It's Like This (15 page)

“Oh,” Kya replies, giving in to the beautiful simplicity of kid logic. “I don’t think you’re right though, because I think if Niles was being a bad boyfriend he probably would try to be sneakier about it.”

Cara nods, sagely. “You’re probably right. Martin looked reeeeeeeeeally surprised to see me and Mom.”

Rylan stops and turns and grins. “You know, Kya, you are smart as shit.”

Cara looks nonplussed. “The sh-word is smart?” she asks.

Even though I promised not to let them, the things Shona said are really niggling at me. She’s right—most of our friends’ parents are divorced. Rylan’s parents are divorced…well, more like, never together, and I guess I’ve always known that monogamy isn’t exactly problem free, or even the only model for relationships. Then again, he said he’d never cheat on me and I’m trying really hard to do this “trusting Rylan” thing these days.

“So? You think about what I asked?” Rylan says, kissing my ear. We’re mostly naked in my bed at home and he’s been trying to fuck me all morning.

Besides what Shona said, I’ve been thinking about not a lot else.

I shake him off, glaring at the computer open on my lap. “I guess. Give me a minute. I’m trying to pick my courses.”

He closes his eyes and points to a spot on the page. “Do that one.”

“Acquiring Expert Venture Cognitions,” I read. “How did you know?”

He laughs and drops his face to between my laptop and my groin. He uses his nose to scrunch up the leg of my boxers and presses his mouth softly against my upper thigh, before responding, “Entrepreneurship not your thing. Got it. I don’t mean to be a nag, Captain, but aren’t you sort of supposed to have a major by now?”

“I think I have one!” I protest. “Maybe! I think geography?”

But my brain is distracted—back to stupid Shona-inspired insecurities. Maybe I’m being selfish. Maybe by assuming this is a long term thing, I’m almost trapping Rylan into something that doesn’t fit. Maybe this isn’t right for him. He’s so great with kids, like maybe he wants some of his own someday to replace his kind of shitty family and while great for now, somewhere down the line there are such big chunks of his history that I think I should know, but don’t, and maybe if I just had more information, I could figure this shit out.

“Have you seen your mom, lately?” I blurt out, obtusely.

Rylan doesn’t move for a long moment, and then slowly sits up. “No,” he replies, carefully, “What brought that on?”

“I don’t know,” I say apologetically. I know I shouldn’t bring shit like that up. I just…I feel like he’s got an unfair advantage. He knows where I come from, who my family is, and how he fits with them and maybe I want that, too. Like they might be fuck-ups, but they’re still his family, right?

I can tell he’s thinking but I can’t tell what. He shifts to face me. “How come you never just tell me what you mean?” he presses, quietly, non-accusingly, even though God knows I deserve to be accused. I know he’s trying to be gentle with me, to keep me calm, but the question still makes my stomach drop and my pulse hopscotch. I wish he wouldn’t because maybe I just don’t want to do the talking thing after all. Maybe it’s too hard.

“I don’t know,” I wheedle. I’m trying to worm out of the whole situation and I know it and I hate it. I try to distract myself with the UVic calendar again, but Rylan simply removes it from my hands, closes it, and puts it on the bedside table. He kisses the side of my neck with a patience I don’t deserve.

“Tell me, please,” he states. He doesn’t beg.

“I don’t know what to tell you!” I exclaim.

“Start with a little part.” His voice is low and formidable. He slinks around behind me so he’s sitting, legs splayed, between the headboard and my back and runs his hands up and down my sides. He pulls me into him. “You don’t even have to look at me. Just give me something, OK?”

“Something of what?”

“Don’t deflect,” he demands, his voice slightly sharper.

I sigh and his fingers encircle my naked waist.

“Nothing.” I insist, and he bites my shoulder, hard. “Something Shona said.”

He laps at the wound he just created, kisses it. “Jesus Christ. That woman.” He continues his attentions, trailing lips and tongue up my neck, fingertips scouting the area around my navel.

“I’m sorry,” I offer, mulishly.

“Keep going.” He nips at my ear. “What did she say?”

“Just stuff.”

He sinks his teeth into the back of my neck, quite possibly breaking the skin.

“Fuck, Ry! That hurts!”

“Then stop delaying the inevitable.” His teeth poise on the verge of attack.

“Look. I just worry, OK?”

I can picture his smirk, even though his face is behind me, as he says, “Tell me something I don’t know.” Then his voice softens. “Seriously, Niles, what is it I don’t know?”

He kisses my cheek, slides his hand over my stomach and ribs.

“Are you happy?” I ask, finally.

“Yes. Very.” His answer is fluid, confident.

I inhale. “Me too. Like. Really happy.” There. That was progress, right?

“Good.” He plucks at a nipple, causing my dick to take interest.

“And you—you think we’ll keep being happy for…” I trail off, uselessly.

“The foreseeable future.” He slides a hand into my shorts and takes my cock in his hand. The warmth of his palm elicits the expected reaction and he rearranges my erection so it’s in typical jack-off position.

“Right,” I breathe.

His hand tightens gently and then relaxes rhythmically around my cock—no real intention present. I’d accuse him of not listening, but I know he is—and intently. He presses his lips to my temple, my jaw. His free hand skates over the skin on my inner thigh, promising to stroke my balls before maddeningly withdrawing. I lean against him, wanting. I don’t know how to react to the talking and the touching at the same time, and I’m guessing that’s his game plan.

“So, why the philosophizing?” he continues. I bite my lip as he squeezes my erection this side of too hard—just the way I like it.

“Just thinking.” And suddenly he’s gone, and I fall back, or he pushes me, and he’s over me, straddling my lap.

“Talk to me, Niles. For fuck’s sake.” He holds my cheeks in his hands.

“I don’t know how,” I whisper.

“Yes, you do. Start small. What are you happy, with?” he prompts. He slots our cocks together, the fabric between us generating a painful-pleasant friction, and grips my wrists, confining them to the bedspread.

“My family.” It feels beyond bizarre to be talking about my family like this, but it’s what he wants, what he told me to do. “The fact that Kya’s OK, that I’m going back to school and I maybe even found something I want to pursue.”

Rylan drags his hips along, parallel to mine. “Good, baby, you’re doing so good,” he whispers into the skin beneath my jaw.

Suddenly my hands are shoved upwards against the wall—caught by one of Rylan’s small hands and my own determination to obey—and he bites or kisses at my throat. His praise punches through me like an arrow, exhilarating everything: my breath, my pulse, my arousal. “My friends. My apartment,” I continue, like a mantra.

He plunges the heel of his free hand upwards, hard over the skin of my chest, and then runs his nails downwards. Until I say it.

Until what I say I know is true. “You.”

His lips find mine, his tongue strong and demanding, and my cock is responding to him, I’m rocking my hips up into him. He lets my hands go and I grasp onto him, arms reckless around his neck.

“And what are you worried about?” he urges, knowing that by this point, I can’t resist. I shake my head, but he catches my lip between his teeth, stilling me immediately. Slamming his hips against mine, he lets me feel that I am not alone in this.

“Going back to school,” I whisper. “Knowing like I do now that shitty things can happen to me, even if I’ve always pretended they can’t.”

“And?” The pace is faster now. He uses one hand to grip me by the hair on the back of my head and I grasp wildly at his biceps, trying to steady us, which is impossible and I know it.

“And…being out. I try not to let people get to me, but—”

“It happens, and you handle it beautifully and stoically and I’m so fucking proud of you,” he tells me and I swear to God I can actually hear his love and it is so much bigger than me and I want it so much—

“What else, sweetness?” he prompts, finally lowering his hand to fully encircle my aching cock. I try to name more but all I can think about is him as we slide together. He strokes me evenly, deftly, and it’s my turn to grab his head, slamming it down towards mine because I need somewhere to put the noises I’m making, but he won’t let me. His lips tease at mine, disallowing any substantial pressure. I’m trying to be quiet, trying to muffle myself, even though I know there’s no one around to hear us.

“For God’s sake, Nigh,” he whispers. “Say it. Scream it if you have to.”

No. I shake my head.

“Scream.”

I can’t help it. It’s an order.

So I do. It’s low and hoarse and ugly, but he demands it of me again and I’m so close to coming I can’t argue, I can only submit.

“And—” he dictates, a final time and it’s not even a question anymore. “What the fucking hell are you so worried about?”

And I whimper. But then I say it. Scream it. Come.

“You.”

* * *

I refuse to open my eyes. If I open my eyes I have to face it: The Conversation. If I keep them closed I can just lie here forever, never having to talk about anything, ever again.

But if Rylan’s anything, it’s patient, or maybe just stubborn. Either way, he can outlast my forever, anytime.

He’s still straddling me. My dick is softening quickly, his hand still wrapped around it. It’s weird. There’s cum, and my sweat, and my throat is sore.

Finally, he releases me and I feel him wiping us up with maybe a T-shirt and the simple hominess of the gesture makes me feel oddly cared for. Fuck. His hand touches my face, and I flinch slightly, caught off-guard. He shifts forward. I know the kiss is coming before it touches my lips. And it’s patient, too, of course.

“Niles,” he says, softly. I want to turn my head away, but I don’t move. I’m not acknowledging this. I’m waiting for him to get bored and go home.

Instead, he preciously strips me of my boxer shorts, rummages through the drawers and passes me a clean pair, along with a T-shirt. I numbly dress myself, while he kicks off his boxers, erection not yet waned. He doesn’t bother dressing, instead gently observing me. He takes his time, afterwards, straightens the fabric under his hands, finger-combs my hair. I feel his palms slide down my torso, pausing on my hip bones. He curls up, naked, beside me and tucks his head under my chin.

“Niles,” he repeats.

He’s not going anywhere.

I cover my eyes with my palms. Surrender.

“Sit up,” he instructs, half-coaxing and half-telling, but I let my hands fall and manoeuvre my body up to lean against the headboard. He falls into place next to me, copying my posture, knees up, fingers clasped over them. But he’s looking at me and not at the sheets. Waiting again.

“This is hard,” I say, finally, my voice scratchy in my throat.

“Shouldn’t be,” he says, seeming to take my words as a cue to touch me, because his hand slips behind my back and I half-wish he wouldn’t. I can’t concentrate on anything but him when he does.

“At least when we weren’t talking I knew what to obsess about.”

He snorts gently, but doesn’t reply.

“Now it’s just…Everything is supposed to be all fine and stuff, but if I start to think too much about something then I have to ask it, but for some reason the asking is just terrifying. Even though logically it shouldn’t be. I’ve just never been taught to talk like this.”

He looks at me strangely.

“You’ve forgotten,” he says.

I glance at him sideways. “What?”

“Even when we weren’t acknowledging this out loud, or even now that we are—we’re still best friends, Nigh. Nothing’s changed in that regard. And we never had any problems talking before.”

“Except about us,” I counter. But he’s right, of course. How the hell can I feel uncomfortable around Rylan when he’s already privy to every last thing about me?

He sighs. “I’m still sorry. You know that, right? I should’ve figured it out that you didn’t want to say anything earlier, because then we wouldn’t have this three-year-cloud hanging over us, making everything a million times more difficult.”

I feel myself relax involuntarily. Of course he’d take the blame. “Yeah,” I agree. “All you needed to do was learn how to read my mind.”

He laughs. “Or you mine. Whatever, though. We’re dealing with it now, right?”

“Yeah,” I agree again. “And I just—I want you to know that I’m pretty, like…invested.”

“And Shona says that’s weird? For you to be invested in me? I mean, we’ve invested three years, so I kind of thought it was a given.” Rylan shakes his head. “Why is she so set upon fucking you up?”

“Hey. She’s only heard my tortured side of our story for all this time. She’s defensive for a reason.”

“And I appreciate her being there for you, but seriously, she has got to give me a chance to be the good guy. What did she say? Did she say I’d screw around on you?”

“No,” I answer truthfully.

“Did she say I’d walk out on you?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t get it.”

“She said—” God, now it sounds so stupid. “She said most people aren’t, like, as fiercely monogamous as me.” I blush. Monogamous. What an eighth grade, family-life kind of word.

Rylan shakes his head. “Of course she did,” he says under his breath. He doesn’t say anything more, so I force myself to end my misery and ask.

“Well?”

“Well,” Rylan responds, “I guess there’s no way around it. She’s right. I can’t think of a single other person on Earth that is interested in finding another person that they might just be into. Security and love, and having someone to go home to—kill me now.” His sarcasm is deafening, but he just steamrolls right on. “I mean, look at us idiots. What have we even been doing? Three fucking years wasted in a monogamous relationship, when we could have been out having vanilla sex with sloppy, drunk strangers. I don’t know about you, babe, but I totally feel like I’m missing out on all those things I never wanted.”