Philadelphia

by L B Winter

  I understood him, though. We could have this now, this moment of total, perfect freedom. We didn’t have to hold back, and we didn’t have to be ashamed. He knew that I loved him, and I knew that he loved me, and we could celebrate the absolute miracle that that was without anything stopping us.

  He set the empty bottle on the counter and smiled at me. For a moment, I wanted to pounce on him—but then a bigger part of me just wanted to look into his eyes, hold his gaze and never, ever let go.

  “You really forgive me?” I said.

  He sighed. “Yeah. You know, technically, I did write you that email, and you had a right to share it with them if you thought it was important. I hurt you a lot, and I get that now. Honestly, I don’t even know how to tell you how sorry I am for all that. I feel like there aren’t any words that say enough.”

  “That’s how I feel,” I said.

  “Then let’s just forget about it,” he replied softly, coming toward me from around the counter. “Neither of us would have done what we did if not for Freedom and all the unfair garbage people put us through. We can’t keep living in the outcome of that. That’s like letting them win, and they don’t deserve to win. We do. You and me.”

  “God, I love you,” I said on a sigh, and he pulled me into his arms again, a slow smile spreading across his face.

  “Ask me to your room.”

  CHAPTER 24

  You’re Better than Me

  __________

  We ran up the stairs, touching hands, arms, backs, never far from each other, and reached my door to find the newly made bed and sparkling surfaces. I was relieved I’d just made it look nice, but that quickly turned to indifference, because it was pretty clear that Jamie could not have cared less about whether the bed was made when he was pulling me onto it with him, kissing me as his hands slipped under my shirt and lifted it over my head.

  I sat up, watching him as he lay back on the bed. He splayed his hands over my chest, staring at it for a moment before meeting my eyes. “You’re the only one I ever think about, Paul. The only one. And it’s always been that way. I thought of you even—even—”

  I leaned over and kissed him, knowing what he meant and not needing him to say it. There was a time, and not long ago, when I wouldn’t have let myself believe it when he said something like that. But I knew I could trust him now; somehow, all my fear had shifted as I realized that he’d earned my trust. He wouldn’t be here right now if he didn’t love me. Ellen wasn’t somebody I needed to compete with, and neither were any of the men who’d gone before. This connection I felt with Jamie was something he felt, too—just as real, just as steady, just as sincere.

  “Sit up,” I said, pulling back for a minute. “I can’t get your shirt off.”

  He did sit up, and he stripped off his shorts, as well, so he was totally bare, then laid back again.

  “Wow,” I whispered, lying down on top of him again. “I couldn’t see you like this last time.”

  He smiled. “Like what you see?”

  “Uh-huh,” I nodded, then captured his lips in another kiss. As I rubbed against him, he ran his hands under my shorts, easing them off until they were around my knees, my ankles, my feet. Gone.

  His skin had that slightly sticky feeling from sweat that’s cooled off, and as I rubbed against him, I felt my skin clinging to his, making the friction even more intense. We were both so hard, and I wrapped my hand around his dick and mine, rocking into my fist as we finally broke the kiss and moaned together.

  “Can I—” he put his hand over mine and slowed me gently. “Paul, can I—”

  “Fuck me?” I whispered, smiling into his eyes, feeling for the first time not just a curiosity but an ache for him to be inside me.

  “I’ll make it good for you,” he said urgently. “It won’t be like at Freedom.”

  “No, I know,” I said softly. How could it? “Just use your hand first for a while, okay? I’m new at this.”

  He smiled. “I will.” The lubricant was cool, but his hands were hot, stroking my buttocks, easing my thighs apart as he rolled me onto my stomach. I felt one long finger press inside so tentatively, and I closed my eyes and willed myself to relax for him. A hand rested on my lower back, and then I felt his lips there, kissing so lightly, tracing the contours of my back with his tongue.

  “You don’t know how much I love you,” he whispered, and my heart immediately started doing backflips.

  “I love you, too. Like crazy.”

  He bit my skin lightly, making me moan with delight, then pulled his hand out for a second before adding another finger. That one stretched further, longer, deeper, and I moaned even louder with the pleasure of it.

  “Oh, fuck, Jamie,” I said, rolling my face back towards the mattress, rubbing against it for a moment. It was the only part of me I could move; his legs were bracketed around mine, and the weight of his body over me kept me steady while he paid me such continuous, lavish attention. He fucked me with his hand, slowly, in and out until I was wild with the thrill of it, increasing the pressure every time and drawing the most desperate sounds I’d ever made out of my panting lips.

  “You like that?” he asked when I’d raised up onto my elbows, arching my back against the overwhelming sensations.

  Breathlessly, I nodded.

  “One more finger?”

  Why the hell not? I nodded again, and he pushed a third finger inside. I was so stretched now, and the moan I let out at that moment would have embarrassed me a week ago, even a day ago. But that was like ancient history now. From now on, I’d never hide anything from him. Never make him feel like he was anything less than the most important person in my world.

  “I don’t know how much longer I can wait,” he said, in a voice so lusty it made me shiver.

  “I’m ready,” I said. “Please—Jamie, oh my God.”

  He chuckled a little and pulled his hand away. My ass felt like it was throbbing, aching for more of him. A few moments later, though, he was above me again, pushing inside in a slow, ceaseless, overwhelming invasion. If I’d thought his fingers were stretching me, that was nothing to this. He filled every part of me, until I hardly knew where he ended and I began.

  “Jamie,” I managed to cry desperately against my pillow, fingers white-knuckled against the sheets.

  He slowly laid his body over mine to whisper in my ear, “You okay?”

  I tried to say yes, but I didn’t know if I could speak. Everything I was feeling was so intense. But then he rolled me onto my side with him. “Come on,” he said, “let’s lie like this.”

  Then his arms were around me, one underneath and one above, cradling me to his chest as he rocked in and out of me, reaching around to pump my dick with his lube-slicked hand as he set the pace.

  From there, it only got better. The sizzling touch of his lips on my earlobes; the way he traced his thumb along the slit as he pumped my dick harder and harder; the way he pounded against me, making my body reverberate with passion. I leaned my head back, aching for his kiss. And he obliged, seeming instantly to know what I wanted.

  A kiss, a bite on my lip, a tweak of one hand on my nipple, a sharp fingernail on my shoulder.

  “Jamie,” I said, though I hardly knew what I was saying. “I…I love you.”

  He let out a short, sharp breath. “Baby,” he moaned. Then his fist was pumping me faster, harder, and just like that, I was coming all over the sheets, my orgasm shooting through me and lasting longer than I’d known it could as he finished inside me, jackhammering for a few seconds until his own climax roared out of him.

  Neither of us said a word at first. It hadn’t been long, but the intensity had been unreal, and we were beyond breathless. He slowly pulled out of me, but he never rolled away. His arms tugged me even closer to him, and he wrapped a leg around me, too. I felt like his teddy bear, a treasured object that he needed to keep close. When he’d caught his breath, he let out a long, happy sigh, and even a little laugh. I could feel how content he w
as, and I felt just the same way. This was such a far cry from where we’d been this morning; I could hardly believe it.

  I finally worked my way out of his tight embrace so I could roll over and look into his eyes. “You weren’t kidding,” I said.

  He gave me a puzzled look.

  “About being better than at Freedom. Holy shit.”

  He laughed. “Good. I wanted to make you feel so good. After everything I put you through…”

  “Let’s not think about that anymore,” I answered.

  His smile was relaxed, sated, content. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Like you said, we can either keep being mad and making up, or we can just…forgive each other. And be happy.”

  He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against mine, lips curved in a wide smile. “I’m really relieved to hear you say that.”

  I kissed him softly. “I missed you, you know.”

  “Yeah?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, like…pretty much as soon as you left. I was so immature about the whole thing, though. I’m embarrassed now.”

  He rolled onto his back, tugging me with him so that I settled my head on his chest. “You can tell me about it,” he said, and I knew that he needed to hear, needed to understand. There was vulnerability in his voice, and it reminded me again of what I’d done—hurting him when he had only just learned to trust again.

  But I could tell him anything now; he would never judge me. We had that safe space again, where it was just the two of us—only this time, it was real. The hesitation, the tension, the uncertainty—all of it was gone.

  Taking a deep breath, I said, “Every time you mentioned Ellen, I totally freaked out. Like, if you ever mentioned her name, I would take that to mean you cared about her more than you cared about me. Or if you ever said that you’d hurt me and her, or like, you regretted what happened with her, I would think, ‘Well, he cares more that he hurt her than me.’”

  He lifted his head to look down at me, a dark crease between his eyebrows. “Paul, that has literally never been true.”

  “I mean, you’re allowed to care about her; she’s your wife.”

  “Ex-wife,” he said softly.

  “Oh, right. Sorry,” I said, lifting up onto my elbow. “I just—I know it’s stupid, but I kept remembering how you went after her on Thanksgiving, and I thought, ‘If he really cares about me, he’ll chase after me like that. If I keep away and he follows me, then I’ll know he loves me as much as her.’”

  He blinked at me slowly, lips parted in confusion. “I…I don’t even know how to compare the two of you,” he said. “I mean, I’ve always loved you. Always. And Ellen…she was normalcy, you know? She was—she was my chance to be hetero. I wasn’t going after her. I was going after that version of me.”

  “Now I feel even stupider,” I said softly.

  He grabbed my hand and pulled it to his lips, kissing my knuckles. “No, don’t feel stupid,” he said. “I get why you felt that way. And like, it makes sense. I’m kind of relieved, you know? That there was a reason, Besides, I never told you how I felt, so you didn’t have a lot to go off of.”

  “I should have trusted you more.”

  “No,” he shook his head, “I treated you like shit for the longest time. You’d have to be crazy to trust me after all that.” He nudged my feet with his toes so I would look up at him.

  “I do, though. Now,” I said. “It just feels—”

  We both paused, at a loss for how to describe how different, how good this felt. “I know,” Jamie said, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Things are finally looking up.”

  That, of course, reminded me again of what I’d done, and I had to look away. How could I look into his eyes, smiling with love and affection, when I’d just done my best to ruin all his chances at a better future?

  Tracing his fingers with my own, I said, “Jamie, what are you going to do about the scholarship?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, “but I’ll figure it out.” I looked up at him again. “Honest,” he said. “Look, I started going to a therapist—well, you know. She helped me see that if I can’t control something, I just need to accept it. If they don’t want to give me this scholarship after this year, the sooner I accept that fact, the sooner I can move on. It’s not the only scholarship in the world, and I have plenty of time to apply for a new one.”

  “Still,” I said, “the job, too. I—I had no business telling them you weren’t right for that job.”

  “You,” he said, “are the one who would be great at that job.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not the mentoring type.”

  “Sure you are,” he said. “Look how much you helped me.”

  “I had ulterior motives,” I said, and he laughed.

  “You set me on this path to accepting myself. That and therapy. I’m never gonna stop going; it’s seriously the best. You know, you should do it.”

  “What, therapy?”

  He nodded.

  “No, I don’t think that’s for me.”

  “You went through all the same shit I did with Freedom. Plus, worse stuff when you were living on the streets,” he added, and when the dark look passed over his eyes, I wished I’d never told him half of it.

  “Yeah, but I’m fine now,” I protested.

  “Are you?” he said. “I mean, look, I’m only suggesting it because it’s the best thing, besides you, that’s happened to me this year. I never could have worked through all the shit that went down with my parents and my church and Ellen, and you, honestly, without talking it all over with somebody.”

  “You guys talked about me?”

  “Don’t change the subject,” he replied, smiling.

  “No, I wasn’t trying to. I mean, just out of curiosity, what did you say about me?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t have to tell you that. Anyway, you could probably guess most of it. I used to be mad at you. Now I’m not. And I’ve loved you more than I can even describe for a very long time now. So, we talked about all of that.”

  How’s that for honesty? For a moment, my voice was lost in my throat. Then, “I missed you so much, Jamie.”

  He sighed softly, touching my cheek. “I missed you, too. But I’m glad we took a little time to figure out all our shit.”

  “I’ll never get used to you saying ‘shit.’”

  He laughed.

  “I felt like you just wanted to be away from me,” I added softly. “I felt like all the guys did.”

  He didn’t need to ask who I meant. “It was hard for them, us fighting,” he said, “especially Steven. I think he was expecting me to be a much bigger jerk than I am. I mean, I have my moments, but—”

  I smiled. “I told him you had a good heart. I said it a hundred times.”

  “I know, he told me.” Jamie smiled. “Look, these past few months, with you and him—what I saw that you didn’t see is that you started hanging out with Zeke, and studying all the time with Tessa, and since you never see Tay during the week, you were like, ‘All weekend, all I want to do is chill with Tay.’ And Steven was really jealous. He felt like you just dumped him.”

  My jaw dropped. All this time, I’d been trying to fill my time with other friends because I thought Steven didn’t have time for me—and he was over there believing the same exact thing in reverse? “Are you serious?”

  He shrugged. “I told him you’re a ‘love the one you’re with’ kind of guy, but that didn’t help.”

  “I’m not!” I said. “I mean, I like to have friends everywhere, but nobody was ever more important than him. I thought he was choosing you over me; I didn’t—I never chose anybody over him.”

  “Tell him that,” Jamie said. “He misses you like crazy. And he’s dealing with all of Trent’s stress, too, because he and Lynn might have to close the storefront—”

  “What? Seriously?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. They do so much more business online that they’ve been considering m
oving exclusively virtual. I don’t know if you know, they cut my hours like crazy since the spring. Going online would be easier for Lynn to manage, too, since now she lives in Jersey with Deacon. Trent would design from his home office. They aren’t going to renew their lease at the end of the year either way, but they might look for something smaller and closer to Lynn. I doubt it, though.”

  Wow. The storefront was where I’d met Lynn, and I had so many memories—good and bad—from that little corner of the world. I couldn’t believe it was closing. No wonder Trent had been so short-tempered. I’d thought it was about me, but—wow.

  “You look shocked,” Jamie said, nudging my feet again.

  Shocked was an understatement. I looked up at him and said, “Just realizing all over again that the world is not all about me.”

  He laughed. “I love when you realize that.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yeah,” he said, running a warm hand down my back. “It’s cute.”

  I laughed, shaking my head. “Well. Therapy, huh?”

  He nodded. “I think you deserve it. Something for you.”

  I leaned down to kiss him again. So, therapy. I started mulling it over. I mean, why not? After all, look what it had done for Jamie. And look how I kept being wrong about everything, and angry when I didn’t need to be. There was definitely some trauma in my past that I could stand to work through.

  Our kiss deepened, and his hands on my back moved incrementally lower, and when he pulled me on top of him, I could feel that he was already up for round two.

  “Wanna take a shower with me?” I said against his lips.

  “Really? Yeah, I’m disgusting after this run.”

  I smiled. “Disgusting is never a word I would use to describe you.”

  His fingertips slid into my crack, and I shivered. “You’re gonna have to go on some of my training runs with me,” he said, “so we can get you to work up a sweat like this. Then you’ll see what I mean.”