One More Time (7 page)

“You okay?” Caleb asked a few minutes after I’d made the decision to leave but hadn’t yet figured out a polite way to excuse myself.

I started to nod, then finished off by shaking my head. “Not really. Look, I’m sorry I came over. I’m not in a good space right now. I should probably go.”

He looked disappointed as his expression, one of mild curiosity, turned into a frown. He nodded, though, and I got up from the couch. “Okay. See you later?”

“Of course.” I was at the door, and I should have just opened it and gone right back outside. But… I ran my hands through my hair. I was too messed up for this, for friends, for hanging out. Caleb was nice, and as a friend he could have been great. But I didn’t need a friend right then. I needed someone to screw and never have to look at again. I needed someone who would let me treat them like a sex toy to vent my frustration about what had happened to Simon, about losing the only person I’d loved. And even if the accident hadn’t been my fault, in my mind I could hear Cassandra screaming at me the way she’d done that first night in the hospital. It was all my fault because I’d fallen in love with Simon and he’d fallen in love with me and if he hadn’t, then her big brother would still be around for her. She was wrong, but she was so right too.

Caleb put his arms around me, and once again I realized I’d been crying. “I’m not good company right now,” I told him, as if that weren’t completely obvious by the way I was crying and shaking.

He nodded and released me. I thought he was letting me go to deal with my problems in the only way I really knew how to: naked on top of someone else. But he took my hand and pulled me back to the couch. I sat after his gentle shove to my stomach. I could have stopped him, could have just moved out of the way and left like I should have. But restlessness warred with frustration within me and so much of me just wanted to stay. I liked Caleb. It wasn’t just that he was the only gay guy I knew of in Thornwood. It was that he smiled, and I felt like smiling too—even now when I didn’t really want to. He put one of his knees on the couch beside my hip, and I looked up at him. I didn’t know what his plan was, and part of me was scared.

“What were you asking me for this afternoon?” His voice was quiet. He’d turned off the movie when I stood up, since the TV behind him was now completely black.

I licked my lips and weighed my options. I didn’t want a relationship, couldn’t handle one even on my best days, and he’d said no to one. The easy way out of there would have been to tell him I wanted to be serious with him. I could scare him by saying I wanted to move in. After two days of knowing me, that would probably make anyone run for their lives. But I didn’t want to shut him down like the persistent guys on my app. I still wanted him to be around, and so I simply shook my head and left my hands on the couch, even though I wanted to touch him.

“Sex,” I replied simply. I watched him, judging his reaction for myself. He pulled his leg off the couch, but he didn’t go far as he sat down next to me, facing me, with one leg pulled up under him. It wasn’t a rejection, not really, but it wasn’t the reaction I was expecting either. I’d figured him for the kind of guy who would have turned me down flat. He didn’t come across at all like one of the guys I toyed with. I chose needy, easily controlled men who let me fuck them and then leave them. If I misjudged them and they turned out to be a bit more clingy than I’d anticipated, it was usually easy to get rid of them.

He was built for sex with a great body, but he didn’t move as if he was looking for his next dick and he didn’t talk like it either. He seemed like all he wanted was a friend, and I couldn’t be that for him right now. Maybe the next day. After all it wasn’t as if either of us was going away anytime soon, but tonight I couldn’t be a friend, not when all I wanted was to forget myself with someone else. And I wasn’t asshole enough to do that to someone I wanted to be friends with. So I tried to get up again, but he wrapped his fingers around my wrist.

“I’m no good right now,” I told him as I covered his hand with my own. I’d pry his fingers off my wrist if I needed to. It wouldn’t even take much, just me putting my fingers around his thumb and manipulating his hand off of me. His hand would go wherever I moved his thumb. I knew that. But I didn’t do that, and I didn’t make myself stand up. I was a coward and a horrible person. That’s all I could think to explain why I sat there and let him straddle me. He bent down and kissed me. His mouth was soft and his kiss gentle, like he was scared of something. I kissed him back, but I was a lot rougher. And I put one of my hands behind his head, right on his neck, so he couldn’t pull away. I was hard, because I’d been so worked up and still was, but having him on my lap with his thickening cock pressing against my stomach through his jeans and the thick material of my uniform made it even more impossible for me to do what was right.

Caleb found the fly of my pants and pressed his palm against me. I jerked back, because he surprised me, but it didn’t take me long to settle down and let him rub and squeeze me through my uniform. This wasn’t right; I didn’t mess around with guys in my uniform. And I didn’t want to lose Caleb as the good friend he could very easily be. But he opened my pants, pushed my briefs aside, and found my cock. I opened my mouth and shot my tongue between his teeth. I should have let him go. I should have pushed him off me and told him that tonight just wasn’t going to work. But he was hot, ready, and wanting me. And I was weak for letting him.

He was good with his hand, but a hand job wouldn’t have fixed my problems tonight, so I reached to the button of his jeans and took him out. He was nearly fully hard and already a bit wet on his tip. I rubbed his head and stroked his length until he was panting and shaking against my chest. I didn’t know if he had a bed already set up in the house, but really it didn’t matter. Sex was just as easy on the couch. Hell, his kitchen island would have worked just fine too. I pulled my wallet out of my pocket and was glad I’d left my holster and gun locked up in the car. It was one less thing to get in the way.

If he noticed me pull a condom out of my wallet, he didn’t mention it. He could think whatever he wanted. I wasn’t being responsible with our budding friendship, but I could be safe with both of us. And, I reasoned as I moved him off me and got behind him on the couch, sex took two people. I wasn’t solely responsible for what we were doing.

Caleb

MY JEANS
slipped down a little on my hips when he moved me over on the couch and got behind me. My heart raced and really, I didn’t know what had made me decide to do this. Trent had looked so miserable sitting beside me on the couch, like he needed to be anywhere but here. I hadn’t been ready to let him go, but sex wasn’t a good way to keep someone next to me. I dug my fingers into the seat cushion of my couch at the first touch of Trent’s tongue against my asshole. I’d been rimmed before, plenty of times, but with him it felt different. Maybe because I wasn’t fully into it, maybe because I’d only known him for two days, but I knew I should have stopped this.

“Trent, stop,” I said. And instantly I felt guilty for not having sex with him because I’d started everything. He’d said he needed to go, plenty of times, but I kept pushing, and it was on the tip of my tongue to say never mind and just have sex with him anyway. He was gorgeous, and I was sure I’d enjoy it. But I wasn’t into the random, casual sex he seemed to want from me, and I was already pretty disgusted with myself after my relationship with Paul.

Trent pulled away, and once his hands were no longer on my hips, I got up and fixed my jeans. He looked confused, and I thought again of how easy it would be to simply say yes to him, that I’d made a mistake, that everything was fine. But it wasn’t.

“I can’t do this. Not tonight,” I told him as he stood up too and adjusted his clothes. He was still hard, and I was quickly losing my erection. Fucking perfect. I wanted to sigh and knock my head against the wall a few dozen times.

He nodded and started heading for the door. “I get it.”

“Where are you going?” I asked. I thought maybe we could watch the rest of the movie, each of us have another beer, and pretend this hadn’t happened.

But he kept walking to my door. “I’m not in the right space for a movie and hanging out right now. You don’t know this about me, and most people don’t actually, but when I’m not okay, like now, the only thing I’ve found that calms me down is sex. So I’m going to go fix myself.”

“You’re with someone?” I asked, feeling a bit sick to my stomach all over again. Not this. I couldn’t be the other person another time.

He shook his head. “It’s not like that. I’ll talk to you later. Bye.”

It took me longer than it should have to figure out what he meant, but after he left, I finally understood and had to sit down on my couch. I realized Trent hadn’t needed to have sex with me; I was merely convenient. He could have had sex with anyone and probably would while I sat here staring at a black TV screen. I shook my head, got up, and downed half a bottle of beer before I stopped being mad at him, and at myself. Because, really, if I was going to actually look at the situation and be honest about it, I’d nearly had sex with a man I’d known for two days. That might have been what Trent did, and I suspected it was, but I wasn’t like that. And I’d pushed him into staying and into having sex.

I wasn’t going to say no to being friends with him, but sex was most definitely off the table between us now. And yet, as I stood there leaning over my island and alternating between bites of a cookie and sips of my beer, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I’d wanted him. It was weird and definitely not something I should have been thinking about while he probably had his dick in someone else. But the thought was there anyway.

I groaned and pulled out my phone. It was still kind of early in California, and my only close friend, Dean, would still be up. I was sure of it.

The phone rang in my hand, and I thought maybe he’d gone to bed early. Or that he and his wife were out doing something much more fun than I was. But then he picked up, and I felt instantly better at having my friend to talk to.

“Hey, Caleb.”

“Hi. How’s things there?” I asked. I wasn’t calling him to get advice on the Trent situation. We weren’t like that, and I didn’t go running to people when I had a problem. I hadn’t even told him I’d been with Paul until last year when I’d tried unsuccessfully to leave him. But it just felt good to talk to someone about nothing at all for a while.

He chuckled. “Oh, you know. Backed-up highways, all those people with their hybrids everywhere, can’t find a decent greasy burger between all the health food places.”

I smiled, remembering, and took my mostly empty beer and the box of nearly gone cookies over to the couch where I lay down and snacked. “Sounds miserable.”

“It is. How’s mountain living and no traffic, then?”

“Pretty good, actually.” When I wasn’t making ridiculous mistakes and nearly having sex with a guy I wanted but had barely even started to get to know.

“Dean, you tell him about Sam,” I heard Dean’s wife, Natalie, call to him.

“Woman, I’m getting to that!”

“Get faster!”

I laughed. “So what’s going on with Sam?”

“He got beat up at school today.” I heard the anger in Dean’s voice, and I was right there with him.

“What? How? Why?” I adored Sam, even more than my own nephews, though he was about their age. But I’d watched Sam grow up. I’d given him swimming lessons as a kid and had babysat him for years.

“Because he decided to come out in his English class.”

For a moment there I didn’t know what to say. “I thought he was going to keep that under wraps for a while.” It hadn’t been my decision, but I hadn’t been against it either. Kids were cruel more often than not, and he’d already been tormented pretty often for being black, and now they were going to beat up on him for being gay? Damn. Poor kid. I shook my head just thinking about it.

“That was what we’d talked about. But he had to write an essay about one thing that’s special about him and he wrote it and the teacher I guess liked it so much that she had him read it in front of the class. Sam says she let him decide if he wanted to or not but my guess is he was just so damn proud of his A that he decided to go for it.” Dean groaned, and I could hear the frustration in his voice. “I just wanted to keep him safe. You know? I love him, Nat loves him, and we’ll always accept him. He can be completely open and out with us at home. But I wanted him to lay low for a little while in that school.”

“So what are you doing now?” I asked. I could understand Dean’s frustration. Having kids was hard, which was probably why I didn’t have any. That and the whole not having someone to raise them with part since I was not interested in being a single parent from the start. Although I did know there was a possibility of that happening later on.

“Nat wants to pull him out of school and homeschool him for a while. I’m not opposed to it. When he was getting teased, we talked about it some and decided that it would be okay once he grew up a bit. But he’s got loads of bruises right now, and I want to go beat up some kids for hurting my little man.”

“I’ve got plenty of room, you know, if you wanted to come spend some time out here and get him away from all of that for a while.” I had just extended the same offer to my sister and her kids, but I highly doubted she’d take me up on it. And from the sound of things there, Sam needed a bit of time away from his life in LA and all the crappy people in it.

Dean didn’t say anything at first. “You sure about that? You did just move there. Maybe you want some time to relax, move your stuff in, get the lay of the land so to speak.”

I laughed at that and put my now-empty beer bottle down on the floor next to me. I had three cookies left though, and knew they wouldn’t last much longer. I should have grabbed some real groceries at the store, but junk food was kind of what I ran on most days. “Dean, seriously, my stuff is moved in. The town has one street and about ten stores in it. Come on out if you can get away. If you can’t and want to send Sam out alone, that would be fine too. I’ll take him fishing or something.”