Bitter Taffy (13 page)

God. So blatant, so carnal, so unapologetic. No fear of discovery for Derek, just joy.

“Someday,” Derek whispered, “you’re gonna be sucking my cock.”

The words were all he needed. Rico closed his eyes, pulled hard on the thumb in his mouth, spasmed from his knees to his armpits, and came.

He lowered his head to Derek’s shoulder, opened his mouth, and groaned.

Derek wrapped his arms around Rico’s back and held on, just held him, until the shudders vibrated through his body and ceased.

Their panting echoed in their ears for a moment, and they were alone in the world. Then Rico heard the woman across the corridor from his apartment swearing at her cat and the guy above her cheering for the Giants on television.

“Oh God,” Rico said numbly.

“Yeah, we did that.” Derek’s eyes were half closed and he looked more smug than Adam’s comatose cat.

“Oh God.”

“Hey, I was going to be a gentleman.” Derek smirked.

Rico closed his eyes against Derek’s shoulder. “I can’t believe we did that.”

“I noticed.”

Oh no. Rico had come, but…. “Did you? Could you?” Helplessly Rico thrust his hips forward, and Derek’s erection pressed back.

“I did not,” Derek breathed. “But I think you’re too embarrassed to go down on me in the car now, so maybe another time.”

Rico was suddenly
starving
for him. He moved frantically, shaking hands to Derek’s belt, imagining the touch, the silk of another man’s cock, the salt and sweet of precome—

Derek closed his hands over Rico’s, and Rico whined, a terrifyingly needy sound, from the back of his throat. “But—”

Derek’s open-mouthed kiss calmed him. “But you’re not ready yet,” Derek said when he’d gone pliant again. “This was a
spectacular
first date. Wanna do it again?”

Rico nodded, the shaft of disappointment painful in his chest. “Yeah,” he said. “But—”

“You’ll tell me.”

A panicked laugh welled up. With Ezra it had been a sudden fall into love and a float into sex. This was a pitch off a sharp cliff, and now Derek was holding him back by the scruff of the neck when he wanted to fly.

Was terrified to fly.

“I’m usually the grown-up,” Rico said softly, swinging his leg up and around so he could sit back in his seat. It was a little awkward, made less so by the open roof, and when he was in place, he leaned his head back against the seat and tried to get his head straight.

His come was already sticking his underwear to his pubic hair. That was actually a novel thing for Rico. All things considered, he figured teenagers could keep it. He wanted adult sex, in the bed and everything.

“Yeah?” Derek reached around his shoulder and brought him in close, until Rico snugged tightly against his chest.

“I… I mean, I had no idea how easy I was,” Rico muttered, a little embarrassed.

“You know, uhm, when I was in college, I had what I thought was going to be my be-all, end-all relationship.”

Rico looked at him, surprised. “Yeah? How did the end-all part happen?”

Derek sighed and stretched his legs out against the floorboards, making himself comfy. “Well, you know. College romance—you had them, right?”

“Not really,” Rico said, remembering his words to his mom. “By my second year, I… I was tired of lying. But I wasn’t ready to come out, you know?”

Derek adjusted his position and looked into Rico’s face, his silhouette blocking out the sky. “So… between college and New York?”

Rico hid his face against Derek’s brand-new maroon sweatshirt. “Oh Lord. Yeah. It was, like, seven years of me and my fist and Internet porn.” God. He hadn’t even told
Adam
that. His
mother
probably hadn’t fathomed the extent of his loneliness.

“Wow,” Derek said, shuddering. “That makes my stupid college breakup look downright
tame
,
you know that?”

Rico chuckled weakly, the comedown from the frantic kiss, the almost-sex in public making him feel vulnerable and sad. “Tell me anyway,” he practically begged. “You’re sort of… godlike right now. I want to hear about you being human.”

Derek laughed dryly and tilted his face back to the sky. “Oh, I was very human. I
cheated
,
Rico.”

Rico didn’t gasp, but he did sort of wake up. “
You
?” Because Derek… Derek was scrupulously honest. Derek ran a clean ship. Derek corrected the person behind the counter when they gave him the wrong change. Derek was so…
wholesome
.

“Yeah.” Derek laughed humorlessly. “I… you ever do something you regret?”

“Yeah,” Rico rasped. “I let… I let Adam get thrown out of the house on Easter Sunday, and I didn’t speak up for him. Didn’t come out like he did. Just let everyone think he was a monster, and didn’t say I was the same sort of monster.”

“Yeah,” Derek said, kissing his temple. “The closet does shitty things to us, Rico. Sometimes you can’t act like you walk in the sun when you’re in the closet. See, I wasn’t out to my parents yet either. And Mom was talking girlfriends, and I just… just… had Alec at college, and let Mom push Rhonda at me when I went home. And Rhonda was all for it. She wasn’t serious, but she was willing, and… I just had this sort of weird double life. But….” Derek shook his head. “But one day during our last spring break, Alec came up from San Francisco to surprise me, and the whole thing just sort of fell apart.”

Rico yearned for water. For coffee. For something to do with his hands.

“That must have
sucked
,” he said. “For everybody.”

“Yeah,” Derek said. “Rhonda was hurt but not too devastated. I think we both knew it wasn’t going anywhere. But Alec—God.” Derek shuddered. “He was… he was destroyed. I
never
want to hurt anybody like that again.”

“He just… just walked out?” Rico asked. “I mean… I mean, I get it. I get why you did what you did. They couldn’t forgive you eventually?”

Derek shrugged, and his voice sounded rough and cracked. “Eventually. I mean, Alec and I went back to living together in our dorm and my parents spent the next year coming around. For the most part, they were pretty great, actually. They’d ask, ‘Uhm, you’re
sure
?’ but they didn’t pull me out of school or threaten me with anything. They didn’t call me names, and they never said they wouldn’t love me. They weren’t thrilled about what I’d done with Rhonda—but Mom even said they were sorry if I felt pressured into it. Rhonda still calls me every now and then—she runs her own drapery business, and she’s a client
and
an employee, so I guess we’re good.”

“What about Alec?” Rico asked, because this was the important one.

Derek’s shrug hid nothing. “We tried. We got back some of our original relationship, but… but not enough to trust. Not enough to plan for a forever. The next time,
he
cheated—with a boy this time—and we both… just looked at each other when I walked in on them. I said, ‘I did this. I broke us beyond repair. I’m so sorry.’ And then I packed my stuff and moved out of that dorm and into another one. I hear they’re still together, and it’s been ten years, so maybe I did him a favor, you know?”

“No,” Rico said. “No. I’m… why are you telling me all this?”

Derek turned toward him again and brushed his cheek with careful fingertips. “Because I always swore after that to take my life with nothing but straightforwardness and honesty. And I
hurt
after Alec. All of it—the two betrayals, the ‘could have beens,’ the ‘I can’t fix this.’ My mind may have thought I was ready—hell, my body was made of ‘Go!’—but my heart….”

Straightforward and honest.

Rico closed his eyes and thought of Ezra, of the ways their hands had shaken Christmas Eve, when Rico had been missing a family to celebrate with and Ezra had been desperate, so desperate, to please.

“Still hurts,” Rico whispered honestly. “It’s getting better, but it still hurts.”

Derek kissed him gently on the top of the head. “I’d rather not be just the rebound guy,” he said. “I—I mean, I maybe came on too strong at the beginning. But God, I wanted you. Still do.” He straightened, shaking Rico off his shoulder, and then leaned across Rico’s body and manually unlocked his door.

“But get out?” Rico asked, understanding.

“I want you when you’re whole,” Derek said, and for a moment, there in the cooling air and the starlight, Rico caught a hint of vulnerability.

For all his assurance, all that he had apparently learned from his past relationships, Derek was afraid of being hurt.

“So,” Rico asked, trying not to be hurt too, “this was… what? An experiment to see if I was ready?”

“A first date,” Derek said, teeth glinting a little in the darkness. “We’ll have a second sometime next week, if you like. And then a third. And then as many as we want to keep going on.”

“But…?”

Derek cupped his chin and brought him in for one last hot kiss. “But no sex until you’re ready,” Derek told him. “You tell me.”

Rico looked him square in the eye and nodded. “You’re a really good man.”

“So are you.”

One more kiss—one—and then Rico pushed himself out of the car, sticky-clammy underwear and all.

Quietly he walked up the stairs and into the darkened apartment.

Adam was sitting on the corner of the couch, working the remote and watching baseball on one channel and an old Vin Diesel movie on the other, while Finn was curled up asleep, his head in Adam’s lap.

The dog was asleep on his bag in the corner—on his back, all four paws flopping shamelessly on his tummy. The cat was half on the couch, half on Adam’s shoulder, drooling.

“How was your date?” Adam asked softly.

“Enlightening,” Rico said, reaching into the dresser under the TV to grab underwear and some sleep shorts. “What did you do to my dog?”

“Ran him off his ass. Tomorrow is a day off and we want to sleep in.” Adam saw what was in Rico’s hand and his eyes narrowed. “That bastard slept with you on the first date? I’ll kill him.”

“No,” Rico hedged. “Spilled something on my pants. Clammy balls.”

“You’re a shitty liar—just tell me you creamed your jeans and get it over with.”

Rico made a noncommittal noise and then despised himself a little, because he liked to think he was more enlightened than that. Rico didn’t grunt—he communicated. “Fine. He got me off and then told me it was too early to have sex. And now I feel embarrassed
and
sort of more horny. Have we been honest enough for you?”

Adam shrugged. “Yeah. At least now I don’t hate our boss. That sounds like an okay move.”

“Glad it meets your approval,” Rico said dryly, heading for the bathroom. “You staying up?”

“Yeah—taped the game
and
the show. You want in on this action?”

“You know it. But maybe more the show. I’m over baseball for the day.”

Adam sighed. “Yeah, they lost this game anyway. Take your shower and bring me a soda when you’re out.”

“Yeah. Will do.”

Rico got into the shower and let the water sluice down, rinsing away the day and the beer and the almost-sex and the disappointment and the humbling realization that Derek was right about all of it.

As he got out and was toweling off, he remembered something.

“Now remember,” Ezra said, looking like an earnest child trying to keep a secret, “we can’t tell anyone or you’ll lose your job. And we have to pretend at work, right?”

Rico had laughed and kissed his bare shoulder as they’d lain in bed watching the Christmas snow through the big bay window from his apartment.

“Not a problem,” he said. “No one to talk to anyway.”

And the next day at work, it felt like none of it had happened.

Adam was waiting in the living room, remote in his hand, thinking that at least their boss wasn’t a pushy bastard who would take advantage of Rico’s virtue.

He’d told someone.

It had happened.

That
made it better than any other sex he’d had ever.

F
INN
’
S
PARENTS
threw one hell of a party.

After weeks of movies and meeting for dinner, as well as a mosquito-bitten Saturday spent hiking up in Auburn, the grand opening fete seemed natural and easy. Just an outing with Rico’s not-so-serious boyfriend and his cousin’s pretty serious if playful in-laws—nothing to see here, folks.

Held in the picnic area of Reichmuth Park, catered by River Burger itself, and replete with balloons and streamers and free hot dogs for any and all who came by, the opening celebration of the new store really was a place for families.

After enduring another critical wardrobe assessment from Finn, Rico wore a pair of Adam’s denim shorts and one of the bright blue River Burger T-shirts Finn had snagged from his father. The caveat, of course, was that he had to help man the barbecue, keep the chips, condiments, and drinks stacked, and help any and all lost children find their way to their parents.

That last one he had to do on more than one occasion, because Finn’s dad had asked them to bring Clopper, and the big moo just attracted attention.

Of course, Derek was playing with him too.
Derek
was wearing a purple T-shirt from a local soccer team he supported, as well as khaki cargo shorts and a baseball hat, and
he
was under no such obligations to help with picnic duty.

No. All Derek had to do was be Derek—adorable, flirty, and in charge. Derek was the one who saved Rico from his time on the grill by insisting he’d be a ringer in the softball game. He wasn’t wrong, actually, but Rico blushed that he’d remember about Rico playing ball in college.

If they hadn’t been playing against Candy Heaven—who had Adam on their team—they might have stood a chance.

As it was, the fourth time Adam hit a ball over the fence on cleanup, Derek jogged after it good-naturedly while Rico looked at Finn’s dad with a shrug.