Trust the Focus (10 page)

He blinked slowly, his long lashes fluttering. He rubbed the inside of his wrist where my lips had touched and then reclasped his hands around his knees.

“So I guess he didn’t like what I was doing anymore, because he pulled my hair. When I stood up, he spun me around. And then my pants were at my knees and he was doing something behind me and then I felt him. Right
there
.”

I wanted to close my eyes, hide my face in my hands, but Landry was brave enough to tell this story, so I had to be brave enough to face him, look him right in those pain-filled eyes as he talked. Because he held my gaze, like I was his lifeline, like if I looked away, his strength would snap like a rubber band.

“I wanted to say no. I did. But my lips were numb from . . . from . . .” Landry shook his head. “Then he grabbed my hips and pressed. And it hurt. It hurt so fucking bad, and I screamed.”

I swore I felt the pain in my own body, a searing burn from the inside out. How Landry wasn’t crying, I had no idea. In fact, his eyes were dry, but they hadn’t left mine.

“So he stopped pushing. I mean, I don’t even know if he actually . . . entered me. And then he swore and told me I was a fucking tease. And then he shoved me and walked out. I sat there on the floor and I . . . I don’t know. I put myself together because all I could think about was seeing you again, knowing you’d . . . do that thing you do. That you’d touch me and look at me like you do and all of this would just be a very distant memory.”

I dug my fingers into my thighs and clenched my teeth until all I felt were those five points of pain on each leg and all I heard was the grinding of my molars. The rage consumed me now, coating the bricks of guilt in front of my heart in a bright shade of crimson. I wanted to take a sledgehammer to the whole thing, then hunt down Bastard Brad and fucking smash in his face.

“So I got up and I walked out. And I tried to pretend it never happened.” He laughed bitterly. “But it didn’t work. You were busier with school and you couldn’t baby me.”

“Landry, why didn’t you—”

“Because it’s fucking embarrassing!” He yelled, his voice cracking on the last word. “Are you kidding?”

“But we tell each other everything . . .” As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew they were a mistake.

Landry jerked his head toward me, those eyes ablaze again. “Don’t even fucking come at me saying shit like that with the bomb you dropped on me a couple of days ago.”

I clenched my jaw. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No shit.”

“You had every right not to tell me.”

“Thanks for the unnecessary permission, Jus.”

I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth, accepting his anger because I deserved it. “But I wish I would have known.”

He shrugged and looked away. I reached out and flicked his gauged ear. “You did this that summer.” I ran my finger down his inked arm. “And started this the next fall.”

Landry got a couple of tattoos done after he turned eighteen, but it was the fall when he’d started his sleeve. He had his ears pierced since high school but didn’t start with the gauges until college.

His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Gave me something to focus on. I don’t know, I guess I wanted . . . control back. Of myself and my body.”

“Did it help?”

His lips moved from side to side in thought and he swiped under his eyes roughly with the heel of his hands. “Yeah, it did. Fuck, I hate talking about this. I’m not over it, because I don’t think there
is
getting over it. But I try not to dwell on it.” He gave me a sad smile. “And I guess I’m still technically a virgin. Like, halfway? Leave it to me to be half a virgin, in this gray area. I thought virginity was like pregnancy. You either were or you weren’t.”

He laughed, but I found nothing fucking funny about it. I was bleeding around the twisted, rusty knife in my gut and there was a hammer banging away in my chest and I was a fucking mess.

“Landry,” I whispered. “I hate that this happened to you.”

He rubbed the inside of his boots together. “It’s not your fault.”

“It kind of is.”

He shook his head vigorously. “No, I told you—”

“I know you said it wasn’t, but fuck, Landry, if I would have just told you the truth, then this wouldn’t have happened—”

“How do you know that?” He shouted, jumping to his feet in front of me. “We can’t predict how our lives would have been if you’d come out in high school or college. What if we got together and broke up? What if this guy had been a rebound for me?”

“But—”

“No buts, Justin. I can’t do that to myself—look back and say,
If only
,
if only
. Because my history is what it is. I can’t change it. That’s what I’ve been thinking since that night you told me the truth. I wanted to hate you and blame you, but I can’t.”

“I know that. I know that more than anyone, but that doesn’t stop me from looking back, learning from what I wish I would have done or said.”

Landry’s face darkened. “What do you wish, Jus? How would you have changed our lives? Tell me.”

I stood up carefully, mindful that one wrong word—one wrong step on a twig—would send Landry running like a skittish animal.

I held out a hand. “Okay, you’re right. Maybe there is no point in looking back, but we can move forward, right?”

Landry didn’t move.

“Why’d you tell me about what happened, Landry?”

“I don’t know. I hadn’t told anyone before and I wanted to come clean—”

“You wanted to get back at me a little.”

“No—”

“Just fucking admit it, Landry!” I shouted. “Be mad. Yell. Do whatever you need to do. It’s okay. Because I’m not doing this with you if you’re going to hold this over my head. If I’m always going to be waiting for you to blow. If you can never forgive me.”

Landry’s jaw shifted beneath his skin.

“Just admit you blame me a little for what happened that night, Landry.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and turned his head. So when he whispered “I do,” I barely heard him.

I took a step toward him and he faced me. In a stronger voice, he said, “I don’t think it’s fair that I feel this way, but I do.”

I knew it. And hearing him admit it brought a whole new wave of pain, even though I’d asked for it. “Will you ever forgive me?”

His eyes filled, but he blinked and beat it back. “I’m going to try.”

My knees almost gave out. “Thank you.”

***

We hiked back in silence, and when we heaved ourselves back into Sally, I nudged my boots off and flopped onto my back on the bed, arm over my eyes.

The bed dipped beside me and two loud
thunks
told me Landry had slipped off his shoes, too. Then the mattress shifted again. I dropped my arm to my side and rolled my head. Landry lay beside me, his arms crossed behind his head, eyes on the ceiling.

“Did you ever wonder if I was gay?” I asked.

Landry blinked and rolled his head to the side and sighed. Our faces were inches apart and I felt his exhale gust over my face. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “Part of me thought, sometimes, that you looked at me a little different. I wondered why you never had a long-term girlfriend. But . . . then I wondered if I wanted it too badly, that I read into things. Know what I mean?”

I nodded. “That makes sense.”

He chewed his lip. “I think that’s why I always gave you such a hard time about following rules. I thought if I got you away from your mom, away from everything, maybe you’d . . . I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I swore I was going insane.”

I reached for his hand and laced our fingers together. “Me too.”

His eyes flicked to our hands and then back to my face. “Did you think I liked you?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Not
like
like. No, I didn’t think so. You flirt with a lot of people, including girls, so I didn’t read into it no matter how much I wanted to.”

He squinted at me. “We’re fucking ridiculous.”

I chuckled. “Yes, we are.”

“From now on, honesty between us.”

“Honesty.”

He lifted up our hands and shook them.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Handshake.” He grinned.

I grinned back, then let it fade. “So . . . you said you never told anyone before. You never told Jud?”

Landry huffed out a snort through his nose. He closed his eyes and sighed but didn’t answer.

“Is that a no?” I asked as Landry heaved himself up. He reached for his phone where he’d dropped it on the kitchen table, then sank back onto the bed as I sat up beside him. “What?”

“Honesty, right? Hold on, I need to show you something.” He pecked away on his phone, so I tapped my fingers impatiently on my chest.

After a couple of minutes, he shoved the phone under my nose. It was a picture of Jud on a horse. With a cowboy hat. And . . . spurs? “Is he from Texas or something? I thought he lived in LA?”

Landry took his phone back and swiped a finger across the screen. Now it was on a picture of Jud in a suit, leaning against a glass door like some Christian Grey-type CEO. “Uh, wow. I thought he was a student?”

Landry dropped the hand holding his phone in his lap and stared at me. “Seriously, Justin?”

“What?”

“You are not stupid.”

“Um, thanks?”

“Jus! There is no fucking Jud!”

I could have sworn the RV just rolled off a cliff and I tumbled end over end with it, smashing into the sides in a big jumble. Or maybe that was just my brain rattling in my skull. “What did you just say?”

Landry shook his head, grimacing, with cheeks flushed. “I made him up.”

“You what?” My brain hadn’t stopped rattling yet, like it was chasing Landry’s words around in my skull, but they stayed out of reach and I couldn’t process until I caught up with them.

“You’re not going to make this easy—”

“I’m sorry, Landry. I’m just shocked. What are you talking about?”

“This guy—” He shoved the phone under my face. Made-up Jud was now naked in the shower, just the rounded top of his ass showing. Nice. “— Is a model. His name is Riley Sorenson.”

“Why the fuck would you make up a boyfriend?”

“Because I didn’t want to date. After the whole fiasco at the club, I just . . . wanted time to myself to deal with everything. So to avoid questions from my friends and from you, I made up a boyfriend.”

Part of me wanted to fist pump that he hadn’t been kissing another guy for the past year, but then the other part of me banged that same fist on the brick wall of guilt in my chest. Because Landry hadn’t felt like he could confide in me, tell me about Bastard, and that he made up a fake boyfriend to keep people—
me
—from asking questions.

And Landry looked at me now, smiling. “That’s so high schoolish, isn’t it? To make up a fake boyfriend?”

I smiled back. “I’d say more middle schoolish.” Landry rolled his eyes as I continued. “But I’m sort of glad to hear it. I mean, I felt guilty that I macked on Jud’s ex-boyfriend.”

Landry threw back his head and laughed, the first real joy I’d seen from him in days. “Poor Jud.”

“I’m sure he’ll find someone who loves him for him.”

Landry chuckled. “Yeah.” Then he raised his hands to his face and sneezed.

“Gesundheit,” I said.

“Danke. Fucking allergies. I need a tissue.” He stood up and began to walk toward the bathroom.

“Hey, Lan.”

“Yeah?”

“Why Jud?”

He pursed his lips and looked down at the floor. “Jud . . . Jus . . .” He shrugged and my heart skipped. “Easy to remember and the closest to my fantasy I thought I’d ever get.” And then he shot me a wink and closed the door behind him.

I picked at the callouses on my palms, fingering the cracks where the chalk from the bag on the pitcher’s mound used to collect. I’d have to scrub and scrub after games to rinse it all out.

The door to the bathroom opened and Landry stepped out. He stood in the doorway, the toes of one bare foot rubbing the top of the other. He bit his lip, then stepped forward and sat beside me on the bed, one knee bent so he faced me.

I mimicked his position and rested my hand on his leg, tracing the outline of his kneecap through denim and skin.

“I need to explain why I was such an asshole. In Colorado.” I kept my eyes on my fingers.

He shifted closer. “It’s okay, I know why.”

I looked up. “Yeah?”

“Well, I can guess. You gave away your position in that stupid playhouse at the water park.”

I nodded.

“I did, too.”

“I know.”

He smiled. “I was so pissed at myself. I thought I was the guy who fell for his straight best friend. I hated myself for betraying your trust, by thinking of you in . . . that way. But I couldn’t help it.”

“I didn’t realize how hard this trip would be.”

“Me either.”

I scooted forward an inch, Landry’s tilted lips an invitation. The last time we touched, it had been dark. I hadn’t seen the way his curls sprung back as I ran my hand through them. I hadn’t seen how his cheeks pinked. I hadn’t watched him nibble on his lips, the area reddened and so damn kissable. Now I could see everything and he could see me and there was no more hiding. Not from Landry.

I wrapped my hands around his neck, my thumb brushing the base of his throat, and leaned forward until all I could see were his eyes. “Can I kiss you now?”

The corners of his eyes crinkled and the blue shone like crystal. “I don’t know, can you?”

“Smart-ass,” I muttered and closed the distance between us. His lips were just as I remembered, soft but firm, his mouth hot.

He pulled back, and I almost pouted.

“Where do we go from here?” he asked quietly.

I placed my other hand on his hip “Well, we can’t go back.”

“You wanna do this? With me?”

“I’ve imagined doing this for years. And the reality is so much better.”

He chuckled but he didn’t lean forward. I got the idea he was waiting for me to make the first move.

So I did, the touch of my lips on his sending waves of desire coursing through my body. He opened his mouth and I dove inside, finally getting to know Landry in the way I’d always wanted. He moaned, a little one in the back of his throat, and I tugged him closer. He hooked his legs over mine and around my hips, then wrapped his arms around my neck. I gripped his waist, kneading the skin through his T-shirt.

I pulled back, wanting his skin. “Take your shirt off.”

With a quick crossarmed move, he was bare-chested. I raised my hand and he smiled, so I started at the base of his throat and ran my fingers over his prominent clavicle, down between his pecs, brushing my nails over his nipples.

“Did you think about doing this?” His voice was soft and husky.

I swallowed, my eyes on his abdominal muscles where my fingers traced the line of hair leading into his mesh shorts. “Yes.”

“Tell me.”

I hooked a finger in the elastic and ran it along the inside. Then I let it go with a snap and trailed my fingers up his side, along his ribs. He sucked in a breath. I knew he was ticklish there. “I imagined this. Just like this. You sitting in front of me. All the time in the world. Me touching your skin. I imagined it’d be soft, but hard underneath. I . . . I knew you’d smell good. I knew this would turn me on.”

Landry’s chest rose and fell. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “What else?”

I wanted him to take his shorts off. I wanted him naked. I wanted to take my time touching him, but telepathy wasn’t working. “Can you . . . take your shorts off?”

He smiled, but it held a hint of nervousness in it, too, so when he rose, I grabbed his wrist. “Lan.”

He froze.

“You want this, right? I mean, if you don’t, it’s okay. We’ll be okay, I don’t want to make you—”

“Jus.”

I stopped talking.

“I want to do this. I’m just nervous because it’s . . . you.”

I frowned. “Why are you nervous because it’s me?”

He looked exasperated. “Because, dumbass, I never wanted anyone else.”

I wanted to answer, but my mouth dried. Because Lan was up on his knees taking off his shorts, nodding at me to do the same, so I did. Then we were both on our knees, naked. And I thought I’d died. Because everything before me was everything I ever wanted. In a blue-eyed blond package.

I realized I hadn’t touched him before. He’d only touched me, even though I’d felt his cock alongside mine.

And fuck, his was beautiful—cut and about the same size as mine, but a little thinner.

“Go ahead.” His instruction was soft and encouraging and I knew what it meant.

So I reached out and wrapped my fingers around his cock and stroked. He leaned his head back, his mouth falling open while I adjusted to the rhythm of jacking off someone who wasn’t me.

“Lay back.” His command was gentle.

“Wha— why?”

He shifted his hips back so I had to let go. I didn’t want to. But he smiled and pushed on the front of my shoulders. “Trust me.”

Of course. I’d always trust Landry, so I slowly lowered myself to the bed, watching him. He pecked kisses along my jaw and sucked the skin on my neck, then moved down, lower, his fingers and tongue touching my chest and abs.

And then his mouth hovered over my cock. “Okay?” he whispered, and I could feel his hot breath on the tip.

I swallowed. “Okay.”

Girls had given me blow jobs. Small hands and full lips and hair I had to hold back to see what they were doing. When I came, I always closed my eyes and pictured short hair, a five-o’clock shadow.

This time I couldn’t look away as Landry gripped the base of my shaft and slid his mouth over my cock, lips stretching around the head and then down to meet his hand. It was tight and hot and wet and fuck, I had to strain not to pump my hips.

He looked up at me, those lips curving into a smile as he tongued the sensitive spot on the underside of the head all those college girls missed. He swirled his tongue in a circle and then went down again. I fought to keep my eyes from rolling into the back of my head.

And then he choked.

Or gagged, or something, but the sound split the silence like a siren in my brain.

I pulled my hips back and scooted up on the bed as Landry released my cock and caught his breath. “What the fuck? Are you okay?” I grasped his chin and raised his head to meet my eyes. His were watery and his cheeks were flushed, either from arousal or embarrassment or both. He tried to duck his head but I wouldn’t let him.
Embarrassment.

“I think that’s my fault, I pumped my hips—”

His brows turned in. “I know how to deep throat, Jus. And you’re not
that
big.”

I dropped my hand from his chin and shoved his shoulder playfully. “Seriously? I’m sitting here naked with your saliva on my dick and you’re insulting it?” I leaned back, bracing myself with my arms behind me, knees open and bent and looked down at my cock. Which was still as hard as iron. “I think you need to apologize to it.”

“I’m not apologizing to your dick. I gagged because I couldn’t breathe through my nose.” Landry blew out a breath and crossed his arms over his chest in a pout. “Fucking allergies.”

He looked ridiculous, sitting there naked with his hair askew and his nose red and his lips wet that I couldn’t do anything but throw back my head and laugh. I laughed until I started coughing and then Landry collapsed between my legs, his head on my stomach, laughing along with me. It was like the time in seventh grade when Landry slid down the banister of my basement stairs, but it ripped out of the wall halfway down and he went flying off the side and somehow landed perfectly on the recliner. Then he proclaimed,
I meant to do that
, sending us in a fit of laughter.

So it was like that, but now we were twenty-two-years old, in an RV, in Missouri. And naked.

“Lan?” I said, when our laughter subsided.

“Yeah?”

“My dick is still waiting for its apology.”

He chuckled, cupped my balls, and then ran a finger slowly up my shaft. “I’m so sorry, Justin’s penis, you’re perfect and not small.”

I laughed again and shoved him off of me, then rolled on top of him, rubbing my thumb on the underside of his wrist where I held his hand by his head. “He said you can make it up to him by talking more about this deep-throat business.”

He rolled his eyes.

“You can just say the words ‘deep throat,’ actually. That was hot.”

Lan smirked. “Deep throat.”

I pumped my hips into his and waggled my eyebrows, which set off his laughter again.

“You just open your throat and breathe through your nose,” he said. “It’s kind of hard if you have a strong gag reflex.”

He made it sound so easy but I was pretty damn sure it was anything but. “I have no idea if I have a strong gag reflex.”

His face changed, and a little breath hitched at the back of his throat. His hips shifted. “Why don’t you see?”

I took the dare in Landry’s eyes and lowered myself to his groin, pressing a kiss to the equal sign tattooed on his left hip.

I’d been with him when he’d had it done, the summer before we went to college. It had been his first tattoo.

His breath hitched as I scooted lower. I’d never been this close to another guy’s cock. I grasped the base like I’d seen him do to mine and bent to take his cock in my mouth. His skin was soft, God, so soft and smooth and he tasted hot and a little like bitter salt. I realized right away the whole area was too dry, so I licked around his head and down his shaft.

Landry’s cock jerked and he moaned. “Am I doing okay?” I asked.

“Fuck, Jus.” His blue eyes bored into mine. “Unless you bite, it’s hard to do this wrong.”

I bared my teeth in a growl and he laughed, but the sound strangled off into a groan when I lowered my head again to take him in my mouth.

I didn’t know what I was doing, obviously. He was big and it was hard to breath, but I knew what felt good when I got a blow job so I tried to replicate all the moves—tonguing that vein on the underside, rolling his balls in my hand—and I apparently was doing all right because Landry was moaning and his hips were moving.

He warned me in a tight whisper he was coming and I planned to pull back. Everything in me told me to pull back because I knew what happened next but then the part of me in charge of my muscles told me to stay, so I did, as he came in my mouth. I kind of sputtered but I swallowed. It was bitter, oh so bitter, and I grimaced, but at the same time, knowing I did that for Landry filled me with triumph. I pressed a kiss to his hip and then raised my head.

I thought I saw a sheen to Landry’s eyes, but it passed with a blink. He sat up and kissed me, not hesitating to plunge his tongue in my mouth, while he reached down, grasped my cock, and stroked until I came on the sheets between us.

We touched foreheads, breathing into each other’s mouths as the air cooled around us. My head swam, treading water, trying to reach the point where I could touch and grasp that I’d just had another man’s cock in my mouth. And it’d been Landry’s. I used to lay awake in college, watching porn on my phone under my sheets, wondering what it felt like to be with a man. Would he be hard? His skin soft? His leg hair prickly?

What would he taste like?

And now I knew. And not just any man.
Landry.

“Justin,” he whispered.

“Yeah?” I said, my voice hoarse.

He pulled me down so I lay next to him, our legs tangled together, his hand on the back of my head. “That was incredible.”

A flush of heat warmed my cheeks and I brushed his lips with my own.

His smile dropped off and he bit his lip. I tensed, because a nervous Landry made me nervous.

“What does this mean?” he asked, then added haltingly, “For us. For the future.”

I swallowed, unsure if I could speak past the lump in my throat. In the turmoil that had been our lives in the last couple of weeks, I hadn’t let myself think past this road trip.

But there was a future—one where I worked for my mom and played straight. Weeks ago, I had thought that future would involve Landry as my best friend, but now I wasn’t that stupid to believe we could go back to that. It was all or nothing. What was I ready for?

My silence froze the air between us and Landry’s eyes hardened to icicles. “You have to be kidding me—” he said through gritted teeth, rolling away from me, taking away his warmth and the only place I felt like myself.

“Landry, stop.” I grabbed him and wrapped my arms around him so his back was to my front, and I tucked him against me so he couldn’t move. He struggled, but I was stronger, and when I gripped his hair and pressed my temple to his, he finally sighed in resignation and went still.

“You gotta give me a moment to fucking think, Lan. And not expect the worst.”

His body trembled despite the heat in the RV, and I tightened my arms. “I don’t expect the worse, but with you Jus, I can’t do this. I can’t spend this summer with you . . . really with you and pretend the fall isn’t going to happen. I won’t avoid the subject.”

I never expected he would. “I know. This all just happened a little fast and I haven’t had time to deal with it. I am now, but give me some fucking time. Did you really think I was just going to continue my plans in the fall? Go back to us being nothing but friends?”

He didn’t say anything. The trembling continued.

I turned him in my arms and gripped his face. “Seriously?”

“I don’t know . . .” He bit his lip. “No, okay, no I didn’t. I trust you but I know how your mom is, and I can’t say I’m not worried.”

He was worried? That made two of us. “I know. Just let me get used to this. Get used to us. And I’ll start thinking of a plan for when we get home.” I reached for his hand. “I can’t go back. To just being friends.”

His face softened, but there were still clouds in his eyes. “Me either.”