Crosscurrents
  By: Adam Phillips
(© 2005-2013 by the author)

35. Cresting

I stared at Jared Cannon's ass while the water was cascading down his back, and my dick responded appreciatively.

It was a new school year, the final one of my undergrad studies. Ryan Cannon's kid brother was a soccer player too, and now he was his brother's teammate and mine, a freshman, one of the New Guys on the team.

We'd been the last two men off the field after practice, and the last--and only--two in the shower together. I'd taken the opportunity to gawk because he was rinsing his shampoo-covered head under the shower next to mine. He wouldn't be able to see me scoping out his body.

Damn, that's one prime grade-A butt, I thought. Standing there stupefied as the water bulleted against my chest, I fantasized about putting my hands on those sweet cheeks and spreading them. In my mind, I fingered his hole while he groaned his assent, and then I brought the head of my dick up against that pucker and pulled his torso toward me until I'd penetrated him...

So soft, so tight...

*******

As I watched Jared rake his hands through his soapy hair, my mind went back to the previous March.

I'd been dressing out for a run when I heard the doorbell ring. I finished putting on my shoes and went to the door.

It was Ryan, standing in front of me with a team bag. I walked out onto the porch and shut the door behind me.

"Hey, Cap Gun," I said, bumping fists with him. "Whassup?"

He set his bag down. "Hey, Andy. I was gonna run, and I knew you went about this time of day. We haven't hung out in a while, and I just decided to see if you wanted a running partner. I have a dinner date, so I brought street clothes and figured it would prolly be okay with you if I showered and changed at your place after."

"Absolutely. Come in for a second." I opened the door and grabbed his bag, and he stepped in.

I scanned him up and down. "Are you stretched?"

He nodded; I set his stuff on the floor of the entryway.

"I'm not," I told him. "Give me a minute to do a few, and we'll go."

As I got my legs prepped to run, he talked about his spring semester and about the girl he was going out with. Then he slid casually into what I realized was his real purpose for stopping by:

"Hey, I hear you and Trey are staying here next year, and you need two more guys to replace Shane and Starnes."

"That's right. Why, are you interested?"

"Definitely."

I considered it as I worked my stretches. "Yeah. I think that would work fine, Cap Gun."

He blushed. "You just love callin' me that, don't you?"

"Shit, yeah! And why not? I fuckin' gave you that name. It's such a good name, too. Fits you real well: A nice bang in a smaller package!"

I slapped him on the back, and he grinned. The nickname had stuck over the years.

Motioning him toward the living room, I said, "Have a seat and I'll fill you in on the basics here. Everybody's pretty easy-going, but we like each man to do his part so the place doesn't go to hell." We talked about him moving in, and I gave him a quick overview of how we ran things at the house: Cleaning chores and schedules. Study zones. Noise. Monthly rent.

When I'd covered all I could think of, I said, "I think that's all I got. Still sound like a place you wanna live?"

"Yeah, it does. How about it?"

"Well, I gotta talk to Trey, but I think it's a good fit."

"Awesome." He stood up and stretched a few times. "Call me when you and Trey have had a chance to talk about it."

I made my way to the door and beckoned him to follow. "Anyway, let's go run."

We put in about three miles; enough to raise a good sweat. When we got back to the house, I said, "You can check out your new room on your way to the shower. Right across from the bathroom. It's Flaherty's room right now, though, so put your shit in my room while you shower."

When we got there, he set his bag down on my bed. Pulling out a pair of jeans, some boxer briefs, a polo shirt, socks, and a pair of deck shoes, he laid them neatly on my bed.

Turning to me, he asked, "Are there towels in the bathroom?"

"Yeah..."

I could hear his question well enough to respond, but I'd just had a thought that snagged me out of full awareness.

It must have been pretty obvious. "Andy?"

I shook my head and tried to focus."What?"

"What's up? You're a little..."

"Yeah. Towels are in the bathroom."

"Okay, but what's..."

I pulled off my shirt. "You're not the only one sweaty. Let's share the shower."

He frowned. "No way in hell. I know what you want."

"I just wanna look, dude," I grinned. "I promise I won't try to touch your dick."

He eyed me for a moment, stroking his chin, and finally said, "What the fuck, I don't give a shit. Not like you haven't seen it before."

"Not like I haven't tasted it before."

His face went crimson. "Dude. Shut the fuck up. Jesus."

I shook my head. "I'm not buyin' it, Cap Gun. You know you liked it."

He paused, considering his comeback line. He tensed, squinted his eyes...

...and then chuckled. "Okay, whatever. I liked it. You're good at it."

"Damn right you liked it." I couldn't keep the mirth out of my voice.

"So what?"

"So don't go all 'I'm-so-grossed-out' on me."

"Sorry," he muttered. "Look, don't take it personal, because we're tight, right? It's just...well, remembering that whole night kinda freaks me out. I was drunk, and if it had only been just you suckin' my dick..."

He blushed furiously again.

"I don't suck dick," he said vehemently. "I don't hate guys who do. Obviously. But I can't get the memory out of my head, having your dick in my mouth. The whole next week I was completely freaked out, trying to deal with it."

"It was just a drunk hookup, Ryan," I said. "It doesn't mean anything about you."

"Yeah, I know, I figured that out eventually," he replied. "Still, thinking back on that night makes me wince a little."

He hooked his thumbs inside the waistband of his shorts. "But I don't care if you wanna check out the bod; that's your kink, not mine."

"Excellent," I said. "So strip for me. Right here. I wanna watch you take it off."

He laughed. "You are such a damn pervert."

The next thing I knew he was running his hands sensuously over his body.

I stifled a groan.

With excruciating deliberateness, he inched his t-shirt up over his head and off. When his upper torso was bare, he lifted his arms, put his hands behind his head, and flexed for me. Closing his eyes and licking his lips, he began his impression of a Chippendale's dancer. His hips moved sensuously to the beat of some imaginary tune as he whispered, "You like this?"

I was fixated on his armpits and found it hard to answer. Fucker had me snared, and he knew it; the leer on his face gave it away.

He pushed his soccer shorts down to his knees. Stepping out of them, he walked a couple of paces closer to me and repeated the hands-behind-his-head flex as his hips undulated seductively. I swallowed hard; he'd invaded my space sufficiently to assault me with pheromones and with the rich, musky smell of his sweaty body.

Completely against my will, I licked my lips and groped myself.

He brought a hand to his crotch and started to rub himself as he danced. Then he turned his backside toward me and, centimeter by centimeter, lowered his boxer briefs, until he'd exposed his entire magnificent butt.

Bringing his hands to his midsection, he covered his junk as he turned to face me. The classic "come-hither" facial expression he was wearing as he beckoned me even closer was almost enough to turn the whole thing into parody and break the mood; but once I'd looked down at his hands, I was unable tear my eyes away.

As he moved his hands to his sides, I dropped to my knees to get an eye-level view.

He flashed me a warning with his eyes. "Okay, but don't get any closer."

I watched his cock as he danced naked for a couple of moments, and then he was done. He grinned and took a bow.

I actually applauded. And part of me was giving him a standing ovation.

He noticed it when he looked at my shorts. "You tell people I did a strip for you, you die," he threatened. His face didn't match his tone, though. He was clearly enjoying the effect he was having on me.

I shucked off the rest of my clothes, and we walked naked down the hall and into the bathroom.

The shower was decidedly non-erotic. I loved his body, but we were more about horseplay than sex play. Well, okay, I grabbed his butt once in both hands and gently felt my way up and down his glutes. He didn't exactly jump away. In fact, as I ran my hands over his ass, he closed his eyes and sighed. I had no intention of taking it beyond that, but damn, his butt was a thing of beauty.

I watched his face as his breathing slowed and deepened. "You like that," I said. His dick hadn't gotten hard, but I could tell from the closed eyes and the expression of contentment on his face that he liked the sensation.

My words seemed to snap him back to reality. "I guess...well, yeah, it felt good, of course I do." he said. "You got good hands. And since you were gettin' your perverted thrills off my body, I decided to let you have a feel. But I tell you this, Sharpe, my little brother's gonna be on the team next year, and you better fuckin' keep your hands off him."

Laughing, I gave his right butt-cheek a slap. "I promise. No hot beef injection for the Little Cannon. Oral or otherwise. Even if his older brother liked it that first time."

"Asshole," he mumbled. "It was the only time, and you told the rest of the whole team."

"That's what you got for trying to make a joke out of me," I said, giving him another slap on the ass.

He reached around and smacked my ass in pay-back. Pretty soon we were in a slap-and-tickle war, laughing our reddened butts off.

Eventually we started feeling too much like eleven-year olds, so we cut the shit, rinsed off, and finished up. I got out first and grabbed towels for us. As I handed him one, he said, "Thanks for letting me move in. I mean, if Trey says yes."

I smiled. "Not a problem. And he will. It'll be fun having you here."

*******

My flashback faded, and my mind turned back to Little Cannon showering next to me. My libido was still wavering over the promise I'd made to his big brother, but that's not what held me back.

I was done with fooling around with teammates. For some time now. I had more important things in my life. Better things.

Still, it sure didn't hurt to look and enjoy.

He turned around to face me while I was still in mid-reverie and imagining the feel of my hands on those silky-smooth globes of his. The shampoo had been washed out of his eyes, and he'd seen enough to know that my gaze was missile-locked on him.

Then he noticed my erection. His eyes widened, and a wicked laugh tumbled from his chest and out his mouth.

"Dude. Really? Am I gonna have to make sure I don't drop the soap around you?"

I nodded, looking him straight in the eye. "Yes. Really. Do you realize what a primo ass you have? You definitely got me hard, not gonna lie. But I'm not the rapist kind, so drop the soap all you want."

He blushed. Those Cannon boys did that pretty easily, I noticed. Whatever he'd thought I might say, I could tell he wasn't expecting me to admit that he'd gotten me hard. "So you're...you're gay? Ryan told me you were practically married."

"I'm sexual. Let's leave it at that. I'm not gay. Ryan told you right. I do have a girlfriend. And her ass is hotter than yours, even. Not that you have anything to be ashamed of."

"Well, I wasn't trying...Ryan said something about you being bi, but you and me, we were just talking, right? I didn't pick the shower head next to you to make you feel gay or anything..."

I tried hard not to laugh. "You can't make people feel gay, moron. And there's nothing your pretty glutes do for me that makes me wanna give up on women. Actually, you're the one who should be answering that question. Are you cool with showering next to a guy whose dick gets hard at the sight of your ass?"

"Hell, I don't care, I know I'm hot." He stuck out his ass in my direction. "You maybe could come in handy if I need a desperation blowjob."

"Yeah. Like I'm gonna service a freshman. Anyway, who said I liked your dick? I was watchin' the other end."

He turned to face me and ran a finger up and down the length of his cock. I'd seen it before, but since I'd already been busted, I used the opportunity to give it a good stare.

He was bigger than his brother. Thicker. Longer. Even when he was soft.

A groan escaped me.

"Hah. Score! Try and deny it now."

"Okay, so I like your dick. Big deal. I'm not interested in fooling around with teammates. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt."

"Really. More than one?"

"Yep."

Anybody I'd know?"

I couldn't help it. I cracked up, and I couldn't get control.

"What's so funny?" His forehead wrinkled in confusion and annoyance.

Then the light came on for him.

His mouth dropped open. "No way. Uh-uh. Don't even tell me that!"

"Yep. Ask him if you don't believe me."

"Ryan fucked around with you? My brother?"

"Yeah. And he gave real good head for a beginner. He swallowed my jizz like a champ. The whole team knows."

I stepped out of the showers and grabbed the towel I'd left hanging on the wall peg just outside. On my way to my locker, I glanced back over my shoulder. Jared was staring after me, his mouth still hanging open in disbelief.

*******

Angie was out of town for the weekend, because her father had fallen off a ladder cleaning the gutters and had broken his leg. She'd gone back home to help play nursemaid with her mom over the weekend.

Matt and Julie came down, though. It was our first game of the season, and they met me at the field, as per my request, about forty-five minutes before starting time. I'd gotten there fifteen minutes earlier, because I wanted some alone-time to settle in and re-acclimate. It had been almost a year since I'd played with the team in a game that actually mattered, and I wanted to give myself time to get the jitters out. I'd told Matt and Julie to meet me there.

When I saw his car, I ran to the parking lot and toward them, intending to hug Matt straight out of the car. As I drew near, though, I had some misgivings and decided to hold back. There were new rules now. I had a place in all this, but I needed to show some respect for that area of Matt's life that was roped off.

Julie got out first and headed over to where I was standing, closing twelve feet of space in three seconds.

She gave me a perfunctory hug. "You better be good out there. I'm not crazy about soccer, and it wasn't a short drive."

"I'm always good when your boyfriend comes to see me play." I smirked; I was pressing my luck, but if we were all going to do this long haul, we needed to stop tiptoeing around it and dive right in.

"Yeah, right." She rolled her eyes, but she laughed.

By this time, Matt had made his way to where we were standing. Our eyes locked together, holding conversation that our voices couldn't.

Respect. I had to be respectful of her claim on him.

I stuck out a hand for him to grab and shake.

Julie rolled her eyes. "Oh, please."

"Excuse me?" I sent an irritated thought in her direction. I'm behaving myself for you, woman; you best be appreciative.

She wasn't impressed. "Don't hold back on my account. I don't want to hear I cost you the game or something on account of your pent-up sexual frustrations. So kiss him already, and get on down the road."

I looked around; it was just us and an empty parking lot. So I pulled Matt into a tight hug, resting my head on his shoulder. He rubbed my head for a moment, then put his hands on the sides of my head and lifted my face toward him.

I closed my eyes as his lips touched mine. He kissed me lightly, then began covering my face with soft kisses. Before he pulled away, he whispered in my ear. "I love you."

"Me, too," I said, suddenly self-conscious.

I looked over at Julie, and our eyes met. Her expression was a mixture of amusement and disdain.

"You better win today."

I already have, I told myself; the thought had more than a reasonable share of "smug" on it.

*******

After our 4-1 victory,  the three of us went back to my place. I showered and changed while Matt and Julie watched TV downstairs. Once I was ready, we took Matt's car, and I navigated them to Abuelo's, a little dive on the east end of town that had the best Mexican food in the city.

Talk consisted of news and commentary about my student life and about their working lives.

We were on two different planets now; talking across the divide felt odd.  But Margaritas lubed the conversation, and even aside from that, things were pleasant enough; Julie had done her best since Angie's intervention to make herself okay with what I had with Matt. I appreciated it, and I know that Matt did too. I could tell it wasn't her first instinct.

But I can't claim that I was especially virtuous about the whole thing: Something inside me resented her for making a portion of Matt unavailable to me. I knew it was unfair to feel that way. I had Angie, after all; and anyway, I was happy for him. But I couldn't help feeling a little like a rival. And if she felt anything like I did, I understood how difficult it was for her even to be polite to me, to say nothing of socializing with me.

I felt guilty about resenting her, especially since she clearly made Matt so happy. And truthfully, I didn't always resent her. Actually, I liked her. And she and Angie had been awesome about sending me and Matt off on a weekend.

I wanted her to see that I was making the effort as much as she was, so I brought up their wedding. A few well-chosen questions got her chattering with enthusiasm, as she filled me in on her thoughts and plans for the ceremony. Apparently, some of this had been in the works since before she'd even had her first date with a boy. I had to marvel at what a big deal wedding ceremonies were for females, but hearing the whole show from her eyes intrigued me enough to stay attentive, and she interpreted that as cordiality.

Who knows? Maybe it was.

*******

When it was time for them to go, they dropped me off at the house.

Matt walked me to the door. At the top of the porch steps, he paused, looked at me, and shuffled his feet nervously. "I know we...you and I, that is...we didn't get any time to..."

"Leave it be," I said, smiling. "It's the new reality. It is what it is, and that's a good thing, right? She's your woman, and that's awesome. Angie takes up a lot of my attention; why would I want it to be different for you?"

"I know, but it's frustrating," he said. "I'm not very good at this balancing act yet, but it'll work out. You know it will. After everything..."

In a flash, anger rose up and flared out from me. "I don't know why you'd think that," I said, interrupting him and giving in to the latent despair I'd been feeling for a while now.

As soon as I'd said it, I regretted it. The look on his face added shame to that unpleasant stewpot of bile I'd been cooking up on the back burner.

"Don't be that way, dude," he said, nearly pleading.

It was never good when I hid things from him. I realized I should probably say something.

"Matt," I began, "do you ever get the sense that we're trying something that's impossible? Look around, man, there's nobody I know who's doing what we're doing. Maybe that should tell us something."

It didn't come out like I'd intended, though. There was too much bitterness on it, and he'd caught it by its sharp edge, and it had drawn blood.

He scowled and said, "Only thing it tells me is that maybe there are people out there being discreet. Anyway, so what if you're right? What does anybody else have to do with us? I thought we write our own rules."

I sighed. "I guess."

I could see a haze of conflicting thoughts and feelings register on his face. Before I'd had time to say anything, though, a grin broke through like sunshine after a rain.

"Don't guess," he said. "Believe."

Believe.

Yeah, right. It was always so simple for Matt.

Before I could speak up, he planted a kiss on my mouth and followed through by singing in a ballsy, Journey-like upper-tenor,

Just a small-town girl,
Livin' in a lonely world,
She took the midnight train goin' anywhere...

I laughed as he crooned the oldie at me. He wouldn't stop, and it was getting embarrassing, so I started pushing him backward.

He backed down the stairs, still singing, as I followed, keeping a gentle pressure on his chest with my hand, forcing him toward his car.

Julie was behind the wheel, laughing. As I opened the passenger-door, he sang,

Don't stop believin',
Hold on to that feelin'...

"Go home," I said, shoving him down into the front seat.

He smiled and grabbed my hand. "Don't stop believing."

I snorted. "You're a moron." I tried to pull away, but he held on tight.

"Don't do it," he said, growing a little intense. The smile faded.

"Matt, shut up."

"I mean it. Hold on to..."

"I get it, okay?"

My irritation was his cue to lighten up again. He gave my hand a wet smooch and let go. Smiling, he said. "You'll see."

"Okay. I know you're right. I never said otherwise."

"Oh, yes you did. You stopped believing, dintcha, boy?"

"Of course not."

"Okay, maybe you didn't...you just like to make noise like you did."

I put my hand on my forehead and squeezed my temples. "Would you please go home?"

"You already said that." He kissed his hand and blew it at me, cracking himself up. Then he turned to Julie. "Home, Jarvis."

"Gladly," she said.

" 'Til next time, soccerboy."

I shut his door.

He rolled down the window as I turned my back toward the house. I heard the car's engine turn over, and a few seconds later I heard a tune blasting from the car's CD player:

Just a small-town girl...

I turned around to look. He had his arm out the window and was grinning lake a crazy man and shooting the finger at me. "Don't stop believing," he shouted in laughing defiance.

I shook my head as they drove off. If it all depended on him, I thought, there'd be no worries at all.

But some things were beyond anybody's control.

*******

"I'm not saying I'm having second thoughts, you idiot."

Angie smacked her hand against her forehead and frowned at me. "What part of this did I not say clearly? Gods, would you listen to me for once? All I'm saying is that I think it'll be better for our marriage if we don't live together during grad school."

"Okay," I said, exasperated. "Maybe that's not what you were saying. But it's the impression it leaves. It's so stupid, Angie. We're gonna be in the same city. We're gonna be man and wife eventually. We're gonna be seeing each other all the time anyway, and it's such a hassle for you to be driving over to my apartment or for me to be driving over to yours. Especially since we'll spend the night together more often than not. And think of the money we'll save. Why wouldn't you wanna live with me unless you're having second thoughts?"

We were at her apartment, discussing Life After Undergrad. She'd applied for medical school in the same city where I'd applied for grad school. I couldn't see the point in keeping separate quarters; I wanted to spend all my time with her. She was resisting, though, and it hurt a little.

She drummed her fingers on the table.  "Do you really want to know, or are you just trying to pressure me into doing it your way?"

"I'm trying to pressure you into doing it my way," I said with a grin.

"You're gonna have to try harder," she said.

"Okay, then, maybe I really want to know."

"Don't ask questions you're not prepared to have answered," she warned.

"Oh, fuck that," I mumbled. "For the love of God, would you help me understand why you wanna keep us living separately in grad school even though we'll be seeing each other all the time anyway?" But even as I spoke, I began to realize what she was going to say.

She didn't flinch, hesitate, or try to soften the blow. "Because you're not ready for it."

There it was. We were on the edge of a discussion I was rigidly uninterested in having.

So I lied. "I don't even know what you mean. I don't even know what you're referring to."

"I think you do. I think you know exactly what my reservations are."

I shot her a death-glare. "Well, maybe I'm just stupider than you think I am, because I have no fucking idea what you're talking about." I was already in deep regret that I'd opened this door, so I tried to close it. "But fuck it. Have it your way. Separate apartments. I don't give a shit."

She shook her head. "No. You asked, and now I'm gonna tell you. If you're honestly mystified, then we need to have this conversation. And if you're not really mystified, then I'm thinking you still need to hear me say it. Because your little about-face doesn't count for anything with me. You do give a shit, and you know it."

Well, fuck. I had no diversionary tactics left and couldn't think my way out of this, so I stood there dumbfounded as she drummed her fingers.

She reached for my hand, kissed it, then let go. "I want to start out with this, because if I don't, you're gonna go off on a tangent you're not entitled to. So let me say it first. I'm happy that you love Matt like that and he loves you. You know this is true, don't you?"

"Yes," I said. "I've known it since we were high school kids. And it makes me happy. How many other bi guys have a woman as awesome as that?"

"Quit being a suck-up," she said. "This isn't gonna be a fun discussion."

"Oh, all right," I sulked. It was maddening that I was so transparent to her.

"My concern is that your ambivalence about Matt, and your frustrations over the whole non-resolution of what you are to him, that's all gonna mess us up if we move in together before you have it worked out."

"I don't know how you can throw down such total bullshit," I fumed. "In case you hadn't noticed, Matt and I are just fine."

She snorted. "Really."

I snorted back. "Really."

"That's why you call his name out in your sleep and plead with him him not to forget about you."

Motherfucker. Throw that in my face?

"One fucking dream, Angie. You're making a whole damn pathology out of one damn dream. I honest-to-God wish I hadn't told you about it."

She put a hand on my shoulder. "It wasn't just one dream. You talk the same kind of thing when you're asleep more often than not lately."

I hesitated. "I do?"

"Yeah. You do. I've been worried. So I talked to Matt. He's been telling me about some of the stuff you've been saying to him. I don't like it. He doesn't either."

Great. Gang up on me. Assholes.

Immediately, I was ashamed of myself. They weren't assholes, and they weren't my enemies; they were the two people who loved me most. And if both of them were worried...

I shook it off. So what if they were? They were wrong.

"You're both misunderstanding what's up with me. It's that I don't like not being in control of my life," I said. "How this plays out with Matt...it's unknowable. He means a lot to me. I don't want things to change, and they're going to. He has a job. He's getting married. I'm moving farther away. I'm getting married. I'll be getting a job. God knows where. We could end up in fucking Maine, for all I know. I'm worried about how he and I are gonna be able to keep anything like we have now. It's so good, and so perfect, and I can't stand the thought of losing that with him. I don't think that counts as being too fucking messed up to move in with the woman I'm gonna marry. What are you worried I'm gonna do? Drop my grad school plans, dump you, and run away with him? Gimme a break."

She smiled at me and shook her head. "Babe, don't take this wrong," she began, "but I gotta say, Andy, your whole deal with Matt is hypocritical."

Nice, the Bitterness Inside said. Now she's calling you names."What the hell do you mean?"

"I'll tell you," she said. "You're so intense about everyone managing their lives instead of letting stuff happen to them. You've always been like that, and you've usually lived that out. Except in this one area: When have you ever done anything but hide in the corner and let things just happen at random with you and Matt?"

I was beyond irritated now. I was into the red zone. "Okay, just fuckin' stop right there. He and I wouldn't be where we are today if I hadn't taken the jump on fixing it," I said.

She folded her arms. Her face grew dark. Her whole body appeared skeptical. "You took the jump. You did."

"Damn right I did."

She stared at me, radiating disagreement.

"Fuck you, Angie, I said I did, and you know I did."

"Sophomore year, spring semester. When you called him on the phone to talk about planning the beach party."

"Exactly."

"Let's see...you made that call why?"

"Because I wanted us to stop all the bullshit and fix things."

"Right. I know what you wanted, but what specifically caused you to call? What actions preceded the actual making of the call?"

Dammit.

Shrugging, I conceded. "Okay, maybe you gave me the idea."

She was unmollified. "I didn't 'give you the idea.' I told you to call him. There's a difference. And even then you fought me, and even then if I hadn't picked up the phone, dialed the number, and handed it to you, you and I both know there's a strong possibility that call would have never happened."

"What's your point?"

"Well...let's keep going. When y'all finally got to the beach, when did you initiate the talk?"

I glared at her, fuming.

"Oh, wait," she continued. "You didn't initiate the talk. You just let the weekend unfold until finally Matt took the bull by the horns."

I looked at my hands. "Fuck," I mumbled.

"My point is that you and he aren't really fixed yet, because you're getting more and more rattled by what may or may not happen in the future. I don't want to start a life together with you until you've done something about those anxieties one way or another. I'm just fine with you loving Matt the way you do, and you know I will never interfere in that area. That's between you and him, and I'll support you and him separately and together in what you have...but I'm not going to live under the same roof with you and start up life together with you until you have all your anxieties about him settled. If we move in together before that happens, it won't be fair to me, because from Day One our life together will be dominated by your angst over you and Matt."

It was like bricks falling on me. I'd never thought about it like that. She was right.

And she wasn't finished.

"It won't be fair to him, either, because when it's really bugging you, instead of resolving things, you'll turn to me, and of course I'll be there for you, and you'll use your love for me as a distraction from your problems with Matt, and nothing will get resolved. And that means unless he does all the heavy lifting, then it all becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and you do just drift further and further apart. You're afraid to work this out with him because there's a part of you that doesn't want to burden him with some kind of gay love thing. There's a part of you that's afraid he needs a normal, ordinary straight life instead of an intimate relationship with you. And you're afraid that when he gets a taste of it, he won't want you anymore."

Injury, meet insult. If looks could have killed...

"When did you get to be the expert on bisexual relationships?" I spat at her.

"Please," she said. "You're not all that difficult to figure out. How many years have I known you? How many years have I observed you? You don't think the relationship is going to survive all the changes we're all going through. So you just let it ride, and you gear yourself up for dealing with a heartbreak that your passivity is hell-bent on fabricating out of nothing!"

My face felt hot. "You make it sound like I'm the biggest coward on the planet."

"That's not my point at all. I don't think you're a coward. I think you and he are trying something that almost nobody tries. You don't know how to make it happen, and you see that things are changing, and it feels out of control. And there aren't any kind of cultural landmarks or advice books, and it's freaking you out a little. What kind of uncaring guy would you be if none of that mattered to you?"

I rubbed my fingers over the bottoms of my eyes and wiped, to keep the moisture from compromising my face. "Angie, this may take years to settle. This is something one talk with him isn't gonna fix. It's not about some kind of conflict. It's about normal, natural consequences of getting older and growing up."

"You're right," she said. "And it's about getting to solutions that nobody has a template for. And that's going to take time and effort from both of you. I'm not saying we can't get married until you have it totally figured out. I'm just saying that while we're working on our doctorates, we don't need the additional stress of your uncertainties over this unconventional thing we're all trying to do. Come to think of it, while we're both working on our doctorates, it might be the smart choice to have separate quarters even if there hadn't been any Matt in the picture! Do you have any idea how busy and stressed I'm gonna be in medical school?"

She was right. I didn't know about that last part, but the part about Matt was dead-on. I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it before.

"You don't need me working my angst over Matt while you and I are under the same roof trying to study."

She rolled her eyes. "Praise Jesus; give the boy a Scooby-Snack."

I sighed and shrugged. She walked over to me and began rubbing my shoulders. "Except for the fact that you have the emotional intelligence of a fruit fly, I have no doubts about us. None. I thought we were clear on that. But not having any doubts doesn't mean I think we're ready yet. Before we can live together, you have to find a way to settle things with Matt. On your own. Without using your relationship with me as a drug or an emotional crutch. You understand that, don't you?" She moved up and began massaging my neck, throwing in some gentle kisses as she kneaded the tension away. A chill went down my spine, and my dick went to full attention.

I turned to face her. "Thanks," I whispered.

"You're welcome," she said, unbuttoning my shirt.

********

Heading up I-35, I was tense with curiosity and anticipation.

It was the last week of September, and we had a bye weekend. I'd originally planned to visit my parents, but on Wednesday of that week,  I got an email from Matt. It was short and cryptic.

Don't go home Friday. After your last class, drive straight to the lakehouse. I'll be there by 2. Get there when you can. You can drive back to school Sunday afternoon.

That was the extent of it.

When I hit Dallas, I needed a bathroom break, so I stopped off at my parents' place. As I'd anticipated, nobody was home. That was good; it would keep me on schedule.

I went to the bathroom and relieved my aching bladder. But I had other things to do.

In my room, there was a box I'd hidden at the back of the closet. I retrieved it, took it to the bathroom, extracted its contents, and took off my clothes. I got myself all cleaned out inside in anticipation of what Matt and I might be doing at the lake, a little embarrassed, as always, at having to be so damn conscious and deliberate about all this. After I'd finished, I cleaned and dried the equipment, packed it up, and hid it back in my closet. Then I returned to the bathroom, showered up, dried off, dressed, and got back on the road.

The lakehouse: Matt and I had probably spent more time together there than Angie's parents had, and they were the owners. Invariably, weekends at the lake with him were sexually charged.

Thoughts and memories along those lines were running through my head as I drove. By the time I reached the turnoff, all I could think about was holding him naked in my arms. It was about 3 in the afternoon, and knowing Matt had been waiting an hour to be with me had me wound beyond tight.

The lake came into view, and then the street, and then the house.

I'd arrived.

I pulled into the drive, and that's when it hit me.

Matt's car wasn't there.

I wondered why he'd been delayed.

I had a spare key to the house, so I wasn't worried about getting in. But Matt had been so definite that he'd be there first. It gave me an odd feeling.

I got out of my car; it was utterly silent outside, except for the sound of the gentle breeze moving the leaves on the trees.

I scanned the area. The nearest neighboring house was several lots over. Two vacant lots--unsold property--were to the left of the house, and three empty lots stood to the right. And those nearest houses appeared not to have anyone there. Between the empty space and the eerie quiet, it gave the day an isolated, lonely feel.

I didn't mind. It would give me a chance to walk around a little, unwind, and anticipate seeing him.

The weather was a perfect 75 degrees.  My muscles relaxed almost reflexively, and I began to turn toward the lake, intending to walk along the shoreline for a while.

But as I turned, the door of the lakehouse caught my eye.

It was ajar.

I frowned, and about the moment that it occurred to me that maybe someone had broken in, I was startled by sound breaking the silence.

It was a savage, hypnotic, and all-too-familiar synthetic pulse...

...and it was coming from inside the house.

Loudly.

As I reached the top of the steps, a vocal line, thoroughly familiar to me but still menacing in its intensity, wrapped itself around the beat.

You let my violate you...
You let me desecrate you...
You let me penetrate you...
You let me complicate you...
Help me!

I stepped inside, wary. The curtains were drawn; the front of the house was empty and dark, except for the glow of the display on the stereo.

"Matt?"

No answer.

A chill ran up my spine. He had to be here. Otherwise...

Struggling to shake off the Stephen King scenarios that were banging at the door of my imagination, I made my way cautiously to the back of the house.

I walked toward the largest of the three bedrooms.

Its door was shut.

The other two had been open.

I hesitated; this was starting to feel like a John Carpenter movie.

The sound was just as loud in the back as it was in the front. The tune was inescapable.

You're being stupid, I told myself. Knock it off. Are you nine years old?

Right. But as I brought my hand cautiously to the knob and began to turn it, I squeezed my eyes shut and thought of the horror films that used this same exact scene.

I opened my eyes and eased the door open, bracing myself and ready for nothing and for anything.

Except for what I saw.

It was Matt. Standing at the foot of the bed, naked and steel-stiff with arousal.

He stared at me without speaking, his face a mask of intensity and aggression. Part of me wanted to laugh with relief and to run to him and put my arms around him...but his eyes were riveting in their violent intensity; and they told me to keep my distance.

"Matt?"

I wanted to say more. I needed to cover over the discomfort with chatter, I had to shake being spooked.  But he spoke first.

"Undress."

I tried to respond in sentences, but everything that came out was a stumble. "Matt, where's your...I mean, how long have...what are you.."

"You heard me," he cut in. "Do it."

I was stunned. Confused. Mesmerized.

Turned on.

Spooked.

And there wasn't any question of disobedience.

I swallowed hard and lifted the t-shirt over my head.

Dropping it on the floor, I took off my shoes and socks.

I shucked the jeans.

Finally, I pushed my boxer briefs down to my ankles and stepped out of them.

His eyes traveled downward from my face and stopped at my dick, which was as hard as his was.

He motioned me toward him with his head, as Trent Reznor intoned, his voice bestial and driven.

I wanna fuck you like an animal...

And I realized just how it was going to be today. My eyes got wide, and yet another shiver went through me.

He wanted it like this?

"Come over here."

I obeyed.

When I was in reaching distance, he put his hands on my shoulders. Pulling me toward him, he got me within kissing distance. He put his hands on the sides of my head, forcing my face close to his.

He opened his mouth and brought it hard against mine.

It wasn't tender. His right upper canine tooth nicked the edge of my upper lip and drew blood. I knew it was going to bleed when I felt it.

He must have tasted it. He backed off and surveyed my face with a look of horror, breaking character for the only time that night:

"Oh, shit, Andy, I'm sorry..."

"Shut up," I told him. He'd scared me. He'd put my dick into an uncomprehending frenzy. And those things had made me angry. I wasn't interested in apologies.

"Bring it," I said, as I pulled his face back into mine.

The bleeding wasn't bad, and it had stopped pretty quickly, but when our lips touched, he licked at the blood and covered the area with small, tender kisses.

He looked into my eyes. There wasn't any hurt for him to find; The slash to my lip was inconsequential. Irrelevant.

I knew he could read all that in my eyes. We'd known each other for too long.

He brought his mouth to the wound and sucked gently.

I was as hard as I'd ever been.

The mesmerizing sounds of "Closer" continued to pulse through the house. The chorus had come around again.

I wanna fuck you like an animal...

Raw desperation dripped from Trent Reznor's voice.

I shuddered. I had no idea what was possessing him. But this was his show, and I was trapped, unless I chose to throw water on the whole thing. And who knew where that would lead? So I decided to roll with it. But he needed permission to continue after I'd been lacerated.

I locked eyes with him, nodded, and said, "Yeah. That. What he said. Do it."

That was apparently all I'd needed to say. The next thing I knew, he'd scooped me up in his arms and thrown me down onto the bed. Climbing on top of me, he attacked my neck, open-mouthed. I gasped when I felt his teeth sink into me.

He began sucking on my neck as his hard cock thrust up and down the length of my own.

I'd never been bitten on the neck before. Not by a human being, anyway. And somehow it was the most intense thing I'd ever felt. Not that it was exactly a bite.

I stretched my neck to give him unrestricted access. "More," I said.

He grinned savagely, and whispered into my ear, "You want me to leave a mark?"

"I want you to fuckin' rape me with your teeth," I said hoarsely, completely at the mercy of my dark lust for him. "I want you to hurt me."

He ground his hard cock against mine, groaning into my ear. "You are mine, soccerboy, and if you ever try to leave me, I'll fuckin' waste you. You belong to me. I'll loan you out to your woman, but you better recognize. You are mine. You hear that, boy?"

I was beside myself. "Want you so much...I..."

He put his mouth against mine and stabbed a finger hard into my ass.

My whole body lurched involuntarily. "Agggh!  Fuckin' hurts!"

At that same instant he brought his teeth down--hard--on my neck again. Like before.

I screamed out.

As before, he hadn't bitten me. It was more as though he was trying to pierce my skin with his teeth. I was taken completely off-guard by the pain.

It wasn't all about the pain, though. There was something raw and atavistic and predatory about the feel of his teeth against one of the most vulnerable places of my body. Through a haze of lust and ten other ineffable sensations and emotions, I wondered absently if a person could kill another person like that if he went at it seriously enough. The thought made my apprehension and desire amp up even higher. I felt my dick spasm, and I realized that he could probably make me cum just doing what he was doing.

His eyes blazed at me, and as he probed me deeply with his finger, he began sucking on my neck again.

But almost as soon as I'd gotten adjusted to that sensation, he pulled away and brought his teeth down on me again.

Over and over he alternated between sucking on my neck and attacking me with his teeth. I was excited past the point of comprehension. I was incoherent. No thoughts would sort themselves out. Vaguely, abstractly, I wanted him to draw blood. I kept trying to bare more and more of my neck to him, kept wanting him to go further and strike harder, to be ruthless, merciless. I wanted him to dominate me and damage me in visceral, unspeakable ways. I wanted him to shred my asshole with his finger and to tear my neck with his teeth.

It shocked me. He'd somehow unleashed something in me I'd never experienced before. It was scaring me. He was scaring me.

And I couldn't get enough of it.

We went at it for longer than I thought I'd be able to endure. I saw in his face that he was as entranced as I was.

Finally, as I crouched at the edge of coming unhinged from this insanity of lust and aggression, he took a ragged breath and said, "Get up."

His words jolted me halfway back into the world of concepts and thoughts, but only halfway.

"Huh?"

He walked over to the mirror. "Get over here."

I fought through the mental fog and struggled to obey.

Joining him in front of the mirror, I looked at my neck in the reflection.

He'd gotten me on both sides, in three places. I shuddered at the sight of the dark, angry "love-bites" that splotched my neck.

Shit. There was no way any of that could be covered up with clothing.

"Go ahead," he said defiantly. "Tell people who did it. I don't care."

Before I could reply, he pulled me back toward the bed and pushed me down onto it.

He got on top of me and began sucking on my nipples, but I was so far and firmly into his zone, I wasn't in the mood for preliminaries.

I brought a hand to my mouth and spit; I used it to lube up his cock.

I spit again and got my asshole slicked up.

"Now. Hard."

He wasn't the only one who could issue orders.

I spread myself open for him with my hands. He lined himself up and shoved, brutal and fast. In an instant he was in all the way to the hilt, and I was groaning from the searing pain of his pitiless entrance.

"Ima split you open, boy," he leered. "Ima tear you up. Ima fuck the living daylights outta you. When we done, you're gonna know you been fucked."

Panting to keep myself from crying out in pain, I hung with him as he took me with a ferocity that almost felt like rage.

I'd never experienced him like this. He was relentless. Angry. Passionate. Loving. All rolled up into one.

And his eyes...they were fierce. Wild. Dangerous.

The music faded in and out of my consciousness. "Closer" was obviously on a loop. And somehow the loud, menacing, intoxicating music seemed like an extension of him. Impossible to tame, impossible to control. Out of control.

Suddenly, I began to understand something I couldn't express with words.

I filed the moment away for future reflection.

Gradually, the hurt from his violent breach attenuated, and the sensation from my prostate rose to the foreground. As pain gave way to ecstasy, he spoke to me.

"You are mine," he told me between heavy breaths. "Telling you again. Never letting you go. Ever. Don't even think about leaving me. You don't have to live in the same town as me, but if you fuckin' abandon me I swear I'll fuckin' hunt you down. I don't care if you get a job in fuckin' Antarctica! This is for always, dammit."

He pulled me tight into him while we fucked. I kissed him over and over on his face, neck and chest.

My words fell out involuntarily and almost mantra-like. "Fuck me, Matt, fuck me baby, fuck me, fuck me hard..." It was all I could say, and I couldn't stop saying it.

For half an hour we went at it like that. He'd slam my body into the bed as he rammed his dick into me, and with each thrust, I'd yell out in fear and ecstasy. After a time, we'd slow to catch our breaths and our equilibrium, and then we'd be back at it, coupling in sexual fury. Over and over.

Love and lust, deep knowledge and depths of incomprehension, all coursed through my body and mind, impossible to unmingle and distinguish. Multiple clashing feelings and thoughts pounded simultaneously. I wanted to laugh and to cry. My eyes rolled up and into the back of my head and I gave into him fully, letting myself become an unreasoning system of synapses.

Over and over his dick assaulted me. The whole time, I let my hands roam over his head, his back, his ass, his legs.

Eventually, we reached the apex. He pulled me into a death grip, the speed of his thrusts accelerated, and the force of his cock slamming into me became the only reality in the world that mattered.

I'd been dominated. Owned. Maybe even humiliated. And I didn't care.

But I'd have my moment of control.

I wet two fingers in my mouth, and as he held me hard against him, pounding away at me, I reached down and shoved them into his asshole as hard as I could.

"Awww, fuck!"

He literally growled. Pulling me so tight into him that I could hardly breathe, he yelled out and exploded inside me, groaning with each pump of his cock. His asshole squeezed against my fingers in hard contractions.

That put me over the top. Grabbing my cock, I jacked myself up and down furiously and began cumming a few seconds after him. He watched in disbelief as nine shots of cum jetted from my cock and spattered our chests.

Pulling out of me, he sat on me and rubbed his cock all over my chest, dragging it through our combined juices. Then, scooting forward a little, he smeared his wet cock all over my face and under my nose. He finished up by parking his dick at my lips. When I opened my mouth, he filled it. I sucked the slimy residue of our sex off his cock, and as the final, unremarkable act of our strange, violent coupling, I licked his balls until they were soaked in my spit.

At the touch of my tongue to his sac, he shuddered and began his descent. I watched as he relaxed and closed his eyes. "Mmmmmmmmm," he said. "Feels so good..."

Gradually, as we lay there facing each other, staring wordlessly at each other, we drifted into something resembling reality.

Which summoned the inevitable questions from me.

I sat up. "Where's your car?"

"In the shop."

"How'd you get here?"

"I...okay, Julie gave me a ride up here. I figured you could bring me home."

"She knows what..."

"She knows enough," he said, scowling.

"Okay, whatever, I'm sorry," I said sarcastically. "I didn't know it was such a sensitive subject."

"It's not. I'm sorry, man."

"It's all good," I said, leaning in and kissing him. "But Matt...

"...what the fuck?"

I said it quietly; I'd meant it as an inquiry, but it probably came out as an accusation.

He blushed, and then he pulled himself up and sat next to me.

Turning my face toward his, he tried to give it voice. But he was semi-petulant. Almost defensive.

"Look what you've done to me."

I grabbed a hand, perplexed. "I don't understand."

"I own you, because I can't get away from you. I know that doesn't make any sense. I mean, I don't want to get away from you.

"I planned this, because...because..."

He turned away from my stare for a moment, mumbling to himself and looking down at the floor.

"Things are good with us, right?"

"Of course," I said.

"And life is good."

"It's the best."

"Andy...you have to stop this waffling and doubting and fearing. Do you know what it does to me? It's been on my mind for weeks, and you let it out in little knife attacks, but whenever I try to talk about it, you shut me down."

He shook his head. "You just make me so mad sometimes, the way you act like this is some kind of charity I'm giving you."

I squeezed his hand. "Matt...look, I don't think I do that; I believe what you're..."

"I know you believe it," he said. "When you do. When you don't, you drive me crazy. This obsession you have with believing we're gonna fade to black...Jesus! Why don't you see it, Andy? Why don't you see the love between us is as huge inside me as it is inside you?

"What we just did, I...I feel this way about you sometimes. It's so intense, it overwhelms me. And I needed you to experience it. Sometimes you make loving me seem like a weakness. And you act like I have some kind of power over this that you don't. You talk like it wouldn't matter to me if life took us away from each other. I think you feel like somewhere down the line, I'm gonna turn it off when it gets to be too inconvenient."

He shook his head. "I got no power over it. The only power I have is the power to show you how big it is, how intense it is. How sometimes I want to bang us so hard together that we fuckin' merge into each other forever. So hard that we fuckin' fuse.

"I've held it back for so long. I thought the intensity of it might put you off. But I couldn't take it anymore. Not with the way you're always putting in the escape clauses lately."

"They're not escape clauses," I protested.

"Yes, they are," he replied, "because they give you room to imagine life without me, and I'm telling you I don't have that luxury."

He took a breath. "You're always talking about how we don't know what the future is going to bring, and you're always acting like the future's bigger than what we have in each other. I'm not the Answer Man, you should know that by now. I don't know what the fuck happens in the future. What if you get a job in fucking Idaho? What happens then? How does it work with us? How the fuck should I know? I don't. But I'll tell you this. I don't care, either. I'm not worried. Why should I care? Why should it bother me if we love each other like...well, like this? Like today?

"You're the one who acts like any of that might spell the end of us. Not me. Okay, so I don't know how we'll work it all out. How can we know how to work on a problem until it happens? We can't cover every possible scenario ahead of time. I know that's your preferred MO, but sometimes it's just not do-able! But my point is, it's not even necessary. I'm not worried. I don't care. You shouldn't be worried either. We got the essentials covered. All that other shit is just details. And we can worry about those when they come up. If they come up. In the meantime, we don't go around looking to buy trouble."

He took his hand out of mine and ran it through my hair. "My life is changing, your life is changing, we're making lives with women, and who knows what other shit is gonna come along. I'm just saying that this...what you saw today...that's just the tip of the iceberg of what's inside of me for you, and you know that. Or at least you should. None of that's going anywhere, and I'm not going anywhere. Today was about...well, you need to know how bad it gets...and how good it is. For me."

He stood up and began pacing. "I feel it deep in my bones. It's crazy intense. And I'm claiming you. Because if I don't, you'll find some way to freak out on me. I'm telling you today that you lose the right to do that, motherfucker. You don't get away from me. Not after all the shit we been through. Not after all the times you've broken my heart pushing me away with your confused inner bullshit. You've used up your rejection moves. You don't get any more. So just forget about all that."

I watched a moment of uncertainty flicker over his face. "Unless, well, like I said to you once before, if you ever decide you..."

"Shut up," I said, tears streaming down my face. "Come back to bed."

He  climbed on top of me and rested his head on my chest. We lay there like that, our bodies smeared with each other's cum, each other's sweat.

Pretty soon he began whispering to me and covering my face with kisses. "I love you...oh god, I love you." A little louder, but almost tentative, he said, "You are my fuckin' life, Andy. You've always been. Even when you refused to believe it."

I held him wordlessly, unable to speak, unable to sort out thoughts and feelings. Unable to distinguish between thoughts and feelings.

Unable to tell where I stopped and he began.

Unable to sense us as two separate selves.

We lay there for a while; when the latest iteration of "Closer" reached its familiar, strange terminus, I got up and shut the stereo off.

"Come back," he said.

"I was gonna," I said.

I climbed back into bed, and we fell asleep in each other's arms.

Fused.

*******

"It's so weird watching from the stands. And it's so weird seeing you out there and not being out there too. And it's so weird seeing all these guys I don't even know that well."

Trey was a working man now. He lived in a "soccer house" with us, and he still hung out with a soccer guy...but the college life and the soccer life weren't his anymore.

In an odd way, they weren't mine, either.

He came to all the home games and a fair amount of the "away" games as well...but the rhythms and routines of college life lay in his past. Sometimes Coach Miller would invite him to sit on the bench at games, and he'd even persuaded him to run some skill drills for the team--for compensation, even--when his schedule managed.

But it was different. And the difference was unsettling for him. He'd moved on without moving on.

One night, we were drinking beer downtown. This particular place had outside seating; it had been one of our favorite hell-raising spots.

He'd been talking about the day's practice, which he'd actually coached, because Coach Miller had taken a sick day. That discussion led us back to talking about the glory days when we'd worked in tandem on the field. We went through a few figurative highlight reels, enjoying the memories, laughing at the stupid stuff, when his smile faded out and he grew quiet.

It happened so suddenly, I had to ask him. "What's up, dude? Was there a cockroach in your beer and you swallowed him?"

"Just thinking back, man. Those were some great times...

"Don't get me wrong. I'm so glad I'm outta there...but the problem is..."

I slapped him on the shoulder. "The problem is, you're not outta there."

"Yeah. That's it. I made such a big deal out of staying here and staying friends with you...and I like it that we can still hang."

"But that doesn't mean it's working for you."

"Right," he said. "I feel like a fuckin' lifer."

He was referring to people who affiliated with the big university in town, then fell out, via either graduation or dropping out, but never seemed to be able to leave.

"Are you saying you maybe made the wrong decision to stay in town?"

"Yeah. Probably,"  he replied.

I sighed and nodded. "You can always say 'fuck it' and go somewhere else."

"You want me to do that?"

"That's not what I'm saying. I want you here. But mainly I want you to do what you need to."

"I love you, dude."

"Of course you do. I give the best head jobs in town."

He smiled. "No doubt. It's been too long..."

I felt myself blush a little, which made him add, "I hope you know I'm kidding."

"Yeah. And I hope you know I still like you like that. But..."

"But you're spoken for twice over. I know."

"Yeah."

A silence descended. We drank in our beers and enjoyed the night air.

After a while, he spoke up. "It's like we always said. It's better when we don't complicate shit between us with sex."

"I totally agree with you."

"When I say that I don't want you to think I didn't like doing stuff with you."

"I don't think that."

"Good. Because I enjoyed it. I'm glad we did it. I hope you are too."

"I am, but it's a pretty crazy thing for a straight guy to admit."

"I'm a pretty crazy straight guy," he said, chuckling.

"That you are." I tipped my bottle toward his. He did the same. We clinked them together, toasting his craziness.

"I'm gonna stay until you graduate," he said casually. "I want to spend your last months in Austin with you."

Neither of us knew how to respond to that, so we sat without speaking, enjoying the night.

"I lost a best friend when I went off to college, you know," I finally said.

"Right, because he became your lover."

"Eventually. After I dragged him through hell."

"Well, that's just the kinda guy you are."

That got me laughing for a good minute.

When I was done, I said, "So I lost one best friend, but while I was losing one, I was making another one."

"For life," he said.

"For life," I replied.

We clinked our bottles together.

*******

Trey wasn't the only one who'd moved on without moving on.

Even though I was still a college student, my life wasn't really about college anymore. Even though I was a college soccer player, my life wasn't about soccer anymore.

Even as much as I loved the game.

I gave it all I had, and I was glad my younger teammates from previous years were still around. But I was ancient compared to the incoming freshman. And with my own classmates graduated, I felt like the lone survivor of an extinct species.

The guys had all suggested me for team captain again, but I'd declined to be considered. It was my fifth year. A "real" senior needed to be given the honor and responsibility. Ultimately, the team chose Ryan Cannon, my housemate. I was happy for him, and I even threw a little team celebration for him at the house.

But that odd haze that had descended on me my senior year in high school showed up again during my final year of college. It numbed me to the experiences I was walking through. I studied hard, played soccer hard, and spent a reasonable amount of time socializing with teammates and hanging out with Trey. But what really mattered in my life, what really counted, was The Next Chapter. The chapter I hadn't reached yet. I felt like I was still living in Part One of Two. "1/2" was The Childhood Years. Where I actually needed to be was 2/2. That's the segment of the book where I needed to be living. The segment that wasn't all behind me. The segment that was looming ahead, with all its excitement and all its potential.

But what about Matt? Where did he belong in the narrative? The first part, or both parts?

In the meantime, time spent in the "now," as a second-year senior, felt like marking time. My body was taking up space in that 1/2 part, when that segment had already been written. The rest of me wasn't there.

Emotionally, I'd Left The Building.

Not to mix metaphors or anything.

*******

Matt got free to visit me by himself one weekend shortly after fall break.

He drove down Friday to see our Saturday morning game and spent the night in my bed. Saturday afternoon we were in the back yard tossing a football around and enjoying the time alone and free. It had been ages since I'd played a simple game of pass-and-catch with him, and between that and the perfect weather, I was caught up in a natural high: Just me and Matt and a football and no cares in the world.

Thoughts of back-in-the-day began to rise to the top.

I walked over to the back porch, grabbed a couple of beers out of the ice chest we'd stocked, and sat, motioning for him to join me.

I threw him a can. "Hey, remember back in seventh grade that time we got into it about Beth Prescott?"

He threw back his head and laughed, joining me on the porch steps. "You mean the time you got all jealous because she wanted me and didn't know you were alive?"

"Yeah," I grinned. "I don't know why, but I was thinking about that today."

He put an arm over my shoulder. "So many memories, man. We've made so many...haven't we?" He squeezed my neck with his arm, pulled me in his direction, and planted a kiss on my cheek.

I closed my eyes, thinking about how pissed off I'd been that day. Before I could replay the scene in my head, though, he cut in.

"That's not the only thing I remember about that day."

I faked innocence. "Oh, yeah?"

"Oh, yeah."

"I don't know what you're referring to. What else do you remember about that day?"

He wrinkled his nose in mock disgust. "I remember it being the first time I'd had another guy's jizz all over my hand."

I took a swig of my beer. "You know you liked it."

"Not as much as you did, faggot," he teased.

I nodded. "You got me there. I just didn't realize it fully at the time."

He fell silent for a moment. I thought back on how strange it had been to touch his cock that first time. Somewhere between that initial encounter and my fifteenth birthday, my feelings for Matt had complicated and compounded themselves far beyond anything I'd felt for him during that seventh-grade jerkoff session.

"Tell you a secret," he said, interrupting my train of thought. "When I went to bed that night, I jacked off remembering the feel of your hand on my dick."

"Really?" I asked, bemused and surprised.

"Really."

"Some straight guy you are."

He shook his head and sighed. "I was horny."

I nodded. "I know."

"And I loved you."

I looked up into his eyes. "Did you know..."

"No. Did you?"

"No. For whatever reason, you hadn't hit me that way yet. But it was fun anyway."

"Yeah, it kinda was." He smiled wistfully. "Damn, we've walked some road together."

I felt myself cloud over a little as I thought about some of that mileage. "It hasn't all been good."

"Nope."

"I was afraid of you after we..."

"I know."

"I hurt you."

"Yeah, you did. But you stopped doing that. Now you're just an asshole sometimes."

I shrugged. "I don't mean to..."

"I know," he interrupted. "I can work with it." He gazed over to the back fence and took another pull on his beer. "Because the times you've been there for me...well, the problems we've had can't even measure up to the times you kept me sane, the times you made me feel it was all gonna be all right."

He put a hand on my back and rubbed. I breathed in deep, soaking up the tenderness, the love.

"You're still waiting for the sad ending, though," he said. "Don't even try to lie."

I cracked open a second beer. "Let's not talk about this, okay? I trust you and I love you and I know that I was totally fucked-up wrong all those years."

"Right. But you're afraid."

"I'm realistic, Matt. It's not about being afraid. I know what you said at the lake, but still. Look, if we step into our grownup lives and everything stays the same between us, nobody will be happier than me. But I think you and I both know the likelihood of that happening is close to zero. You've already started a career. I'll be next, and quite honestly, I don't know where that'll take me. Eventually we'll have kids. Won't this become pretty much irrelevant, or at least not-doable? I'm not like you. I can't just choose to think about that some other day. I can't just assume it'll all work out. Shit doesn't always work out! I have to deal with that ahead of time in my head. I have to be prepared for it so..."

I started to choke up.

"...so it won't destroy me if it happens."

I cleared my throat and struggled to regain control. "Matt, please don't be pissed at me. I know it breaks your heart when I refuse to trust that you'll...

Not letting me finish, he pulled me close to him and put his arms around me.

"Shhh. It's okay. I know you're trying. And it doesn't hurt me anymore. I took it personally for so long...but I learned something up at the lake."

I pulled out of his embrace. "What?"

"Never mind," he said. "Just chill. And if you can't believe what I keep saying, just make believe. Pretend you think we'll always be like this, and leave the details to me. I got it covered, so you can stop worrying about losing me someday. You won't."

He put an arm around my shoulder. I let him pull me into him until I could lay my head on his shoulder. "You don't know that, Matt," I said quietly. "You don't know how it'll work out."

"Nope. I don't know how it'll work out," he said. "But I don't need to."

"Why?"

"Because I know what we want. What we both want. And we'll work it out as we go along. At the lake I finally realized I'm not gonna change your pessimistic streak, so I'm not gonna waste any more words or worry on it. After all, I'm here to keep you in line. Between me and your woman, you don't stand a chance."

I punched him in the gut. He punched me on the face.

"Hey!" I shouted.

"You started it."

We laughed.

"Tell you something else, Andy," he said, continuing. "It's not just that. There's something more important: I have confidence in you. You're not just a guy who waits for the other shoe to drop. You're a guy who takes life on and makes it work."

"Tell it to Angie," I said, rolling my eyes. "She doesn't think so. Not about this. Can't say she's wrong."

"She's your woman, and I'm not gonna dispute her...but she doesn't see everything about you. She doesn't see some things I do. And you're just regularly wrong about yourself.

"I know you think all you've ever done is fail this relationship," he said. "Yeah, you had some moments of paralysis. But where we are today isn't all my doing. All our lives, stuff has changed, and we got to some really, really bad places. But here we are still, tighter than ever. I know you both think I got us back together...but Andy, if you'd never called me on the phone that spring when we were sophomores, it never would have happened. I was ready to give up. I had decided that you were too stubborn to ever try again, and I knew I couldn't force you. When you called, it was the first time I realized you were willing to work on it as hard as I was. It was the first time that whole school year I felt a spark of hope about you. And that's because you reached out.

"Angie made me do it," I said.

"I know. But you did it. That's what counts. If it was up to me, it might not have happened. And you know what, as hard as it's been for you, even at the worst, you never totally cut me off. We always had some contact. We even spent some time together. I always felt the hope when you were around, even when things were bad. And that's because you had the courage to bring the love, even when it was fucking you up. So don't be thinking you've only torn things apart.

"Do we have changes ahead of us? Hell, yeah! Awesome ones! But there's not one damn thing in this world that can fuck us up. We went to hell, and we came back together, stronger than before. So whatever life has for both of us, I say bring it. We're gonna make it work. Bottom line: Worry if you have to, I don't give a shit. I have enough belief for the both of us. We're gonna be fine, whatever comes. Remember the lake. We did something there, dude. Something important."

"How the fuck could I possibly forget? You were fucking insane."

That cracked him up. "But remember how that felt and what it meant. Look: One of us is gonna have to die for this to fall apart."

I smiled at him. "You're not gonna hate my ass for not being fully convinced, are you?"

He rolled his eyes. "Why would I expect you to be convinced? You're not happy unless you're gearing up for some oncoming disaster. I've decided to consider it part of your skill set. It keeps away potential bullshit artists. Someday I'm gonna teach you to chill. That's part of my skill set. But I can tell it's not gonna be any time soon."

"Matt, it's not that I don't trust everything you just said about you..."

"Well, yeah, Andy, it is...but we've had too many versions of this discussion before, and it's not always fun, and I'm throwing in the towel for now. I apologize for bringing it up. We shouldn't make it a problem. I'm gonna have to accept that you'll see I'm right when the time comes. In the meantime, we don't have to talk about it. I gotta leave in a couple of hours, and I don't wanna spend the rest of our time today frowning." He picked up the football, walked over to the gate, and went into the front and out into the deserted street. I followed. 

He motioned for me to run a route. I took off down the street at a full run and caught his pass in transit, without even thinking.

I'd known exactly when he was gonna release and where. I could have caught it blindfolded.

"You still know instinctively how we fit together," he said when I'd walked back and brought him the ball.

"Like riding a bicycle. Some things you can't unlearn."

His smile lit up his face as I walked back to him. "What makes you think the day's gonna come when we can't do that anymore?"

*******

Life gobbled up huge chunks of the year so quickly it surprised me. I burned through the soccer season like it was a lit matchbook. Classes started and finished in a flash. The fall semester shut down, Christmas break came and went, and the spring semester was off to the races.

I'd spent Christmas at home. My parents were happy to have me for the whole break, and I saw a lot of Matt. Angie was home with me as well, and when I wasn't with Matt or my own family, I was spending time with her or her family.

As the spring semester geared up, a seriousness descended over me. Every now and then, a memory from my first two years there weighed in, and I always found myself shaking my head in disbelief. The shit I pulled...who was that guy? I couldn't bring myself to regret any of it, though.

In any case, I kept my head down and focused on my stuff; I hung out with my housemates, especially Trey; I spent all the time I could with Angie; and I got together with Matt every three weeks or so. Sometimes I'd go back to Dallas to get with him, and when I did, I'd stop in on the family. But more often than not, when we saw each other, it was because he'd come down for the weekend and hang out with me.

Julie never came with him again. I asked him about it once.

"She doesn't need to," he said. "She sees how it is, and...well, she's still not a hundred percent on board, not gonna lie. But she's eighty-five percent on board, anyway...and she feels safe."

"What do you mean?"

She knows what I have with you won't fuck up what I have with her."

Those were important words for me. I needed to have a guilt-free relationship with Matt, and as long as Julie felt threatened, that would put a cloud over what he and I had.

From that point on, I stopped worrying about her. They'd be fine, and that was a major relief for me.

*******

Spring Break was scheduled for the third week in March. A lot of my soccer teammates had made plans to go to Colorado with their girlfriends. I was in on it at first; even though it wasn't the venue I'd have picked, I wanted to spend my last undergrad Spring Break with my soccer buddies.

But I wanted Matt to go along too. I hoped I could get him to take a week and come. I was sure he'd have a good time. I'd put the idea past him the middle of January. He said he'd think about it, and although he hadn't sounded positive, I figured he'd eventually agree to it. When had he ever turned down a request of mine?

He was down for a visit the first week in February when I asked him for a decision.

He was quiet for a minute, and then he shook his head. "I can't, Andy. I should have told you I wouldn't even consider it, but I could tell how bad you wanted me to come. And I didn't wanna say anything to you that proved that your fears were coming true."

I grimaced. "Well, aren't they?"

"Aside from this, have you seen any indication that they are?"

"Well, no," I said warily, "but..."

"But nothing," he said. "You gotta understand, man. I'm not a college guy anymore. It would be hard to get the time off work, although I could do it. But I don't know that I wanna take that time away from Julie. She's my life now. You are too, never forget that. But I just wouldn't feel right, running off to Colorado, taking vacation days that I should probably be saving up for our honeymoon. And anyway, I don't know your college friends all that well now that the ones I knew already graduated. I'd just be up there for you, and then you'd be torn between socializing with them and spending time with me."

He grabbed my hand. "Just go. You'll have a great time. You can tell me all about it when you get back, and I'll take the closest weekend available and come down."

I sighed. He was right, and I didn't want to make him feel guilty over it. "Okay. I was just making the offer, you know? But I get where you're coming from; it makes all the sense in the world."

He eyed me with suspicion. "You mean that?"

"Yeah, I mean it," I said meekly.

"Are you sure you're okay with it?"

"I'm fine with it, Matt. It's the only decision that makes any sense, and you're right: You and I have a lifetime."

"Damn right," he said.

We let it go at that point and spent a great weekend together. I kept my game face on the whole time he was in town.

But as he drove off, I felt the doubt and insecurity rise up. I hadn't even left college yet, and already our roads were diverging. I could tell that before too long, we'd be moving farther and farther apart.

The next morning I told my teammates I wouldn't be going to Colorado with them.

I didn't want a Spring Break of fun without Matt.

*******

I talked to Trey about it a few evenings later.

"I wish I could just focus on the positive," I said. "What we have, it's more than I ever dared to dream for. And I know he thinks he wants this; right now he does, anyway. But what happens when his time is all taken up with married life and work and whatever community stuff he decides to get involved in? And then kids are gonna come along...I just don't see how I fit into the picture."

"Well, right," Trey said, "but isn't the same thing true about you? You'll have your own career, your own wife, your own kids...all the same kind of shit."

"Exactly," I told him. "That's my point. How the hell we gonna make this work in two separate cities, with two separate families and two separate lives?"

"Well, let me ask you something," he said. "Do you think you and I are gonna lose touch?"

I pondered for a moment. "We might."

"In your dreams," he said.

"Why?"

"I won't let it happen," he said. "I don't give a shit where you live or where I live or who we're married to or how many damn kids we have. You don't get to exit stage left. I'm gonna let my college roomie from Day One become a stranger? Yeah, right."

"I love you too, asshole," I said, laughing. "And you know what? You're right."

"Damn right, I'm right," he said. "And I'm not a fraction of what Matt is to you."

"Nah, I think you're a fraction. A small one, but a fraction anyway."

He threw a couch cushion at me. It escalated into a full-blown upholstery war, and pretty soon our other housemates were in the thick of it.

*******

Angie had been right: Things with Matt were unresolved.

I needed him in my life as badly as I needed oxygen. And I saw a future without him looming before me. No matter how hard I tried to trust.

And, as much as I hated it, I couldn't afford trust. Trust never bought anybody anything but some short-term illusory peace. Ever since I was a little kid, I'd walked through life refusing to trust. I didn't believe in trust and hope. I believed in making things happen.

On that score, Matt was right: We didn't have to just sit there and let our relationship gradually fall apart as we walked diverging roads. If it mattered to us, we could make it work, couldn't we?

The problem was that I couldn't see how. When you don't set up house with someone you love intimately--when you in fact set up house with someone else you love intimately--how do you "make it work" with the one you weren't living with? Nobody I was aware of had any answers, because nobody had tried that kind of insanity.

With those givens, it only made sense to steel myself for a future without Matt and to make my peace with it.

But that's not what I wanted. I wanted to come up with a way to make sure we wouldn't lose touch. I wanted his beliefs to become a certainty for me.

I bounced back and forth. What should I work on? Think and think and think some more until I discovered how we could remain as we were with each other? Or accept the inevitable and get on with my life? One would drive me insane searching for a way that didn't exist; the other would kill a huge chunk of my heart. It might hurt his, too, though he'd get over it, since he was essentially straight.

The more I tried to think it through, the crazier I got.

It was starting to become difficult to focus at school. Even my time with Angie was compromised. She could see something was up with me, and I knew she knew what it was. But, mercifully, she never brought it up. I realized she was giving me the space to work it out on my own.

As the days went by, it began to occur to me that if I could just hang in until Spring Break, maybe I could get away somewhere, go off by myself, and pull my Matt-shit together. I wasn't sure how I'd do that, but I knew I couldn't do it in the middle of campus life.

Angie wanted to spend some extended time at home with her family. She'd already told me to count her out on any Spring Break plans and to go have fun. But I had no intention of going to Colorado with the guys if Matt couldn't come. And I didn't feel like going home and having meaningless chatter with my family when my emotional life was in such turmoil.

I needed to get away and think. But the thought of going to some strange vacation place all alone was utterly unappealing. And the idea of holing up in some hotel by myself sounded like something an axe murderer would do.

Some time in mid-February, the answer fell from nowhere, and I realized that it was probably available to me with a simple phone call.

I picked up the phone and dialed.

"Mrs. Flores? Hey, it's Andy Sharpe."

..."I'm good, thanks; how are you?"

..."I'm glad to hear it, 'cause I haven't heard from Ruben in forever. Not since our July party at your place, anyway."

..."Well, thanks. We always try to leave it in as good a shape as it was when we got there, and y'all have been so good to let us use it year after year. Actually, all that's kind of related to why I'm calling. This is my last year of college, and before the craziness of Finals hits, I need some time alone just to think about things and reflect on my future."

..."Yeah, we are. We got back together a couple of years ago, and she's the one. We've already decided to get married once we finish grad school."

..."Thanks. Anyway, I was wondering...I know it's late notice, and it may have been rented out, but is there any possibility I could use your condo the third week of March? I love it down there, and I wouldn't be taking anybody else. I just need the solitude so I can kinda get geared up for the end of school."

..."That would be so awesome. Would you call me back when you find out? And I'll pay the going rate..."

..."Well, I appreciate that, but I feel like it's enough of an imposition..."

..."All right, if you insist. I'm not gonna keep badgering you to let me pay money if you're adamant."

..."Thanks. You too. And I'll look forward to hearing from you. Bye."

Ten minutes later, she called me back. It was a go.

The Beach. The Condo. That's where I needed to go.

I needed to walk along the shoreline. I needed to let my heart roam through my past, taking me where it wanted, with no time pressure. In the remembering, I'd either make my peace with the inevitable, or I'd convince myself once and for all that we'd be okay. Either way, I could stop torturing myself.

And more importantly, I could stop torturing him.

I thought of the eight-year old whose hand I grasped as I promised I'd never let anything hurt him.

I thought of the twelve-year-old who'd called me out for being cruel to a classmate, who'd reminded me that there was enough hurt in the world without having me add to it.

I thought of the fourteen-year-old who reminded me that it was his lost-and-gone brother Kenny who fueled his endless commitment to be kind and compassionate.

I thought of the sleepovers, and the love, and the laughs, and the passes thrown and received, and the myriad ways we'd been interwoven into each other's lives.

I thought of the eighteen-year-old whose love for me brought him to swim out beyond his depths and into waters he didn't even know how to chart, much less swim...just because I was there, and he wanted to be there with me.

I thought about how I rewarded that love and that commitment and that bravery with rejection and cruelty.

And I thought of his relentless refusal to let me end us, a refusal that rescued us and brought us back to each other more intimately than I could have possibly imagined, much less hoped for.

He was right. Through it all, we'd been each other's lives.

Regardless of what the future brought, surely what we had was worth commemorating, worth celebrating, worth a look back in love.

I wanted to go off by myself and remember it all. I wanted to put the rest of my reality on pause and think only about him.

At the place that most reminded me of what we were to each other. What we'd always been.

And maybe it would settle the storm that had been raging inside me for months.

And I'd come away with some kind of way forward into my future:  A way forward in which I fought against the challenges of our grownup lives and separate families until I knew he was mine forever...

...or a way forward in which I gave him back his life and made my peace with letting him go.

Thank You for Reading!

© 2003-2013 by Adam Phillips

Posted: 08/09/13