The Summer of Us: A Romance Anthology

by AJ Matthews

  Ridley has a spattering of chest hair and a thin trail of sandy blond starting just below his navel and disappearing beneath the waistband of his shorts that feels so good rubbing against me. I’ve never been a hairy man. So I never thought I’d want a man with any. He’s definitely changed my mind.

  “I um… I want to do more than kiss tonight,” he tells me, looking at the sand.

  “You do?”

  Main form of communication strikes again. He smirks. Then nods.

  “You have to look me in the eyes, Rid. You know the rules.”

  Ridley stands from my lap, looking me directly in the eyes. “Leif, I want to do more than kiss tonight.”

  “Good start. What do you want to do?”

  “Do I have to say it?”

  “I won’t do it unless you’re willing to say it, babe. Thems the breaks.”

  “Okay.” He stretches out the word, pulls in a deep breath then goes for it. “I want to go down on you. And then I want you to do the same to me.”

  Um. I think he just gave me the greatest moment of my life.

  “We can do that…we can so do that.”

  Of course the words hardly leave my mouth before Rid drops to his knees in front of me, methodically unbuttoning my shorts then tugging them down around my hips along with my underwear so I’m there, plazow!, right in his face.

  With one hand he massages my balls, with the other he grabs the base of me and then without any buildup just goes for it, taking me wholly into his mouth. Holy! Ridley sucking. Sucking like his life depends on it. Cheeks sinking in as he bobs his head until he takes me too far, gagging. I want to laugh but I have no more laughs in me, not right now. Love changes everything. My ex knew what he was doing, and what he did was great. What Ridley does, what’s greater than great? Because that’s how it feels to have Ridley’s mouth on me, greater than great. So great that if I didn’t have the rock behind me to keep me propped up, I’d fall my ass to the ground. Legs giving out from pleasure too big for me to concentrate enough to keep standing.

  He pulls back licking and nipping when his mouth tires of sucking.

  “Are… you sure… you’ve never done this… before?” I pant out, as I feel myself getting close. And I feel him smile around me. “Because you’re…you’re…a naturalohshit!” I shout as I let go without warning. The poor guy gets the full experience whether he was ready for it or not.

  And I was wrong. That was the greatest moment of my life.

  “My turn.” Man, I’m anxious to get my mouth around him. “You ready for that?” I ask.

  “Please,” he answers, though it sounds more like begging. Well okay then.

  Without bothering to tug my shorts up, I spin us, hauling him up so that he stands against the rock and I kneel down in front of him. His shorts are elastic waist and glide down over his hips as I move my hands down. Good freaking lord Ridley is beautiful everywhere.

  “You just gonna stare at it?” He teases me.

  No. Definitely not. Well, maybe for a minute. Once I’ve had my fill of looking and tracing the veins and ridges lightly with the tip of my finger, like him, I go right in. Sucking, nipping and licking. His skin tastes salty and manly. I’m in the zone. And yeah, I may have done this before, but hearing him, his grunts. His groans so low and guttural he has to be pulling them from the soles of his feet, I’ve never wanted to please someone so badly in my life. They spur me on. When my jaw starts to tire and my mouth gets sore, I switch to tonguing him from root to tip.

  Feeling him squirm above me, I look up in time to see him close his eyes and drop his head back, pure ecstasy covers like an emotional film over his face. And the way he grabs fists full of my hair is so sexy I feel myself building up again. So when he takes over with his thrusting, I grip myself and start tugging.

  Our releases come together.

  Beautiful. Abso-freaking-lutely-beautiful.

  I rest my cheek against the flat plain of his stomach, half of which is covered with his own splooge. It takes me a good five minutes to recover fully enough to stand. Wow.

  When I can finally speak again I ask, “What’d you think?”

  “I think I’m glad my first time doing that, I did it with you. You really know what you’re doing.”

  “Yeah, well. You’re a natural Rid. And you bring it out of me, like no one I’ve ever been with.”

  Immediately we fall into each other, kissing gently, I get to run my hands over the rounded apples of his cheeks and strong jaw. Neither of us bothering to pull up our pants so we continue to press and rub together skin to skin as we make out. Amazing.

  We go a couple more rounds of jerking and going down on each other until his phone starts ringing incessantly, along with text messages pinging in from his mother: Rid, the movie should have ended a while ago. Where are you?

  Ridley, I’m worried. Call me back.

  Are you with Leif? It’s getting late.

  “My mom’s not going to stop. I should probably get home.”

  “Yeah,” I agree.

  Although it makes me feel great when he admits, “I don’t want to go home. I want to stay with you all night.”

  “Few more weeks Rid. Like eight at most. Then we’ll be together all the time. We can hold out.”

  It’s only then that we pull up our shorts and tug back on our shirts. I hate to see that chest disappear. Fully dressed, he no longer looks at me but out at the blackness of the ocean. There aren’t too many stars in the overcast sky tonight, so the water appears even blacker than usual at this time of night.

  I walk up and press my front to his back, wrapping my arms around him I murmur, “Thank you. For tonight, Babe.”

  He doesn’t reply at first, but turns his head to kiss me again. Sweet. Too short. Though completely fine with me because he murmurs back, “I love you Leif. If sex gets better, I think my heart might explode. That felt so good.”

  “Yeah, it did. I hear it gets better. Though, I don’t have any experience with that, not with a guy.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Ridley seems to contemplate my words for a couple of minutes as we both keep silent. “We can be our first times together,” he finally answers, still standing with his arms down at his side locked in my embrace, staring out into the infinite blackness.

  “No rush. We’ve got time. I want you to be comfortable with me, to know deep in your heart that I’d never hurt you.”

  With one more quick kiss to my cheek. “We can be our first times together,” he repeats himself then abruptly moves to walk back up the beach. Autistics. What do you do?

  Chapter Six

  “Hey Kid. You okay?” Mom asks. I look up from my phone to her standing in the doorway of my bedroom leaning against the threshold with her feet crossed at the ankle, arms crossed over her chest and a dish towel hanging partly out of her hand. Her jeans are tight but not inappropriately so, and her T-shirt, form fitting. Mom looks good for her age. Dad’s a lucky guy. And they’d gotten together at nineteen. Just like me and Rid. Rid…

  “Eh…I guess.”

  “You look down. No Ridley today?”

  Without asking, she moves inside and shuts the door behind her, then walks over to sit at the foot of my bed.

  “Talk to me,” she orders.

  “I’m in love with him.” Yes. That’s what I blurt out to my mother. No lead in.

  Mom laughs. Yeah, she laughs, snatches the phone which I’d still been playing with to avoid eye contact with her and tosses it onto a pillow at the head of my bed. “I’m happy to hear you say that. But when I said talk, I meant something I didn’t know.”

  “What? You know?”

  “Give me some credit here, Leif. You light up when you talk to him, you light up when you talk about him, you light up when one of us brings him up.”

  “I do?”

  She pins me with her, ‘Really?’ look.

  “I do.”

  “So why does love got you down? Som
ething happened between you two.”

  “Mom. I’m not talking about that with you.”

  “You forget, it’s what I do.”

  “I haven’t forgotten. But you’re my mom. Men don’t talk with their mothers about their sex lives.”

  “That’s because most men don’t have a mom as cool as me and I’ll repeat, does it for a living.”

  “Fine. Yes. We—god this is humiliating—we took things to the next level yesterday.”

  “It’s not humiliating. How next level?”

  “You are just dying to know that, aren’t you? Seems every conversation we have… no. We haven’t gone all the way yet.” I swear I catch the briefest smirk cross her face at my answer. Because I actually told her or because she’s maybe not quite ready to hear about her son topping or bottoming, I’m still trying to figure out.

  “How’d Ridley handle it?”

  “Like a pro. It was his idea. I let him lead on everything relationship. But you know he’s turning twenty. Well we got home later than his curfew so today he’s grounded. Grounded! Can you believe it? The woman wouldn’t stop texting and calling. She was out on the lawn waiting for us. And I can’t say a damn thing because he’s worried she’ll keep us apart, so she doesn’t know or hell she probably does know but won’t acknowledge that we’re together, together and it freaking sucks.”

  “She knows. She might not accept it, but she knows.”

  “Mom, when I think of the future, it’s of where Rid and I will be together. I can’t hold his hand or kiss him except in hiding. It’s like I’m back in that damn closet and I hate it.”

  “I’m going to talk with her.”

  “No.”

  “Sweetheart, not just because she’s hurting you and mama bear don’t like her cubs being hurt, but because she’s hurting Ridley. He has too many strikes against him already. She needs to be schooled and we both know I’m the one to educate her.”

  “We have a plan. Just sometimes, it’s really hard to stick with the plan. He’s made so many strides this summer. How can she not see it? He wants us to get an apartment together so he can go to sleep next to me every night and wake up with me every morning. And it’s not about sex because we talked about this well before yesterday happened.” I pause to take a breath. “That’s not the ramblings of a child or a child-like brain. He doesn’t want to be my roommate, Mom. He wants us to be a real couple. Ridley’s a man.”

  “Yes. He is. Which is why I need to speak with Ms. McAllister. Because her son is a man and she’s holding him back from living life.”

  “I don’t know. Just let me talk to him first. It’s really a decision we should make together.”

  Mom stands and pats my leg. Shaking her head, she doesn’t answer me but does mumble a low, “I knew it would happen… that boy’s gonna be my son-in-law someday.” And she walks out of my room.

  I might have just had the strangest conversation of my life.

  And I’m oddly okay with it.

  Two more days pass before I see Ridley again. His mother wouldn’t let me come over that day, his day off, and the following days he worked. But she tasked Asshat Trucker with keeping me away. I tried to push through, but the asshat threatened to call the cops if I didn’t leave.

  He had me going out of my mind not seeing or speaking to him. Was he okay? Ridley McAllister is like a drug. I’m totally addicted and I know it. What’s worse, I don’t ever want him cleansed from my system.

  He’s at work, but today I’m allowed back.

  “Rid. Hey, Rid,” I call out as I jog up to his game. Something’s wrong though. He looks up, catches my eye but turns away, not looking me in the eye. This has me slowing my jog instead of speeding up. Why wouldn’t he look me in the eye?

  He looks good today. Still in one of his T-shirts, but back in those golf shorts he wore when I first met him.

  “Ridley?”

  Nothing. No response.

  “Ridley. Look at me.” He does, but does it opening and closing his hands into fists. It’s like we’ve erased all the time we’ve put in to get him past this.

  “You were with Gabe,” he accuses. Shit. “Don’t deny it, he told me.”

  “I’m not going to deny it. I’m surprised he told you, though.”

  “He said I can’t tell anyone.” Open. Close. Open. Close. “You warn me off him and you’d been with him.”

  “Yeah, like once. We messed around. He was the only other gay kid I knew at the time. What’s going on here? Do you want to be with him?”

  “No. But you messed around at the jetty.” Crap. “The jetty where I gave you me.” Open. Close. Open. Close. “I think you should go now.” His words come hard. Harder than he’s ever talked to me before, but I can hear the hurt underneath.

  “No, Rid. I’m not leaving. We need to talk this out.”

  “My mom was right. I’m not ready for this. You should go.” Open. Close. Open. Close. “I’m not ready,” he repeats himself. Open. Close. “You should go.”

  “Come on, we need to talk it out.”

  He still won’t look me in the eye. “Mr. Trucker!” he yells. He yells for the asshat.

  “Fine, I’ll go. But we’re not done.”

  “We’re done,” he whispers. The pain in my gut at those words is so harsh I feel like he literally shoved a blade in and twisted. I have to get out before I make a fool of myself crying like a flipping baby.

  For two weeks I’ve avoided the carnival and the boardwalk, the beach and the jetty. Gabe had the nerve to show up to the jetty the last time I went. Jock cut, board shorts and rippling abs on display. He actually thought I’d blow him. In secret of course. Because he’s not gay. After all, he has a girlfriend. Ruin my shot at love for a secret blowie. Just like Gabe Freaking Cera.

  Mom wanted to talk but talking would be the last thing I want to do. So to avoid her and her questions I’ve been hanging at the park across from St. Luke’s Medical Center.

  Farther inland the humidity this time of year can reach unbearable levels. In my effort to hide, from the heat and from the world, I stick to the swings tucked underneath the canopy of lush green foliage from the hickory trees to shade me from the direct sun. I’d rather be at the beach, but it’s too hard. Heartbreak sucks. I wonder if I’d made Amanda feel as bad as I feel right now.

  “You’re a hard man to get ahold of.” That voice. Speak of the devil and the devil shall appear. I know that voice. I’ve kissed the lips attached to that voice. Moved inside the body, attached to that voice. Although admittedly, I did it thinking of beautiful, naked men because that was the only way for me to get it up and keep it up. Nevertheless, I whip my head to look at her. Amanda and her smile. She always had the best smile. She’s still as beautiful as ever. The female equivalent to Rid. Sandy blonde hair and hazel eyes. Rosy cheeks. Fantastic body. If I could’ve ever fallen in love with a girl, Amanda would’ve been that girl. Part of me wishes I could’ve been the man she needed me to be, but then, I’d have missed out on Ridley.

  “I didn’t know you were looking,” I tell her honestly. Because our breakup wasn’t exactly mutual and I didn’t have the guts to tell her the real reason. I thought she hated me.

  “Well, I have been. Leif, I miss you.”

  “Listen Mandy…”

  “No. I know. I don’t miss you because I want to get back together. I miss you because I miss you. We were together for three years. You were my first serious kiss. I gave you my virginity for crying out loud. So yeah, I was hurt. Doesn’t mean I don’t miss you.”

  “What do you mean you know?”

  “I ran into your parents at Christmas. They told me what you didn’t. I really wish it had come from you, but I understand. Now it seems you’ve gone and fallen in love for real this time.”

  “My mother sent you, didn’t she?”

  “I haven’t talked to her recently, so no.”

  “What does it matter? He won’t talk to me. I feel like…god, I can’t even explain how it fee
ls.”

  “Trust me, I get it.”

  She would. I did the same thing to her. Sent her away without a reason for the split.

  “Jesus Mandy, I’m so sorry.”

  “Water under the bridge so long as you say we can still be friends, and mean it. I’m talking hanging out the rest of the summer, you visiting me at school, me visiting you. Think you can handle that stud?”

  Stud. Her nickname for me. Feels good to hear it again. Feels normal, right. “Yeah. We can still be friends. And for the record, I did, do love you. Just…”

  “Not in that way. I know. But speaking of sexy men with hazel eyes who you do love in that way—”

  I cut her off, “What? H-how do you know?”

  “He’s in my car.”

  Amanda drops that bomb on me without a word of explanation as she swipes her phone. She calls a number, then “Yeah Ridley. He’s here. I’m going for a walk...” A pause for his response and then, “by the swings.” That’s it. She hangs up.

  What the hell just happened?

  I’m torn between looking at Ridley jogging toward us and Amanda starting to walk away. Clearly I’ve got to patch things up with Rid, but I call to Amanda. She stops. I run up, kiss her on the nose, give a quick “Thanks” and turn back for my, well, I hope my boyfriend.

  He doesn’t stop jogging until the slamming of our bodies together ceases his forward momentum. Cupping my cheeks in each of his hands, Ridley cocks his head to crush his lips against mine. Hard and powerful. And as much as I want to be in the moment all I can think is, Holy shit! Rid’s kissing me in public.

  The next thing I know he’s spearing his tongue against my lips leaving me no choice but to open up for his invasion. Two weeks, I’d forgotten how great he tastes. As he kisses and licks and nips and probes my mouth all the pain of our separation dissipates. His hands slide from my cheeks down to around my shoulders and waist pulling us closer, deepening the kiss.