Boston Boys [01] - A Life Without You (10 page)

“It’s just that –”

70 Erica Pike

I raise myself up to look at him. “Am I gonna have to go down on you again to shut you up?” I say, firmer than I meant to. We both end up snorting out in laughter and I settle down in his neck again.

The heaving and relaxing of his chest is soothing and I can feel his heartbeat against my hand. I’ve almost drifted to sleep when he speaks again.

“Just listen to me for a minute, okay?” I lift my shoulder in a defeated shrug.

“I’m not leaving, Adam, so just give up on that already, okay?

Don’t you think I would’ve left by now if I was that freaked out by this whole thing? I’ll admit that it’s crossed my mind that it would be better if we didn’t have to face each other every day, but you’re my best friend, Adam, and I’m just too damn selfish to give my bed – and your company – to someone else.” He pushes me off and we lie on our sides facing each other.

My fingers play with the soft skin below his ribcage.

“It’s just that I don’t think you know how…shameful I feel after we do these things,” he says, glancing at me, but otherwise examining the white sheet on my mattress.

Ouch. That stung.

“You mean it feels disgusting?” I ask, my voice calm and low, but my hands are starting to twitch.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” Jesse replies and plops down on his back. “It just goes against everything I thought I was. I mean, if I’m bi –”

“Did you ever think about guys before you met me?” I ask, cutting him off. “I mean, like, did you ever masturbate thinking about guys when you were younger?”

Jesse stays quiet for a long time and then puffs out a breath before he answers. “Yeah, I’ve been asking myself that a lot lately.

I remember this one time at a friend’s house he showed me a porn video. It was a guy and a girl, but instead of focusing on the girl, I kept looking at the guy’s dick thrusting in and out. It got me A Life Without You
71

all hot and bothered and I used to jerk off to that image. I used to tell myself that I wished I was that man fucking that woman.” The image of Jesse masturbating flashes through my mind and my cock lurches.

“It was the same when I saw your body after I first moved in,” he continues. “I kept thinking that I didn’t want to touch your body, I just wanted to have a body like yours. But not just your body, your face, your hair, your deep voice, long fingers…

everything.”

He glances up but I’m lost for words.

“And this one time I was forced to watch gay porn, I just couldn’t take it because I was so turned on and disgusted at the same time. It scared me. So since you told me about bisexuality I’ve been fighting against the idea that I might be that way, but it’s useless. I-I
am
bisexual,” he says to my mattress. “And not only am I bi, Adam, but I can’t stand the idea of other guys being with you. Jazz, Eric, your ex boyfriends...” I close my eyes for a moment while I let his words sink in.

Does this mean he’s going to break up with Chirpy? I’m almost afraid to hope…

“Does this mean you have feelings for me?” I ask, my voice coming out hoarse. I keep my eyes clamped shut because I’m sure tears will trickle down if I open them.

“Yeah,” Jesse says after a moment’s hesitation, as if admitting it to himself for the first time. “Yeah, I guess that’s what it means.

It’s so hard not to think about you when we’re not together, and I’m not just talking about your body. It’s like, when I hear something funny I immediately think that I have to tell you about it, or when I discover something new I like to eat I nearly buy some for you too, but then rationality kicks in and I put it back on the shelf.”

I hear his head thump down against the pillow and a muffled growl of frustration makes me open my eyes and wipe away the few tears that nearly trickled down.

“What does this mean then, for us?” I ask when I have my
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voice back under control.

“Nothing,” he says with a sigh, his voice muffled by the pillow.

He rolls his head to the side to meet my gaze. “I mean, I’m still engaged to Anne and I can’t break up with her.”

“Why not?” I say with more than a little irritation in my voice.

“Because I’m still going to get married and have kids. I can’t be in an open relationship with a guy. The people back home would never accept it –
Mom
would never accept it.”

“Yeah, but can’t you break up with Anne and then later find some other girl to marry? Can’t we be together at least during college? No one has to know.”

Jesse laughs through his nose in dismay. “Anne has been collecting things for our future: dinner set, pots, bed sheets, toaster, baby clothes, coffee maker…garden equipment. I just can’t do that to her.”

“Do you love her?” I play with the corner of my pillowcase while I wait for him to answer.

He holds his breath for a few seconds before speaking his thoughts. “I care about her very deeply. I’ve known her for as long as I can remember. She used to kiss my scrapes and cuts when I fell and nurse me back to health. She helped me with my homework when I was struggling during my parent’s divorce, and she’s basically stuck with me through the whole emotional rollercoaster that followed. I owe her so much.” I swallow back the lump in my throat. “Do you love me?” I whisper, glancing at him from my pillow twiddling.

We lock gazes for a long, long time, but he doesn’t say it. He doesn’t have to, though; I can see it in his eyes. I’m so happy that I could die and at the same time I
want to
die because he won’t let there be an ‘us’.

I lie down on my stomach and stretch my naked body on the bed. Jesse’s eyes catch the movement and he stares at the inwards curve of my back and the outwards bump of my ass. I rest my cheek on my pillow with a smile and take a deep breath, A Life Without You
73

appreciating the cool sheet under my stomach and how good it feels against my hot body.

Jesse’s gaze runs along the length of my legs with a needy, almost desperate gleam.

I reach out my hand and gently run it through his soft hair while he releases a long sigh. He doesn’t push me away when I raise myself up and give him a lingering kiss. He responds by meeting my tongue halfway and gives me the deepest, most passionate kiss to date. I tangle my fingers in his hair with a moan as I try to convey back to him just how much he means to me.

Our fingers roam each other’s bodies and we end up jerking each other off again before falling asleep in each other’s arms.

It’s hard to focus on the exams. Thank goodness for Eric who keeps my nose in the books. He somehow manages to raise my anxiety levels enough with his constant chattering about the material that I do try my best, but it’s hard. My mind keeps wandering back to ‘the morning after’ as I’ve come to call the morning after that night we spent in my bed a week ago. Jesse hasn’t let me near him since that night.

When he woke up the next morning he felt terrible about cheating on Anne. I tried to get him to see reason, to tell him that if he wasn’t in love with her then he shouldn’t commit his life to her. It would solve everything between us if he broke up with her, but he’s being stubborn as hell. We’ve fought a lot since then. I even ended up storming out at one point. It just hurts like hell to have him within my reach but not be able to claim him as mine.

We’re sort of at odds at the moment since we fought this morning, but no matter how angry I get with him I silently will him to come over to my bed every night. Needless to say he’s being very unresponsive to my hopeless attempts at telepathy. I know this will only end with heartache, but I can’t help myself.

I find that I’m sinking deeper and deeper in love with him by the hour. I know he’s fighting his feelings for me; I see it every day. The fights seem to make him feel a little better about his betrayal to Anne, as if they can somehow erase or lessen what’s already happened between us. At least he’s being honest with me with his intentions, that he’s still going through with the marriage after college and that I’ll never get my chance. It has to lessen the inevitable blow. Right?

My forehead collides with the notebook on the library desk.

It won’t
. It will hurt just as much or even more. If Jesse would just let me hug him once in a while, or hold his hand, or stroke his cheek. That would make me happy. And that wouldn’t be
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cheating, would it? It would be more like charity.

Eric is back from his break and slides me a can of energy drink. “Just keep it hidden, okay?” he mouths.

I nod and smile to myself. He’ll do anything to keep me awake. Whatever it takes to cram in more knowledge through my skull, even if it means breaking library rules.

He pretend-coughs loudly while I pop the top and take a swig.

The buzz quickly fizzes to my brain and I’m awake again.

There are not so many people in the library this late, but I’ve been keeping an eye on that Zeke kid ever since he arrived about an hour ago. The light from his laptop screen casts shifting shadows on his white face. I still don’t know what his deal is.

Eric likes to ‘digest’ a little after eating, so he sits back in his chair. ‘
You going to the end of semester party?
’ he writes on a piece of paper.

‘
Nah, I’m staying in
,” I write and lift it up for him to see.

‘
Seriously? A group of us are going to play a prank on the Frat house.

You should come.
’

Eric hates the Frat house. I have no idea why.

‘
I’ve got plans
,” I write.

Eric rolls his eyes and sighs. ‘
Jesse,
’ he writes on his paper and lifts it.

I raise my eyebrows and smile.

‘
Seriously, dude, just give it up. It’s never gonna happen.
’

It already has and I’m still clinging to the hope that it will again, but I can’t tell that to Eric. Instead I shrug and go back to reading. The fact is that Jesse’s going back home for Christmas, but since I really have nowhere to go to, I’m staying in the dorm.

It’ll be quiet since I’m the only one in our dorm staying behind, but at least I can get a head start on next semester’s reading.

Jesse will leave in one short week. He’ll go back to Chirpy to plan their future together some more and probably have lots of sex with her. The thought sends stabs of pain to my stomach.

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77

Eric is holding up a piece of paper. ‘
Snow
,’ it says and I look out the window. Thick flakes of snow fall from the sky. I smile and wonder if Jesse’s looking out the window, too. Maybe I’ll coax him out for a walk tomorrow, if it’s still snowing. I’d love to chuck a snowball at him, or sneak some ice down his back. That wouldn’t look gay to the other students since it’s a guy thing to do.

The wind picks up and whirls the flakes in the air before sending them plummeting to the ground. It looks like there might be a snowstorm. Maybe – hopefully – Jesse will get snowed in and then he’ll have to stay with me over Christmas. That means no sex with Chirpy.

Eric clears his throat and I realize that I’m not even looking at the book anymore.

§ § § §

It’s midnight when I head back to my room. The library is directly across our dorm, so it’s a quick run, but I’m still freezing when I get inside. It doesn’t help that the dorm is cold as well, and I know that my room won’t be much warmer.

I’m still a little hurt by what he said this morning when he argued that a relationship between two guys can’t possibly last like a relationship between a man and a woman. He had no example to give me, because he doesn’t know any other gay people, so all I could pin it down to was prejudice, or ignorance at best. I, unfortunately, couldn’t prove him wrong because I don’t know any gay couples myself. All I know is that I’m sure there must be plenty who are just as committed to each other as hetero couples, or at the very least that
I
am a person who would commit myself fully to Jesse, regardless of any statistics he might throw at me.

When I open the door, I find Jesse wrapped up in his sheet on his bed. His teeth chatter and his body rattles like a flag in an ice storm.

“Ugh, Adam, I’m literally freezing my ass off,” he complains while I quickly undress and put on a pair of pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt.

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“Are you naked under there?”

Jesse nods, or I think he does, he’s shivering so badly.

I walk into the bathroom. “Just put on some clothes and you’ll get warm.”

“No way,” Jesse calls after me. “I sleep naked on principle.” I breathe out a laugh and feel the tension between us ebb away as I finish what I need to do in the bathroom. I dive under the extra thick cover I bought after it started getting really cold at night and Jesse eyes it with envy.

“On principle?”

“Yeah,” Jesse chatters. “We didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up, so Mom made me wear pink hand-me-down girl pajamas with pony figures and tiny hearts when I was a kid.

I refuse to wear anything to smother the memory. Seriously, I’m scarred for life.”

I roll my eyes with a snort. “That’s not a principle, that’s just you being weird.”

Jesse either refuses to dignify that with a reply, or his jaws have frozen together. I’m guessing it’s a little bit of both.

“Well then, come to my bed,” I say with a smirk and prop myself up on my elbow. “I’ll keep you warm.”

“Yeah, right,” Jesse laughs through chattering teeth.

I shrug and turn my back to him. “It’s really warm under here. I’ll just keep that offer open in case you change your mind, okay?”

“Traitor,” Jesse chatters.

I’m tired. Eric and I have been studying a lot lately but he never feels that we’ve studied enough. That’s why I’ve been going to sleep late this past week. That’s also why I haven’t been seeing a lot of Jesse, which, in a way, has been for the best. The few moments we do get together these days are hardly ever pleasant and almost always hurtful.