by Lisa Henry
“Sorry,” Mr. Green says, holding his palms up. “Sorry, guys.”
He retreats up the steps, still staring, like a guy unwilling to turn his back on a wild animal.
The door snicks shut.
Jai climbs to his feet. “Nick, fuck, I’m sorry about that.”
“No, it’s okay.” Nick’s tongue feels weird and heavy in his mouth, and his skull feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton. “Just . . . weird? Yeah. Weird.”
Jai puts a hand on his shoulder.
“I think I want to go home now, Jai,” Nick says. “Like maybe pick this up some time when my balls can actually crawl out of my body again?”
Jai’s expression softens. “Yeah. Yeah, no problem.”
Nick shuffles over to pick up the motorbike helmet.
His second ride of the night isn’t as fun at all.
Nick: Has anyone ever sucked ur nipples?
Devon: ???
Nick: Is it weird?
Devon: I don’t think so. Nobody’s ever done it to me, but sometimes I pinch them when I’m jerking off, so?
Nick: Are we both weird?
Devon: Probably. Sounds like u had a fun night?
Nick: It was pretty ok. Also, so Mr. Green, our history teacher?
Devon: Yeah?
Nick: He saw my dick.
Devon: Wow. What? Wow.
Nick: IKR?
“Nick Stahlnecker,” Ronny says over breakfast the next morning. “Holy shit.”
“Wait, who?” Kat asks, sliding into her chair and stealing a piece of toast from Ronny’s plate.
“Jai is dating one of my ex-students,” Ronny tells her. “He only graduated last month.”
“He’s eighteen,” Jai mutters. “And we’re not dating.”
“Oh, you really should go with dating,” Ronny tells him. “It sounds slightly less creepy than the alternative.”
“Come on,” Jai says. “He’s your ex-student, not mine. He’s legally an adult.”
“Nick is one of your students?” Janice asks, appearing in the doorway. Her dressing gown is flapping open, revealing her slip, and her wet hair is drying in weird ways. “Ha! That’s hilarious! You’re dating one of Ronny’s kids!”
“He’s an ex-student, and he’s eighteen!” Jai shoots back. “And we’re not dating! And, Jesus Christ, Ronny, can you learn to fucking knock?”
He’s still pissed. Not because he really blames Ronny, but because he texted Nick last night and still hasn’t heard back. Maybe Nick’s embarrassed. Embarrassment doesn’t seem to quite suit the guy who offered to blow him in a porta-potty, but it doesn’t have to be logical. Ronny was his teacher. It’s probably right up there with a parent walking in.
“What happened?” Kat asks eagerly.
“Fuck you guys,” Jai grumbles into his coffee, while Ronny mimes frantically at Kat, fist up to his mouth, tongue pushing his cheek out.
“So who was giving it?” Kat asks.
“I was,” Jai snaps. “Okay? I was!”
Janice stands behind him and massages his shoulders. “Oh, honey.” Her sympathetic tone would be a lot more believable if she weren’t so obviously trying not to laugh.
“Aw, that’s nice,” Kat says. “You guys can totally bond over how it feels being busted with a dick in your mouth.”
Ronny grins. “Actually—”
Kat elbows him. “One time, Ronny, that was one time! Shut up!”
“Oh, do tell,” Janice says, and Jai wonders what it would be like to be part of a normal, sexually repressed family.
He stands, disentangling himself from Janice, and crosses the kitchen to put his coffee mug in the sink. “Yeah, I’m glad you all think it’s so hilarious. Too bad Nick’s not answering my texts, or I’d invite him over to join the laugh-fest.”
The smile drops right off Kat’s face. “Jai, I’m sorry!”
“Yeah, man,” Ronny adds. “We didn’t know it was serious.”
“It’s not,” Jai says, leaning back against the sink. He shakes his head. “It’s really not.”
He’s probably just going to keep repeating that until he believes it.
Jai: Sorry about last night. Are you ok?
Nick: Yeah.
Jai: Do you want to meet up after my shift tonight?
Nick: It’s Sunday though?
Jai: Do you have plans?
Nick: No, it’s cool. Pizza Perfecto?
Jai: See you there.
Nick: :)
Jai’s old Timberlands did not come back from Vietnam in the healthiest condition. It’s no surprise, really. He got three years of almost constant wear out of them. They’re not the cheapest brand of boots out there, but they’re the best he’s found so far for backpacking. He heads to Walmart before his shift at Pizza Perfecto, to find a replacement pair and grab some new socks while he’s at it. Now that he’s working again, Argentina is back in reach.
Jai’s halfway to the shoe department when he spots Nick.
He’s standing in front of a display of storage boxes, looking half-asleep and fairly despondent, while beside him a woman loads up a cart. The woman has to be Nick’s mom. She’s a little shorter than he is, and has the same dark eyes and expressive mouth. Her hair is a shade or two lighter than Nick’s. She wears it pulled back in a messy ponytail.
Jai thinks about slinking past, but it’s already too late. Nick looks up and sees him: cue a shy, rueful smile and a blush that makes him look instantly sunburned.
“Now, we’ll need at least three,” the woman says. “This one has a broken lid. Help me get the— Nick, are you even listening to me?”
Nick starts.
The woman turns around and sees Jai. She smiles politely.
“Um,” Nick says, scratching his head. “Mom, this is my friend Jai. Jai, this is my mom.”
“Marnie,” his mom says, eyes widening slightly. “It’s nice to meet you, Jai.”
“Nice to meet you too.” Jai shakes her hand and wonders how much she knows. Has Nick even mentioned him at home? As either the not-a-boyfriend or the guy he blew on a construction site? Neither of those is much of a recommendation for parents, he supposes. He glances at Nick, hoping to take a hint from him. He should have known better.
Nick looks like a deer in headlights.
“Buying boxes?” Jai asks, and immediately hates himself. But at least he’s contributing more than Nick.
“For college,” Marnie says. “I keep telling Nick he’ll need more than he thinks, but he just doesn’t listen. You need storage boxes, Nick. You have more stuff than you know.”
Nick mumbles something that sounds like “ant backpack.”
Marnie ignores him. “Are you in college, Jai?”
“I never went,” Jai says, and catches the way she looks at his Pizza Perfecto shirt.
So does Nick.
Jai knows he doesn’t owe Marnie, or anyone, an explanation, but he can’t pretend it doesn’t rankle either.
“Actually, Jai travels,” Nick says. “He’s been to over forty countries.”
“Oh,” Marnie says, her expression shuttering. “How nice.”
Nick huffs, jams his hands in his pockets, and chews his lip.
“It was nice to meet you,” Jai says, and retreats.
Jesus.
Why does he get the impression that this isn’t the first trip Nick and his mom have made for storage boxes? Maybe if they keep looking, Marnie will find exactly the right one to stick Nick in.
Okay, so maybe that’s not fair. But Jai hardly knows Nick at all, and even he can tell the kid’s freaking about his future, and picking out storage boxes isn’t exactly helping him.
Jai’s checking out the various boots when Nick finds him.
“Sorry about my mom,” he mutters. “It’s just she’s really going to town on all this college stuff, and I don’t even know if that’s what I want, you know?”
Jai picks up a pair and checks the soles. Not great. “Have you told her that?”
&nb
sp; Nick screws up his face. “It’s not like I don’t want to go. Jesus, I don’t know. But it’s just . . . What if this is all there is, you know?” He gestures.
“What, Walmart?” Jai asks with a slight smile.
“Yes, Walmart,” Nick hisses. “Walmart, and boxes, and lists, and getting a job, and being a grown-up, and having a student debt and maybe not even a job, and then it’s like you’re locked in and maybe you never even figured out what you wanted to do in the first place!” He stops to draw a breath, and looks a little surprised at his own outburst. “I’ve maybe been reading Catcher in the Rye way too much lately.”
“I can tell,” Jai says. “When it comes to the soul-crushing meaninglessness of life, though, I much prefer Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.”
“Isn’t that about aliens and a teapot?”
“Only superficially.”
“Oh.” Nick reaches out and strokes the toe of a hiking boot. He sighs. “It’s not like I can tell them though, is it? It’s like I’m kicking against the cage, except there is no cage. And even if there was a cage, I’d be one of those animals that’s too scared to leave it anyhow, because if I don’t go to college, what else is there?”
“There’s a whole world.”
Nick snorts like he said something funny. “Yeah, no. That’s not really my jam.”
“There must be somewhere you want to go.”
Nick twists his mouth. “Middle Earth?”
Jai laughs.
“Anyway,” Nick says. “Sorry about before, and yeah, that’s my mom. She’s totally figured out we’re fooling around, by the way, in case you didn’t pick up on the disapproving mom-glare. Also, if it comes up, I might have told her you were twenty. You can totally pull that off, actually. She also wants me to invite you to dinner, because I haven’t figured out how to work the whole ‘fuck buddy’ thing into conversation, so.”
“So you’re inviting me to dinner?” Jai asks, stomach clenching.
“Oh, God no! Not that— Well, you know.” Nick stares at the floor for a moment before looking up again. “Wow. Who’d have thought anything could be more awkward than last night, right?”
“Right,” Jai agrees.
“If you were my boyfriend, I would totally invite you to dinner,” Nick says, “because you’re hot like the sun. But that’s not what we’re doing here.”
“Right,” Jai says again.
“Right,” Nick echoes, relief flooding his features. “Okay, so I’ll see you later tonight, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Okay, cool.” Nick shoots him a grin and scurries away.
Jai loses sight of him somewhere in men’s clothing.
At work, Devon is on cloud nine.
“Got the shovel talk,” he says proudly when Jai asks. “From Ebony’s dad. He sat me down and reminded me that he’s a cop and knows where to hide a body. It was so cool!”
Nick’s friend is as odd as Nick.
“No, see, because he knows I’m serious now!” Devon exclaims. “That’s how it works. I promise to be respectful and not a dick, and he promises to kill me if I fuck it up.”
Behind him, Ebony rolls her eyes. “It’s bullshit!”
“It’s tradition!” Devon exclaims.
“A bullshit patriarchal tradition where I get treated like a piece of property instead of a woman capable of making her own decisions,” Ebony says.
Devon beams at her.
“Do you think he gave my brother’s girlfriend the shovel talk?” Ebony asks. “No, of course not. Because people still think that a woman’s sexuality is something to be controlled by men, and that if women have sex, we somehow lose value.”
“That is fucked up,” Devon agrees, his brow furrowing slightly even though his smile loses none of its brilliance. “But, like, for a man of your dad’s generation, isn’t it also a way of him expressing how much he cares for you?”
“My dad was born in 1972,” Ebony tells him. “My grandmother burned her bra. He should know better.”
“It was still kind of cool,” Devon says, and Ebony snorts. “Anyway, I know that if I’m ever dumb enough to screw up with you, it’s not your dad I have to be scared of.”
“Damn straight.” Ebony grins and moves past them with a tray of drinks.
Devon exhales slowly. “Wow. I am learning so much about male privilege lately. It’s more complicated than I thought at first. Dude, do you even know how good we’ve got it?” He shakes his head slowly. “So, anyway, last night when I was getting the shovel talk, I figured that someone should probably give you one.”
Jai raises his eyebrows. He leans back on the counter and folds his arms over his chest. “Okay. Let’s hear it.”
Devon nods sharply. “Okay. Well, Nick is my best friend in the whole world, and I know you’re not like serious or anything, but he did cry in The Force Awakens, so.” He shudders. “Okay, so did I, but that’s not the point. The point is that Nick’s a great guy, and he has feelings about stuff, and if you do anything to hurt him, I’ll . . .”
Jai waits.
“Well, I really didn’t think this through. I’m not a cop, and I don’t know how to get rid of a body, and you could totally take me in a fight. Okay, so if you hurt Nick, I’ll tell everyone on Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr what an asshole you are.” He tries for a scowl. “And Instagram.”
“Oh no,” Jai deadpans. “Not Instagram too!”
“Dude,” Devon says beseechingly.
“Fine. Consider me intimidated.”
“Cool.” Devon enters a phone order on the register. “Just . . . yeah, he’s my friend.”
Jai nods. “I get it, Devon. Really.”
Devon looks relieved.
Jai heads to the kitchen to see what the delay is on table four’s order. When he gets back again, Nick is at the front counter, eating a breadstick.
Jai nods to the back booth, and Nick heads on through.
It’s surprising how quickly Jai has started to feel comfortable here, with Devon and Ebony and the others. And with Nick. He’s as much a fixture of the place as the red-and-white checkered tablecloths and the raffia bread baskets.
“Staff special?” Jai asks him when he’s finished with table four.
“What is it tonight?”
“Meatlovers with anchovies and pineapple.”
“Eugh. Whose bright idea was that?”
“I’m blaming Tyler.”
“There is actually no such thing as bad pizza,” Nick says. “That’s a scientific fact.”
“Well, this one will test your precious science. I had one bite during my break, then went to Subway.”
“I like a challenge,” Nick declares. “Bring it!”
Subway is still open when Jai finishes his shift. He and Nick head over there, and Nick orders a meatball sub with as many extras as will fit.
“Dude, Tyler is a dick,” Nick says, devouring his sub in the parking lot.
“Believe me, everyone has told him that tonight.”
“Damn it!” A meatball lands with a splat on the cracked asphalt. “I doubt even the raccoons will eat that pizza.”
Jai laughs.
“So,” Nick says around a mouthful of sub, “I was thinking tonight we could, like, have sex?”
“Is that what you want?” Jai asks, heartbeat quickening.
Nick nods and swallows. “Yeah. And I thought maybe you could top me?”
Shit. The image sends a jolt of heat right through Jai. It settles in his balls. “Okay.”
“Because I thought the first time it would be easier if, like, you could do it to me, and then I’d maybe know what I was doing if, um, if you still want me to do it to you later.”
Jai is sure that if it weren’t dark out here, he’d be able to see Nick was bright red. He can’t wait to see the flush extending all the way down his body. “Yeah.”
“Cool.” Nick wraps his unfinished sub up and clutches it tightly. “So, this time we’ll lock the door, right?”
“Awesome.” Nick’s voice wavers but he grins. “Let’s do this thing!”
They head for Jai’s bike.
The couch is folded out into a bed.
Nick lies on it, naked, feeling both braver and more terrified than he ever has in his life. His meatball sub sits heavily in his belly, and he’s worried he’s going to throw it up. He’s also worried he’s too scrawny, his feet are too hairy, his balls are, and should he have shaved or waxed or something? None of the twinks in porn have much body hair. Is he an otter instead? That’s a thing, right? Otters. Except now he’s thinking about actual otters. Actual otters are adorable.
Then Jai is lowering himself onto the bed beside him, and Nick can’t think about anything at all. The springs squeak a little, and the thin mattress dips, and suddenly they’re making out, which is just the same as they’ve done a few times, except there is much more nakedness involved.
Nick tries to lose himself in the heat of Jai’s touches. Tries to open himself to the kiss, but it feels so laden, and his anxiety is still clinging to him, edges sharp. He’s also really fucking hard, and it’s a small miracle he doesn’t come the second Jai’s thigh brushes against his dick.
He wants to say something maybe, to break the tension, to try to laugh off how obvious it is that he’s so fucking nervous, but there aren’t any words he can even imagine that can do that trick. And Nick has never been short on words in his life. It’s more than nervousness. It may even be actual fear. Not just because this may hurt—how can it not, right?—even though Nick trusts not everyone in porn is faking how good it gets, but he’s also scared he’ll be bad at this, so it’ll be awkward afterward, and he won’t be able to look Jai in the eye ever again, and it will ruin everything between them. Not that . . . not that there’s anything between them. Right?
Oh, fuck his brain, seriously.
Nick angles his face for a heady kiss, eager to distract himself from his own thoughts and lose himself in sensation. Jai hasn’t shaved today, and the prickle of stubble around his lips feels rough and exciting. He’s kissing a man. Not just a boy, although of course boys are awesome, but a man, with all the scratchy body hair and developed muscles to prove it.
