Anna Martin's First Love Box Set: Signs - Bright Young Things - Five Times My Best Friend Kissed Me

by Anna Martin

  When Jared told Coach he was happy to play in goal, he’d been given a funny look, then told to go and find gloves from the kit room. Jared had his own. That earned him another look, as if it was somehow surprising that private school kids could afford to buy their own gym kit.

  Chris opted for baseball, and Adam, after checking the sign-up lists, added his name to soccer.

  “You play in goal,” Adam said as they walked out onto one of the training fields. Jared looked down at his jersey—forest green, instead of the blue and white the other players wore.

  “Yeah,” he said. “My middle school had a soccer academy, and because I was tall, they coached me into that position.”

  “I can think of some positions I’d like to coach you into,” Adam said with a lascivious grin.

  Jared laughed. “I was probably asking for that.”

  His response seemed to confuse Adam, who stood still and frowned as Jared broke into a jog, covering the field quickly as he headed for the goal.

  They ran drills for thirty minutes or so before breaking off into a game. It was a cold but thankfully dry day, and the sun hung low in the sky. Out here it was almost spookily quiet apart from the noise of the ocean behind them.

  Jared was silently amused when Adam fell into an attacking position. It was a rare occurrence when Adam was anywhere other than front and center. The team was woefully lacking in any real skill and didn’t make up for that with enthusiasm. They were lackluster at best.

  “Head up, DJ!” Jared yelled to his central defender, spreading his legs wide and rocking from side to side, ready to dive in any direction if Adam—who was hurtling toward him with the ball—got close enough to strike. The defense on his team was shockingly bad.

  Adam was okay, but nowhere near good enough to put the ball past Jared, much to his apparent frustration. Nor was anyone else. Jared was feeling more than a little smug after the game as they all filed into the locker rooms, sweaty, muddy, exhausted.

  “You’re good,” Adam said grudgingly.

  “I know.”

  Adam scowled and Jared smiled to himself, pleased to finally be the one who was ruffling the un-rufflable Adam Hemlock.

  Once showered and dressed, Jared headed to the cafeteria and made sure to get Chris’s nod before taking his usual seat. He pushed his chair away and leaned back until it tilted up on two legs. With his feet kicked up onto the edge of the table—making Clare scowl—Jared pulled a battered paperback out of his pocket and started to read.

  This was one of his favorite things to do: letting the world around him melt into nothing but background noise as he absorbed himself in a really good book.

  So, naturally, someone had to come along and ruin it.

  “Whatcha reading, bitch?” Adam said, plucking the book out of Jared’s fingers as he passed. For reasons Jared had yet to understand, Adam always took longer in the locker room than anyone else, which made him always late for lunch.

  “Wilde,” Jared said.

  “Dorian Gray. Nice. Is this the first version?”

  “You mean the blatantly homoerotic one? Yeah.”

  Adam grinned and tossed the book back. “If you want dirty books, I can recommend a lot better than some veiled references to anal. Try Nifty.”

  “Nifty?” Ryder asked.

  Jared leaned forward, letting the front legs of the chair thump down. “It’s an online archive of gay erotica.”

  “Oh,” she said, and blushed.

  “Come on, Smooth Ryder,” Adam said, taking the seat next to Ryder and throwing his arm around her shoulders. “You know I’m not one of those safe, sterile gays. I love cock. I love ass. I like to fuck.”

  “We’d heard,” Clare said drily and pushed Adam away. “Leave her alone.”

  “I’m going into Seattle Friday night,” Adam continued, ignoring Clare. She didn’t like that one bit. “You should come, Ryder. Be a fag hag for the night.”

  “I don’t think so,” Ryder said. “Why don’t you ask Jared?”

  Clare smirked into her Greek yogurt and Jared knew, he really fucking knew, there was something going on no one would tell him.

  “Jared?” Adam said, one word enough to send a tiny shiver down Jared’s spine.

  “I don’t have fake ID. My dad found it and cut it up.”

  “Oh, honey,” Clare said, all simpering fake concern. “Don’t let that stop you. I can get you one by this afternoon. What do you need? Driver’s license? Passport? Visa? Immigration papers?”

  “I was born here, you asshole,” he said.

  “I’ll get you a driver’s license,” Clare continued. “Your date of birth, just a few years added to it. That way if you get questioned, it’s easier to remember.”

  “Where the fuck are you going to get a fake driver’s license?” Jared asked, both amused and curious.

  “The DMV,” Clare said without any hint of sarcasm.

  Jared waited a few beats, then shook his head. “Sure.”

  The English class Jared was supposed to attend, rather than the one he’d turned up in his first day, was actually with Adam. That wasn’t particularly surprising. In a school of only a few hundred students, there was a lot of crossover in classes.

  English was one of the few things Jared enjoyed and was good at. The syllabus here was interesting, but a challenge, and he hadn’t read any of the books the teacher assigned. Dorian Gray was something he was reading for fun, but Mr. Parsons was more than happy to discuss homosexual themes in Virginia Woolf and Henry James.

  It was that acceptance and agreement to acknowledge gay themes that had caught Jared’s attention. So many of his teachers in the past had wanted to gloss over anything they considered sordid, which was, in Jared’s view, the best reason to read old books.

  He sat at the back of the classroom because he was secretly farsighted, and it made his life a lot easier if he didn’t have to squint at what was being projected. There were only a few people milling around when Jared arrived, so he found his usual seat and pulled out Wilde again.

  “Are you seriously reading that for pleasure?”

  Jared looked up into Adam’s lopsided, dimpled grin.

  “I’m trying to,” he said.

  Adam plopped down in the chair next to him. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like reading. But I usually go for stuff a bit more… masculine.”

  Jared closed his book and decided to fight this one out. “Are you saying Wilde is, what, effeminate?”

  “Dude. Yeah.”

  “Based on what? He was openly gay in a time when it was literally a death sentence.”

  “I know that. And fair props to the guy. He didn’t have to flounce around London and Paris but he did, born that way and all that shit.”

  “Exactly. So… what’s your definition of ‘masculine’ gay books?”

  “Oh, not gay fiction, just books in general,” Adam said, waving Jared’s words away. “I like things with a bit more grit, you know?”

  “Examples, Adam.”

  “Vonnegut. Hemingway. Nabokov.”

  “That’s an interesting mix. Of men who were known to be assholes.”

  “Maybe that’s why I like them,” Adam said with a grin. “You want to come over later? We can start your French tutoring.” He wiggled his tongue.

  Jared huffed a laugh. “Keep your tongue in your mouth. No one wants to see that.”

  “Be there by six,” Adam said, turning his chair to the front and pasting an “I’m listening” expression on his face.

  At six-fifteen—Jared didn’t want to set unrealistic expectations—he pulled up outside the Hemlock mansion. With his French textbook tucked under his arm he strolled up to the front door and knocked, appreciating how the sound echoed through the cavernous entrance hall.

  Adam answered with a scowl on his face. He was wearing loose running pants and a close-fitting T-shirt.

  “You’re late.”

  “Yeah. Traffic,” Jared said with a shrug. It was bullshit. Ther
e was hardly any traffic at all on the island, let alone enough to get caught in.

  Adam turned on his heel and headed through the house and down to the kitchen, leaving Jared to close the door. “You want a drink?” Adam called over his shoulder.

  “Sure,” Jared muttered and followed him.

  “I gave Lisa the night off,” Adam said at normal volume. It was this sense of entitlement Jared found both oddly charming and incredibly obnoxious—Adam made no attempt to make Jared feel welcome. To hold a conversation, Jared had to hurry to catch up, finally falling into step alongside Adam at the top of the stairs that led to the kitchen. “I can order in if you want to stay for dinner.”

  “Sure,” Jared said.

  Adam crossed to the fridge and pulled out two Snapples, holding one out for Jared, who took it with a soft “thank you” and followed Adam up the back staircase to his little empire.

  Jared had been nervous about Adam turning into an asshole when they got to the actual tutoring part of the evening, and was pleasantly shocked. They sat down on either side of the low coffee table on cushions, books spread out between them, and worked through the written assignment for class that had taken Adam about five minutes.

  “How did you learn to be so good, anyway?” Jared grumbled as Adam pointed out a spelling mistake.

  “My mom is part-French,” Adam said lightly. “French French, not French Canadian. When I was little, she would speak to me in both languages, so I grew up fluent.”

  “And she’s in France now?”

  “Yeah,” Adam said. He was much less of an asshole when Jared got him on his own. Almost like any other guy. Almost. “She went to Paris a few months ago for a job. It really upset her to leave, but she got an amazing contract there to work on some new buildings in the city, and I knew she was desperate to do it. We talked about me transferring to a school there but I don’t have dual citizenship, which makes it harder. In the end she went on her own.”

  There was something on the tip of Jared’s tongue about them both being lost boys, abandoned to their own devices at just eighteen years old. The difference was, it seemed Adam’s mom actually gave a damn about her son compared to his own parents, who blatantly didn’t. Not that he was bitter or anything—being independent was awesome.

  “When will you see her again?” Jared asked, playing with the edge of one of his textbooks, wearing at the corners of the pages.

  “Thanksgiving, I expect. She promised to come back.”

  Jared nodded. “That’ll be nice.”

  “Yeah.”

  Adam smiled, and it was sweet and handsome and made Jared’s stomach do an awkward cartwheel.

  “Do you want to take a break?” Adam asked, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “Because, you know, oral is a vital component of the final exam. You should practice. I want to make sure you get the best possible grade.”

  Jared laughed. “You’re unbelievable.”

  “I know.”

  Adam hauled himself up onto the couch, then pulled Jared up too. They moved closer, and Adam shifted until he was straddling Jared’s thighs. His eyes were hypnotizing; even though Jared knew he could move at any time, he was fixed in place, watching as Adam inched closer.

  They had kissed before, so Jared knew what to expect when Adam’s eyelids flickered, then closed as he leaned in close. Jared met him halfway and let their lips touch softly, curiously, an innocent kiss that made him smile.

  When their lips parted slowly, so, so slowly, Jared brought his hand up to rest lightly on Adam’s jaw. He flicked his tongue out, tasting peach and apple and something uniquely Adam.

  They shifted on the couch, Jared wrapping both his legs around Adam’s waist and leaning back into the corner, bringing Adam with him into a perfectly comfortable position to make out in.

  And they did. Make out. For far longer than Jared thought he was able to without taking their activities to the next level. He wanted to push, to see what might make Adam yield. It wasn’t the right time though, not the right night for stealing virginity.

  Kissing like this was good. Jared couldn’t remember when he’d last dedicated any time to making out with someone, just kissing with no promise of anything else. It was an art, a skill, to lick and nibble and tease someone until they were both hard—from kissing!—just kissing.

  “I should feed you,” Adam murmured, breaking away from Jared’s lips and kissing down his neck. It was territory he’d covered a few times already.

  “I should… fuck, that feels good. I should be conjugating French verbs.”

  Adam laughed. It wasn’t one of his sarcastic snickers or dull, dry laughs, but something that came from his belly. Something real.

  “Fuck French verbs, Jared.”

  “Merde.”

  “Le souper.”

  “Okay, fine,” Jared said, dramatically pulling back from Adam’s arms and adjusting his cock. It had spent the better part of an hour straining at his jeans. “What are you in the mood for?”

  “Coq au vin?”

  “You think you’re funny?” Jared growled, pushing Adam’s arm when Adam started to laugh, eventually pinning him to the buttery soft leather. “I’ll give you fucking coq au vin.”

  Adam let a tiny sound escape from his throat, not so much a sigh as a murmur of arousal. He rocked his hips up to meet Jared’s, the loose pants giving him all the room he needed to writhe and squirm.

  This was a position Jared liked—his partner stretched out beneath him, hands pinned, wanton and wanting and needing. He licked Adam’s neck, then grazed his throat with careful teeth, wondering if they’d walk into school tomorrow morning and be hideously obvious.

  “You’re good at this, aren’t you,” Adam murmured.

  “Hm?”

  “This.”

  “Yeah. I like giving,” Jared said, aware of how low and husky he sounded. “I like knowing that the guy I’m with is feeling more. I want it to feel better when he’s with me than it ever has with anyone else.”

  Adam grinned, then neatly flipped their positions.

  “Hey—” Jared started, but Adam broke him off with a kiss.

  “It’s my turn to tell you what I like,” Adam said pointedly.

  “Okay. What do you like?” Jared asked, willing to play the game.

  “I like the noise he makes,” Adam said, his lips hovering over Jared’s. “I like… the way he smells. The way he tastes. I want to know all of those things, how soft his skin is, the texture of his hair. Most of all I want to know what it feels like when his tongue wraps around the head of my dick.”

  It was Jared’s turn to laugh. “It always comes down to that, doesn’t it?”

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Adam said, leaning his weight on one forearm while teasing under the collar of Jared’s shirt. “Sometimes it’s nice to just get head from someone who really knows what they’re doing.”

  “How many guys have you fucked?” Jared asked frankly.

  “I don’t know,” Adam replied with equal openness. “Probably less than twenty. Is that a problem?”

  “No. I’m just curious.”

  Adam rolled to the side, as if sensing that the fun part of the evening was over. His fingers still roamed over Jared’s chest, though, mapping and exploring, ever so gently. Jared stretched, letting his spine contract and pop, wondering if they would ever take this easy sexuality to the next level.

  Then his stomach growled.

  “Come on, pretty boy,” Adam said, hauling himself off the sofa. “Let me call in a pizza or something.”

  “Don’t do that. I don’t mind cooking.”

  “Oh, honey. I don’t cook.”

  “Are you serious?” Jared asked, pulling himself up and off the sofa and following Adam down to the kitchen. “You made it to eighteen years old without being able to cook?”

  “I can order from one of several dozen restaurants that’ll deliver within an hour. I don’t need to know how to cook.”

  Jared grinned. “Yo
u do. Come on.”

  The kitchen was fairly well stocked. Adam sat on a counter, watching Jared rifle through the cupboards.

  “What are you in the mood for?”

  “I’ll eat anything,” Adam said.

  “Pasta and pesto? I can make it with mozzarella and garlic bread.”

  “Yeah,” Adam said with enthusiasm. “Sounds good.”

  “Okay. Fill a pot with water, please.”

  Adam gave him a pointed look. “Are you serious?”

  “Jesus. Just fill a pan with some damn water.”

  Adam sighed heavily, like he’d been tasked with something truly herculean. Still, he hopped down from the counter and found a pot from a drawer, and filled it with water.

  “You need to turn the burner on underneath it,” Jared said, amused. “Otherwise it won’t heat up.”

  “I know that,” Adam said sarcastically, then spent three minutes fiddling with the dials on the stove until he got the burner to light.

  Jared gently guided Adam through the process of measuring out pasta and setting the timer to beep when it was done, then had him tearing pieces of mozzarella into a bowl and rubbing garlic onto slices of ciabatta ready to grill.

  “You do know this is the first time I’ve ever cooked for myself?” Adam asked when the pasta had cooked and Jared had drained it.

  “I got that impression, yeah. Put a couple of teaspoons of that pesto in a bowl.”

  “Please.”

  “Please.”

  Jared was amused. He’d play Adam’s game, happily so when he was sure there was nothing to lose. It was clear to anyone who spent more than a couple of seconds in his presence that Adam was a spoiled brat, but a curious spoiled brat. Really, it was Jared who was playing Adam right back.

  “Okay, so now you need to tip the pasta into the bowl, put the cheese in there too, then stir it all up.”

  “I think I can do that.”

  “I’m just going to put the bread in the oven to toast a little.”

  Adam stirred the pasta painfully slowly, like he was coating each individual piece of penne with the pesto. Jared didn’t push or tell him to hurry up. This was Adam’s thing—his learning experience.