The Luckiest (8 page)

Aaron pushes up and rolls them, pinning Nik under his body and God, their clothes are going to be ruined at this rate, but at least it’s just one more of Nik’s faded UT T-shirts and a pair of khaki shorts rubbing up against the rough plank­ing as Aaron leans down and kisses him, hot and dirty, pushing up to his elbows so he can get his hands into Nik’s thick hair.

Aaron pulls away, kisses down to Nik’s jaw again and whis­pers, “No more being quiet—let me hear it,” before sucking a kiss into that spot low on Nik’s throat, the one he’d first found on another summer day so many years ago.

It still works—it lights up Nik’s body and brings him surging up against Aaron, calling out for him. “Aaron, fuck, shit—oh, God, Aaron, Aaron.” Aaron’s going for it now, taking the ride that Nik is giving him, and it’s so juvenile, just rubbing against him as if they are teenagers again; but there’s time for more, and this is where they started out, and it’s so
hot,
stripped back to that place where they can’t get enough of each other. Nik clutches at Aaron’s back; his words give way to panting and deep groans while his hips work and his leg comes up to wrap around Aaron’s ass and pull him closer, tighter. Aaron rolls his hips and licks, his tongue hot and wet, up Nik’s neck to suck and nip at his earlobe. He can feel Nik’s nails through his shirt when he finally goes tense all over and moans long and loudly—and if the sound doesn’t carry clear across the beach, Aaron will be shocked. And he just… doesn’t care.

He rolls off Nik and pulls him close so he’ll be able to breathe as he comes down—Aaron
needs
Nik right here with him, but can’t bear to crush him. Nik’s breathing is still far from steady and his eyes are screwed shut, and Aaron can’t keep from rubbing gently against him; Nik post-orgasm has always been arousing as hell, so loose and flushed and happy.

Aaron is already thinking about the next time, because this summer he’s not stopping at once—he can’t wait to get Nik naked, to bite the curve of his bicep and trace his belly with his tongue and dig firm fingers into the muscles of his thighs, to see more of his skin, stretched out under the lights, and the thought makes him groan and snake his hand down to press against the front of his own shorts. Nik’s eyes drift open at the movement and he’s suddenly alert, grabs Aaron’s wrist and drags his hand away and replaces it with his own. Nik’s eyes stay locked on Aaron’s as he begins to stroke, and Aaron can’t look away from Nik’s messy hair, his dark eyes and wet mouth; the look in his eyes is intense, possessive. Aaron falls onto his back, gasping for breath, but with his head turned to Nik, staring.

“Aaron, you—fuck, I need to—” and Nik is reaching for the button on Aaron’s shorts, pulling it open and using his wrist to push down the zipper so he can wrap his hand around Aaron’s dick. His hand is warm, his callouses create just the right kind of friction, and he starts pulling right away. “Fuck, you’re so—”

Aaron looks from the ripple of Nik’s forearm to his face, his mouth, his eyes locked on Aaron and says, “Oh, God,
Nik.
” And that’s it, he’s gone, spilling over Nik’s hand and all over his clothes, and he’s warm and his
toes
tingle and his shoulders ache from arching over and over into Nik’s hand until he can’t take it anymore; he needs to lie down and he lets his arms fall to his side.

Nik flops down next to him and wipes his hand on his wrecked T-shirt, and together they gaze at the sky, lost in their own worlds and waiting for their breathing to slow down.

Aaron finally breaks the silence. “You swear more than I remember. You never did that.”

“Mmmm, better to say ‘fuck’ than ‘Aaron’—I think it’s become a habit.” Aaron smiles. “You’ve grown into your dick.”

Aaron laughs, hopeless and a little broken; he has, Nik’s right. “And you’re broader, too. And hairier.” He rolls onto his side to look at Nik and props himself on an elbow. “I like it. I like all of it, although you should feel free to shout my name when you come.” He drops a kiss on Nik’s neck and takes a deep breath, then noses at Nik’s skin. “God, you’re still so damn
sexy.
”

Nik pulls him into a kiss as he breathes out Aaron’s name; his voice is full of sweetness and gentle affection, and Aaron can’t help it, he
wants
it. Aaron’s so tired of regret; maybe he’ll regret this later, but for now he can’t bear to think of that. Except …

He breaks the kiss. “Seriously, you can’t ever tell Stephanie about this. Or Alex. Or David.”

Nik just laughs. “You have overestimated the level of sharing in that friendship. What, are you thinking about how you’ll have to lie to Alex?”

Aaron smirks. “I’ll tell her someday. It’d be a nice anniver­sary gift, don’t you think, telling her that, on the spot where her bridal portrait was taken, we consummated our burning passion for each other days earlier?”

Nik smiles at Aaron gently, so earnestly. “Tell her it’s where we ‘made love.’ You’ll get the bonus of turning her stomach,” Nik says.

Aaron runs his fingers through Nik’s hair and looks at him. There are so many things he doesn’t trust himself to feel or say right now to. Instead he kisses Nik, dragging “Stay with me tonight?” across his lips, feeling the risk in every word and every sweet meeting of their mouths.

Nik nods. “Not yet, though. Stay here for a minute.”

Nik pulls Aaron into his strong arms and pillows Aaron’s head against his broader shoulder. Aaron listens to Nik’s heart beat slow and steady, the warm sound of his body’s con­tent­ment mixing with the lapping of the water against stone. When he lets his body go soft, languid, content… that’s when he knows he’s in trouble.

In Their Own Words

A
post from
the blog
A Lone Star in Manhattan
, Monday, October 3, 2011:

So. Let’s talk about sex (baby).

Just to be clear, let me define my terms. If activity occurs that could conceivably lead to orgasm and somebody else is involved and actually knows about it, then it counts. Don’t get too excited or too disgusted; I’m not dishing details. But I suddenly realized just this afternoon that this is a thing I can do now. It’s not like it happened without my knowledge; I was there the whole time. But if I want to I can have cereal for dinner, I can skip a class, and I can get laid—whenever I want to. How amazing is that?

I’m gay, so a whole host of things about sex came as a bit of a surprise. But the
second
time that sex made me reevaluate the world and my place in it was just after I started fooling around with my first boyfriend. I’m sure we all went through this, but for me it was still a revelation; for weeks I was sure that every person I saw might have been doing something naughty just moments before. Who knew what kind of filthy thoughts the library aide might be having? It was so egalitarian, and I kind of loved it; I loved the mystery just as much as I loved the power.

It’s been a while. I learned a lot, I went through some adjust­ments, and now it looks like I’m looking at tracking down partner number two. It’s so different to think about this now. I feel as if I already know myself, and the whole process isn’t the mystery it used to be. Now I understand the power of sex; now I understand how I work, and what it’s like for me. And that’s great, but suddenly, now that I’m thinking about this, it’s as if I’m that kid again. Every man I lay eyes on is a potential partner; I’m not saying I want it to, but it
could
happen. I could have Lucky Charms for dinner, I could skip my eight a.m., and I could take that cute boy in my tech and media lecture back to my room.

The world is a miraculous place.

But that brings me back to the beginning: what is sex to
you
? Do you have a working definition? Because the only thing keeping me from implementing this plan immediately is that I have no idea what’s expected of me. The last time I did this it was with somebody I had known for a long time, and we talked and talked and talked before anything ever got really good. I’m not up for that right now. So I guess what I’m asking is: Oh my sweet lord, what am I in for?

Wednesday

A
aron opens his
eyes to sun streaming into the window and groans, just a little, at the ache in his back. He and Nik woke up sometime after midnight, stiff and sweaty, and hauled themselves up to wander, bleary-eyed and half asleep, back to the house. All the bags were still sitting on the front porch, as well as Nik’s laptop and his guitar, and he heard laughter coming from the living room. They’d only just managed to shove everything inside the front door and stumble up the stairs unseen before they stripped down to their underwear—Aaron had thrown Nik a fresh pair—climbed into Aaron’s bed and passed out again.

Aaron is glad to have a few minutes to lie here, quiet and still, before he has to get started on the day, because he has a lot to think about.

Nik says he still loves him.

Some small, dark part of him thrills at this, because for so long he thought that Nik didn’t, that he never could have loved him if he’d done what he had. The whole thing had been so confused and so fucking
painful,
and the last few months of high school—from the moment Nik had come to his front porch late one night in April and tearfully dropped the bomb­shell that he wasn’t going to New York because he was staying to go to the University of Texas instead, right up until Nik’s prom night, when they fought on that porch all over again and then broke up—was a period Aaron tried not to spend too much time considering. There had been so many arguments, so many miscommunications and so much painful confusion that by June he’d been bitter and resentful and so fucking eager to get out of Texas that he decided to find a summer job in New York and left town as soon as he could.

He jumped into the city the way so many had, happy to be there not just for everything the city itself had to offer, but also as part of his grand escape plan, and he drifted through that first summer almost numb to everything he had left behind. Determined to get some good writing out of the whole thing, he started a blog and spitefully titled it
A Lone Star in Manhattan
.

Everybody had advice on how to deal with the breakup, once the actual event was over and he was left to put his life back together according to an undetermined pattern. His mom told him that life was long and he was young, and to wait and see what happened next. Jasmine told him to do what he had to do to get Nik back. Alex said he should give it some time, go see what New York had to offer, but not take for granted what he’d had with Nik, because it was special—just like her and Andy. The writing had been Stephanie’s contribution: “Use the experience, Aaron,” she’d said. He might have hated her a little for it, but she wasn’t wrong; it was how he first started to think of himself as more a memoirist than a journalist, and look where that has taken him.

Aaron threw himself into the city with everything he had, his body and his brain and his words, and it helped. Michael, too, had been a gift, but once Aaron realized it wasn’t ever going to work the way he wanted it to—would never
feel
the way he wanted it to— he’d taken control of that part of his life and stopped letting other people in so easily.

Going back to Houston was never going to be easy, but going straight from a breakup with Michael at the end of his first year in college to almost constant contact with Nik over the summer made everything much more difficult. Once that sum­mer was behind him, once he’d allowed himself one last fling with Nik, he felt so
different
—harder, more brittle, but determined to stop feeling bad about himself. Nik was his first love, but also his first hookup, and he wasn’t the last.

Nik stirs next to him, and Aaron turns to face him. This is not a view that Aaron has had enough of in his life—he’s seen a fair few men wake up, some of them better-looking than Nik, but none so absolutely fundamental to him and to how attraction works for him. Nik’s hair is a mess; his jaw is dark with stubble where it hangs slightly ajar. Aaron has seen Nik like this only a time or two; chances to share a bed were rare in high school, and that had been one of the things they daydreamed about when planning to end up in college together. That time seems so long ago, and it’s bittersweet to remember.

Nik’s eyes flutter open, and Aaron watches him come back to himself; he can see the second Nik realizes Aaron is watching him, because suddenly he’s wearing the most beautiful, sleepy smile. “Hey,” Nik whispers. His voice is rough, and when he’s sleepy he has a little more Texas in his voice than usual, so the vowel stretches long and lazy.

“Good morning,” Aaron says back, and then they lie there, breathing together, inches away from each other and unable to stop staring. Nik reaches out to touch Aaron’s face, feathering his fingertips across his hairline, over his ear, down his jaw, and Aaron shivers as those fingers delicately move down his neck, tickle his collarbones, slide over his shoulder and gently tug.

“C’mere,” Nik mutters, sleep thick in his voice.

Aaron smiles. “I don’t know, I’m pretty comfortable here. Maybe
you
should come
here
.”

Nik squeezes his shoulder and pulls harder, saying, “Colum­bia, remember? You can move the three inches this morning.” Aaron just rolls into it, too stunned to continue resisting.

He settles against Nik’s bare shoulder, his face turned toward Nik’s, and his hand hesitates before it rests on Nik’s chest and splays wide across his heart. Aaron plays with the hair on Nik’s chest. There’s more than he remembers, and it’s thick and dark and—on Nik, at least—so appealing. His legs tangle with Nik’s, and the arm that’s wrapped around him sweeps over his back, cups his shoulder and pulls him in a little tighter.

Nik groans. “God, you feel good.” He drops a kiss on Aaron’s hair, then lets his head fall back to the pillow and sighs. “You feel really good. Let’s never get out of bed.”

Aaron laughs. “They’d just come looking.”

“Let them. It’s worth it. I’m not looking forward to letting you go again, even if it’s only for the day.”

They fall quiet, waking up to each other, stroking gently and breath­ing together. There’s so much between them; so much that’s already gone by, but so much potential, too. Aaron is ready to let the past go, to carry on and move forward—he wants this so badly he would compromise just about anything—and he can finally admit that to himself. Still, he has to ask: “You have to tell me what happened. Back then.”

Nik is quiet for a second, but he doesn’t act as if he doesn’t know what Aaron’s talking about, at least. He drops a kiss to Aaron’s hair and sighs. “My dad. My dad, and sort of my mom, and money.”

Aaron is quiet while the whole story spills out: about how Nik’s dad hadn’t wanted him at NYU; about how the end of the shuttle program and the killing of that particular fatted calf scared the shit out of Nik’s dad and just about every other engineer in the area who had ever worked with NASA; about the scholarship at the University of Texas, his grandfather’s legacy there and his dad’s insistence that Nik take what was on offer, because he wasn’t interested in raiding his retirement to fund Nik through four years of living with his boyfriend on the East Coast.

It began when Nik started applying to schools, but it didn’t come to a head until that one night in April, only an hour before Nik ended up on Aaron’s front porch, and it ended with a fight that involved Nik’s mom and dad and didn’t stop until his little sister Alisha came into the room crying and Nik left. It’s as messy a story as any Aaron has ever had to tell about his own family, and Nik’s bitterness is evident in the telling, especially when he talks about his little sister, the baby Aaron remembers being so full of laughter. Yet Aaron is stuck on one question: “Why didn’t you
tell
me all of this?”

Nik scrubs at his face with his free hand. “Because you never asked,” Nik says with more bitterness in his tone.

Aaron starts to pull away, but Nik holds him with the hand clasped on his shoulder and says in a low voice, “No. We need to do this, but no running away this time. Stay here.” Aaron is stung; his mouth sets in a hard line, and the hand on Nik’s chest pulls into a fist. Nik’s hand covers it; his thumb brushes softly and tenderly across Aaron’s curled knuckles. “Please. Aaron, you
left
me, come the fuck on,” he whispers.

Fuck it, that might be fair
. And anyway, maybe Nik’s right. The contact keeps Aaron a little looser, makes it impossible for him to build up a good head of steam, and as earned as his indignation might be, being close to Nik feels too good to let go of quite yet.

So Aaron stays there, body taut, staring straight past Nik and into the wall, and says, “I left
you
? What are you
talking
about? You told
me
you weren’t coming with me to New York. I must have asked why a hundred times that month, and all you ever said was ‘It’s not possible’ and ‘I can’t.’ ‘Believe me, it’s not that I don’t want to’ and ‘Aaron, I love you, it doesn’t have to be like this.’ And what you asked was always ‘How could you do this to me? Don’t you love me?’ It wasn’t—I just
couldn’t.
”

Nik sighs again and lifts his hand from Aaron’s to rub his eyes as if he’s waking up with a headache; Aaron knows the feeling. “It’s stupid, I know—within six months I felt like an asshole about it, because I let the whole thing happen, so that much is totally on me. But I didn’t know how to tell you how fucked up it all was. I wasn’t used to money being an issue, for one thing, and I was
so
embarrassed about that. And it was harder then, dealing with my dad—so much of what went on between me and him left me feeling like it was all my fault, and my mom was pretty much useless with that, at least at first—she didn’t know what to do either. She’s apologized for it since then, but man, talk about too late.

“By then Dad was angry about
everything
and had taken to saying snide things about you, about us, and I just… I couldn’t
tell
you how bad it was—how could I do that? You always came to
me
with stuff that was upsetting you—it felt so weird to even think about throwing all this stuff on the table. And I thought… I mean, not to be a dick about it, but I know you loved me, Aaron. I
know
you did, I felt it, and I
never
thought it could get that bad. And then once it was done, once you left and left
me,
I was just… God,
so
angry.”

“Nik, we told each other
everything
. I told you about my
dad
.”

“I know. I
know
. But this was hard for me like nothing had been before, not really. And I told myself that if you ever came to me and just
asked
, if you seemed like you really wanted to listen, then I would tell you, because I would know you were ready to hear it. But you never did. You assumed, right from the start, that it was something I was doing to you because I wanted to, and it was—God, Aaron, do you know what it felt like to know that you trusted me that little? After everything?”

Aaron lies there for a long time. Nik’s thumb continues to rub across his hand, and Nik’s other hand comes up to sink into the hair at the back of Aaron’s head, to hold him there. Aaron thinks back, lets himself really probe those six weeks of painful in-between.

Most of what he remembers is feeling incredibly injured, because Nik is right—that’s
exactly
what it felt like. It seemed Nik had done this
to him,
as if he’d thrown away everything they had, and the thing that’s most fucked up is that now he’s heard Nik’s story, of
course
that’s what happened. He can’t imagine that he ever thought otherwise, because Nik is right about that, too—Aaron does know him, has known him for years. Right now it seems absolutely insane to have thought, all these years, that Nik turned on a dime and decided to be cruel, to simply change his mind. Aaron has no idea how he could have ever
thought
that—and then, maybe he sort of does.

When Aaron was little, he thought he understood how love worked. He knew that you found your person and you stuck it out, even though sometimes it could be hard, and even though sometimes you might fight and yell, and even though some­times it could be ugly. Love was a mixed blessing: Some­times he would watch movies with his mom on the sofa and she would be in her soft chenille robe, and love looked so beau­tiful, and sometimes there was singing, and always the focus and the kisses and the hands were soft. And then sometimes he could hear his parents fighting, usually late at night while he was supposed to be sleeping, and sometimes there was crashing or glass breaking or words he wasn’t supposed to say and nothing seemed soft except his pillow, so he tugged it over his head so he could sleep.

And then, when he was seven, his dad was suddenly gone, and then when he was nine he was back, and there was this long period when he wasn’t sure how many parents he had, this long stretch of back and forth when most days it didn’t really matter but sometimes it really did. Until one day, Aaron’s dad said something smart and mean about how Aaron was maybe
too
much like his mother and his mother didn’t like that,
at all
. Her face went hard and terrifying and she told his dad to go, chased him out of the house without ever having to raise a hand. There was nothing soft about her then.