Philadelphia

by L B Winter

  He laughed. “I know you never remember anything without getting a text. Okay, dude. I’ll text you.”

  I said goodbye, and when I rejoined Jamie, I still had a smile on my face thinking about how much less bored I was about to be. Jamie was always at work until evening, and Taylor had his internship. Steven spent all his time lately either at The Beat or prepping for his next show. Now I would have people to hang out with again! But when Jamie met my eyes, he was scowling.

  “Ready?” he said.

  I wondered if I’d done something wrong. “Yep,” I answered, and we went to the locker room to shower and change. I had been in sports my whole life, so it was no problem for me to change in front of other dudes, but Jamie went into a bathroom stall. He came out bundled up and still frowning, and I finally ventured a small, “You okay?” to break the tension.

  “Fine,” he answered.

  We walked together out the AC doors and toward the bus stop, but the bus wasn’t due to arrive for another five minutes, according to the app on my phone. At least the rain had stopped—but I wasn’t going to stand there the whole time in silence.

  “Are you mad?” I said after he heaved another sigh.

  He glanced sidelong at me. “No.”

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  “What makes you think—”

  “I can tell something’s wrong, Jamie. You were in a great mood before I went over to talk to Zeke.”

  “Yeah, well.” Jamie shook his head. “You could have said something.”

  “Said something about what?”

  “That you were still seeing that dude. Nobody knows; your friends all think you’re single.”

  “I am single,” I said. What in the world? Was Jamie actually jealous? “Zeke and I are just friends.”

  “Uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that.”

  Okay, now this was just annoying. “Jamie, I don’t—I don’t have to tell myself anything. We didn’t click that way. We ran into each other here last month and then we started hanging out sometimes when Zeke’s basketball team needs somebody to fill in for one of the regulars. That’s all it is.” I paused. “And I don’t know why you’re making me explain this, anyway. I’m allowed to have friends.”

  Jamie looked a little bit chagrined, but also like he wasn’t willing to let it go so easily. “It’s pretty weird to stay friends with an ex, though,” he said. “Of course, you’re friends with everybody, so. It hardly means anything to be friends with you; we’re all just one of the many.”

  Ouch. “Fuck you, Jamie,” I said, and I turned toward the street again to wait for the bus. On second thought, silence was way preferable to this.

  “Fuck everybody, right, Paul? Literally. Just fuck random dudes and then act like everything with them is casual and join their basketball team—”

  “Okay, for the record,” I said, turning around angrily, “and not that it’s any of your business, but just because you keep saying shit about it, I have had sex three times, total, ever. Once with you, once with this sleazy guy at the homeless shelter who made me blow him in exchange for letting me sleep indoors for the night when I was freezing my balls off, and once this stupid mistake with a guy I met at The Beat. So no, I don’t fuck everybody. I don’t fuck anybody. Zeke and I went on one date, and when I told him I wasn’t into him, he backed off and we’ve been friends ever since. So you can get off your fucking high horse now. Pun intended!”

  Ugh, why did I say pun intended? I turned back to the street and was immensely relieved to see the headlights of the bus coming up the street toward us. It was still a long way off, but I couldn’t wait for it to stop so I could get inside and get far, far away from Jamie and all his judgmental comments and cruel, stinging accusations. Every single time I thought he was an okay person, he proved me so wrong. But at least he’d been mean enough this time that anger could outweigh the hurt; the last thing that I wanted to do was cry in front of him.

  But then I felt his hands on my shoulders. Just barely a touch, so light, and his fingers were nearly white with cold. I felt his face near me, lips behind my ear, breath warming it for a split second before the vapor cooled it again.

  “Forgive me,” he whispered. “Forgive me, please.”

  There was such brokenness in his voice at that moment; I’d never expected it. Part of me knew after that speech that he would apologize, and I didn’t have any intention of forgiving him—until I heard the tone of his voice. I turned toward him once more to see that his eyes were full to the brim.

  “Paul,” he said, and he took a long, shuddering breath. I waited, barely breathing, to hear what he would say. Too many emotions to name passed across his face, but each one appeared more tender than the last. He put his hands on my shoulders again, then slowly raised them to my face. I didn’t realize what he was doing until he was already doing it, drawing me close to him, licking my lips apart, gently pressing his own against them, his tongue grazing mine.

  We’d kissed before, a lifetime ago, but this one was so much softer. It disarmed me with its tenderness, a slow drum against my lips, pulsing over them, in and out, until I opened my mouth and let him inside as far as he wanted.

  A sound escaped his throat, soft and hungry. His hands, still on my face, curled curious fingers through my hair. His breaths were warm on my skin, and he smelled like peppermint and crispness and snow. After so many months of wanting him and not letting myself have him, it was such a relief to feel that he wanted me, too. What else could I do? I let him tilt my head back, suck my bottom lip into his mouth, and nibble softly on it. I let his hands descend from my head to my back to my hips, gripping me tightly, drawing me ever closer. He moaned, and through our jeans, I started to feel his hardness pressing against me, a rolling, ebbing motion that made my dick harden in response.

  I let go of everything in that moment: the uncertainty about how he felt, the memories of a painful past, the stinging hurt from the insults he’d uttered. Everything dissolved and disappeared, floating away like they had never been. Jamie was kissing me. Jamie was holding me like I was precious to him, running his hands up and down my back, igniting in me everything I’d ever felt for him.

  I hoped he’d never let go.

  CHAPTER 18

  I Don’t Want to Hurt You

  __________

  Headlights from the bus finally reached us, fully illuminating us there on the sidewalk where we stood wrapped up in each other, suddenly in no hurry to board the bus.

  But Jamie broke the kiss and stepped back. “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered. I eagerly followed him onto the bus, and we sat in the same row, knees pressing against each other, but arms folded tightly around our chests, like we didn’t trust ourselves to keep our hands off each other if we didn’t tie them down.

  The ride wasn’t long, but it had never felt so torturously slow as it did that night, waiting to get back to my dorm with Jamie. What would he say? What would he do? What would I do, for that matter? I had only one hint, one inkling of an idea of how he would act, when I looked up at his face while the bus was stopped at a stoplight and saw him wink at me—just a quick, easy gesture that made my heart do backflips.

  When we reached the dorm, we had been on the bus long enough to miss each other, but not nearly long enough to cool the heat that had built between us. We hurried to my room, neither of us needing to say a word to show what we felt or where we wanted to be. When we got in the room, it was quiet—Tay was evidently in his own room, and mine was dark and empty.

  Jamie paused for a second—only a split second—before he took me by the hand and said, with an earnestness in his face that I’d only seen once before, “Ask me to your room.”

  I smiled, loving that he’d needed to be invited. “Come on in.”

  He took off his coat and scarf, dropped his backpack on the couch, and followed me inside, waiting for me to similarly unload my various burdens, before he pulled me into his arms and kissed me again. This time, though, behind eyes br
ight with passion and lips certain of the territory they had traced only minutes before, there was the hesitation I’d expected when he’d kissed me the first time. I knew he wanted to stop kissing me, that he wanted to say something.

  Bracing myself for him to tell me it was all a mistake, after all, I pulled back. My arms had been wound around his neck, but I let them fall to my sides. He didn’t let me go, though. His hands remained on my hips, and after only a moment of looking into my eyes, he squeezed his own eyes shut again, like he couldn’t bear to look at me, and pressed his forehead against mine.

  “Jamie?”

  He gulped away his nerves and whispered, “I didn’t mean for all that to happen, Paul.” My heart jumped into my throat—but then he added, “After Freedom, everything you went through. Being homeless…and having that…that guy…” He couldn’t finish the thought, and I didn’t blame him; having lived through it personally, it just wasn’t the most pleasant thing to say. He finally pulled back to look at me again and I saw that his eyes were red-rimmed. He whispered, “I’m sorry I said all those things. I think I was just picking a fight. I know that sounds stupid—”

  “I knew that’s what you were doing,” I said, realizing as I spoke that my words were true. I’d known for months that every time we got too close to each other, he was pushing me away on purpose. I just hadn’t articulated it to myself before—that it was because he was trying to keep me at arm’s length that he did it.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I hated the thought of you being with anybody else. I was so jealous. And then—God, to find out—”

  “Hey, it’s okay,” I said, rising on my tip toes to pull his lips down to mine in a quick, warm kiss. “That was a long time ago.”

  His eyes sparkled as he looked down at me. “I know,” he said, “but it’s the craziest thing. Sometimes it feels like it was only yesterday. Being with you at Freedom.”

  “I didn’t know you ever thought about me,” I blurted out, before I could think better of it.

  He smiled. “You’ll judge me pretty hard when you know the truth, then.”

  I seriously doubted that. “What?”

  He shook his head.

  “You have to tell me now.”

  A brief pause, then, “I got so good at lying to myself. At believing that all my feelings had changed, that God had changed me. But after you left, I just…I just daydreamed about you all the time. Like, what you might be doing and when we might see each other again. God, I had this stupid fantasy. It was so fucked up, though.”

  Something in his tone told me that it was probably as bad as he thought it was, and I almost didn’t want to hear. I raised my eyebrows in question, though, and he barreled on.

  “I was engaged to Ellen,” he said, “and I had this idea that like, maybe if I was married, and you were married, we could both have families but then, like, secretly be together.”

  Yikes. Yeah, that was pretty bad, and my cringe must have shown it.

  “I know,” he said, and he hung his head. “Like, I wasn’t even married yet and I was already daydreaming about committing adultery. How messed up was that? I mean, I don’t think I would have ever gone through with it, but that wasn’t the point. Like, I never had any dream of being happily married to her; I dreamt of being able to be with you, while it was a secret from everybody else. I wanted to have my cake and eat it, too.” He sighed heavily. “I was so selfish. I never once thought of her. I never even really thought of you, that you deserve better than that. I was willing to go so far to keep everything to myself, to keep this dirty little secret.” He lifted his eyes to mine again, and I saw pleading there. “You’re the first person who ever made me think maybe there was another way. I was just so scared to believe you, Paul, I had to push you away.”

  He was quiet, his breaths the only sound between us, as I thought about what he’d said. If there was one thing I knew for certain, it was that fear makes people do terrible things. History is just a clear record of that, over and over, isn’t it? Jamie’s actions, in light of his confession, were suddenly perfectly clear to me in a way they never had been before.

  But then again, they were also more despicable. He’d been so driven by his fear to live a lie that had hurt people, left and right, everywhere he went. There was a lot of damage in his wake—but then, could I really blame him? If his family, his friends, his church—if all had accepted him instead of trying to change him, then wouldn’t things have wound up differently? Jamie never really wanted any of the lie he was living; he just wanted to be accepted for who he really is.

  “Please say something,” he said softly, and I looked up into his eyes. He looked like I was torturing him; sadness, exhaustion, fear.

  “I don’t like that you cheated,” I said, surprising myself with those words. It was the first time I’d said them, but they were completely true.

  “Oh,” he said, raising his eyebrows—probably surprised that this, of all the confessions he had just made, was the one that I chose to mention. “I don’t know if this makes any difference. I mean, it probably shouldn’t, because I married her knowing I didn’t love her. In every way a person can be unfaithful, besides sex, I was unfaithful. But I never slept with anybody else once we were married.” He paused. “I never slept with anybody at all when we were married. I just…couldn’t. Not even with her.”

  He hung his head with shame, and I was so surprised and caught off guard by his confession that I still couldn’t really think straight. “I heard she threw you out after you cheated,” I blurted out.

  He sighed, a sad chuckle escaping from his throat. “Yeah. People were saying all kinds of things about me. The truth is, I was chatting online with a guy, and I wanted to…I wanted to cheat. But I hadn’t done it yet, when she caught me. There was a whole dating history on there, though. Like, old messages and stuff. Guys I’d hooked up with before the wedding. She saw all the messages from them. She couldn’t deny that I was gay, and I couldn’t deny it anymore, either.”

  How had we gone from making out to talking about this? It felt intimate, and fragile, and tender in a way that I wasn’t expecting really ever to reach with Jamie. He was so closed off and distant with me—but then again, he’d never been like that at Freedom. He’d acted one way during our group therapy sessions, true, but when we got to our room together, it was like all that faded away. He was himself with me. And now, after all the angry words we’d battered each other with today, we were somehow there again—that safe, honest place where it was just the two of us.

  And I couldn’t judge him—not really. Wasn’t what Steven had always said still true? It could have been me, who’d married some woman and tried to live a life of total denial. I didn’t have to ask him why he’d married a woman he didn’t love, because I knew exactly the kind of fear and self-loathing that makes a person do a thing like that. I was intimately acquainted with it—as intimately acquainted as I was with Jamie. The way his skin smelled, the way it tasted, how his arms felt around me. Once, I’d known all those things. Despite everything, I wanted to know them again. Despite everything, he was still beautiful to me.

  I reached forward tentatively, so slowly that he didn’t seem to notice at first my hands on the hem of his shirt. I lifted it a little, then a little more, then smiled when he looked down at me with surprise and happiness in his eyes.

  “You must not scare easy,” he said, and that smile that made me melt was back. He threw his shirt over his head, and then his eyes were dark as he leaned into me, bare arms holding me to his chest. I undid his jeans, too, and ran my palm along his cock. He gasped, instantly pressing forward into my touch. “I can’t believe this is real,” he whispered, ducking to capture my lips in a searing kiss. “I can’t believe you’re touching me.”

  He flung my clothes off of me with little skill, hands shaking, and I rubbed my hands up and down his shoulders to calm him down. Although, I felt equally anxious, if I was being honest with myself. I’d wanted him for so fuckin
g long, it didn’t even matter if it was sloppy.

  But then he slowed down, heaving long, shuddering breaths as he leaned over me, arms tightly wound around me. Each breath seemed to steady him; each hum of his throat as he inhaled my scent seemed to ground him. Then his lips were on mine again, and for once, it was as perfect as it could possibly be.

  He pushed me backwards toward my bed, gently laying me on the unmade sheets, and reached down to pull long, teasing strokes along my cock.

  I sighed, unsure what to expect. I had never done anything like this in bed before; I’d given exactly one blow job, and I’d been fucked twice, but my cock rarely got this kind of attention. Jamie was propped up on one arm above me, watching my face as he stroked my cock. “Paul,” he said softly, and I looked up at him.

  “Hmm? Oh, that’s good.”

  He smirked, his enjoyment of all my reactions evident in the way he licked his lips. “Have you ever done this before?”

  “Done what?” I said, confused. “Had sex? Yeah, dude, you were there.”

  He laughed gently. “No, I know you’ve bottomed. Have you ever topped?”

  Oh. Oh. Was that what we were going to do? “Do you—do you want me to—”

  He nodded, smiling. “Mhmm. I want to ride your cock while you just lie here and enjoy it. I want to make it perfect for you.”

  If he kept talking like that, and stroking me like this, I probably wouldn’t last long enough for it to be perfect, or even adequate. I shivered a little.

  “You’re ready, aren’t you?” he said, smiling. But then, a frown passed over his face, and he glanced around. “Do you have—”

  “Condoms?” I said, smiling. “Lube? I have both, thanks to a certain best friend of mine who buys the weirdest fucking Christmas presents.”

  Jamie laughed. “You have the best friends. You are the best friend,” he added, kissing my lips quickly and softly before reaching into my nightstand to find the little “get laid soon” package Steven had so thoughtfully dropped off when I’d returned from Christmas break.