Chapter 3
I quickly tucked all my wet parts back in place and zipped up. My first thought was that I was glad I got to cum before Joe interrupted. Then reality set in.
Gabe actually choked and coughed hard. I reached out to pat his back, but he jumped to his feet and turned away from Joe, vigorously wiping his mouth on the back of his arm. I only caught a brief glimpse of his face when he grabbed his shoulder bag from my bed, but I thought he looked sort of sick. I felt bad when he wouldn’t look at either one of us directly as he shot toward the door.
“Hey! What’s going on?” Joe asked.
I was still too foggy-minded to think of anything intelligent to say. I didn’t even have enough brain power to ask Gabe to come back.
Joe tried to catch his arm as he ran by, but Gabe flung him off and kept going. In that split-second reaction I realized that if Joe was his crush, then this was the worst possible situation for him to be caught in. And not only that, I doubted he was anywhere near ready to come out to anyone else and especially not to Joe.
“Hey! Gabe! It’s ok!” Joe called. “Don’t just walk away from this!”
The front door slammed shut downstairs and echoed through the whole house. The pictures of Mexico on my walls actually rattled from the jolt. One of my decorative Sombreros even fell to the floor. Joe turned back to me, his eyebrows tightly drawn together. He was about to blame me for this.
“JC.”
His already deep voice went a notch lower. For a high school kid, he sounded pretty masculine. He’d probably be a good candidate for movie trailer voice-overs or those macho Brawny paper towel commercials when he graduated.
“You know I didn’t force him into any of this,” I said. “He wouldn’t do anything he didn’t want to do.”
“Are you going out?”
His thumbs were both hooked in his jeans pockets, but his hands were clenched into fists like he was ready to punch me if I said the wrong thing. I had to be careful without giving too much away. I didn’t have the right to tell him Gabe’s business. I’d let Gabe tell him when he was ready. God knew I could still be wrong about who he liked.
I held my hands out from my sides.
“I’m just here for his support,” I said. “He wanted to do some research. ”
“You –?”
He went still and just stared at his feet while my words sank in. He was still thinking when Molly came running up the stairs and startled him. I was glad to see she didn’t run outside when Gabe left so I put her back in the hall and shut the door.
Joe kicked his bag to the middle of the room and I cringed at the violence in the movement. I wasn’t used to this side of Joe since he was usually so cool and carefree, but he got like this whenever Gabe was involved. I wheeled my chair as close to my desk as I could.
“So research, huh?” he said. “Is that code for blowjob?”
My tense shoulders relaxed when his hands did. I had the feeling he’d been about to hit me, but I knew it could still happen if I said the wrong thing. No one was as protective about Gabe as Joe was.
“That wasn’t research. I think that was the experiment.”
Joe – also affectionately called “Java” at school because of his name and lack of energy– was so tall he seemed to take up a lot of room. His head was only a few inches from brushing the ceiling. He had the height for basketball and the build for football, but he loved pitching for our baseball team and no one could talk him into playing anything else. He was just…big. His usually spiky honey and brown hair had fallen flat toward the end of school today so his bangs were lying flat against his forehead. He’d also put his silver labret stud back in, which he usually took out during workouts, practices or games.
I forced back a chuckle when I saw the fresh Chapstick on his lips. Gabe had turned him on to it, but he only applied it when he wasn’t in school. He liked to look good for all his girlfriends, but he didn’t want his jock buddies to know.
Lips… I sighed and rubbed my hand over my eyes. I’d never get today out of my head as long as I lived. It felt damned good for sure, but I still didn’t know what I thought about it.
“Are you for real?” Joe said. “You were experimenting?”
“What’s the big deal?”
“Are you gay?”
I dropped my hand and saw him glance at the porn site on my laptop as he sat on my bed. He seemed to lose his train of thought for a second and had to shake his head and look away.
“Wow,” he muttered and absently tugged his earlobe with embarrassment.
“So I can grab Kyle’s ass and wear Twilight-vampire glitter for homecoming week but this makes me gay?” I said.
He gave me a weird look.
“I’ve seen you do a lot of weird shit …so if it was anyone but you I might say yes.” He snorted and held up his hand. “No. You know what? Why don’t you just be honest and tell me you’re both gay.”
“No wayyy,” I said. “It’s not like we were kissing or anything.”
He crossed his arms and gave me a dry look.
“Ok. So what if I told you I was gay, too?” I said. “Would it bother you?”
“You know it doesn’t. I just don’t get why you wouldn’t tell me about this before now.”
“It’s not like we’re trying to hide anything from you,” I said, quoting Gabe’s earlier remark. “He just told me about it today.”
Ironically enough.
He gave me a look like he didn’t believe me. Then he hung his hands between his knees and stared down at the carpet for a long while. I really wished I’d set a specific day to play the newest Call of Duty with Joe instead of leaving an open invitation. Now everything was a huge mess. I was an idiot when it came to things that had to do with people. I’d lost a couple of friends over the years because of it.
“I just don’t get why he wouldn’t tell me about it,” he said. “I thought we were all friends? He knows I won’t say anything to anyone.”
Joe was as close to us as Gabe and I were with each other. In fact, Joe was the one who brought Gabe into our small circle of friends. When Gabe first transferred, he told me that he felt like an outsider too shy to make friends. In the first few weeks before we met, guys from the “A-list jocks” made his life hell. Joe was the one who actually stepped in against some of his own friends to protect Gabe.
I still remembered the shock of seeing Joe get serious about something for the first time, and I’d known him since middle school. Poor Gabe had been cornered by a guy who brought a knife to school, and it made Joe so angry that he didn’t even have to resort to violence to scare the guy off. He calmly approached from behind and, with one hand in his jeans’ pocket, tapped the guy on the shoulder. In a soft psychopath’s voice, he said: “
Hey, have you ever wondered what your own brain fluid tastes like?” If I hadn’t known Joe as well as I did, I would have shit two tons of bricks. Even Gabe was startled by this new crazy guy joining the fight. Scared now by Joe, Gabe actually called to me for help. I went over to explain things to him while Joe ran after the attacker, yelling: “
I’m comin’ for your skull, motherfucker!” Since that day, he and I laughed about Joe’s reaction because he rarely overreacted to anything like that. Bullying was his one exception.
Somehow, Joe was never called out for that day by his other friends. I never understood how he did it – maybe he had the right charisma – but he was popular with almost everyone. I think if our school had a chess club he’d be fine even being part of it. He just fit in everywhere. For a guy voted homecoming king last year…the guy who supposedly took the homecoming queen’s virginity and was invited to all the parties with the cheerleaders, he was surprisingly more comfortable hanging out with me, Gabe and our friends. I never really understood it, but that was Joe.
“Ok.” I leaned forward to get him to look at me again. “So say Gabe and I are gay, but we’re not going out. What would you do if one of us said we liked you?”
Before he had the chance to even think about an answer, I reached out and put my hand on his thigh. His mouth fell open as I gave it a good, firm squeeze. Maybe if I could get him to think about this seriously there was hope for him and Gabe getting together.
“What if one of us touched you?” I asked softly. “What if we wanted you to help us experiment?”
He stiffened and looked down at my hand.
“Would you actually think about it?” I said. “Could you still be our friend even if you’re completely straight?”
I moved my hand a little higher, half-expecting him to move or push me away, but he eventually put his hand over mine as if to trap me. It was my turn to gape at him when he finally lifted his head. His brown eyes seemed darker when he narrowed them.
Oh man! I was suddenly dying to take my hand back. I knew he would get mad, but I didn’t realize how intimidating he could actually be. He’d never been seriously mad at me before.
“You know,” he said and squeezed my hand. “It pisses me off when you don’t let me in on important shit. I bet neither of you was planning to tell me about this.”
I jumped when he suddenly pulled me forward by my hand and wheeled the chair closer toward him. My knees bumped up hard against the boxspring mattress between his legs, but I barely noticed the pain as I looked up at his face. God, I hoped he didn’t hit me.
“You’re not even giving me a fair amount of time to think this through,” he said, “Just because I’ve been with a lot of girls doesn’t mean I’ve got a problem with you or Gabe being gay. You know I’d never talk shit about something I don’t know anything about. You don’t have to go this far just to fuckin’ test me.”
Damn, I began to realize how badly I’d handled this. I didn’t know what direction I was trying to steer this conversation toward, but I didn’t plan this. When he scooted forward on the edge of the bed, my mind was racing to understand what sort of situation this talk had mutated into.
“What are you –?”
His free hand went to the arm of my chair. He loomed over me.
“What about you?” he said. “When were
you planning to tell me? Were you ever?”
Shit. Now I was stuck together with Gabe in this. There was no way I could tell him I wasn’t gay now. At least, I didn’t think I was. This all happened way too fast for me to think.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I choked back a wince when he squeezed all my fingers together in his hand. His grip felt like a damn steel vice.
“I get it,” he said, “I don’t have a problem with you two going out, but don’t ever fucking hit on me again.”
I gaped at him. “What?”
“I’ll beat the teeth out of your head if you hurt him.”
“I wasn’t…!”
“Gabe would never head fuck a guy he was only friends with!”
“He just wanted to try it –
out!” My voice was getting weaker the harder he squeezed my hand. “Ouch! I’m serious! Just ask him!”
We both jumped when footsteps walked up to my door. Joe sat back fast as a bullet when someone knocked. I kicked away from the bed to wheel myself back to the desk. Did Gabe finally come back?
“Joel?” my Mom called. “What are you doing?”
“What do you want?” I shook my aching hand as the blood rushed back into my fingers. The back of my hand hurt so bad I wondered if something was broken.
Her laugh was soft on the other side of the door.
“Relax,” she said. “I won’t come in, but don’t go raw from watching porn all day, mm‘kay?”
I stared at the dark wood door and wished I had some wood-penetrating darts. She couldn’t have picked a worst time to bother me.
“Great!” I said. “Then could you go away now?”
“Fine, but don’t be too much longer. I need you to catch Molly so I can to take her next door. I’m too tired to handle her alone today.”
I sighed heavily. Where the hell was Billi?
“Alright. Just give me a minute,” I said.
I waited while her soft footsteps retreated down the hallway to the creaky stairs beyond. Then I slumped back in my seat feeling like I’d just been holding my breath for two minutes. My hand still throbbed as I massaged it, and I wondered how dark the bruises would be by morning.
The room went quiet again. Joe cleared his throat and stared at the black armoire on the other side of my room. He didn’t want to look directly at me, but I could tell he had something else to say.
I stared at the side of his face from the corners of my eyes. I was afraid of what he’d say next, and I didn’t know if I could say anything that wouldn’t make him mad all over again. The only way I knew to clear up this misunderstanding was to get Gabe to talk to him because I doubted he would listen to anything I had to say at this point.
“I better go downstairs before she comes back,” I said and slowly stood. “Um, did you want to eat with us tonight?”
“Maybe another night.”
Like Gabe, he didn’t look at me when he stood to grab his bag.
“All right.”
He didn’t say another word as he flung open the door and calmly walked out. The door hit the doorstop and bounced back until it was halfway closed again. I waited until he was all the way downstairs before I followed.
God, why didn’t I make Gabe stay to talk about this? I hated how stupid I could be around people. I would’ve rammed my head against the null post if I thought I wouldn’t break it.
