Page 17

The first thought in my head is, I’m not drunk enough to be doing this.

Second thought is, I’m not drunk at all.

I can’t blame alcohol.

The third thought: I’ve done this before.

He said “again”. Kiss him— again .

I hadn’t imagined it. It wasn’t a haunting vision. I kissed him on the floor of that church.

I just realized he’s the one who made the move just now. He knew I was too chicken shit, and now he’s giving this to me. He’s letting me kiss him. Bridger, who I was just selling pest control services to this morning. The guy who’s been giving me hell all week. Or is it me who’s been giving him hell?

The only thing he’s giving right now are his lips.

I’m actually surprised by how soft they are. I don’t know why I was expecting sandpaper. The guy clearly takes care of himself, that much is obvious. From the way he dresses to the way he does his hair. Even his skin is flawless. Does he shave every hour to get it that smooth? He probably does, as anal retentive as he is.

Goddamn, no matter how hard I try to distract myself with thoughts, I can’t ignore how good this feels, to kiss him.

Or to let him kiss me.

Or whatever the hell’s happening right now.

This is what I wanted, right? To try this out? I already knew he makes my heart race. I didn’t expect to fall into his lap in the theater, but after he yanked me back and I fell onto him, I froze, and suddenly those guys a few rows ahead of us didn’t matter. The firm, safe, perfect lap of Bridger was all I could think about. Sure, I threw my attention right back to the movie, but damn if I couldn’t have just sat there with his arms around me awhile longer.

But every second that passed made me feel weirder. Like I was stealing something that didn’t belong to me, like I was an imposter sitting on a lap I didn’t deserve to be enjoying so damned much.

Just like this kiss.

I’m not me. I’m someone else right now, locking lips with the bastard who’s been driving me crazy.

What am I doing??

I pull away from him, out of breath— was I holding it? —and look the other way. I can’t move. Can’t think. Everything in my head is flipping upside-down and spinning like a possessed carousel.

The touch of his lips lingers on mine.

He tastes so good, too. Better than lips ought to taste.

When’s the last time I ever even experienced lips that made me feel this way? Was that even real? Did that just happen?

“You alright there?”

I know he asked the question. I can’t seem to make my mouth work. How would I answer it anyway? Am I alright? How the hell do I know if I’m alright? Have I ever been alright? Have I been not alright my whole fucking life and am just now realizing it?

Maybe I haven’t been alright.

Because I’ve been lying to myself, for years and years.

Lying to myself that I didn’t want to be the one Bobby waited for every day at the movie theater instead of Jimmy. And maybe that’s the real reason I provoked them both way back then.

Lying to myself that watching Cole and Noah find happiness recently didn’t also make me feel lonelier. That being part of the bachelor pageant wasn’t just about male bonding, but also feeding a part of myself I think has been starving for years.

Lying to myself about why I really agreed to go out tonight.

With Bridger.

“Anthony …?”

I finally turn back to him. Apparently, I also scooted away, as there’s room on the park bench for two people to sit between us now. “Sorry,” I blurt. “I didn’t mean … to get all weird, or … or …”

“Nothing’s weird,” he assures me.

Damn it, why’s he so patient and good with me suddenly? This is all so much easier when we’re being pricks to each other.

The frustrating politeness continues. “Did you, uh, figure out what you needed to figure out …?” he asks me carefully.

Just the sound of his voice, how he’s both gentle and strong at the same time, willful yet patient, full of concern for me when I’m spiraling in the most fundamental way a person can spiral …

It’s too much. “I gotta—” I rise abruptly to my feet.

He does, too. “Something wrong?”

“I gotta … I gotta head back. To my, uh, home. To my h-house, apartment house … place. My apartment house place.”

“Nothing weird’s happening,” he says in a voice that sounds like he’s talking a spooked housecat out of bolting into the night. Maybe that’s exactly what he’s doing. “Look at me, Anthony … I don’t care. I’m not panicking, see? You wanna try stuff out on me? Kiss me again? Have me hold you like I did by the side of the road the other night? I’m not judging you. Not one bit.”

All those wicked words dancing so easily out of his mouth like seductive poetry—“try stuff out”, “kiss me again”, “hold you”—has my stomach feeling thrown around like a kid on a trampoline and no amount of reasoning seems to get it to stop.

“I … n-nah, I just … nope.” I laugh it off suddenly. “Was just playin’ around. The kiss. It was just a joke. Thanks for the movie. And for … whatever the fuck this night was, but I really gotta—”

“You’re just gonna leave now?” His face tightens. “Sit on my lap, play with my feelings, use me for a kiss— again —then ditch?”

“I-I didn’t use you for—” I trip over my foot and stumble. I’m backing away from him, I guess. Fast. “—for nothin’. Why are you always givin’ me a hard time?”

“It isn’t right, to just kiss someone and then leave.”

“And you shouldn’t be tellin’ me—sayin’ to me—” I don’t know why I always feel like I have to speak properly in front of Bridger. It’s annoying, constantly editing myself. “You’re so goddamned uptight all the time. Tellin’ me what I can’t do. Holdin’ me back from … from fighting those dicks in the theater …”

“What? If I wasn’t there to hold you back, you’d have been kicked out or worse.”

“Oh, thanks, you’re my hero now.”

“You can’t just pick fights with people like that,” says Bridger, “unless your idea of fun is sitting in a jail cell all night. Besides, we were the ones making noise. They had every right to—”

“Great, that’s all I fuckin’ need,” I burst out before I can stop myself. “One more person in my life scoldin’ everything I do.”

“And I’m not uptight.”

“Yeah, you are,” I spit back. “Givin’ me hell for being late—”

“It was almost an hour—”

“Then getting the tickets and the popcorn and the drinks, and now you’re worked up ‘cause I just wanted to try somethin’—”

“Is that what this is?” He takes a step toward me. “All of this? Just wanting to ‘try’ something? I’m not a flavor of beverage.”

“Listen to you. ‘Flavor of beverage’. You sound like a butler.” My head spins. I keep stumbling. “I said I gotta go. I’m going. Right now, I’m going.”

“You’re running.”

“Going.”

“What’re you running from?” I’ve already turned and started walking away—well, something a lot faster than a walk that ain’t quite a run. “Hey. Look, let’s just chill somewhere and talk. Back at Trey and Cody’s. Or at your place. One of the bars. I’m not uptight. I can … I can be chill! I’m sorry for losing my cool! Anthony!”

The last place I can stand to be right now is with that guy, and those intense eyes, and his perfect lips, and my racing heart.

“Is there, like, a reason we’re driving around in the dark?”

I’m leaning forward in the passenger seat, foot bouncing in place, my eyes glued to the sliver of road ahead of us lit by Juni’s headlights. I’m still not ready to talk.

“This is fun and all,” she goes on, “but you won’t even let me play music. Every bad mood is made better with a little ABBA.”

How do I tell Juni what happened? Where do I even begin? At the part where I sat in Bridger’s lap or when I kissed him?

“I wish I’d worn something cute before going on this joyride with you,” she mumbles, “then we could go to the Saloon instead of circling these roads for half an hour.”

“Just went last night. Goin’ tomorrow. Too dang late, besides.”

“Oh, so you do talk.” When I sigh, she rests her chin on the wheel as she continues zigzagging down the dark country road at barely ten miles an hour. “We’ve gone there this late before. They don’t close until four.”

“What’s the point drivin’ all the way out there to spend ten minutes in a club before drivin’ all the way back? You never drink when we go anyway, because you gotta drive, and—”

“It’d be more than ten minutes. I think. Also, we could get a room and stay ‘til Sunday. Then I can get wasted with you.”

“The beds there are like sleepin’ on bricks.”

“You have a nasty gash on your arm.”

“My clumsy ass fell on the stupid pavement earlier today.”

“Clumsiness is only cute until you get an infection. You going to tell me what’s up yet? I’m getting bored.”

I sigh and cradle my head in my hands. “I don’t know if I can.”

“Try. You can do it. Use your words,” she sings, pretending to be a schoolteacher or something.

Suddenly I’m gonna be sick. “Pull over.”

“Oh, you wanna pet a cow?”

She’s going so slow, I don’t care. I yank open my door while the car’s still moving, tumble out of the vehicle, fly over the ditch, grab hold of a fence by the road and hurl. My first thought when I stare into the dark and wherever my vomit went is that if I had known all that money spent on popcorn was gonna end up in the field on the edge of someone’s ranch …

“Are you okay?” shouts Juni from the car, now stopped.

“Uh-huh,” I mumble, leaning on the fence, certain if I let go of it that I’ll go tumbling straight to the dirt.

The crunching of her heels (why is she always wearing heels?) brings her closer, but not too close. Probably afraid of stepping on something. “Did you eat a bad burger?”

“I need a drink,” I groan.

“Oh … You’re doing this backwards. People usually drink first, then barf.”

I shut my eyes and lay my head on the fence. “I did something tonight, Juni. Something … really, really … really fuckin’ crazy.”

“Well, I would guess it likely isn’t that crazy, considering the things you might have done. Like rob a bank. Or adopt a pet frog.”

“I kissed a dude.” Juni appears by the fence and lets out a sigh. I look at her. “Did you hear me?”

“We should probably go back. You look pale. I have iced tea.”

“I just said I kissed a dude.”

“Yes, you did.”

She’s leaning against the fence next to me now, staring up at the stars. I’m suddenly annoyed. “That’s all you got to say? I kissed a man tonight. I feel … I feel really confused.”

“What’s there to be confused about? Didn’t you like it?” When she looks my way and sees my baffled face with my jaw hanging, her eyebrows go up. “I … I thought it was our thing.”

“Our thing?”

“Yeah. Like, we go out. See hot guys. I throw myself at them. You don’t. Then we go home, alone together, and get drunk.”

I can’t even begin to pretend I follow her. “The fuck?”

“I knew you like guys since I met you. Don’t you remember? At the auction? When that one man put a bid on you, and then you didn’t care and said anyone could put in a bid, and then it was all men and women until I won?” She shrugs. “I just figured.”

I’m so lost. My head and stomach are spinning even worse. “It was just a fundraiser. I don’t understand how … how that even …?”

“And the club we always go to.” She lets out another dainty sigh into the night. “The Saloon is a gay nightclub.”

I snap my eyes back to her. “It is?”

Suddenly she lets out a laugh that fills the whole damned field and scares half the crickets into silence. “You gotta be the most clueless boy I’ve ever known, Anthony! I think it’s why I like you. We’re, like, totally brother and sister. How we sometimes don’t see the obvious thing. It’s the Sassy Saloon,” she says with a nudge at my side. “ Sassy . The logo is a red smiley with its tongue sticking out. We made jokes on what it’s licking the first night we went.”

I turn around, then find my back against the fence, staring off at the road, blank-faced. “But … h-how could you know I like guys if … if I wasn’t even sure if I—?”

“I didn’t know. Not for sure. Small-town guys can be weird. They hide it. Or don’t know. Or don’t announce it. Or let everyone assume one way or the other, never confirming it. I became more sure when we went on our date at that Nadine’s place, but then I also wondered if maybe you swang both ways …”

“Swang ain’t a word.”

“Didn’t it feel nice? Kissing the guy? Who was it, by the way?”

I move from the fence and wander into the road. I don’t know if I can have this conversation yet. My heart hasn’t stopped racing. I feel like my mind is spinning out of control.

“Was it the guy from the jukebox?”

I spin on her. “Are you a psychic? Can you read my mind?”

“He was awful charming.” She hops over the ditch, stumbles, then brings a hand to her face, looking dreamy-eyed. “I wonder if his friend’s single. Could we do a double-date thing sometime?”

“Are you serious? Juni, no, we’re not—”

“Double Date Barbie! It’d be so fun! Don’t care which guy I get. I just want one to play with for a while. Or longer, if it works out.”

“Let’s just go back to the apartment before I’m sick again.”

“Hmm, okay.” She heads to the car. I follow. And as we drive back, I find myself staring as much at the side of her face as I am my own in the side mirror, unable to figure out either of us. Then ABBA’s Dancing Queen comes on the radio at full blast without warning, and I’m reminded of one of the first times we went to that Sassy Saloon place and how my first thought was how free and unique everyone seemed. Did I seriously not put two-and-two together and realize she’d been taking me to a gay nightclub this whole time? With gay guys dancing all over me? Flirting with me? I just assumed the world outside of Spruce was louder and it’s no big surprise when a gay guy hits on you at any bar or club. Am I really that thick? About everything? Who I am? What I’m doing in life? Who I’m doing it with? That it apparently comes as a surprise to me that a place called “The Sassy Saloon” is a gay nightclub?

“It’s really not that big a deal,” says Juni as she fixes us a pair of Sandwich Surprises back at the apartment. It’s our thing. I’m not allowed to ask what’s in it. I just have to wait on this barstool at the counter to find out. “I think I’m a little gay, too. There was a girl I used to sleep over with when I was thirteen, maybe fourteen, nearly every weekend, and I liked how she smelled. I kept getting into tickle fights with her just because I wanted to smell her.”

“That’s … weird.”

“It was probably just the fabric detergent her mom used.” She sighs. “As for you … well … maybe it’s the way your guy sounds like when he talks to you that makes your heart go silly.”

“I hate how he talks to me. Like I’m a child.”

“Or it could be what he wears.”

“He dresses like a … a …” I can’t quite insult him fast enough, finding him too handsome every time we encounter each other.

“Or you just like how he looks.”

I press my face into my hands. “I don’t wanna talk about this no more. I wanna forget tonight ever happened.”

“That’s what the Saloon’s for. Forgetting everything. Oh, and these,” she says, spinning around and placing a plated sandwich in front of me. I drop my hands to get a look at it, then glance at her questioningly. “ It has Reese’s Pieces in it ,” she explains in a whisper, then fetches her own Sandwich Surprise and sits on the barstool next to me to eat.

I stare at the sandwich and wonder if it’s the way he looks. Or what he wears. Or how he smells. Or how his lips felt against mine.

How his breath swirled like ocean breeze in my ears.

How safe I felt with his arms around my body when he held me against him—and how he begged me not to run away tonight, wanting to talk it out. What if I had agreed? What if I was with him at Trey and Cody’s now, totally alone, just me and him in a room?

What else would I want to try on him?

What else would he let me do?

“You haven’t touched your sandwich,” Juni notices, sad.

Maybe it’s not the sandwich I want to touch right now.

It’s that thought two long, agonizing hours later when Juni is asleep hogging the bed and I’m out on the couch in the dark that makes me move my hand to the crotch of my tight briefs.

I’m hard. Achingly hard.

You wanna try stuff out on me?

Bridger’s voice. Bridger’s burning blue eyes. Bridger’s cocky, insufferable fucking face.

Kiss me again?

My hand slips into my underwear, grabs hold of my dick, and squeezes it. I gasp into the silent air of the living room.

Have me hold you like I did by the side of the road the other night?

When my face was buried in his chest, in the blue denim of his jacket, and his arms enclosed around me, pinning my body against him with no chance of breaking free.

My hand’s started to move.

I’m not a flavor of beverage .

Why does it drive me crazy even when he gives me that hard, indignant look? He gets pissed so quickly. And when he does, the way his eyes shine with irritation looks the same as I’d imagine he gets in the bedroom when fucking someone senseless.

Biting his lip, gripping his partner, and reaming them.

Sweaty bodies after working out, after some military drill, all slick with sweat, as he slams himself again and again into his man.

That irritated, hungry, nothing-is-enough glint in his eyes.

I’m not even jerking my cock all that fast inside my briefs, but it’s coming, and it’s coming fast, the edge, rushing toward me with the intensity I’m imagining in Bridger’s eyes.

Want me to try stuff out on you? I hear his voice again, but the words have reversed.

“Yeah,” I grunt into the darkness of the room, into the silence that’s filled only by the swishing noise of my fist inside my tight underwear, and the cock slowly being choked to death. “I want you to … t-try stuff out on me. Gimme your worst.”

Want me to fuck you senseless, Anthony?

Whenever he says my name. Even when it’s said angrily. Even when I could put money down that he hates my guts from here to the ends of every country road leading outta this dusty town.

His sweaty body tensing with every pump of his dick into that poor guy he’s got bent over his bed, clutching him tight, fucking him without relent.

It’s not just his strength. It’s his rule-abiding discipline. His unwavering commitment. His current charge: fucking. His current mission: fucking. His entire world and everything he is doggone worth is doggone fucking.

And he will perform his duty perfectly.

The guy he’s fucking senseless suppresses a whimper, claws at the sheets, then turns his sweat-drenched head.

It’s me.

I shoot my load so hard that I stop jerking entirely, and while my eyes and mouth fly open, I squeeze my dick and feel it ejecting every last ounce of my frustration inside my briefs, sticky and warm and gushing with no end in sight.

Every single shot is his kiss again.

Every squeeze of my dick, an embrace of his possessive arms.

Every wave that courses through me like an electric current, his eyes as they blaze with anger at me.

What’re you running from? His stern voice, one more time.

I collapse back on the couch, spent, hand stuffed in my briefs, staring up at the whirring ceiling fan while catching my breath.

What the hell are you doing to me, Bridger?