Page 111 of String Boys

Seth shook his head. “I didn’t want it,” he whispered. Young. How was Kelly so old and he was so young? Especially right now, when Seth’s insides, his cock, all of him was still pulsing with come?

“But you must have. Because unless you were with me, your head was with your music. And you’d come down from that place to be with me, but that was because you loved me. It’s a gift.”

“That’s not fair,” Seth whispered. “It’s not fair to call it a gift when I have to choose between it and you.”

Kelly sighed. “But you have to be gone right now anyway. Because people are still talking and Matty is still… well, he’s in rehab again, and maybe it will stick. But he could come back any minute and shoot off his big mouth and Chloe will get taken away—”

Seth closed his eyes. “That can’t happen.” He knew this.

“No. No, it can’t. So if you’ve got to be gone—why not be somewhere awesome?”

Seth shook his head, not ready to concede, and helpless tears slid between his eyelids. “This was so not the conversation I thought we’d be having right now,” he confessed.

Kelly let out a chuff of air. “Well, if you want to talk about doing that again, I’m good for it. But maybe….”

He was biting his lip shyly.

“What?”

“Maybe we can walk on the beach first? I… you know. I really love the ocean too.”

Seth smiled—God, he was ready to smile. “Yeah. Okay. That’s good.”

They walked on the foggy, chilly beach, and Seth let the roar of it fill him, let the heat of Kelly’s hand in his and the beauty of the wave foam crashing near their feet, consume him.

And the loneliness of being far away from Kelly, too far to touch, was kept at bay for the rest of the afternoon.

Footsteps in the Sand

KELLY HATEDrunning. His bare feet fell unevenly on the damp portion of the beach, his calves, his thighs, his arches working overtime to bounce back up and take the next step.

He couldn’t go fast enough.

Step, step, step, shush, shush, shush… God, he couldn’t go fast enough.

“Kelly!”

Augh! Dammit! Seth didn’t even sound winded. “Kelly! It’s not your fault! Dammit—wait!”

A wave washed up, and Kelly swerved, trying to pull up, but the dry sand sucked at his feet, and the incoming tide kept coming and coming. Brine froze his ankles, his shins, his knees, andfuck,he went down, tumbling, coming up sputtering and shaking and unable to run anywhere, anywhere at all.

“Baby….”

Seth’s arm, warm and kind, wrapped around his shoulders, and before Kelly could even chatter, “Go away,” Seth had taken off his own sweatshirt, ripped Kelly’s sodden one off, and replaced it.

It was old and soft—Seth’s first Bridgford sweatshirt—and warmed by their mad dash along the beach.

“I’m sorry,” Kelly mumbled. “God, I’m sorry.”

“All you ever have to say is stop,” Seth whispered, his lips by Kelly’s ear. “Ever. You don’t have to be sorry. You don’t have to explain. I know.”

“I thought I wanted it.”

“I know.”

“I wasn’t ready.”A body, hot, behind his, invading. Flesh where he didn’t want it. Friction. Burning. Pain.

They’d tried in the daylight, after the family had gone back to Sacramento, playful, intense—the way sex had always been for them—and this time… this time, oh God, Kelly had wanted it.