Don't Read in the Closet volume one

by Various Authors

  Thankfully, they were some of the first guests to arrive, so there wasn’t a line at the bar. He’d already downed one shot of Jager and was working on his second when he heard a throat clearing behind him. Finnegan turned around and barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes when he saw the man trying to get his attention. How had the evening managed to get even more annoying?

  Rick Fremont wasn’t actually a bad guy. He’d gone to law school with Tucker and Finnegan, but his relentless come-ons over the years had become so unbearable that Finnegan had made concerted efforts to avoid him. He should have realized Rick would be at the wedding. The Fremonts were tight with Bradford’s family.

  “Hey, Rick. How’s it going?”

  “It’s going better for me than it is for you, by the look of things.”

  Now Finnegan actually did roll his eyes.

  “Things are going fine for me, Rick. My family is thrilled about Karen’s wedding, I just won my first trial as first chair, and Tucker and I bought a great condo downtown.”

  “So you’re still with Tucker Jones, huh? I’m surprised it’s lasted this long.”

  "What the hell does that mean?" Finnegan forced himself to take a deep breath and made an internal vow to lay off the alcohol. The last thing he wanted was to get piss-drunk and cause a scene at his sister’s wedding.

  "It means you're not a woman. He might be willing to let you get him off for a while, but he won't stay with you. Come on, Finnegan, everyone knows the guy's basically straight."

  "He isn't straight, Rick. Trust me. A straight guy wouldn't have let me do what I did in bed this afternoon."

  As soon as the words left his mouth, Finnegan winced. Damn it. He shouldn’t be standing around talking about something that was between himself and his lover. Still, the shocked expression on Rick’s face as he processed the implications of that statement was very satisfying. Unfortunately, Rick recovered all too quickly.

  "Just because he likes having his ass filled, doesn't make him gay. Hell, he could get that from a woman with a dildo. Even if he's slightly bi, that doesn't change anything. Those types of guys always end up married to a woman with two-point-five kids and a white picket fence. A little sex with you isn't going to change that."

  “Alright. Well, it was good catching up with you, Rick. See you later.”

  Of course it wasn’t good and Finnegan had no desire to see the annoying man later, but it seemed like the right thing to say as he was making a run for it. The conversation with Rick on the heels of that frustrating limo ride made Finnegan feel like he had ants crawling under his skin. He found a bench in a secluded part of the yard and sat down.

  During more than twenty years of friendship, Tucker Jones had been many things – a class clown, a popular jock, an honor student, a frat boy, a baby lawyer – the list went on and on, but one trait that most definitely wasn’t on the list was gay. Well, at least it hadn’t been before that kiss.

  *****

  Finnegan had plans to meet some friends at a gay bar that night and Tucker, apparently on a lark, decided to come along. They stumbled back to their apartment after midnight, more because they were both laughing than because either of them had had all that much to drink. And that’s what made it all the more surprising when Tucker walked out of the kitchen, handed Finnegan a bottle of water, and said, “Did you see those two guys making out in the corner all night? It was pretty hot.”

  The water went down the wrong pipe and Finnegan almost choked. Tucker had to bang on his back for a good minute before he finally managed to calm down.

  “Did you just say that watching two men make out was hot?” Finnegan’s voice was still rough from the near drowning he’d just avoided while standing in his living room.

  “What? You didn’t think so?” Tucker sounded surprised.

  “Umm, well, yeah I guess so. But here’s a news flash for you, TJ, straight guys don’t usually think watching other guys making out is arousing.”

  Tucker shrugged.

  “Who said I was straight?”

  Finnegan’s jaw dropped. Umm, the lineup of girl friends over the years? Figuring that his friend was just screwing around, Finnegan grasped Tucker’s shirt, glared at him, and yanked him forward, landing a closed-mouth kiss on wet, plump lips.

  "You kissed me."

  The words were barely audible and the bewildered expression on Tucker’s face was disconcerting.

  "Yeah, I did."

  Now that he’d done it, Finnegan was a little nervous that he’d crossed some boundary, even if they had been kidding around.

  "I didn't say you could kiss me."

  "True enough. So you gonna claim I committed a battery?"

  "Huh?" Tucker sounded dazed.

  "You know, a tort resulting from an unwelcome and offensive touching. I know you practice corporate law, TJ, but how'd you pass the bar without knowing basic claims?"

  He knew he was babbling, but Finnegan couldn’t help it. It was his body’s instinctive reaction to stressful situations.

  "Finn?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Stop being a lawyer for a minute and kiss me again."

  So he did. But this time his hand caressed Tucker’s chest instead of grabbing his shirt, his eyes closed on their own accord, and his mouth opened as he leaned forward. It was a real kiss, tongues and moans, groping hands and humping hips, and irrefutable evidence that even though Tucker Jones had always dated girls, the man most definitely was not straight.

  *****

  "Hey."

  Finnegan jolted out of memory lane and snapped his eyes up. His heart immediately started slamming against his chest. Just seeing Tucker did that to him. The man was positively stunning in his tailored black suit with a silk polka dot tie.

  "Hi."

  “Talk to me, Finn. What’s eating at you?”

  He let out a shaky breath.

  "Sometimes I still worry that you'll decide this isn't worth it."

  Finnegan hadn’t meant to say anything; the words had somehow spilled out all on their own. Oh, well he never could hide anything from his best friend.

  "This?" Tucker asked.

  "Yeah, you know. The scowls when we're walking down the street, the tension with your family, that guy in your office who gives you strange looks. This."

  One side of Tucker’s mouth slowly went up in a sexy grin.

  "Ahh. This. Yeah, it sucks, but there's nothing we can do to change them. We just have to live our lives."

  Finnegan shrugged.

  "Sure, I know. But this doesn't have to be your life."

  Tucker stopped smiling.

  "I see. So it's somehow different for me, is that it? I can just walk away?"

  Those brown eyes were squinting and the full lips were drawn in tight lines. Okay, so Tucker was angry. Finnegan knew that, but being angry didn’t change the facts. Bisexual wasn’t the same thing as gay. Tucker could choose a different life. But Finnegan couldn’t.

  "Come on, TJ. You know you could. You could date Daisy or Darcy or whatever the hell her name is. That woman your mother won't stop talking about it. And you could have a couple of kids, get a house ..."

  "Put up a white picket fence, buy a dildo ..."

  Finnegan froze.

  "You heard that?"

  The question was barely a whisper.

  "Yeah.”

  Damn it. Finnegan felt like such an ass. Tucker didn’t deserve to be saddled with his insecurities.

  "I'm sorry."

  Tucker stretched his arm out, reaching his hand to Finnegan.

  "Don't be sorry, but listen to me. A woman with a dildo is never going to replace you."

  Finnegan wanted to take that hand. Wanted to let Tucker pull him up and hug him and then everything would feel right again. But he couldn’t.

  "How can you be so sure?"

  He hated the break in his own voice when he asked the question. He looked down at his knees, feeling embarrassed, but then he had to look back up again. He had
to see Tucker’s face, his eyes, his smile. When he met the adoring gaze aimed his way, his stomach flipped over.

  "Because a dildo won't grow and fill in my hand when I stroke it. Because a dildo won't taste warm and salty against my tongue when I lick it, or push against my throat with a firm but giving pressure. Because a dildo won't ever move inside me and touch just the right spots the way you do.”

  Finnegan couldn’t stay sitting after that. He put his hand in Tucker’s and let himself get pulled to his feet and tugged toward Tucker’s chest. Then he reenacted the kiss that started it all – head tilted up, eyes closed, hand reaching for Tucker’s chest, and mouth open.

  It felt even better this time. The lust was just as strong, the friendship just as deep, but there was even more between them now. There was the knowledge of how much Finnegan liked having his ass caressed while they kissed, how much Tucker liked to have his tongue sucked, and there was love. Deep abiding love.

  “Do you want to know the biggest problem with a woman with a dildo, Finn?" Tucker asked breathlessly when they finally broke apart for air.

  "What?"

  Those long fingers traced Finnegan’s lips.

  "She wouldn't have your smile that lights up the whole room and seems to see only me. She wouldn't beat my ass in basketball and talk smack the whole way home. She wouldn't support my pathetic body on a two mile hike out of a canyon after I'm dumb enough to climb an unsteady rock to get a picture and end up with a twisted ankle. She wouldn't know I was actually happy to play the pink bunny in the second grade spring play.” Tucker’s big hands cupped Finnegan’s cheeks and their eyes locked together. “The biggest problem with a woman with a dildo is that she isn't you."

  THE END

  Also from Cardeno C.:

  He Completes Me

  Home Again

  Love at First Sight

  Where He Ends and I Begin

  Website: www.cardenoc.com

  E-mail: cardenoc@cardenoc.com

  L.C. Chase – OPEN TACKLE (Friends to Lovers)*

  Selected by L.C. Chase

  Dear Author,

  I can't tell you how long I've wanted a story to go along with this picture. I love the thought that they have been friends forever and just couldn't resist each other anymore.

  [PHOTO: Two shirtless young men lay on top of each other, the one on top with his pants pushed down to expose his butt, kissing on a grassy field. A football rests in the grass next to them.]

  I would be forever grateful if you could help me out!!

  Sincerely,

  Nic

  Genre: contemporary

  Tags: friends-to-lovers, college, football, athletes, first-time

  Words: 6,410

  OPEN TACKLE

  by L.C. Chase

  I love you.

  The words bounced around inside Rory’s skull like ping-pong balls in a wind tunnel.

  I love you.

  Did Owen really say that? Like he meant it in a non-brotherly, non-best-friend, I-want-to-get-naked-with-you way?

  Rory kicked off the covers, threw his legs over the edge of the bed and groaned when he glanced at the clock radio on his night table. Such an innocuous, inanimate object, yet it begged for his fist, the way it tauntingly displayed 4:47am in obnoxious digital green. He’d hardly slept more than an hour in fits and starts since Owen had dropped the L-bomb on him and then run for the hills.

  He rolled out of bed, pulled on a pair of cotton briefs that were lying on the floor and wandered across the small bedroom to stand in front of the window. From his third-story apartment, he could see Folsom Stadium, painted with the first blush of a sunrise kiss. Beyond the main CU-Boulder campus the infamous Flatirons reached for the heavens in all their glory. It was five miles from his apartment to the university, but in the clear mile-high Colorado air it appeared as close as crossing the block.

  He could even see the campus dorms. Where he used to live with Owen.

  He exhaled a heavy sigh. The gust of hot, moist breath collided with the cool glass surface and created a thin fog that clouded his view. He drew an O in the center with his fingertip and watched it vanish. A secret message left behind for discovery.

  Last night, seven sleepless hours ago, when they’d been celebrating another game victory at a local sports pub, Owen Harris, his very best friend, told Rory he loved him. To say Rory had been stunned was an understatement. He’d fought saying those very words himself for so long now, dreamed of hearing them tumble off Owen’s enticing tongue to lick the shell of his ear. When he finally did hear them his brain short-circuited, throat closed, heart stopped. That the dream had manifested into reality was beyond surreal.

  Especially considering Owen wasn’t even gay.

  Or so Rory had believed.

  Rory’s mental engine had stuttered and coughed as the ignition fought to fire. Coherent thought and speech danced just beyond his reach and left him sitting there, staring at Owen like he was from another planet, speaking a foreign language. Frozen with the overwhelming desire that what he was hearing was true, and paralyzed with the fear that he’d had a few too many tequila shots and imagined his friend’s declaration.

  But Owen, always quick to conclusion, took his silence as rejection. I’m sorry, he said as his beautiful brown eyes began to glitter with moisture. I am so sorry, he repeated before he turned and ran from the bar.

  When Rory’s motor finally kicked in and spurred him into action, he raced through the front doors and spilled out onto a near-deserted Pearl Street. Owen was gone.

  I love you.

  Rory braced his hands on either side of the window frame and leaned his forehead against the glass. Almost twenty years they’d known each other. Almost twenty years they’d been inseparable. Ever since the cute little brunet with the big puppy-dog eyes moved in two doors down and they became instant best friends. They did everything and went everywhere together. They finished each other’s sentences, and developed that innate ability of silent communication generally reserved for old married couples.

  Then puberty hit Rory like a semi-truck, and he started to notice things about Owen he was pretty sure most boys didn’t notice about other boys. Things like how long and thick his best friend’s eyelashes were, or the high cheekbones they fanned. The guileless brown eyes flecked with gold, and the burning red that shimmered in fine threads through rich tawny hair when the summer sun fingered Owen's shaggy locks. And long fingers that graced hands he’d spent far too much time imagining how they’d feel caressing his bare skin. And for the next four years, Rory walked around in a constant state of arousal.

  He so badly wanted to tell Owen what was going on with him, the feelings raging inside, but he was terrified of losing his best friend. Owen was his other half. The thought of losing him, losing the friendship they shared, that effortless connection, was unbearable. That they both played offense on the high school football team -- a team chock full of testosterone-overdosed he-men, where Rory Ballard was the star quarterback and Owen the star wide receiver -- also had the potential to put both their scholarships at risk.

  There was no way he could come out to the one person in the world he should have been able to. So he mastered the art of denial. Almost believed it himself.

  Until college.

  Sharing a dorm room like they’d always planned had quickly become a living hell. Owen had added another four inches to his height and filled out, putting him just an inch taller than Rory’s six feet three, and twenty pounds of solid muscle heavier. He was the most beautiful man Rory had ever seen. That long, lithe body was a sculptor’s dream. And because Rory wasn’t the sculptor, and never would be, he began to pull away.

  Owen sensed that something wasn’t right and tried to understand, tried to help, but every time he asked what was wrong, Rory said he was just tired. College life, studies and the football team were a lot to keep up with. Every concerned touch that followed -- a hand on his back, an arm over his shoulder, a smack on the ass at pract
ice -- became a stick poking a hornet’s nest. And then came the final straw just over a month ago: Owen sitting beside him on his bed, rubbing slow circles on Rory’s back with that big strong hand, the two of them wearing nothing more than workout shorts, bare thighs touching, had snapped the bounds of Rory’s rapidly thinning resolve.

  He saw himself pushing his best friend back on the bed, straddling his hips and sinking into that hard, pliant body. And right on the heels of that image, the deafening rattle of walls when the door slammed behind Owen’s retreating back, leaving Rory in the dust with a hole in his chest that would never heal.

  He shook the image away and shot off the bed like he’d been stuck with a cattle prod, then made the most heartbreaking decision of his entire life. He moved out of the dorm the next day, and pushed the only person who meant anything in his whole life further away.

  I love you.

  Anger welled up inside Rory with frightening intensity. Owen knew him better than that. Should have known no matter what he said, Rory wouldn’t judge, wouldn’t turn away from him. Rory promptly shut down the little voice in the back of his mind that tried to point out the obvious. He didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to face the fact that while Owen should have known better, he should have too.

  Hypocrisy was a bitter dish. He wasn’t hungry.

  “Fuck this,” Rory said in a muted voice. He pushed off from the window and picked up a pair of jeans and his team jersey from the floor. He quickly dressed, grabbed his wallet and keys, and stormed out of the apartment.

  * * *

  THE TEMPERATURE WAS still comfortable in the early morning light, the world still in peaceful repose when he started walking. When walking quickly proved not enough to ebb his anger he started to jog, accelerated into run, and then kicked it up another gear into a full-out sprint. Breath wheezed harsh and loud through his throat, lungs heaved, and thighs burned and threatened to give out with every bone-jarring strike against the unforgiving pavement. Sweat flooded from his pores, drying into salty crystals on his skin as the arid climate sucked the fluids from his body almost as fast as he expelled it. His gritty eyes watered and vision doubled.

  But he was not crying. Rory Ballard did not cry.