Page 6 of Try Me
“Is this okay?” Obviously I knew how to jerk a dick, but right then I felt like an inexperienced idiot, which kind of made it all the hotter. Our breaths went rough, and a weird but organic sense of inevitability descended, like we were picking up at some unknown point we’d left off on previously that I had no memory of.
Had it always been there, lying in wait?
“Yeah. Goddamn, yeah,” Chet whispered, fucking into my hand in smooth, practiced strokes. I could tell he was trying to keep quiet, trying to keep his exhales from becoming ragged pants that might say too much. But he liked it. I could tell that much, too. And fuck, I liked it just as much as he did. If not more.
Tightening my grip, I stroked him harder, and he rolled onto his back, arching into the friction, throwing his head back as he muttered a hoarse “Shit.” His throat bobbed as he swallowed, and his lips parted. Light from the window hugged his profile, casting dark shadows across his jaw and side of his neck. He was fucking gorgeous. It was the first time I allowed myself to explicitly acknowledge that fact.
A second later, he rolled to face me, forehead barely touching mine, open mouth pouring hot breaths over my cheek as his fingertips curled around the shell of my ear and splayed through the ends of my hair. And though his dick was in my hand, at that moment it was his mouth I wanted. The shit he said on the court, the way he’d always taunted me, even his smirks seemed to hold a flavor I desperately wanted a taste of.
“Harder.” The wet rasp of his breath came as harsh and staggered as my heart beats. I rubbed over his head, into his slit, smearing the sticky fluid and wishing I could taste it. My cock pressed hard against the back of my own hand as I jerked him, and fast-tracked images flickered against the backs of my eyelids: Chet thrusting inside someone, shadows dishing into the sides of his tight ass, the hard flex of muscle straining with his every movement. Him prying my asscheeks apart, flicking his tongue at my hole, getting it wet. Pushing his fingers inside me. His cock. Me doing the same to him.
I gasped with the warning tingle of imminent orgasm.
“Don’t.” I shoved Chet’s hand away when he slid it down and tried to grip me, but I shattered anyway, like some dork getting his first taste. I unloaded in an achy rush of pleasure all the fuck over the inside of my boxers. Chet made a sound caught between surprise and deep lust in response, and then the hot gush of his release spilled over my knuckles.
The force of my orgasm kept rebounding through me, from the crown of my head, over my shoulders, all the way to my toes, and I struggled to come down as we went still against each other. Chet’s breaths slowed as his grip in my hair loosened. His thumb traced the curve of my jaw and dropped away.
“I don’t…that doesn’t usually happen. That fast, I mean.” I sounded defensive to my own ears, the embarrassment over jizzing my boxers flaming in my cheeks.
A low chuckle rumbled through Chet, but it wasn’t a mean sound. In fact, it was almost fond. “Me either.”
We both laughed as I dragged the sheets between us and mopped up our spunk. The scent of it hung thick in the air, and I waited to see if he’d say something else when our laughter died down. Or maybe it was me who was supposed to. But I didn’t know what to say.
Will you be okay?
I’ve thought of this before?
Both seemed like awful choices.
“Your dad’s a prick.” He sighed.
“I know.” I knew that intrinsically. I knew it by experience, but I didn’t know exactly what Chet meant by saying it, or if he was just reminding me.
Seconds later, Chet rolled over and put his back to me again. “Fuck,” he whispered, and that was all, but the finite edge in his tone was palpable.
When I woke the next morning he was gone. I wasn’t surprised. The pallet I’d made him was folded neatly, pillow set on top of it. I rolled back over, burying my face in sheets that still smelled like him. Sharp and musky and warm.
My dad called me into his office later that afternoon. I stood in front of his huge mahogany desk, looking at the bookshelves behind him that my mom had filled with first editions, biographies, and business texts I knew he hadn’t touched since we’d moved in. Behind him, next to his degree, a wheel from my great-great-great-grandfather’s horse-drawn hay rake took center stage. Dad used to be more sensitive about coming from nothing. Mom had told me he’d worked an entire semester to afford a custom suit for his first job interview and that he fudged his Kentucky roots on his resume, as well as the fact that he came from generations of farmers. Now he’d weaponized it as a point of pride, as a part of his bootstrapping narrative.You evolve to survive, he’d always told me, along with the old dog-eat-dog adages.True evolution takes thousands of years, he’d said,but a single person? We best do it every day unless we want to get left behind.
He capped a pen and set it carefully on his desk, gaze taking in my gym shorts, sweaty tee, and mussed hair. I’d just gotten back from a pickup game with the guys, and there was a rumor about a party happening later at some Hawthorn Prep sophomore’s house across town. All day, I’d been wondering if Chet would be there. The idea made me hopeful and terrified all at once.
“I don’t want you in any way associated with Chet Pynchon. Do you understand me?” Fear lanced through me, and I searched his face for evidence that he knew Chet had been in my room last night, scared shitless he might. “It might reflect poorly on my business. Our family.You.”
I exhaled in relief; he didn’t know.“I hardly ever see him.” It was both truth and lie. My hand curled into a fist at the memory of his touch across my jaw.
“Good. Keep it that way.”
* * *
The next timeI saw Chet was fall semester at the U. I’d heard he given up his walk-on spot on the basketball team to do work-study in order to be able to attend. Their big glass house was now property of the FBI. I’d also heard his sister and mom lived in some shitty apartment across town. That she’d had trouble finding a job and had considered retaking her maiden name.
Chet walked across the quad with a couple of other guys, hands buried in the pockets of a hoodie, book-stuffed backpack sagging between his shoulders. I stood stock-still watching him, my feet rooted to the ground with a firmness that belied the wistful flutter in my rib cage.
Chet met my gaze, held it for a moment, then snapped it away and walked on.
Chet
Present day