End of the Innocence (21 page)

“He told you?” I asked her.

“Oh my God, you did know,” she said, putting her bowl down. “And you didn’t share!” She hit my arm.

“Well, I just figured it out last night, so there wasn’t a lot of time to share,” I said, pulling back in case she swung again.

“There is
always
time to share gossip. If you are going to be my gay BFF, you need to learn these things.” She picked up her bowl again. “You tell me if what I am wearing looks like crap, you tell me which guys are most likely closet cases, and you
always
share gossip.”

I looked at her in confusion for several seconds. “You do know I have no idea what looks good or not, and I didn’t even know Brad liked guys until he kissed me, and even then it took me a few days to believe it.” In a quiet voice I added, “I am a horrible gay.”

She said nothing for so long I thought I had pissed her off. Finally she burst out laughing, almost spilling her milk as she rocked with the emotion. “You are too easy,” she assured me. “Calm down, Kyle, you’re doing fine.” For some reason that made me feel a thousand times better.

We both settled in and went back to eating our cereals.

About halfway through
Thunder Cats
, Brad lurched sleepily down the stairs, rubbing his eyes. “Food?” he croaked when he saw us on the couch. We both pointed at the kitchen, and he wandered off that way.

“You want some advice?” she asked me as the sound of bowls came crashing from the kitchen. I nodded. “Do not try to talk to him before he has food in him, because anything he says won’t make any sense, trust me.”

“I heard that, and fuck you,” Brad bellowed from the kitchen. She pointed toward him and gave me a “see what I mean?” look. I covered my mouth to stop from laughing out loud.

He came out, and I moved over to make room for him to sit. The three of us watched cartoons until our bowls were empty and our minds were awake. Jennifer described what happened again to Brad minus the Kelly being in love with him part. It seemed she didn’t think he needed to know that any more than I did.

“Your dad pissed?” Brad asked her.

She shrugged. “Is he ever not mad at me?” She sounded completely blasé, but I could see the way her forehead scrunched up when she remembered her and her father fighting. “I’m not trying to lay a guilt trip on you or anything, but he was pretty pissed when he heard about you being gay.”

“I’m sorry,” he said in that awkward way you use when you know you should say more than sorry to someone but have no idea what.

She stared at the TV, not even blinking for a few seconds; I imagined she was remembering some distant conversation. And, just like that, she looked over at him and smiled. “Oh well, life sucks for everyone.” It was easily the smoothest transition from a negative emotion to beaming smile I had ever seen. Academy Award winners wished they could fake emotion that well.

Brad looked like he was going to say something when Kelly came tripping down the last few stairs. His hair stuck straight up, and he looked like he hadn’t quite woken up yet. He stared at us in confusion and then squinted to make sure he was seeing correctly. “What the fuck are you doing in my living room?” he asked in a half groan.

“Eating your cereal,” Brad answered him, smiling brightly.

Kelly thought about it a second, nodded, and shambled into the kitchen himself.

“And you say I’m bad in the morning,” Brad quipped.

“You are,” Jennifer replied, sarcasm dripping from her words. “You fell asleep one night, and when I tried to wake you up to get out before my dad discovered you were there, you told me ‘If he wants lemonade, then let him buy one.’ To this day I have no idea what the hell that means.”

I started laughing again while Brad tried to explain what he’d said that morning in Jennifer’s room. “What does that mean?”

“You’re asking me? I tell you my dad, who has a gun, is about to come in my room and you talk about lemonade? Trust me, Kelly’s a Rhodes Scholar compared to that.”

Brad flipped her off and went back to watching cartoons.

Kelly came over and sat down on the floor in front of the couch as we watched
Ben 10
. Halfway through, Brad stood up. “You have any clothes, man? I need to shower before I start having stink lines around me all Pigpen style.”

Kelly nodded as he watched the show. “Mi closet es su closet,” he said.

Brad looked over at me and raised one eyebrow, which was his way of asking, “Want to join me?”

I shook my head. My face had to be a portrait of complete panic. I felt Jennifer nudge me from behind, and when I looked at her, she nodded. I looked back to Brad, and he smiled, holding out his hand. “Hey, Kelly,” Jennifer said sliding to the floor. “Load up some COD so I can kick your ass.”

Kelly looked at her incredulously, since everyone knew guys beat girls at Call of Duty.

Brad and I went upstairs like we were sneaking away. “Ten bucks she pounds him,” Brad said once we were out of ear shot. “I went shooting with her once, and she is like the Black Widow with a gun.”

He was rummaging through Kelly’s closet, looking for fresh clothes, while I stood there trying to calm myself. “What are we going to do?” I asked.

He poked his head out for a moment. “Um… I don’t know. The day is still young. I was going to stick around and help Kelly clean up, but we can bail if you want.”

I shook my head. “I mean right now.”

He paused. “Um… look for clothes?”

I sighed. “I mean in the shower?”

“Oh,” he said, suddenly getting what I was hinting at. “
Oh
!” he added once he really got it. “We can just take a shower if you want. I just thought it would be fun.” He flashed me a smile that could melt ice at twenty yards, and I felt my stomach clench in distress while the rest of my body became aroused. “It’s going to be okay, Kyle,” he said, reassuring me. “It’s just a shower.”

I didn’t say anything as he grabbed a handful of clothes for both of us and led me to Kelly’s parents’ room. Like the rest of the house, it was huge and way overdecorated. It struck me as the house of someone trying way too hard to prove they had money and ended up just showing how little taste they had. But what the house lacked in style, it made up for with size, and the master bath was no exception.

There was a tub larger than Vermont on the right side of the room, while a shower that was bigger than my room at home stood on the left. In between them were two full-sized sinks, one for each of Kelly’s parents. It wasn’t as much a large bathroom as it was a small spa. “What the fuck?” I exclaimed out loud, not being able to handle such a waste of money. Brad set down the clothes and looked at me questioningly. “I’m sorry. I just think I’ve lived in smaller places than this bathroom.”

Brad chuckled as he stripped off his shirt. I barely heard his words as I marveled at the flatness of his stomach. “Yeah, Kelly’s parents grew up poor, so when they made their money, they kinda took a trip on the white trash express.” He began to unbutton his slacks. “It takes some getting used to.”

“Where should I change?” I asked, looking away from him in his boxers for some reason. I knew the question was stupid the moment it left my lips, but I was so flustered I couldn’t help it. I could hear him throw his pants on the ground and walk over to me.

“Kyle, why are you so scared?” His voice was so low and so inviting that I felt myself relax some.

“I just…,” I stammered. “I don’t have any of that,” I said, gesturing at his upper body. He looked down at himself, and it made me crazy. His pecs were so perfect that the charm on his chain rested perfectly between them. I had no idea how he got abs like that, but if I didn’t know him I would assume he spent all his spare time doing crunches. Everything about the way he looked made me feel even uglier than I usually did.

He gave me a look so damn reassuring it made me want to spit for some reason. “You have no idea how insanely hot you are, do you?” he asked. That was probably the stupidest question I had ever heard. “I mean it,” he said, undoing the last buttons on my shirt. He slipped it over my shoulders and grasped the bottom of my T-shirt. I grabbed his hands as he tried to take it off. “Please,” he whispered. “Let me see you.”

I closed my eyes and let go.

He took my shirt off, and I half expected to hear laughing. His hands undid my belt, and my slacks fell to the ground. I stepped out of them, my hand resting on his forearm since I refused to open my eyes. His hands moved up from my waist, across my stomach and paused on my chest. “So hot,” he breathed into my ear as he traced circles around my nipples.

I laughed and pulled away a little, and when I opened my eyes I saw him standing in front of me. He was naked now, his boxer briefs discarded at some point, and I half gasped as I took him in fully. It was like looking at a statue the way all the lines of his muscles moved under his skin. He was hard, which surprised me more than anything else since I had never really looked at it in actual light.

“Take them off,” he said, looking at my underwear. “Please,” he added smiling.

I put my hands on either side of the elastic band, but they refused to move.

“Does this look like I don’t like the way you look?” he asked, pointing at his hardness.

With the same conviction someone takes jumping into a freezing pool, I pushed them off and kicked them away. We stood next to each other, fully naked for the first time. He moved to me and pulled me close, the warmth of his skin as erotic as the feel of him pressing against me. “I love everything about you,” he said as his hands moved down to cup my ass. “I just wished you could see yourself the way I do.”

I began to tremble and thought I was cold for a moment, but I realized I had broken out in a cold sweat. He pulled me even closer and held me. “Take a deep breath,” he said, rubbing my back. “Just relax and breathe.”

My hands clutched at each other around his back as I tried to calm myself down.

“Come on,” he said pulling away slightly, “let’s get wet.” He opened the shower door and turned on one of the two shower heads. Once he got the temperature right he turned the other one on, and within a minute the room began to fill up with steam. He stood at the door smiling, his body looking even better wet. “Come on,” he said, holding out a hand. “Come take a shower with me.”

I stepped into the shower, praying at some point I would get relaxed with this or that my heart would just burst and get my torture over with. Either one would be nice.

I stood under one of the shower heads and discovered that the water was hot but not intolerable. I rested my chin against my chest and let the water roll down my back. The steady wash of warm water felt awesome; the shower in my apartment had nowhere near as much pressure. Brad’s hands began to move over my shoulders, and I could feel him put some kind of lotion or soap on me. His grip got firmer, and he began to message the tension out of my muscles.

“Oh fuck,” I said, catching myself with my hands before I fell forward and slammed into the marble walls of the shower. It was like an electric current was moving from his fingertips through me. “Where did you learn that?”

He chuckled as his hands moved toward my neck. “I’ve played sports since I was seven, dude. You know how many massages I’ve had? You pick up a trick or two along the way.” His thumbs moved into the area right where my skull connected with my spine, and I felt another spark move through me.

“Oh my God,” I half moaned. One, I wasn’t the most comfortable person when it came to being touched. Yeah don’t look at me like that. I know you knew; I just need to say it out loud, okay? So the way his hands moved over my shoulders and neck was the best thing I had ever felt, period, and that was including him going down on me. I knew I was a wound-up guy and had always wondered if a massage would help, but since I was never going to let a guy touch me like Brad was, to avoid going all homo nuts on him, I had never tried one. Two, he knew what he was doing. He hadn’t learned a trick or two. This boy had a whole routine under his belt, and it was incredible. And though three shouldn’t have to be said, I will anyway. He was fucking the best-looking guy I had ever seen, and he was rubbing me naked in a shower.

I guess what I am trying to say is, I got hard.

Since I was leaning into the shower wall with both my hands pressed to the tiles, I couldn’t do a thing about it. Part of me hoped Brad couldn’t tell; the other part wished he did.

His hands moved from my neck down the middle of my back and began pressing and kneading outward from my spine. With each passing second, I became more and more relaxed as I also became more and more turned on. “See?” he asked softly. “Not so bad, is it?” I shook my head because I didn’t trust myself not to shout out very, very loudly to do me. “All work and no play makes Kyle a basket case,” he said, kissing my shoulders.

“Better?” he asked when I was almost purring. “What is there to be nervous about?”

As if to make his point, the bathroom door burst open and Jennifer called out, “Guys, get out here right now. We have a problem.”

All the tension Brad had massaged out of me was back tenfold as I almost jumped out of my skin. The only thing that made it funny was the girl-like shriek Brad let out at the same time. “What the fuck, Jen?” he growled, knowing she couldn’t see us through the steam.

“Not kidding, get out here.” And she closed the door.

“If her dad wasn’t a cop, and she couldn’t, like, you know, kick my ass, I would kill her,” he said, turning the water off.

I still felt like I was on the edge of a heart attack as we got out of the shower.

I threw on a sweatshirt that could have fit three of me while Brad just put on a pair of sweats and nothing else as he ran out. I followed him after slipping on my underwear and slacks.

I found Brad standing at Kelly’s doorway, where the sound of Kelly’s voice screaming “
Fuck fuck fuck
!” came echoing out of the room. I peeked in and could see he was sitting at his desk in front of his computer, pounding on his keyboard. Jennifer stood a few feet behind him, obviously too nervous to get any closer. I didn’t understand what the problem was until I heard what was coming from the speakers.