He felt perfect.

  I yanked my lips from his and squashed the thought.

  That wasn’t… that wasn’t right to think that. And in thinking that, I sensed that I’d lost something; some small bit of power that I’d been keeping all to myself…

  Kyle blinked a few times, his mouth open slightly as if begging for more.

  Another pulse of desire surged into my cock.

  A line of confusion appeared between his thick eyebrows. “What… what was that for?”

  I felt the corner of my mouth lift.

  It was curious he phrased it that way; that meant my point hit home:

  Kyle understood that I was punishing him.

  No feelings.

  No; that kiss wasn’t about feelings at all.

  It was about power.

  It was about retaliation.

  And most of all, it was about showing him who was boss.

  And with him asking me that, it showed that he understood our relationship was no longer horizontal. Homeboy knew one of us always had to be above the other.

  I slipped my hands into my pockets. “To give you a preview of what your sister’s gonna get later.”

  His face fell.

  Delight swirled in my chest. Yes, this was exactly what I wanted—I wanted to make him angry. To show him that I was the one in control here—

  He slammed his lips onto mine again.

  This time, the force was so great that I took a few steps backward and collided with the wall.

  Kyle had zero finesse with this kiss. It was like he was using it as a weapon; trying to punish me. Trying to regain lost ground…

  He slipped his tongue into my mouth again with all the emotions of revenge.

  I let my hands rove over his shoulders, feeling their roundness.


  His hands pressed me against the wall as he kissed me, hard.

  I could tell what he was doing—trying to show me he was the dominant one.

  It would’ve been funny if it wasn’t so sad.

  He tilted his head and his nose thumbed over mine.

  Growing up with him, I’d always admired his profile—his nose was sloped and pointy. A nose that people line up at plastic surgeon’s offices to get. But I never thought… I never thought it would be against me like this.

  He tilted his head, his lips melting against mine.

  And just like that, I forgot what I was trying to do. What was my master plan again? Something to do with Julie…

  But her face, the way she smiled at me under the stairs out there was rapidly fading to the background of my memory. Now, the only thing I could see, think, or feel was my best friend Kyle.

  As we ground against each other on the wall like that, his kiss softened. It was no longer a punishment; it had shifted into something he was…

  Something he was enjoying.

  And fuck, I was enjoying it too! Fuck, fuck, fuck!

  This was wrong. But in that wrongness, I found that I wanted to stretch my legs a bit. Explore. Chart this new, uncharted territory.

  Maybe he felt the same thing, because he pulled away.

  I could feel the panicky questions swirling away under the surface of my desire: did this mean I was gay? Did I like this? Yes, I liked this. Did that mean I was bi or not-straight or what?

  But when Kyle slowly moved his palm down my shoulder, then my bicep, then my forearm, and then interlaced his fingers through mine, all thoughts of doubt were pushed deeper under the surface. They didn’t matter anymore; all those feelings were cheap compared to the enjoyment of this moment. And it felt like even the strategist in my mind, the ever-present force that made sure I stayed in control at all times, was blowing away in the face of the way events were unfolding.

  Let’s see where this goes, it said, sitting on its armchair in the dark.

  A weak smile curled across Kyle’s face as he looked me in the eye.

  I saw the glimmer of emerald-colored desire lurking in them.

  Desire.

  He desired me.

  A rush of power flooded through me. I got caught in the riptide; powerless to resist its pull.

  And just like that, Kyle turned and tugged on my hand, leading me down the hallway.

  My hard cock pressed against my pants as I followed him down the long vanilla corridor, passing more artifacts from Egypt on the way.

  Jackals stared at me from the vases on the shelf.

  Even though I’d been down this hallway and in his room a million times, in this light, it felt like he’d open his door and there’d be a different room waiting for us. An ancient Egyptian treasure room, filled with sparkling relics of the past.

  The sound of the party quieted to a dull thud, the reverberation only present in the bones of the house. It was as if Kyle’s house—this place we both had so many adventures in as kids, had become a living, breathing thing with its own heartbeat.

  And for this time here in the dark with him, none of this counted.

  He thrust open his door and we stepped inside.

  Kyle’s familiar scent swirled into my nostrils with full-force: slightly smoky, bonfires, memories, and some kind of grassy smell. However, I could never tell if that was from him constantly being out in the soccer field or if that had just become part of his smell now.

  He must have absorbed it; absorbed the outside world so much that it flooded out through his pores in a fresh, green scent. And that scent smelled like adventure and exploration and childhood secrets that you never tell your parents.

  Kyle closed the door behind us.

  It latched with a smuck.

  I only had a moment to glance around—make sure everything was right where it was supposed to be. I hadn’t been in here in a few months, and the thought of it being rearranged in my absence was… it was an invasive feeling.

  A quick glance showed me the shadowy shapes of his dresser still in the same spot, that stupid gilded globe over in the corner, his guinea pig cage sitting on his windowsill, and his bed in the other corner. It was dark, but even in this darkness, I felt rather than saw that nothing had changed.

  Still the same Kyle. Still the same…

  But things were different, somehow. There was a chip in the image I’d painted of him over our lives, revealing something colorful and wild and vibrant underneath.

  And that… that was so interesting.

  Fingers closed around my wrist.

  I turned to look at him.

  His eyes were different here in the dark. They shone in the weak light of the crescent moon, and I could only just make out his expression—

  What was that? Regret? Resignation? Sadness?

  But everything vanished as soon as he kissed me again.

  Here in his room, this felt… different.

  Something had shifted, and I could tell from the kiss that this was no longer a game.

  My inner strategist uncrossed his legs and leaned forward in his chair. “No, Phil, this is still a game and you’re still playing. You’re still on top. Just see where this goes.”

  The small trembling uncertainty in my chest subsided.

  Yes, I was in control. I was still in power, and that was all that counted.

  Kyle moved his hands down my sides, feeling my obliques as he kissed me.

  I let my hands travel down his biceps, enjoying the smooth skin over his muscles.

  An experiment. This is just an experiment. Part of growing up. Everyone does it, my inner strategist whispered.

  Right. An experiment. Just to see what will happen…

  Kyle broke the kiss and walked me over to his bed.

  We sat on the edge of it, just like we had a million times before. When we were kids, we’d sit here and paw through his Pokemon Card collection. We’d talk about bugs or games or the woods and what monsters lurked inside of it. But now, everything had shifted.

  We weren’t kids anymore; we were men. And those times were gone.

  That was the funny thing about time. It kept marching forward into the future, letting relationships and friendships twist around in its current. And when you added a new color to it… well, it was like dipping a paintbrush loaded with a vibrant color into a fresh vat of water.

  New. Swirling. Letting it take its own shape in the liquid.

  Kyle’s tongue slowly danced against mine.

  My resistance, which was already lowered in the first place, lowered even more. None of this counted, but at this point, I didn’t really care if it did or not.

  It just felt… right.

  At that point, my inner strategist was hitting the abort button on his dial.

  This needed to stop at once. I no longer had control.

  But that button didn’t work. I no longer cared if I had control.

  I was sitting in a room kissing a guy, and that was wrong, but it wasn’t just any guy.

  It was Kyle, my best friend. My next-door neighbor. The guy I’d shared my childhood with—the guy I’d known for all these years.

  The guy who I’d thought was one-dimensional until how he reacted to me kissing him out in the hallway. Now I understood there was more to him. I just didn’t now how much more.

  He deepened our kiss and we fell back onto his comforter.

  Kyle climbed on top of me and dipped his body over mine.

  I loved the way his abs felt, brushing up against me like this.

  It felt different than when girls did it, and it felt… wrong. And right. Somehow, it was the right-est thing that had ever happened to me.

  Maybe I just liked breaking barriers. Maybe I just like violating boundaries; seeing where they were so I could step over them and explore new territory.

  In a way, it felt like Kyle and I were just kids again, finding that boundary to Farmer Braam’s field and stepping across it.
That’s when we found that thing we shouldn’t have—that thing that cemented our friendship.

  The field. Then that old barn…

  And what we found inside—

  Kyle pulled away from the kiss and his face whipped toward the door.

  “What is it?” I asked my heart racing.

  “I think there’s someone out there,” he whispered.

  “Who cares?” I said, grabbing a bunch of his shirt and pulling him back down.

  He resisted the kiss this time, then he sprung off of me.

  “Dude, what the fuck?” I said, propping myself on my elbows.

  He turned to me with a look of absolute disgust on his face, and I knew the magical moment we shared was over.

  It was just a game. And he’d won.

  The sensation of losing seeped through my bones like poison, slowly eating at my pride.

  But as I sat up, I crossed my legs and began to regroup. It was fine that I lost this game—it was just the first round. And it was only natural that I’d lost—I was new to it, and didn’t understand the rules yet.

  Kyle stood up and ran his hand through his hair.

  The silvery moonlight only fell across half of his face, but I could tell from here that he didn’t feel like he’d made a mistake. No; it wasn’t regret written there.

  It was victory.

  My frown deepened. “What… what’s going on in your head?” I asked.

  And suddenly, he wasn’t Kyle my friend anymore. He’d moved out of the friend territory and into this weird gray area between friend and enemy. In my head, our relationship had become clouded; enveloped in a thick fog.

  I no longer knew him.

  And I sensed an attack waiting in the mist.

  But he tore his gaze from the door and looked back at me. A smile curled on his face. “In my head? In my head, I’m thinking the coast is clear.”

  Then he leaned back in and kissed me.

  This time, the game was back on.

  It was a kiss of punishment.

  So, I did what anyone being punished does:

  I punished him back.

  2

  Kyle

  Oh my God, what the FUCK are you doing, Kyle? The voice in my head screamed.

  But I could drown it out. All I had to do was keep kissing Phil—