Curious

by Seth King

  All I know for sure is that right now, I’ve got to get out of here.

  Hey, my friend Harrison says as soon as we get back to the hotel, the bride and groom are greeting family all day, so we’re off the hook. Some of the boys are going to Sloppy Joe’s, that tourist bar – you and Beau are welcome to come.

  I read the text aloud, and one look between Beau and me tells me we’re not coming. But after the incident earlier, I want to get as far away from here as I can. This place is toxic, and the walls are closing in. And part of me shudders to even imagine what would happen if Lane does something about this…

  “What do you say about going for a ride?” I ask Beau.

  “As long as you’re there, I’m there, too.”

  We walk to a Hertz and rent a Chrysler convertible that is nearly twenty years old, and it shows every day of its age, too. We do manage to get the top down, though, and soon it is smooth sailing. Then we follow Google Maps out of town.

  The Overseas Highway is a hundred-mile-long, mostly-elevated road that connects the islands of the Keys, and when it’s not meandering through tiny little beach towns, it’s a series of bridges through the most sparkling waters you’ve ever seen. Sometimes mangrove swamps jut out from the turquoise seas, and sometimes you’re driving over sand flats so shallow you can’t tell what is solid ground and what is ocean. All in all, it’s a paradise in pastels, and speeding through with Beau beside me in an open-air convertible is almost too much, almost too perfect.

  “You know what’s weird?” I ask him at one point. I still can’t get used to how blue-green the water is here. No matter how many times I stare at it, it’s still beautiful. Beau and the Keys have that in common…

  “What?”

  “I thought you were one of my best friends, or my very best friend, but lately I’m realizing I barely knew you at all.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well. I feel like I knew you on such a…platonic level. That’s so different from what’s happening now.”

  “Hmm. I guess I was…maybe hiding parts of myself?”

  “So was I, probably.”

  I shiver. We’re not touching each other, but his energy is still filling the air.

  “Favorite food, besides mixing up side dishes?” I ask. “I feel like I’ve forgotten that.”

  “Cereal, but only with warm milk.”

  “Wow. Strange. And gross.”

  He shrugs. “You?”

  “Steak and white corn. Never yellow corn.”

  “Oh, I already knew that. You always try to order that at Outback. And they never have it, either.”

  “Well let’s find things you don’t know, then.”

  We go back and forth for a while, and soon I feel more secure – we’re really getting somewhere, somewhere beyond where we were before. When we’re discussing the best and worst movies we’ve watched together at that trashy little theater in the shopping center in Charleston, I realize we have no idea where we’re going. At a gas station we ask someone for the nearest tourist landmark, and he directs us to Bahia Honda State Park, an apparently pristine white-sand beach that overlooks an old bridge that fell apart. The guy takes out his phone and shows us a picture. One side of the bridge has become a platform where local teens jump thirty feet into the water, and just looking at the photo gives me the willies – but Beau, of course, can’t be contained, and forces me to drive him there.

  The beach is just as advertised – actually, the water is even lighter than described. It makes the brownish oceans of South Carolina look like vegetable soup in comparison. We walk down the shore for a little, and all the while I’m trying not to notice Beau’s muscular legs, his near-brown skin, the thin dark line of hair disappearing into his bathing suit and leading to his thick cock…

  Ugh. This shit is hard.

  Soon I hear myself laugh.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s just…well, I literally wouldn’t rather be with anyone but you right now. Not my family, not anyone. Is that weird?”

  “No,” he smiles. “You were always the one I wanted around for good times. And bad times, too, come to think of it. Remember when my dad died? Your house was the first place I drove. All I wanted was to sit on your loveseat and not think about a single thing.”

  “I remember. At the time I didn’t get it, but…I mean, I guess I do now…”

  “Yeah,” he laughs. I take a breath.

  “Speaking of that, did you ever pick up on any…signs?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Signs that you were maybe…curious for me, or gay for me, or whatever this is?”

  “Hmmm…no,” he says suspiciously quickly.

  “Come on – there have to have been points where you knew. Or even about me, and how I felt. Be honest.”

  He blushes. “I mean…you did get really into Britney Spears videos as a little kid, and not in a gawky, she’s hot! way, but in a way where you’d sing along to the words and sway to the beat.”

  “God. I didn’t know I did that. But at the same time, let’s admit it – she did have some jams.”

  He throws his hands in the air. “Hey, not knocking Britney here – Toxic was the official song of one entire summer. She’s a legend.”

  “Shit,” I laugh. “Maybe we actually are gay. Can’t get much gayer than Britney Spears fans, right?”

  “Shut up,” he says, then gulps. “Did you ever notice anything about…me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well. There were little looks, little vibes I’d get…remember Fletcher McMahon, our old buddy from school? You’d stare at his ass all the time.”

  He starts to object, but I wave him off.

  “Hey, not hating on you at all – that kid did have a good fucking ass. I mean, the sight of him in those baseball pants would make every single mouth drop on the stands. It was just unfair, really.”

  “True. Women love asses.”

  “So do we now, apparently, too,” I laugh. “Oh, and…no offense, but your closet is one of the gayest things I’ve seen. The color-coded shirts, the rows and rows of shoes, the way you keep a padlock on it so nobody disturbs the perfection…sometimes I feel like I need to be listening to a Lady Gaga song just to walk in there.”

  “So I’m anal-retentive. So what?”

  “And now you’re ‘anal’ in an entirely different sense…”

  He slaps me on the arm. Then he takes a short breath and pauses. “Listen, I…”

  “Yeah?”

  He’s silent for a while. “Well,” he says. “I have no shame about any of this – there’s nothing wrong with anything gay – it’s just…weird. I’m embarrassed that people were noticing things I never even noticed about myself. It’s like suddenly finding out I was a blonde when I’d always thought I was a redhead.”

  “I get what you mean,” I tell him. “Sometimes I feel like none of us know who we are at all, and we all just go around lying all day until we figure out the truth…that’s what life is, actually. A contest of who can lie the loudest, and therefore turn it into truth.”

  We hit a small hill that leads up to the wrecked bridge. In the end I actually do jump off the platform, but only under the agreement that Beau holds my hand as we do it. Finally he takes it, and then we step off the platform and fall twenty feet into ethereal white-blue waves…

  On the way out of the park, we stop at a gas station. We both see the motel at the same time. ROOMS BY THE HOUR – 30$ PER, the sign says. He puts an arm on mine.

  “I have to tell you something,” he whispers needily.

  “…Yes?”

  “Keeping myself away from you was so fucking hard on that beach. I need you on my mouth, and I need it now. That’s why I didn’t want to take your hand. I was already uncomfortable.”

  My face goes numb, but I look around and remember we’re in public, in a very conservative area, too. I shake my head. “No,” I say. “That motel looks disgusting.
It looks like venereal disease in a bottle, actually.”

  “Please?” he whines, his breath teasing the tip of my ear. “I like you, and it makes me want to…well, be with you all the time. And it would be such an…experience...”

  I blush, then shake it off. “Yes, and that ‘experience’ would end in both of us getting chlamydia from the infected bed sheets. It’s a no from me.”

  He leans in even closer and brushes against my ear, which I think he’s already learned is the most surefire way to get me going. “But I want your fucking cock down my throat, Nathan Sykes. Can I have that?”

  Every inch of my body ignites for him. How could I resist this? How could anyone resist this?

  I glance over his shoulder at the motel, then back into his eyes. “So do you have thirty in cash, or will I have to use my card? I’m afraid to say I’m fresh out of bills…”

  ~

  Within fifteen minutes we’re entering a (surprisingly clean) room in the Isle of Palms Motel. I toss our key onto the desk and get ready to ask him what he wants to do next, and then-

  Bam. I feel hands pushing me back, and before I can process anything, he slams me against the wall, buffering the impact with his forearm at the small of my back.

  “Fuck,” he breathes as he leans in. “I’ve been wanting to do this all day…”

  And then he kisses me so hard, my vision goes out.

  When I return to the present, I open my eyes and stare into his.

  “That was the hottest thing you’ve ever done,” I whisper.

  “What can I say? Ugh, just stare at me. My eyes have missed you.”

  “Yeah, well, my tongue missed you, too. Now get on the bed.”

  The mattress is shockingly clean and comfortable, too. Soon we’re both naked, chest to chest, nose to nose, dick to dick.

  “Gimme this cock,” he says from under me, planting a kiss on my forehead.

  “Fine, but let me suck yours, first. I’m already craving that pre-cum, and I-”

  “How about we do it both, then, together?”

  “Huh?”

  He reaches down, grabs me by the torso, and slowly swivels me all the way around so that he has access to my cock, and I have access to his, too. A regular sixty-nine…

  “Oh…” I say, but he’s already taken me all the way to the root. Shit, at this angle he can take all of me, and I lean my head back and moan. But then I feel my balls slapping against his forehead and remember it’s time for me to get to work, too.

  I swallow him up, making him grunt. Oh, Jesus – in this position, I can taste him while he sucks me, and it’s almost too good to be real. I could do this forever, actually…

  “Ugh, suck that dick,” I say as I take a pause and watch. “Yes, just like that.”

  He kisses his way up to my balls, then my inner legs – which gives me an idea. We just went swimming, so I know he’s clean – can I lick his hole?

  I close my eyes, crane my neck forward, stick out my tongue, and make contact. Shit, he’s so soft and smooth, and he tastes like skin and water and sugar. My cock getting even harder, I thrust my hips up and down to shove my dick down his throat, and start rolling my tongue in circles around his hole.

  He spits out my cock, tilts his head sideways, and lets out the loudest moan I’ve heard yet.

  “How does it feel?” I ask.

  “It’s…it’s like…fuck…you need to feel this, too. It’s heaven.”

  I lift up my body to give him a better angle, and as I return to licking him, he digs his face into my ass. Oh, Jesus…

  From this angle, it feels like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. Now I understand why he had to stop sucking me and moan – it’s like an angel from heaven is licking a spot I never even knew I had. (Just a really slutty angel.) Is this why girls could only ever orgasm while I ate them out? Is this what it felt like?

  I stick my tongue further into his hole as he sucks mine. Shiiiit…his tongue is like a prickly-tickly-feathery tease down there, and I still can’t quite get used to how it feels.

  Suddenly I want every inch of him against me – in fact, stepping into his body right now wouldn’t be enough contact. I reach my hands around his torso and press him to me so that our entire bodies are touching as we lick each other. I don’t know who’s moaning louder – me, or him. If anything it’s like a glorious duet, each of us making sounds for each other while we please the other one. He does a funny little circular rolling thing around my hole and then plunges his tongue into me, and that does it – I reach down and grip my cock just as it pulses and throbs with the hardest orgasm I’ve probably ever had.

  “Yes, dude,” he says he sits up and starts licking up what cum he can reach on his upper chest. “Make that dick come for me.”

  That sends me totally over the edge, and I come for probably fifteen more seconds as he slurps up every ounce of my liquid he can. When I’m finally spent, he flips himself out from under me and jacks himself off onto my back, and I rub his nipples and kiss his waist to help him along. Finally he grunts once and then squirts all over my sweaty skin, mixing our liquids together in the sexiest combination I’ve ever imagined.

  He collapses down next to me, and for a few minutes we just catch our breaths and stare up at the ceiling.

  “Fuck,” he says soon.

  “I know.”

  “That was…”

  “I know.”

  We just lay there, trying to breathe. Then I look over and say the thing that’s really on my mind.

  “Tomorrow is our last day together here. Do you realize that? Then it’ll be back to the wedding shit, and after that, it’s back to Charleston…”

  “Ugh. I know. You don’t have to tell me.”

  “Fuck my life…”

  “How are we ever going to stop this?” he asks soon. “How am I ever going to go back to girls? Honestly, that would be like going back to ham sandwiches after trying filet mignon.”

  “I don’t know. Do…do you at least feel any less awkward now, by the way? About the fact that I am…you know…”

  “A dude? And also my best friend? And also my lover?”

  I nod.

  “I mean, I don’t feel bad about it. I don’t feel good about it, either. That part is just kind of…inconsequential? The friendship thing is mostly the sticking point for me, I guess.”

  “I know, I know, you don’t have to tell me that, either,” I groan.

  “But don’t get me wrong. I’m still having the time of my life.”

  “So am I,” I say as I smile into his eyes.

  “Be careful, though,” he whispers, smirking.

  “Why?”

  “Because I wasn’t supposed to like you, but if you keep licking my hole like that, we may have to re-negotiate the terms of that pact – for good.”

  ~

  When we head out of the parking lot and start back for Key West, he rests his hand on my leg. And this time, he doesn’t move it an inch the whole way home. He is growing more comfortable with me now, and it feels like Hawaii after decades of January. Every moment is such a sweet, special kind of torture.

  This is happening, I keep thinking to myself. It is really happening, because he is letting it happen. All we have to do now is keep the ball rolling…

  As there’s no roof above us, I watch the dying sun the whole way back to the hotel. Soon it’s totally dark, and the sky is giving us the most dazzling star-show I’ve ever seen. Key West is at the end of a long, isolated island chain, and the sky here is so black, the stars are the brightest I’ve ever seen in my life. You can even see the stripe of the Milky Way running down the middle of the heavens – for a minute I can’t even take my eyes away.

  “Would you look at that?” I ask him, but by the tone of his response I can tell his face is not turned upward.

  “No. I have enough to look at, and those stars could never hold a candle to it.”

  I look down. He’s staring at me.

  “Beau?” I ask
breathlessly, caught in this gorgeous moment.

  “Yeah?”

  “Whatever happens when we leave, please know I wanted you since the first day. The first moment, really. I know that now.”

  He smiles appreciatively and just kisses my hand. But even as we return the car and start walking back to the hotel, the cranks in my mind won’t stop turning.

  The weird thing is, I never wanted to fall for Beau Lindemann. I really didn’t. Sure, I wanted to taste his cum and squeeze his ass and choke on his dick all day, but love? The fluttery, teenager-y bullshit that Katy Perry talks about in her pop songs? No. That was never on my mind. For one, it would’ve changed everything I ever thought about my identity, and also, our friendship might never come back from that. You can’t go from friends to more-than-friends and then back to friends again. You just can’t. It’s either this-or-that, forever-or-nothing. I’ve tried to maintain enough chilly, awkward relationships with former flings to know that fact down to my bones.

  But still, some forces are non-negotiable. They move in and take over, and soon you are a prisoner to their intentions. And on a weekday evening in Key West, I do the unthinkable:

  I start to fall, to really fall, for Beau Lindemann, my best friend in the world.

  Beau Lindemann

  We wake up together, and the next day is slow and easy and comfortable. It feels like French Toast, if that makes any sense at all – it’s the kind of day that warms you up from the inside out. We mostly sit at the resort pool drinking a beer or two in the sun, both dreading the fact that this will be our last night alone together, but happy and grateful at the same time – and also sick with the knowledge that the wedding will be the last hours we spend in this paradise together before we have to return home.

  Before three we head back to the room to shower and wash off the salt from the ocean. Nate’s tanner than he’s been in years, and from the moment he de-clothes, I can’t take my eyes off him. How was it that I was able to be around this body for so long without seeing the beauty in his every square inch?

  He showers alone, then gets dressed. When I pee and walk back into the room, my Nate is just staring at me, waiting.