Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover (5 page)

“For you, anytime. For anybody else, screw ’em.”

We laughed, and then finally he was quiet.

L
ONG
after Bill stopped talking and his breathing evened out in apparent sleep, I lay awake, my mind spinning like a top that was wound as tight as it could possibly go. I was in bed with Bill Cromwell! I never, ever, ever in my wildest dreams thought such a thing could ever happen. This man was sex on two feet. He was a walking, talking wet dream come to life. And he was in my bed, one foot from my body, that was about to explode from pent-up lust and excitement. It was too bad men were so ruled by their dicks. They got us into so much trouble and made us make such horrible decisions half the time. They didn’t contribute anything to calculus exams or memorizing lines for a play, but still they wanted to rule the world and direct our every move, or at least the most dangerous ones.

Bill was clearly asleep. With the nightlight I had plugged in to help him if he woke up, I was able to see his face clearly. He lay on his side toward me, curled up in almost a fetal position, seemingly making his muscular body smaller, safer, less vulnerable.

The man was so incredibly gorgeous it nearly left me speechless. I lay in bed facing toward him, not more than a foot from his face, studying him intently. His eyes moved, and his facial muscles jerked lightly as if he was dreaming. For the first time I noticed that he had a scar just above his right eye. Unless you looked closely you wouldn’t see it, but since I was a foot from his face and studying him like the Good Book, not much was escaping my notice.

Eventually fatigue proved to be too much even for my testosterone-addled brain, and I too fell asleep. I was not accustomed to sharing my bed with anyone. This may have been the first time I had ever done such a thing. As a result, I stirred from sleep anytime my bedmate moved.

Sometime during the night he got up to pee. As he made his way back to bed I was surprised to see him slip off his T-shirt and briefs before crawling back into bed, naked. I wondered if he had consciously done that or if this was an act that was more second nature to someone who slept naked every night. He must have been warm, because he didn’t pull the blankets back up over his body, only the sheet.

He again curled up facing toward me. It was all I could do to keep my hands from roaming one foot to my right to feel his dick, to rub his pecs, to stroke his abs, to gently cup his tender testicles. But such a move would be the kiss of death to any friendship and any future for me in any high school anywhere in the state of New York, so I fought down those urges and kept my hands to myself.

Too bad he didn’t start snoring. Then I would have a legitimate excuse to reach out and touch him to get him to roll over or to carry out my threatened tickling. But I didn’t want the fleeting touch of a tickle from a body that was trying to get away. No, what I wanted more than anything else was to reach out and gently, lovingly caress his masculine body, to run my fingers gently over his torso, down over his gorgeous nipples. Then I wanted to lick and tease those nipples with my tongue and my lips….

Crap! Now I really was hard! No! Couldn’t do this! No matter how hot the man was, I liked finally having someone act like my friend. I didn’t want to risk ruining everything after less than a week by doing something stupid. So I forced myself to roll over and to lie facing away from the hunk in my bed. Eventually I too fell back asleep.

Sometime in the hours that came after that—I don’t know exactly when—my bedmate moved around in his sleep. When I woke up I found him cuddled up behind me with his arms wrapped around my body.

Major, major warning bells were going off in my head. I went from asleep to wide awake nearly instantly. I drew in a deep breath and held it. I didn’t dare to even breathe. I was absolutely convinced that I was going to black out from lack of oxygen to my brain. Damn! But his hand felt good on my side, wrapped around my body.

Oh! My! God! Bill was naked in my bed with his arms wrapped around me! I must have died during the night and gone to heaven!

My mind was absolutely swimming with a thousand thoughts. This couldn’t be happening. Part of me wanted him to wake up, but another part of me wanted time to stop and for this man to remain wrapped around my body forever. It was with very mixed feelings a few minutes later that I noticed Bill was stirring. There was no sun that morning, but it was light outside, and the curtains to my window were open so my room was well illuminated.

When I heard Bill mumble something—I couldn’t tell what—I decided that I needed to take the upper hand. He was snuggled up against me so tightly. I tried to make a joke in the hopes of not freaking the man out totally. The man with his arms wrapped around me was straight—there was no question about that fact—and I was assuming that any straight man would freak out completely when he woke up this close to another man, gay or straight.

“Don’t you think you should buy me dinner—or breakfast in this case—first?” I asked, trying to set a light tone.

The man behind me gasped and jumped. I didn’t know a man could move so fast, and I’m not entirely sure how he did it, but Bill was out of my bed and up faster than you could believe. His feet got tangled up in the sheet and blankets and the man went down—hard.

“Bill!” I yelled. “You okay?”

I moved quickly myself because I had incentive—the man who was on my floor was naked. This was my one chance to see the man in all his glory.

“Crap!” he said, blushing several shades of red. “I’m so sorry.” Bill tried to grab hold of a blanket or something, anything within reach to pull over his crotch. Even in the midst of the moment, I noticed he was surprisingly not as big as I had imagined.

“
Bill!
” I tried. “Dude! Take a breath. Relax.”

“I’m so sorry. So sorry.”

“For what?” I said, trying to minimize his upset. “You’re a guy. I’m a guy. Guys have dicks. Guys wake up with morning wood. It happens. The things don’t usually ask us for permission before they get hard. Nothing to get upset about. Relax.”

“Why am I naked?” he asked.

“You got up during the night to pee, and when you came back, you took everything off. I think you were too warm. I don’t really know. I wasn’t exactly awake enough to have a conversation.”

I hopped out of bed on my side and went to my dresser, pulling out a pair of sweatpants, which I threw toward Bill. I also grabbed a T-shirt from a pile on my dresser and tossed that his way as well. The man pulled the clothes on quickly. I was able to get another really good look while he was pulling both the pants and then the shirt on. I grabbed some half socks as well from another drawer and passed them to my guest.

“I think my mom’s baking something. You like cinnamon? She makes some really good cinnamon rolls.”

Bill seemed incredulous that I was not freaking out as badly as he was. “You hungry?”

The poor guy just stared at me. I looked right at him and simply said, “Bill. Please. Relax.”

I didn’t think my words were registering with him, but I didn’t know how to convince him that he hadn’t done anything wrong, short of coming out and telling him that it had been a fantastic experience for me. And I wasn’t about to come out to him or anyone else. Nope. Not gonna do that. Not gonna happen. Nope. Not gonna do it.

As I predicted, my mom had been up for hours and had been baking up a storm, something she loved to do on a stormy day. Her cinnamon rolls were out of this world, and I always liked it when she made them. She told me they were something her grandmother used to make years ago, and that’s where she got the recipe. If nothing else, when I left home I wanted that recipe to take with me, although I wasn’t sure I could ever pull it off like she did.

I led a very quiet Bill to the kitchen, where my mom bustled about offering us seventeen different things for breakfast when she saw that we were up. Bill hadn’t said a word, which worried me. But then he sniffed—the air was filled with the scent of cinnamon. “Something smells wonderful,” he offered.

“Fresh-baked cinnamon rolls—my grandmother’s recipe. I wanted you boys to have something nice and hot for breakfast.”

We sat at the counter, where the smell of cinnamon was even stronger. We each took one of the piping hot items. It appeared that all problems were forgotten when Bill took one bite of the proffered rolls. “Oh my God. This is the best thing I have ever tasted!” he said. The look on his face matched the words coming out of his mouth. When he got silent a moment later it wasn’t because he was deep in angst, it was because his mouth was full of a roll. We seemed to have achieved something good.

The man moaned with delight as he polished off several of the items as they came out of the oven.

“I have never, ever tasted anything like that before. That has to be the best thing anyone anywhere at any point in history has ever created. Period.”

Bill was happy. My mother was happy. And I’d seen him naked and hard—I was happy too. We were all happy, at least for the moment, although I had no confidence that it would all last.

My mother kept pushing more food at the poor unsuspecting man. My mother liked to cook, and she was a good cook. We rarely had guests, so when we did she wanted to prepare everything all at once. I never understood why she didn’t invite people in occasionally, given how much she liked to take care of people, but she never did.

So when an opportunity fell out of the sky and landed in her lap she was prepared to go all out. Fresh oranges appeared from somewhere—oh, right, I had sold them last month in yet another fundraiser. In no time flat, the oranges were halved and juiced before our eyes, and two glasses of fresh-squeezed juice were presented to us.

Bill seemed to be in awe of the experience. She offered omelets, waffles, pancakes, and a number of other things. I was getting full just listening to her name off the options. Bill had mistakenly assumed that the rolls
were
breakfast. Silly boy! Those were just the appetizer, the first course of a never-ending breakfast banquet.

“I don’t think I’ve ever eaten so much fantastic food in my life!” Bill said when he was stuffed and unable to eat another bite. “I may never eat again, one because I’m so stuffed, and two because no other food could ever come close to measuring up to this meal.”

“Aren’t you sweet!” my mother observed, impressed with Bill’s appreciation and his manners.

Bill and I retired to the living room, where my father was sprawled out in his recliner. He was half-asleep or half-awake, depending on your point of view. I looked out the window, and as I guessed, the driveway was completely cleared of snow. And the snow had stopped falling from the sky.

My dad had been watching the local news while we ate so he had the latest updates. “Well, it looks like the snow is finished, but now we’re gonna get some ferocious winds. That accident you mentioned last night was bad. They had some video on the news earlier. Four people killed and a whole bunch of trucks and a couple of cars destroyed. It’s not clear when we’ll get our roads cleared. The state is sending in some equipment and manpower to get the main roads open, but some of the back roads are gonna take a few days.”

My father asked Bill where he lived. “I know that road—you might be with us another night or two before they get that one cleared. I hope this one didn’t hog the covers!” he said jokingly.

“No, sir. I slept really well. Hope I didn’t snore,” he said.

“Nope. You were quiet as a church mouse all night long.”

My father retired to his workshop in the basement to do something (he was always working on something, even though we usually had no idea what). My mother was in the kitchen. I grabbed a book I had been reading. Bill retrieved his backpack and pulled out something (couldn’t tell what). Whenever I looked over at him he was busily at work on something. After twenty minutes I was getting really curious but didn’t want to be rude.

At one point I left the room and came back a moment later, trying to get a glimpse of what he was working on. It looked like he had a sketchpad of some sort and was drawing something. Whatever he was working on, he was being very private about it.

After another ten minutes I moved over to his side and asked him. He quickly closed his pad and said, “Nothing.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I was just curious. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

The guy looked chagrined or something—I wasn’t sure. It was so odd to see the most popular guy in the school be anything other than 100 percent in charge. Slowly he pulled his sketchpad back onto his lap and opened it up to the page he’d been working on.

“Here,” he said, handing the pad to me. He turned his face away.

I was absolutely blown away by what I was seeing. “This is amazing! Did you draw this? Just now? Holy crap! You did this?” I said again. “You’re… you’re really, really good. Wow!”

What I was holding in my hand was a pencil drawing—a very detailed pencil drawing—of me. The detail that he had captured in just half an hour was beyond belief. The man had an amazing talent. Why had I never heard that he was an artist?