by Lina Langley
Cyrus and Montgomery exchanged a look.
“You didn’t!”
“None of your business, choirboy,” Montgomery says, winking at me. “What is it that they say? Easiest way to get over someone is to get under them.”
Cyrus is blushing. I want to slap them both. Lawrence laughs. “Why don’t you boys come in?” he asks. “I’ve made plenty of breakfast. Enough for two extra people.”
“Oh, they wouldn’t want to intrude,” I say.
“Actually, food sounds amazing,” Montgomery replies. He takes a step closer into the house and I gawk at him as Cyrus follows him inside. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.
We all sit at the table as if it’s no big deal. When Montgomery starts to eat, his gaze darts between Lawrence and I. “So are you two like, dating? Considering you spent the night here.”
I look at Lawrence, my cheeks red. I don’t know what to answer. “Yes,” Lawrence says with a smile on his face. “I’m his boyfriend.”
That makes Cyrus and Montgomery look at each other, and then they start snickering. Lawrence grabs my hand and kisses it and it makes my heart jump in my chest.
CONTINUE
I spend the rest of my summer having sex with Lawrence and hanging out with Montgomery and Cyrus. The two are a couple now, and they’re cute. I’m glad to see they’ve found each other and sad to see that Cyrus is going to leave him behind, but they seem to have an understanding that it’s just a fling.
I wish Lawrence and I had to come to the same understanding, because I don’t think this is a fling. I think I’m falling in love with Lawrence, which is a problem. We’re having lots of sex, lots and lots of sex, but he cooks for me, asks me how I’m doing, lets me borrow books that look like they cost more than everything I own.
He pulls my hair and says my name as he comes inside of me. He tells me to get on my knees for the first meal of the day after he has cooked me breakfast and then he feeds me my come until I’m left gasping. He wakes me up by sucking my dick and he tells me to roll over and bites into my shoulder as he fingers me to completion. He’s asked me to fuck him in the bathroom, in the living room, by the pool. He’s always ready for anything, and even though he’s about twice my age, sometimes I find it hard to keep up with him.
Then he says my name and kisses my cheek. He asks me how my day was. He puts his arm around me as I’m watching a movie and he’s reading a book. He goes to Church with me and discusses the sermon thoroughly afterward in the car. The Friday before I’m due to leave, he gets me a silver rosary to hang around my neck, kisses my mouth and tells me he’s going to miss me. When he pulls away, I feel like I might faint.
“Can you drive me?” I say to him the night before I’m due to leave. We’re cuddling on the couch, my head on his lap.
He puts his book down, moves his glasses away from his face. “I thought you’d want your friends to drive you.”
“I want them there,” I say. “To see me off. But I would rather have my boyfriend drive me.”
I think that’s the first time I’ve called him my boyfriend to his face. He closes his eyes a little and then he nods, pushing my hair away from my face. “Of course I’ll drive you, Alejandro.”
I can’t see him like this. I can’t stand to see him this sad. I move his book away from him and put it on the coffee table, then climb on top of him, one leg on each side of him. I kiss him softly on the lips, then move away from him. His eyes are watering and I feel like I’m breaking his heart.
This is breaking my heart.
“Lawrence?”
“Yes, darling?”
“Can you fuck me?”
He smiles briefly then closes the gap between us to kiss me hungrily on the mouth. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I can fuck you.”
I lean back to grab the lube off the coffee table and then hand it to him. I get off him for a second while he scrambles to take his pants off and I do the same. I’m already hard just thinking about this and I can feel his cock pressing against my ass as I move down, so the tip of his cock is right under me.
He’s slathering his dick with lube and kissing me on the mouth, sloppily at times, other times softly, moving away from me to gaze into my eyes. He bites my lower lip then smiles. “Sit on me, Alejandro.”
I could come just from the way he says my name. I do as I’m told, taking him in slowly, even though I want to fuck myself on his cock more than anything in the world. We both breathe at the same time once he’s inside me, then he grabs my dick and starts jacking me off as I move up and down on top of him.
It’s slow, slower than we’ve ever done it, but I can still feel how close I am to coming when I look at his face. He moves his free hand up so that he’s holding my throat, just hard enough to put pressure on it, and after what must be fifteen to twenty minutes of momentary bursts of pleasure and looking into each other’s eyes, he whispers my name.
I know what he means—there’s no way for me not to know what he means—because the moment he says my name, I start going faster, knowing that he’s going to come inside me, his hands matching the rhythm of my hips.
He groans, closes his eyes a little and tells me he’s going to come, making sure to hold me in place by applying pressure on my throat and looking right at me as he does, all while he brings me to an orgasm, which I can feel everywhere. Warmth from the core of my body to the tips of my fingers, rolling, crashing stars of nothing but pleasure under my skin.
I don’t close my eyes. I never close my eyes. I stare at him when I come. When I’m done, I’m left gasping for breath, and when he moves his hand away from my throat, I start coughing. He laughs quietly. I’m about to get off him but he holds me in place by securing one arm around my waist.
“Don’t,” he says, biting his lower lip. “I want you to stay here for as long as possible.”
I put my forehead on his, this time, closing my eyes. “I’m going to miss you,” I say quietly.
“I’m going to miss you too,” he replies, his voice breaking. I’m not sure, but when I open my eyes and look at his face, I think he might be crying.
CONTINUE
I’m sitting in Lawrence’s car and trying my best to make it seem like I’m not struggling with this decision. My bags are in the back of his SUV and they keep moving around the vehicle every time he takes a turn. I’m trying to ignore the growing pit on my stomach, even though we have barely left Lawrence’s place. I’ve already packed—everything is ready at home, safe with Montgomery and Cyrus. I smile, thinking about how weird it is to think about them together.
Cyrus told me they might continue their relationship when he goes. He said Montgomery might go with him. I would have loved to see his face then, but I’m kind of glad it was over the phone, because despite myself, I was definitely a little jealous.
I wish I hadn’t been. I wish there was no reason for me to be jealous.
I should feel relieved. This is the beginning of the rest of my life. I don’t feel relieved. I feel sick as I look at Lawrence, my throat dry.
I grab his hand and he squeezes me. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” I say, shifting my weight. “This is… it’s big.”
“I know,” he says. “Are you excited?”
“No,” I say. “Not at all.”
He furrows his brow. I cough, and then close my eyes. “Lawrence, can you pull over?”
“Yes,” he says. He checks his mirrors then pulls over on the shoulder of the road. He puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes it. It burns.
I turn around to look at him. “I don’t think this is what I want,” I say, tears welling up in my eyes.
He watches me, saying nothing. I wish he wasn’t so damn inscrutable all the time. I wish he would help me out here. “Alejandro…”
“I want to stay,” I say. “I want to be with you.”
He swallows. I watch his Adam’s apple work as he does. “I can’t let you stay here just because of me.”
“W
hy?” I ask, my voice trembling. “You don’t think God will forgive me?”
He swallows again and kills the ignition. He leans forward to hug me. “Of course God will forgive you,” he says. “But if you don’t go, and it turns out it’s what you wanted to do, I’m worried you won’t forgive me.”
“I love you,” I say, more to myself than to him. Fuck it, I don’t care if it scares him. “I would have nothing to forgive you for. I want to stay here, with you.”
“You do?”
I nod. “Yes,” I say. “For the first time in my life, I’m certain of… fuck, of something. And you’re always telling me I should do what I want to do. This is what I want to do, Lawrence.”
“What is?”
“Be with you,” I say. “For good. Everything else… it can happen later. If that’s what you want. If it doesn’t scare you.”
He closes his eyes, and he lets out the most relieved breath I’ve ever heard in my life. “It doesn’t scare me,” he says, closing the space between us to kiss me in the mouth. “It doesn’t.”
When he pulls away from me, I can see the tears welling up in his eyes.
I swallow, my mouth dry. “Why are you crying?”
“Because,” he says. “I love you too. And I’m so, so glad that you’re staying with me.”
“You are?”
“Yes,” he says. “So glad.”
Then he kisses me again, and right then, nothing else matters.
THE END
Author’s Note
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About the author
Lina Langley is a first-generation immigrant. She currently lives in sunny Florida and spends her time slashing hot strangers while getting coffee.
Her past is haunted by spies, thieves, tyrants, and murderers. A resident of the world, she’s lived on three different continents. She first saw a radiator when she was twenty-two years old, and one time she followed a cat instead of going to a house party.
She likes to read, watch TV, and play video games when she’s not developing them. The rest of her free time is spent recreating her own characters in The Sims and hoping that people don’t look at the back end of her games.
You can email her: [email protected]
I look at the door and take a deep breath. There’s a part of me that wants to follow Cyrus out the door, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. I have no idea how to start fixing this. I have no idea how to start fixing us.
I need to talk to Montgomery, too. I need to know if this is going to change anything. He always asks like he’s living this life where he has no regrets and he just lives for the moment, but I have no idea how to live like that.
I tell myself that it’s going to be okay before I go knock on Montgomery’s door. “Hey,” I say. “Can we talk for a minute?”
“Go away, I’m sleeping,” he replies.
“Just—just a minute, okay?” I ask. “I need to talk to you about something.”
He groans. I can hear him moving around in his bedroom. Then he opens the door and lets me in. “Make it quick, choirboy,” he says. “I’ve had a long day.”
I narrow my eyes as I look at him. Can he really be that unconcerned about what happened tonight? There’s no way. I walk into his bedroom, glancing around and noticing how different it is from my own.
I don’t think I’ve ever been in here before. Our bedroom layout is completely the same, largish rooms with one window and a walk-in closet. My room, in comparison to his, is austere.
He’s painted one of the walls, the one you can’t see from outside, because I think he knows I wouldn’t be okay with it. The rest of his walls are covered in posters, paintings and photographs from his friends, lit up with decorative Christmas lights. There are clothes strewn all over the floor and his bed is unmade, but that shouldn’t be a surprise. His bed is always unmade. I can see that every morning, because he leaves his door open before he goes to work.
“Cyrus left,” I say.
Montgomery furrows his brow. “Why? I thought he was spending the night,” he says, then gets a dreamy look on his face. “You should invite him over more often. He’s a good kisser.”
I sit down on his unmade bed. I don’t even care that he hasn’t asked me to. I don’t know how long this will take, but I know it’s a conversation that we need to have. “I think it made things weird between us.”
He rolls his eyes and then falls back on the bed loudly. “He’ll get over it,” he says. “It’s always a little weird, you know, when you first hook up with a friend. Then it gets easier.”
I watch him. My mouth is dry. “The friendship or the hooking up?”
“Shit, I don’t know,” he says. “I guess that’s the hard part. Deciding what matters more to you. Is it his friendship or is it hooking up with him?”
“His friendship,” I say instantly. “Of course it’s his friendship. I mean, if I wanted to pursue something with him, I would have done that a while ago.”
I think. That last part sounds right. I haven’t ever wanted to ruin anything between us, but I also had never thought there was a chance of anything romantic happening between Cyrus and me. I didn’t think he had ever expressed any interest.
“So he thought the same thing?”
I lie back on the bed next to him and look at the popcorn ceiling. “I don’t know,” I say. “I hate these ceilings. Who thought they were a good idea?”
“Right?” he asks. Then he gets on his side so that he’s looking at me. I can see him from the corner of my eye. “They suck.”
I close my eyes
. “I’m sorry,” I say.
“About what?”
“You know, about… about what happened,” I say. “I didn’t want it to change things between you and me, either.”
I turn to look at him when I say that, because it doesn’t seem to me like he’s going to reply. I can only see the whites of his eyes in the darkness of his room, the outline of his features.
“You didn’t?” he asks quietly.
I swallow. I’m not sure why, but this seems like uncharted territory. I feel like things could go very poorly very quickly. “I… I mean, not for the worse, I guess,” I say. “I didn’t really think about it.”
He closes his eyes. “But you did think about what it meant regarding your relationship with Cyrus,” he says. “How you felt about him.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head slightly. “No, it’s not that exactly. It’s more like… like, you already hate me, so it’s okay if you keep hating me. Cyrus likes me. Liked me. Fuck, I don’t know, I don’t know how to talk about this. All I know is that I’m at risk of losing one of the most important people in my life and I need to avoid that somehow.”
He opens his eyes again. I think there’s a smile on his face, but it’s a small one. “Then you have to decide,” he says.
“Decide what?”
“Like, how do you want him in your life?” he replies. “Do you want him to be there as a friend or do you want him to be there as something more?”
“I don’t know,” I say quietly, more to myself than to him. “I just want him in my life. Why is everything so complicated?”
“You’re asking me, choirboy,” he replies. He sighs quietly. “I wish things were simple too.”
He’s only a couple of inches away from my face. I’m about to thank him for the talk and tell him that I need to call Cyrus, but before I can, his lips are on mine and he’s kissing me deeply, his hand on my waist. He tastes like rum and salt and a little bit like me.
There’s a big part of me that wants to keep kissing him, that wants to see where this goes. Instead, I move away from him.
