Return to Sender

by Ashlyn Kane

  Emerson was weaving a few hours later as he walked away from the beer pong table, though he didn’t sway as badly as his opponent.

  “Emery!” Eve popped up in front of him. Her dark curls were a mess around her face.

  Emerson had met Eve when she had followed Hayley to Zack’s dorm room last spring. The girls had met in Hayley’s Intro to Art History course second semester, and Eve just started showing up to gatherings as if she had always been there.

  Eve was… Eve scared him a little. She was unlike anyone else Emerson had ever met. Her long hair always looked like it was ready for a shampoo commercial. Her brown eyes were framed by cat’s-eye horn rims, and a silver tongue stud peeked out between her teeth. Emerson wasn’t as afraid of her beauty or fashion sense, though, as he was about her brazen honesty regarding three things: one, sex; two, being into chicks; three, sex with said chicks. Eve was an unapologetic lesbian.

  Her out-and-proud attitude threw Emerson. He wasn’t used to people who made the announcement so unselfconsciously—or during the first five minutes of meeting them. He also wasn’t sure what to make of her art. She was taking the Design program, and any of her work that Emerson had seen tended to have lots of breasts and vaginas.

  Still, Emerson had a soft spot for the girl who could make Hayley seem prudish.

  “I’m victorious,” he told her.

  “So I saw, darling—beer pong champion.” She smacked a kiss to his cheek. “Have you been having a good birthday?”

  Emerson nodded. “Yes. Jonah sent me a camera.”

  “Ooh. The elusive Jonah!” Eve gave a grin. “So, let’s see it, darling.”

  Emerson spun on his heels and looked around. “I left it… kitchen!”

  He led Eve toward the kitchen, giggling with her as they went. Emerson went to the cabinet where he had stored the camera before playing beer pong and pulled it out.

  “Ooh. Expensive,” Eve said, properly impressed.

  “Yep!” Emerson nodded.

  Eve looked from the camera to his face. “Oh my—Emery, did you know that you’re glowing?”

  He blinked at her. “Am not?” He wasn’t feeling too confident about that denial.

  “Are too.”

  Emerson couldn’t tell if he was blushing, his face was already so flushed with alcohol. “Am not.”

  “Too. Does he know?”

  “He who?”

  “Mysterious Pen Pal! Does he know?”

  “Know what?”

  “That you’re glowing!”

  “Well, he’s not here, so I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know what I look like right now….”

  “I meant, does he know you’re completely in love with him?”

  “I—” Emerson stared. “No?”

  Eve laughed. “Why so unsure?”

  Emerson looked down at his camera and didn’t say anything.

  “Oh Emery, honey! You’re blushing! Don’t be embarrassed! You know I’d never hold loving cock against you! Loving cock is wonderful if that’s what you’re into.”

  Staring at her really was the only possible course of action. He really should have been used to Eve by now.

  Fortunately, Emerson was saved from having to find a response to that by Hayley’s arrival.

  Unfortunately, Hayley had arrived to pull him into a conversation with some of her hot friends from her history class. Meeting the cute boys wasn’t a hardship, but Emerson began to feel very uncomfortable when Eve and the newly met Devon started up a game of “Never Have I Ever.”

  “Never have I ever had sex in an empty classroom,” said Devon to start.

  Hayley took her shot without shame. As did Brian, Emerson noticed.

  “My turn!” Hayley said with a grin. “Never have I ever slept with a frat boy!” She shot Emerson a coy smile.

  He took his shot. Eve stared at him.

  “You didn’t! Ooh. You did!”

  “I—”

  “Emery, you slept with a frat boy?”

  “I… think he was?”

  “You think? Did you have a one-off lay at a frat party?”

  “Okay! Next question!” Emerson said desperately.

  “My turn!” Eve gave a wicked grin, and Emerson suspected he was about to pay for shutting her down. “I’ve never had a crush on my pen pal!”

  Emerson glared at Eve.

  “Drink up, Emery!” Eve cried.

  Hayley cackled.

  Emerson drank.

  “I’ve never been caught with my pants down by my mother,” said Brian when they finally resumed the game. Devon drank.

  “Your turn, Em!”

  “Never have I ever had to pee so badly before!” Emerson said before jumping to his feet.

  “Boo!” Eve cried out drunkenly.

  “That’s cheating!” cried Hayley.

  “But I have to pee!”

  “You better come back!” Hayley called.

  He waved a hand at her. “Sure, sure,” he called, then weaved his way through party-goers, trying to find a bathroom.

  It wasn’t until he had stumbled into the bathroom that Emerson realized he was still clutching his camera. Setting it down carefully, he proceeded to drunkenly attack his button and zipper.

  When Emerson stumbled out, once again holding his camera, he looked hard for a distraction worthy of missing the rest of “Never Have I Ever.”

  Fortunately, Zack was very obliging.

  “Emma! Birthday boy! How’s the party going?”

  Emerson grinned. Oh yeah, no one better than Zack to offer up a distraction.

  Hayley found them in the kitchen thirty minutes later, laughing over the dirty lyrics Zack was penning.

  “Emerson! You didn’t come back! You lied to me!” Crap. Hayley was pouting.

  Emerson shook his head in denial. “No—I ran into Zack!” he said, pointing.

  “So Zack is more important than me?”

  “No!” Emerson shook his head vehemently. “But Zack was distracting. And I’m drunk,” he added for good measure.

  “Right. Well, I demand that you come spend time with me! You left during me time and didn’t come back!”

  “Okay, okay,” Emerson said, happy to give in. Though mostly happy that Hayley wasn’t going to continue pouting.

  “Good!” Hayley grabbed his hand and pulled. “Greg was just showing off the checker board! We’re playing!”

  “Checkers?” Okay, Emerson might be drunk, but that really didn’t sound right.

  “Yes, checkers.”

  What kind of drunken game was that? Emerson wondered. Then he saw the board, and everything made sense.

  §

  Jonah,

  Thank you! The camera is awesome and filled with pictures.

  Last night Zack threw me a birthday party. He insisted. It was at his townhouse, and there was a lot of alcohol. Also, pretty much everyone I ever met while on campus. Seriously, I think I saw the girl who sells me coffee on Tuesday mornings.

  Anyway, the night was pretty awesome. I won at beer pong and lost at checkers (no, really, Greg has this awesome checkers board that has shot glasses for playing pieces. Every time you lose a piece you have to drink the contents. Unfortunately for me, Hayley is a total shark!).

  Fortunately, your present arrived in good time, so I got a LOT of pictures—far too many to print out or e-mail. I’ll see about getting them put onto a CD for you.

  Tell everyone at the workshop I say thanks for their good wishes. I’m not sure about the dirty jokes, but Hayley thought they were a riot. Especially when I told her about Roberta. She pulled each sticky note out of the card and pinned them to the corkboard of messages I keep at Zack’s (I’m there a lot—they use me for my cooking skills, and Zack and Greg always forget to tell me shit when I’m around).

  I’m not sure how a camera isn’t as extravagant as I think, but I guess I’ll have to take your word for it. I’m seriously hoping, though, that you didn’t shoplift it or take out a loan—I like it too much to gi
ve it back.

  Having had a very awesome birthday,

  Emerson

  §

  EMERSON readjusted his grip around the pillow under his head. His fingers had been gripping the down for so long that they creaked as he let go and then gripped the fabric again.

  The body behind him shifted, and two large hands palmed his naked ass. He shivered when the thumbs slipped between the cheeks.

  It hit him then that Karl was pulling them apart to see his hole, to eye the entrance into Emerson’s body. He shivered again and wondered for a moment how it was that he got here in the first place.

  It started at the party, he thought. Well, this part had started at the party, when Karl had approached him. Emerson had already had a few drinks by then, and so when Karl started flirting, Emerson had flirted back. He had let Karl lean in close, speak in his ear and run his hand up Emerson’s arm. He even leaned in toward Karl and glanced at the other man from below his lashes.

  When Karl had moved on to kisses, Emerson had opened his mouth and welcomed them. He had even reached up to twine both arms around Karl’s neck. He didn’t object when Karl curled large hands around his hips before running them up his torso, rubbing up and down. They had curled around his waist and palmed the small of his back and between his shoulder blades. Emerson moaned and pressed closer and let his tongue reach out to Karl’s.

  When Karl had hotly suggested that they go back to his place, Emerson had readily agreed.

  Emerson was startled out of his reverie by the feel of a lube-coated finger pushing past the ring of muscle guarding his body. The finger pushed in slowly, and—Jesus! Karl must have some experience with this, because he went straight for Emerson’s prostate. He moaned loudly at the shivery feeling running through his body. God, but he loved his prostate! He had long ago tried slipping his own fingers into his body when he jerked off; the feeling of a finger inside him was familiar at least. The slow, unerring massage turned Emerson into a moaning, shivery mess. He pressed his face into the pillow and tried to stifle some of the moans. Seeing as how Emerson was drunk, stopping the moans before they escaped him was impossible.

  Karl was good at this, Emerson thought dazedly as another finger pushed in with the first. He pushed his face deeper into the pillow and wondered if he could get more control if he distracted himself from the pleasure.

  He tried to think of something else, ran his day through his mind. He had woken up, made himself breakfast, and then said goodbye to his parents and Kierstyn when they left for the day. Emerson’s dad had an appointment in Austin, so he and his wife were spending the day out and dropping Kierstyn off at a friend’s there. Emerson had had the house to himself, which turned out to be a bad thing when he opened and read Jonah’s latest letter.

  The most recent letter had been written on stationery from someplace called the Rustic Inn Creekside Resort and Spa. Something about the name had made Emerson’s stomach curl with dread.

  The sour feeling in his stomach only got worse when he read Jonah’s story about where his camera had come from. He couldn’t help but be disappointed at knowing that his camera was not just second-hand, but that Jonah hadn’t even paid for it. It had been the broken, discarded toy of a friend.

  The feeling only got worse when he read about why Jonah was at the Rustic Inn.

  I am looking forward to having some privacy from Gavin was a deceptive start to the paragraph. Emerson’s stomach plummeted as he continued to read: It seems another one of his shortcomings is that he doesn’t like to knock. That or he just wants to see Xie naked.

  He had kind of suspected that Jonah and Xie probably weren’t just kissing each other goodnight, but he didn’t appreciate having it spelled out for him. Unbidden, the image of Jonah having sex with a cute girl came to him. He could imagine Jonah kissing her, undressing her, petting her and fu—

  Emerson had stopped himself. He wasn’t going to picture Jonah with his girlfriend having a romantic “stay-cation” at an inn and spa that gave them their own Jacuzzi. He wasn’t going to do that to himself.

  He had reread the paragraph. Emerson had really wanted to find some evidence to tell him he was wrong. He didn’t find any.

  God, he had been such a fool. After Jonah had confessed his bisexuality, Emerson had allowed thoughts he had suppressed for so long to have some legroom. Had imagined what life might be like if he and Jonah were the couple he had so long wanted them to be. And then Jonah had sent him a camera, a gift that was not only thoughtful, but also expensive. Emerson had started to think, to hope, that he wasn’t being foolish in his dreams. That Jonah really did feel something for him, too, wanted him too.

  But this latest letter just proved how much of an idiot he had been. Jonah wasn’t pining after him in return, wasn’t wishing that Emerson could be something more. He wasn’t like Emerson, who was waiting at home for someone who would never love him. He wasn’t turning down dates and keeping his romantic experiences limited to make-out sessions at college parties. He wasn’t being a pathetic loser wasting his life away while he waited for the object of his hopeless crush to love him back.

  The rest of the afternoon passed away in a strange blur after that. The first thing he’d done was to find the Rustic Inn’s website, which had filled Emerson with longing as he imagined what a weekend there would be like. It also prompted him to decide that Jonah had been lying about his bisexuality. That he was, instead, bi-curious, and now that he had found Xie, he would marry her, and they’d have the perfect life together. They would, Emerson suspected, have loads of beautiful babies, to whom Emerson would be godfather, while he stayed a lonely bachelor living with his bazillion cats and perving on Jonah from afar for the rest of his life until he died.

  That was when Emerson went hunting for liquor. He found the Smirnoff Lime Twist in his parents’ cupboards and took two shots to calm his hysteria.

  A little tipsy, Emerson had reread the letter again. Jonah didn’t just have a girlfriend—he had a lover. Emerson then spent half an hour obsessing over what Xie looked like and how long she had waited before she let Jonah fuck her. He wondered how many times they had fucked since the first.

  When the image of Jonah fucking some girl good enough to make her scream in delight started to torture him, Emerson took another shot of vodka.

  Half an hour later, Emerson was stumbling out of the house to escape the letter and his own thoughts and running into a neighbor, a fellow student on his way to a party. Two hours after that, he was at a campus party drinking bad keg beer and getting chatted up by Karl.

  “I can’t wait to fuck you,” Karl growled, shocking Emerson back to the present. He was still on his knees, and Karl still had fingers up his ass. “Bet you’re tight. Can’t wait to get in your tight little ass.”

  Karl followed thought with action. He pulled out his fingers, leaving Emerson feeling open and obscene. Then Emerson heard a condom wrapper tear and then the sounds of Karl stroking himself. Then Karl was guiding his cock to Emerson’s ass and pushing in.

  It hurt. Karl was hot, hard, and unforgiving as he pushed steadily into his body. Emerson gasped into the pillow, tears stinging his eyes. He felt like he was being split in two. When a tear escaped, he rubbed his face into the fabric, wiping it away.

  Karl was groaning and moaning behind him. He gripped Emerson’s hips tight and started to move in even strokes.

  After a minute it felt all right. It wasn’t unpleasant. But the pain had sobered him up, and Emerson suddenly felt lonely, even as Karl puffed away behind him. He bit his lip, trying to will it better, trying to get more pleasure out of this.

  He thought of Jonah and the Rustic Inn and wondered if Jonah was fucking Xie right now. He thought of the pictures of the Inn and suddenly felt a deep longing to be with Jonah instead. He closed his eyes tight. The thoughts went away, but a new one came instead. He saw himself at the Rustic Inn, kneeling on that big bed with Jonah behind him. He pretended for a moment that it was Jonah thrusting into him with
increasing force.

  The sex didn’t get better. It didn’t get worse. Or, at least, the physical act didn’t get worse. The sick feeling in Emerson’s stomach yawned and widened when he suddenly remembered the promises he had made himself once. The promise to be careful about who he had sex with after the drunk hand jobs at the frat party. And the wistful promise he had made years ago to let Jonah be the first.

  After Karl finally came, he flipped Emerson over and sucked him off. The relief Emerson felt when he came was mostly about being thankful that the whole experience was finally over.

  Luckily, Karl passed out. Alcohol and sex had proved to be too much for him.

  Emerson just crawled out of the bed and back into his clothes. He was definitely too drunk now to find his way back to the Bend, but fortunately Zack and Greg’s was within walking distance. It took him almost twenty minutes to get there with his slow, swaying gait.

  When he discovered that no one was home, he was glad that Zack had long ago given him a key to the place.

  Emerson headed straight to the kitchen and fished out Zack’s bottle of Jack. Then he stumbled his way to Zack’s bedroom—he didn’t much feel like seeing Greg right now—and started drinking.

  §

  ZACK found him in his room, a few hours after the fact, pissed drunk and sprawled out on the floor. Emerson’s shoulders were propped up against the edge of his bed. He had tried sitting but found that lying down was much preferable and, after a lengthy consideration of Zack’s bed, he had opted for the floor instead.

  “Em! What the hell are you doing here?” Zack asked, surprised. Then, after a long pause, he said, “Are you drunk?”

  He sounded very incredulous, which Emerson thought was unfair, since he had seen Emerson drunk before.

  “Yes,” said Emerson, trying not to sound petulant at all.

  “Emerson….” There was another pause, and then Zack was sitting down on the floor next to him. “Emma, why are you getting drunk alone in my room at two in the morning?”