Page 116 of Oleander

I could only manage some version of a nod.

My dorm was as I left it earlier that day. Empty glasses by the bed – a habit I’ve still not grown out of – dirty clothes strewn across the carpet, textbooks open on the desk on the pages I’dlast been reading. My laptop was on the unmade bed where I’d been watching a Belgian film at lunchtime. I flitted about scooping things up and reordering things while Finn sat at the desk chair, relaxed but rapt, watching me.

“I don’t give a shit about your room, Jude,” he said at last.

“Eh, oh, I know, but still.”

He waited silently for a few moments while I continued before he lost patience and stood. He took the empty glass from my hand and set it down on the desk, and then tugged me gently across the room to my bed. Nudging me to sit on the edge of it, he moved to settle between my legs and reached for the button of my jeans. His face was open and soft, a small fire of desire in his eyes that sparked something to life inside me.

“You have a really nice dick,” he said as he stared at it, hand slotting around its base. He leaned in and sucked it into his mouth without any further commentary.

I’d had three people suck my dick at this point in my life. (The girl I’d woken up next to on my birthday didn’t count, mainly as I couldn’t remember whether she did.) Each of them had distinctly different techniques. Finn’s, I decided, was the most enthusiastic. He seemed to enjoy it more than Ellie had, more than even Caspien had – though Cas’s was by far the most skilful. Just like when he’d kissed me in the hallway, Finn was determined in this too, and so I came shockingly quick.

He swallowed my climax with the sorts of sounds that made me think of a particularly tasty meal. I’d fallen back onto the bed, and when he was finished, Finn came to lie on his back next to me.

When my mind cleared and the fog of climax had lifted, I said languidly, “That was nice, thanks.”

He laughed. “Fuck, that’s the most depressing compliment I’ve ever gotten.” He punched me lightly on the shoulder.

I laughed back. “No, I mean, it was great. Really good. I enjoyed it a lot.”

“Stop talking, Jude.”

I was silent for a minute or so. “You want me to return the favour?”

“I actually don’t,” he said.

I twisted my head to look at him, but he was still all easy smiles and soft eyes.

“I meant, I don’t need you to. I get so fucking turned on when I’m sucking dick.” He gestured at his body. The zip of his jeans was down and his cock lay soft and spent outside of it.

“Hot,” I smiled.

“Yeah, you are.”

I punched him on the shoulder and we laughed again. It felt nice. Comfortable and easy.

We went back to Bast’s party a short while after, still laughing about something stupid. We sat a little closer together, caught each other’s eye a little more often, and brought each other a drink when one of us went to the box of beer on the window sill.

It set the tone for how it would be between us: comfortable and easy. We were mainly friends, but every now and then, need would flare up between us and we’d tug each other into empty rooms at parties to get each other off with our hands or our mouths.

Who instigated it would vary, but it would almost always lead to Finn on his knees with his eyes closed in bliss and his fist around his cock as he swallowed mine and we both tried not to make too much noise. Not that it mattered. Everyone knew. It was as open a secret as there was. I knew everyone was well aware of what we’d been doing when we’d come back into the room together, flushed and thirsty.

Sex, the full kind, never really came up. Or at least, that’s how it felt to me. We were attracted to each other, but after sating our desires with our mouths or hands, the rush of lust would fade, and we’d leave these encounters satisfied. I didn’t know if Finn slept with other people – we never talked about it – but it wouldn’t have bothered me if he was. What I had with Finn, casual and easy and comfortable, was more than enough.

My heart wasn’t ready or willing to take on anything else. Caspien’s memory was too big, too powerful, too all-consuming for there to be room for anything else. He was a ghost, and what I was living through then was a haunting. When I closed my eyes, and often too when I was awake, I could still feel his lips on mine and the touch of his breath on my neck.

One Sunday afternoon, I was in Milner’s Books, and a girl passed me who reminded me so much of him that it ached. I couldn’t understand what it was because her hair was dark, almost black, her eyes round and brown.

But after following her for a little while around the store, I understood what it was. It was the line of her neck that led up to her delicate girlish ears, and the way she held her head. Eventually, she caught my eye and smiled. Surprisingly, I hadn’t creeped her out.

For a second, I thought about giving her my number, asking her out for a drink. But then I remembered Ellie, and how her eyes would look like Ellie’s did that day when I ended it. When Cas came back into my life, I didn’t want there to be someone else I would have to hurt or leave, so I could have him.

I smiled back, then turned and hurried out of the shop and back to my dorm. I bought a bottle of vodka on the way and drank it with a stolen carton of orange juice from the common kitchen I promised to replace the following day.

When I think back now, I know that part of what stopped me crossing that line with Finn was that I didn’t feel confident yet in my own sexuality. I didn’t understand it enough to know what to do with it. There hadn’t yet been a need for me to define myself as bi or gay or anything else. I’d slept with girls, but I knew that didn’t mean I was straight. I’d loved a boy, and yet somehow I knew that didn’t mean I was gay.

Had someone asked me outright, I’m sure I’d have been able to come up with an answer, but I was still uncertain enough that it prevented me from taking things to that next level with Finn.