Page 72 of Hamartia

“I suppose so…yes.” He looks distracted, still worried, I think.

I lean up and kiss him hard.

“I’m okay,” I tell him. “You touched my asshole and I liked it. Please stop looking so worried.”

When I kiss him again, he smiles, dropping his arms to loop around my neck and pull me closer. Then he’s grinding. Sliding that perfect fucking ass over my cock. Then I wonder how he’d feel inside, raw, and I groan around his tongue.

“You liked it?” he whispers, pulling back to look at me.

“Mmm, I did. I’m not saying I’m ready for anything to be pushed inside it, but the door is unlocked.”

He laughs as I catch his lips between mine.

After we make out for a bit I flip him round, settle lower into the sofa, and eat him out again. Angling him to sit on my face while he babbles half in English and half in Korean about my tongue and my mouth like it’s a fucking god he worships. He plays with his nipples as I jerk him off, and when he’s about to come I throw him on his back and motion for him to do it on my face. His eyes go a kind of black I haven’t seen before, as he lets it tear through him. Hot white come shooting up into my open mouth. I’m two seconds from blowing when he surges up and kisses me hard, licking his tongue over his orgasm as he cleans my face. Urging me onto my back, he proceeds to give me the best blowjob I’ve ever had, almost passing out from the pleasure, then again from the over-sensitivity that pulses through my cock as he suckles the softening head.

After, we lie together on the couch, him drawing circles on my chest in shapes that feel foreign and my fingers twisting through in his hair.

“I think I have a fetish for your hair.”

He chuckles sleepily. “It will be silver when you see me again.”

“Mmm. I like it silver.” I think I’m halfway asleep. “I also like it pink and blue and purple.”

“You liked it pink?” he says.

“It was the first color I ever saw it. I wanted you so fucking much. Even then.”

He doesn’t answer, but his fingers still on my chest. That’s when I know. He remembered. I guess I always suspected he did, I was just happier pretending he didn’t.

“I know.”

I open my eyes for this and move my arms so I’m holding him tighter against me.

“Baby, I’m so fucking sorry. I think maybe…I was a different person back then.” I think about Mason, aboutthis shit never bothered you this much before, and I feel sick. “I’m sorry for what I said. For what we said. I’m just…sorry.”

“I know,” he says again.

Mom is wearing mittens, an oversized lumberjack shirt with jeans, and a pair of lined fur boots when I spot her at the airport. She’s waving both arms at me like she’s drowning, red curls bright and shining, and I’m hit with a rush of love and warmth and home so strong it almost knocks me off my feet.

“Baby!” she shouts, in case I haven’t seen her. Which would be impossible. “Here!”

I pull my ballcap lower as I move toward her. She pulls me into a tight hug. “Hey mom.”

That smell. Of cooking and paint cleaner and cut grass. It settles some flux inside me. She clings to me as she presses wet kisses to the bits of my face she can get to.

“Look at you! Look at my baby. Have you lost weight, I think you have? Are you on one of those silly LA diets again? Let me see you properly.”

She goes to pull my cap off but I stop her. She forgets. She always forgets. When she’s in LA—which is rarely—it’s better, she already feels out of place there and thinks basically everyone is a celebrity, but here she just forgets entirely. Here we’re both who we’ve always been. Airports make me nervous though. A glance around tells me there’s no paparazzi here, but there are still people with cameras. There always are.

When I pull back to let her look at me, I notice she has some purple paint on her cheek and a little in her hair.

“You definitely look skinny, Raphael.” She pinches my cheek with her mittened fingers and gives me a sad smile. “I can’t wait to fatten you up. This all you got?” She glances at my bags.

“Yeah, just these.”

She fights over the backpack which I eventually let her have and then we’re strolling out of Denver International towards my mom’s car. She’s parked her white SUV on the drop-off point and it takes us far quicker than I expect to get out of the Thanksgiving traffic at the airport and onto US-40. She’d been listening to some podcast with a British host which she switches off, and then Sayonara Sun is blasting through the car speakers. I half chuckle half groan.

“We really don’t have to listen to this.”