by Morgan Kyle
Wrong, Eric. I wish I could, but I can’t. I’m fucking my swim coach and it could ruin me, ruin him, and there’s no telling the kind of judgment I’d be on the receiving end of, even possibly from you.
“Yeah,” I said, “I know.”
As the evening wore on, I found myself thinking more and more about Cole. It was a Saturday night, and we had spent the last several Saturday nights together. Well, part of the night anyway. I wondered what he was doing. I kept wanting to text him, but didn’t, not wanting to give Eric anything more to ask me about, and also not wanting it to appear to Cole that I couldn’t be without him on a Saturday night.
A pizza delivery guy showed up and had to make two trips to his car to bring in what looked like almost ten boxes. Eric and I both agreed it was the suckiest pizza in town so we weren’t going to get any.
A girl sat on the trunk of a car, a guy standing close in front of her, with her legs wrapped around him. They were laughing and kissing.
A guy came outside and stood close to us, smoking a cigarette. We were downwind and the billowing gray cloud wafted right into our faces. Eric asked the guy if he would move, and he did.
We sat there watching and small-talking, until Eric eventually said, “Do you ever wonder if our lives will be the same after all of this?”
“Everything’s going to be different,” I said.
He was looking straight ahead. “Sucks.”
I looked over at him. “Actually, I can’t wait.”
The window near us rattled as some song with an insanely furious drum solo blew out of the speakers.
Eric leaned closer to me so I could hear him. “You gonna come visit me?”
“Where?”
He shrugged. “Wherever I end up. You’re going to be here, and I’ll be somewhere else. It’s going to be the first time in our lives that we’ve ever been apart.”
I hadn’t even begun to think of future details like that, but he was right. God, we’d been around each other—same neighborhood, same schools, everything—for about twenty years. The only time we weren’t was when we were babies and we’d never remember that anyway.
“I can’t imagine us ever losing touch, you know?”
He just nodded.
“Plus,” I added, “I don’t care if you get a job ten thousand miles away, I’d still go there and I know you’d still come back here.”
I was in a car accident when I was seven. I don’t remember much of what happened after the impact, but what stayed with me all these years was the suddenness of it. Totally unexpected, out of nowhere, bam! To label it as shock would be an understatement. It was more along the lines of mental detachment—this can’t be happening to me, there was no warning, in a second I’ll wake up and realize I’d been dreaming...
That’s what it was like when Eric kissed me.
He just leaned over and before I could process what was happening, before I could think Whoa! and move, his lips were on mine and I felt a deep exhale of warm air coming from his nose and hitting my cheek.
What do you call it when someone kisses you and you don’t move? Does that qualify as kissing them back? Does it imply consent? Does it send the message that you want them to be kissing you? Because none of those come anywhere close to the reason I didn’t move my head away. It was shock—pure, body-freezing, motionless surprise. At least that’s the way it was for the first few seconds of the kiss, until my lack of resistance caused him to decide it was time to slip his tongue between my lips.
That’s when I moved. It sounds like there was a lot of time that passed between the first contact and my putting a stop to it, but it couldn’t have been more than a second and a half, maybe two, tops.
I hopped off the railing we’d been sitting on.
“What the hell, Eric?” There was disdain in my voice. It was an octave higher, a bit shrill, but can you blame me?
He just looked at me, blank expression.
I jutted my head forward, raising my eyebrows, the look that says: Well?
His gaze left my face and his eyes dropped to the floor. “I… I just…” His voice lowered and the words wouldn’t come to him. “It seemed like the right time.”
“The right time,” I said, flatly. “I think you’re drunk.”
He produced a little smile. “I am.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, then realized it was a defensive stance and more than a little clichéd.
“You kissed me back,” he said.
The blood rose from my chest to my head, surging in…what was it? Anger? Embarrassment?
“No,” I managed. “I really didn’t.”
“Yeah, you really did.”
Who was this person sitting on the railing before me? We’d been best friends almost our whole lives, nothing like this had ever happened, and suddenly here we were, having just kissed, and arguing about whether or not I wanted it to happen.
“You’re drunk, Eric.”
He hopped off the railing, landing awkwardly, almost stumbling. He caught himself. “And you’re a tease.” He brushed past me, through the crowd, and I stood there, unable to speak, shocked more by those words than I had been by the kiss.
I gathered myself after a moment or so, realizing that the only reason I was at this party was because of Eric and now he’d walked away from me. Maybe he’d gone back inside to refill at the keg. As if he needed it.
A tease? I had never done anything to tease Eric. I’d never said anything that would give him the idea that I had any interest in anything beyond a friendship. I’d never teased him physically. We weren’t even the type of friends who might snuggle on the couch watching a movie. There was none of that. Not one microscopic shred of a reason for him to think I wanted anything more.
I walked into the house, navigating my way through small clots of people, bumping, being bumped, saying excuse me and getting looks of annoyance in return. Made it to the keg. No Eric. Made it to the den. No Eric.
I was about to walk out the front door when I saw one of the guys he had introduced me to a while back. I couldn’t remember his name, so I just said, “Hey, have you seen Eric?”
“Yeah, few minutes ago. He said he was leaving.”
“Fuck. I’m sorry. I…thanks.” I walked past him, out the front door, and walked the three blocks to my apartment. When I got there, I found what I had expected to find. Eric’s car was gone. As drunk as he was, he was driving.
I texted him: Where are you?
No response.
Tried again. Same text. No response.
I called, and it went right to voicemail. He had his phone turned off.
I was feeling fine, having not consumed very much during the evening, so I got in my car and drove to Eric’s, hoping like hell he had intended to go straight home and that he’d actually made it.
A wave of relief flushed over me when I saw his car parked in his spot. A little crooked, one wheel on the white line, but still better than wrapped around a tree somewhere.
*****
“Are you drunk? Because you’re not slurring so you don’t sound drunk but what you’re telling me is fucking crazy.”
That was Izzy’s response when I told her what happened with Eric. I’d called her when I was walking into my apartment.
“I’m not drunk, and it is fucking crazy.”
“Jesus, I can’t believe it. Eric finally made his move.”
I sat down on the sofa, not saying anything as I processed the words she’d just said. “What do you mean ‘finally’?”
She laughed. “That boy, I swear. I knew it all along.”
“Knew…”
“That he wanted to be with you.”
I put my feet up on the coffee table and sank deeper into the cushions. “He told you that?”
“No,” she said, “he didn’t have to. It was just some of the times he looked at you, it was like he was pining for you.”
Eric pining? It didn’t seem like the Eric I knew, or thought I knew. “You�
��re the second person to say that. Miranda said the exact same thing.”
“How’s that going, by the way?”
I sighed. “She’s not you.”
“Awww.” Izzy laughed. “Well, anyway, she’s right. I’m right. Eric has wanted to be with you for…maybe forever?”
“And of course I’m the last to know.”
It didn’t really surprise me that I didn’t see it in him. One of the most fascinating aspects of human psychology that I’d learned over the years of my studies was that people saw what they wanted to see. Something terribly negative could be staring them right in the face, but if they were in denial, they didn’t even register its existence. Pessimistic people could have something positive going on, and only see the potentially negative outcomes of the situation. I’d spent time trying to convince myself that I was in neither group, that I was a fact-based, rational person, and that I assessed situations in a reasonable fashion.
Guess not.
As long as I’d known Eric, I had always looked at him as a friend, a best guy friend, maybe even like a brother I never had. And all along, all the little hints, the looks he gave me telegraphing the fact that he was interested in more, every signal he gave that others picked up, I just missed them. All of them. What your mind can do is kind of scary.
“I really don’t want to talk about this anymore right now,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on with you.”
Izzy briefed me on the latest in her new life back home in Miami—school, her dad’s condition, what it was like living at home again—and though I listened intently to every word she said, I kept dreading the sound of an incoming text or call from Eric.
It never happened.
All during our conversation, I kept debating: should I tell her about Cole? Tell her everything? And would telling her violate the secret unspoken pact that Cole and I had to not tell anyone?
Part of me wanted to get it off my chest, just blurt it all out there. Another part of me—that would be my conscience—kept reprimanding me: You can’t tell her, you can’t tell anyone.
I knew my conscience was right, but I told Izzy anyway. All of it. Everything.
Chapter Nine
I woke up the next morning to a completely quiet apartment. Miranda wasn’t there. I had the place to myself. I lay in bed for longer than usual, replaying the events of the night before, trying to edit out the precise, seriously unwelcome details of the kiss. Part of me felt guilty for not pulling away immediately, not stopping it sooner, because maybe that wouldn’t have given Eric any reason to think I was kissing him back. I really hadn’t.
Had I?
See, that’s why I didn’t want to have the details on a loop in my head all day.
I needed to do something to keep my mind off of it. I thought about texting Cole, asking him to come over. Maybe a quick “Miss you”? No, too strong for what we had going on. Maybe something explicit? No, too needy, too much like begging for his attention. Plus, I wanted to see if he would contact me first.
I spent my day preparing for classes for the upcoming week. Took a short run. Went to the grocery store. Flipped through the channels on the TV, finding absolutely nothing of interest and wondering why I even bothered.
All day, no call or text from Cole. Sad.
Nothing from Eric, either. Glad.
The day was a wash.
*****
The next several days at practice, both morning and afternoon sessions, Cole barely acknowledged me. He glanced at me a few times. I held eye contact, but he looked away each time. It stung at first, but I remembered why I had gotten into this situation in the first place, that it wasn’t serious, he wasn’t my boyfriend, we were just fuck-buddies, and seriously, Brooke…get over it.
I went home for lunch on Thursday, stopping at a deli and picking up and sandwich. Miranda and Gwen were there, Miranda unloading the dishwasher, Gwen sitting on a stool, doing something on her phone and not even looking up from the screen when I opened the door. The moment I walked in, Miranda asked me why Eric hadn’t been around all week.
I had been waiting for this. Eric and I didn’t qualify for the old saying “attached at the hip” but it was strange for us to go five days without seeing each other, without talking to each other, and any other normal week, he would have been over here at least two or three times.
So it was a perfectly reasonable question for Miranda to ask. But I resented the hell out of it.
I hadn’t minded so much when she’d mentioned Eric’s obvious crush a while back, but this was different. She’d been right, and he’d acted on it, and it would have been more than awkward talking to her about it. Izzy, yes. Miranda, no.
So I lied, “He said he had a busy week coming up.”
It worked. She went back to placing glasses in the cabinet, and I continued down the hall to my bedroom, where I ate my lunch and took a short nap before practice.
*****
The Thursday afternoon practice was the same: Cole acting as though I wasn’t even there. I decided to give it right back to him, so after the first ten minutes of practice, I didn’t look his way again. I even managed to walk right past him afterwards, dripping wet, heading for the locker room, goggles perched on my forehead, eyes straight ahead, not even slightly glancing his way.
I woke up Friday early Friday morning, just before five a.m., to the sound of an incoming text. My immediate thought was that it was Eric. I’m not sure why—maybe I was kind of hoping it was him, telling me he’d had a sleepless night and that we should forget what happened at the party. That’s where my mind was toward the end of the week, and I had thought about calling him and telling him exactly that, but I didn’t want to push it if he wasn’t ready to talk to me after embarrassing himself like he had.
But the text wasn’t from Eric. It was from Cole: You up?
“You up?” is perhaps the most famous booty-call text, and this was the first one I’d ever received.
Me, going for sarcasm: I am now, thanks to you…
Him: You would be up shortly anyway for practice. But I think you should come here for a little while first.
I was up and out of my bed the next second, typing OK and running to the shower, where I spent about three minutes. Got out, dried off, pulled on some shorts and a hoodie, exactly what I’d be wearing to practice anyway. I drove to his apartment complex. A thin line of sunlight was breaking through on the horizon. There was little traffic, and just a few people out running on the sidewalks. The streetlights were still on, one of them turning off just as I pulled into his parking lot.
Walking up the stairs to his apartment, I was trying to be quiet with my steps—the clandestine nature of all of this still making me surge with excitement. There was no way he could have heard me, so he must have been watching out the window and seen me quick-stepping across the parking lot, because as soon as I raised my hand to knock, the door opened and he pulled me inside.
He was on me like an animal that had been caged and somehow broke free, and now I was the one caged against the wall, caged by his arms and his lips crushing into mine.
He had backed me against the door and I felt the knob against my lower back. His hand must have felt it as his fingers glided around my waist and he moved me to the side.
His face smelled of shaving cream, his hair was still wet like mine. Warmth radiated from beneath his t-shirt, I could feel it as he pressed his chest against mine, my own shirt raking across my hardening nipples. I could barely see him in the dim light; it was as though I was being taken by some kind of physical shadow.
Cole sucked on my tongue as his hand drifted down to the hem of my shirt, pulling it up over my breasts. Since I had dressed like I always did for morning practice, there was no bra for him to fiddle with. His big palm covered my breast, fingers splayed around the swell of it, plumping it as his thumb traced circles around my nipple.
“This is all wrong,” he said, and I felt a stab of fear—he was going to stop right here, tell me h
e shouldn’t have asked me to come over, and that we shouldn’t do this again.
Instead, his hands lifted to each side of my face, he kissed me again, one hand slipping around to the back of my neck and he started to walk backward with his lips never leaving mine.
He had walked us to his bedroom.
Maybe This is all wrong was just about where we’d been standing, or the fact that we were standing at all. Or maybe he was thinking out loud, announcing to us both just how wrong all of this was, that we shouldn’t be doing it. If that were the case, his words didn’t match his actions, because the second we entered his bedroom he guided me to his bed so I was lying face-down. Pulling my shorts down with one hand, his other squeezing my ass, his firm fingers massaging it, and then…teeth. Just the slightest of a bite, followed by another sucking kiss.
When he rolled me onto my back, I saw that he had worked his shorts off, too. He was naked, his body illuminated a little more by the rising morning sun coming in through his bedroom window. His eyes were wide, lips slightly parted, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever seen a man this turned on for me.
Cole lowered his head and kissed my stomach. His tongue drew a line straight down, and I felt it curve upward, barely touching my clit. My back arched in response, my hips rose. I wanted him to do it again, and he did, this time with a full-tongued lick. His lips closed around me. I felt his hot breath, making me even wetter as I grabbed a handful of his damp hair. And before I could beg him to do it again, he moved up my body. I felt his thick, heavy cock on my thigh and I reached for it. Wrapped my hand around his shaft, feeling like a soft sheath covering steel.
His hand slid up the sheets and beneath the pillow, returning with a condom in hand. He held it, bit the foil package, and he didn’t have to tell me to reach for it. I just did. I wanted to put it on him, and as I rolled it down his length, I felt it twitching in my hand.
We stared into each other’s eyes as he positioned himself between me. The stare was more than any words could have expressed. It was two people knowing they were going down a dangerous path, getting more and more addicted to each other each time we were together. Wrong. It was wrong, but so right, the kind of thing that’s better because it’s so wrong.
