by Anna Martin
When they reached the top of the stairs, Andy was out of breath, and Scott was teasing him mercilessly about it.
“You won’t get back on the team if you don’t get your fitness up,” Scott said, jumping up the last few steps as if to prove his point. He wriggled his butt as he danced toward the open classroom door, and Evan couldn’t help but smile after him.
Evan had gained first-name terms with his art teacher the previous year when it became clear to everyone that he had both talent and passion when it came to his artwork. Jocelyn, “Joss,” Martinez had called on Evan to help run a few art clubs over the summer for children in neighboring communities, and he loved working with her.
She was short, with acorn-colored skin and hair that burst out from her head in dense, immense spirals. Joss, or Ms. Martinez, as he would have to relearn to address her, dyed a few of those spirals blonde or amber, meaning her explosion of hair was as multicolored as the rest of her.
Today she wore a long skirt in deep red, and a yellow shirt that should have clashed but somehow worked. Ms. Martinez was the sort of person who pulled off fashion effortlessly, and Evan couldn’t help but admire her style.
The art classrooms were at the back of the school. Ms. Martinez had been involved in their renovation a few years previously, moving the space from the dark, dingy basement to the current location, where light spilled in through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
The view wasn’t too bad either. They looked out over a small copse of trees that lined the edge of the school property and, in the other direction, the sports fields. In the summer, noise from games drifted over to them, though Evan had never found it distracting.
This year Evan had taken an additional class to start building his portfolio. This would become a key component of his college applications, and Joss had promised to help him ensure it was as strong as it could possibly be.
He found her, ten minutes before class was due to start, sitting on top of her desk with a sketchbook in her lap, doodling something outside one of the huge windows.
“Hey, Evan,” she said with a broad smile. “How are you?”
“Good.” He nodded. Over the summer, he would have greeted her with a hug. That seemed inappropriate now.
“Glad to be back?”
“Glad to be back in here,” he amended, and she nodded.
“This is your last year of high school. You need to enjoy it. Experience the experience.”
“I’ll try. Do we have assigned seats?”
“Yes, but I gave you a good one.” She pulled an elastic from her wrist and tied her mane of hair into a knot on top of her head, sticking the pencil through the middle. “Um, let me check. There’s a printout around here somewhere….”
Evan dumped his backpack on one of the tables and walked over to the printer, where he found the seating chart sitting on top of the class schedule.
“This it?”
“Evan, what am I going to do without you?” she said with a laugh. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“See, right there. Good light.”
Evan nodded, pleased. It was good light, and he’d do good work from that spot.
The classroom didn’t yet smell like acrylic and charcoal and pencil, but it would soon enough. The school had been deep cleaned over the summer, and nothing smelled like it was supposed to for the first week back. It wouldn’t take long for the gym to smell like sweat and the cafeteria to smell like grease and the art rooms to smell like home.
“How’s your mom?”
“She’s good, thank you,” Evan said as he started to unpack his backpack, shuffling things around to suit his particular way of working. He was precise, if nothing else. “Busy at work. As always.”
“Aren’t we all. Are you going to work this year? I only ask because I’ve been offered a place teaching on Saturday mornings, which I really can’t do, and I thought of you. It’s adults, not children.”
Evan cocked his head. “Where is it?”
“At the community center. They want an art teacher for four hours—nine till one—to do a few sessions. Senior citizens and then vulnerable adults. If you’re interested, I’ll pass them your number, and you can get in contact. One of my friends works there. She said she’d be happy for you to take over since I can’t do it.”
“Sounds good. It’ll look good on my college applications too.”
Joss grinned. “That’s what I thought.”
“Okay. Give her my number. I’ll talk to my mom about it.”
She smiled and winked at him as the door opened and a few of Evan’s classmates started to filter into the room. He turned to his corner and went back to his things, frowning as his thoughts started to wander in another direction.
People didn’t know Evan was gay. Evan wasn’t really certain of the fact himself. He’d toyed with the idea of bisexuality, but that didn’t seem to fit the feelings he was only starting to admit to when no one was around.
For a long time, he’d used the word “weird” to describe himself, both privately and publicly. He’d dated girls, taken them to school dances and kissed them chastely at the end of the night. He’d walked them home and delivered them safely back to their fathers, whom he referred to as “sir.” Fathers of teenage girls trusted Evan King to behave appropriately around their daughters.
Evan sometimes wondered if those fathers suspected things about his sexuality that Evan hadn’t discussed with another living soul. There wasn’t a neon sign above his head that flashed Gay.
He thought he didn’t look gay, didn’t act gay, then forced himself to consider what sort of prejudices made up that line of thinking. Evan watched a lot of Queer as Folk and studied those characters in a way he thought other people his age probably didn’t. Not all of the characters on that show looked gay. Some of them did. Some of them acted gay too, but not all of them. Some of the gay men looked and acted like straight men.
Evan thought he was probably one of those gay men. The ones who didn’t look gay on the outside. Even if what he felt, underneath it all, was pretty fucking gay.
People didn’t know Evan had a crush on his best friend. At least he didn’t think they knew. He hoped they didn’t know. Evan lay on his bed, the TV turned to something stupid on MTV. His door was locked, and his mom was on a late shift, so she wouldn’t finish until much later in the evening. He was safe.
There was porn on the Internet, sure, but Evan was still unsure of looking for it. He preferred the images that flashed before his eyes when he threw an arm over his face, blocking out all the light.
Boys his age looked in the showers after gym. He knew it and didn’t really mind when they looked at him. He had broad shoulders and a strong chest that had hair on it. He had pubes he trimmed to what he decided was an acceptable length. His cock was uncircumcised, and he knew some of the other guys tried to get a better look at that, since it was fairly unusual around here. He’d been born at home, in a rush, and his mom had never bothered taking him anywhere to get it fixed. Or so he guessed. He’d never bothered to ask.
Evan’s foreskin was incredibly sensitive, so he was glad no one had cut it off. One of his favorite things was pulling it back, all the way, really slowly, then pushing it back up over the head of his cock again. When his precome started to dribble out, it slicked the way, making that slow, intense glide of skin on skin one of the most pleasurable things Evan had ever felt.
He was eighteen. He masturbated a lot.
The sheets under his back had grown warm as he lay there pushing and pulling on his foreskin and thinking about the prank someone—not him—had pulled on Scott today. They had replaced his regular shower gel with something that produced a shit-ton of bubbles, meaning when Scott lathered up his hair, the stuff had practically exploded all over his body. Evan thought baking soda was involved, but he wasn’t entirely sure. All he knew was one minute Scott had been singing to himself, the next minute he’d been yelling as the stuff foamed all over his naked body.<
br />
Another blob of thick precome pulsed out of the end of Evan’s cock.
Scott wasn’t ashamed of his body. Nor should he be; as far as Evan was concerned, Scott was perfect. His body was slim and lithe, a runner’s body, with dark hairs on his pale skin. Scott didn’t have hair on his chest yet, and he definitely didn’t trim his pubes. He had big balls. Evan almost wished he didn’t know this.
His current fantasies didn’t have any particular theme. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with Scott, how their bodies would react to each other. Evan thought he might want to know how Scott’s dick tasted. He was willing to bet it would be hard and thick on his tongue, maybe a little salty. Evan had tasted his own come before. He’d be okay if Scott leaked in his mouth.
He thought about standing, having Scott on his knees, looking up with his big blue eyes from under those dark, gorgeous lashes. Evan thought about taking his hard cock and rubbing it over the perfect pink bow of Scott’s lips. He thought about Scott’s tongue darting out to lick those lips, taking Evan’s taste into his mouth. He thought about Scott’s tongue wrapping around the head of his cock.
Evan came.
“So, guess what?” Scott asked in a low voice, swinging his tall lab stool onto its back two legs.
“What?”
Evan was busy contemplating how his best friend could look good in plastic safety goggles. No one looked good in plastic safety goggles. No one except Scott.
“My parents are going away for a weekend at the end of the month. Up to my mom’s cousin’s place in Connecticut. Some retreat thing, I dunno. Anyway, they’re taking Lacey with them, and Tom will be back at college. I asked, and they said I could have a party.”
“Are you serious?”
The Sparrows weren’t particularly strict with their children, more a consequence of their liberal attitude than lack of time to worry about it, like Evan’s mom. But letting their seventeen-year-old host a party was a push, even for them.
“Well, Old Man Collins next door will be checking in on us.” Scott rolled his eyes. “But I can buy him with a bottle of whiskey and the promise to walk Betsy for him when it gets cold.”
“Sounds awesome. Who are you inviting?”
“Not everyone,” Scott said emphatically. “I don’t want people to trash the place. I was thinking of leaving it late, then inviting people last-minute.”
“Then people might already have plans,” Evan said.
“I know. Maybe I’ll tell a few people—you know, the ones who won’t blab—and leave the rest to chance.”
“That could work.”
Their teacher, Mr. Schunard, started his rounds to check on how their experiments were going, and Scott fell back to all four chair legs and subtly adjusted the flame on their Bunsen burner. Evan checked the thermometer and made a note on his chart.
Scott looked behind them and turned back to Evan with a grin.
“I’m going to get Tom to buy us beer before he goes back to school. His classes won’t start for a few more weeks yet.”
“Where are you going to hide it, though?”
“Your place? Your mom never goes into the basement, and it’s colder down there too. Do you still have that massive freezer?”
Evan laughed and shook his head. “You’ve really thought of everything.”
“Freezer, Ev.”
“Yeah. It’s there.”
“Awesome. I’ll come pick the beer up after my folks have gone. You should stay over that night. You can have Tom’s room.”
“Yeah,” Evan said, thinking. “That might be okay.”
“I’ll mention it to Katie later.”
“Are the two of you…?” Evan left the question unasked, not meeting Scott’s eyes as he waited for a reply.
Scott huffed a laugh. “Not recently.”
“What is it with you and girls who could kick your ass?”
“I dunno, man. You’ve got to love the ones who have that spark, you know?”
“Yeah,” Evan murmured, not knowing at all. “Sure.”
Evan stood in the middle of his room, debating whether to dress in anything other than his summer staple of board shorts and T-shirt. Most of his clothes were out, rather than in the closet, the thought making him snort with dry humor. At least something is.
It was a party. He rubbed at his unshaven jaw and decided to make some kind of an effort. His mom had bought him an Abercrombie shirt for his birthday—white, with very thin blue stripes. It fit across his broad chest well, and he hadn’t had a chance to wear it in public yet.
Fuck it. That’ll do.
He left on the khaki shorts he’d dressed in that morning. They were clean, and he wasn’t entirely sure of the cleanliness of any of his other clothes. Since Scott had offered him a room for the night, he shoved a spare T-shirt, boxer briefs, and his toothbrush into a backpack and shouldered it.
“Leaving now, Mom,” he called as he jogged down the stairs.
“In here.”
He paused, wincing at the door that led to the garage. He turned slowly and went into the family room, where his mom was stretched out on the couch watching some terrible soap opera.
“Are you drinking tonight?” she asked as he went around the couch and sat on the arm of the single chair.
“Yeah. Probably.”
There was no point in lying to her.
“Okay. Know your limits, please? If you’re starting to feel sick, go throw up. It’ll make you feel better. Then drink some water. You’re taking your bike?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And staying at Scott’s?”
“I think so.”
“Okay. If you want to come home, call me and I’ll come get you.” She surveyed him through narrowed eyes. “Or ride home. Don’t, for heaven’s sake, Evan, get in a car with someone who’s drunk.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Come here.”
He leaned down and let her hug him. She wasn’t strict, not really, preferring to know what he was getting up to and lecturing him on being safe rather than being blindly ignorant of her teenage son’s activities. Evan loved her something fierce.
“You have condoms?” she asked, and Evan felt his face heat.
“Leaving now, Mom,” he said as he walked to the door, hating that she laughed after him.
“Have fun! Be good! Be safe! Make good choices!”
“Yes, Mom!” he called back and let the garage door slam to end their conversation.
Most kids in his area had bikes. They were close enough to the beach to cycle there, meaning they didn’t have to rely on parents for rides. It meant the sort of precious teenage freedom that didn’t exist everywhere.
Scott’s family lived in a nicer part of town. It took around fifteen minutes to cycle over there, depending on how much effort Evan put into pushing himself to build up speed. He’d been riding these streets since he was a little kid and his mom had finally let him make the journey on his own. Back in those days, he had to take the same route every time and call his mom when he arrived. Mrs. Sparrow was good at reminding him to do that. Just in case he got lost or an accident happened.
Scott’s house was as familiar as his own. As a kid, he’d never really given much thought to how Scott had a nicer house than the one he and his mom lived in. The Sparrows had more kids, so it made sense that they’d need more space to put them all.
Evan hopped off his bike as he approached the garage, then lifted it through the door rather than sending the door up to wheel it in. There was no need to lock it up, not in this neighborhood.
“Scott?” he called as he went around the back of the house. Someone had set up all the lounge chairs around the pool, but no one else seemed to be there yet.
He found Scott in the kitchen, surrounded by a huge crate of oranges, a knife, several bottles of vodka, and a family-sized bottle of Sprite.
“We’re making orange crushes,” Scott said.
“Seriously? Do you know how to make orange cr
ushes?”
“Nope. But they put the ingredients on the menu at Waterman’s. How hard can it be?”
Scott was wearing his “trust me” face. Evan knew the expression well. It had gotten him into plenty of trouble over the years. Scott was wearing a pair of cargo shorts almost identical to the ones Evan had pulled on, and a denim shirt rolled up at the elbows and unbuttoned most of the way down his chest. His feet were bare, and as Evan watched, he lifted one and used the heel to scratch at an itch on his calf.
“You look nice, by the way,” Scott added.
“Thanks,” Evan said, rolling his eyes. “Okay. So we have to squeeze all of those to start with, right? Does your mom have a juicer?”
Scott gave him a blank look. “A what?”
“A fucking orange juicer, Scott. Seriously.”
“Maybe? I don’t know!”
It took nearly half an hour to find the food processor with a juicer attachment, set it up, and try to figure out how to work it without removing one of their fingers.
“What?” Scott said, pushing at Evan’s shoulder.
“Read the fucking instructions!” Evan practically yelled at him. His patience, usually an infinite thing, seemed to have taken a leave of absence. “They put instructions in the box for a reason, Cap.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?” Scott teased, his eyes sparkling, the dimples in his cheeks flashing. “I thought you were an artist. Artists don’t need instructions.”
“We do to operate machinery,” Evan said.
“Aw, come on.” Scott hip-checked him, then pulled him back into a hug. “We can do this.”
Evan sighed. “Look. That little thing there needs to line up with the slot there. Then it has to click into place before the Go button will work.”
“Are you sure? Insert slot A into tab B?”
