Where We Left Off (Middle of Somewhere #3)
Where We Left Off: Chapter 8

I CLAMBERED off Will and rolled out of the bed in a mortification of clumsiness, running into the living room and tugging on my pants as I went, in a futile attempt to feel less exposed.

God, what the hell just happened?

Images of Will, sublimely beautiful in his nakedness, got all jumbled up with the expression on his face: a neutrality so blank I may as well have been a stranger. A pathetic, overly eager, horny stranger. I dropped my head forward to clunk against the kitchen wall. Fuck my life.

“I didn’t quite live up to the fantasy, I guess?” Will’s voice was ice.

“Can you… can you please not be mean to me right now?” My voice was muffled by the wall.

“I’m not being mean to you. I’m serious. You had a vision of what it’d be like to fuck me, and I didn’t fulfill it. Like college, or Christmas.”

I turned around, wrapping my arms around myself against the chill. Will’s jaw was tensed, his eyebrows drawn together, and the pale skin of his chest mottled with a flush. He’d put his pants on again too.

“Wait, are you… are you mad at me?” I asked.

Will gave an uncertain shrug, a gesture so at odds with his usual surety that it distracted me.

“Why are you mad?”

He shook his head in irritation but said nothing, just moved around the kitchen, picking things up and putting them back down again.

“Will.” I put a hand on his shoulder, and he shrugged it off. “Will, come on.”

“Fine! What do you want me to say, Leo? I thought you were different, okay? I didn’t think you saw me that way. The way everyone else does.”

Was I imagining it, or did his mouth tremble slightly?

“What do you mean? How does everyone see you?”

Will glared at me. “You know how—you’ve seen them. Like I’m… like they just care about how I look. They just want to… to fuck me.” He spat the word out, making sex sound filthy for the first time since I’d met him.

“Uh, okay, I know what you mean, but the idea that you would lump me in with those people is… it’s fucked-up, man.”

He set his jaw. “Is it?”

“Will.” I put my hand on his arm and this time he didn’t shrug me off. “You’re totally beautiful. You are.” His eyes flew to mine, narrowed, and angry. “Hang on. Jesus. Yeah, you’re super hot. But… like, a lot of people are. Give me a little credit for not being some mindless… sex zombie or something, would you? I’m not like totally powerless in the face of your beauty.”

This was almost completely true. Will’s looks did still take me by surprise sometimes, his beauty rendered something separate from him. A thing he possessed rather than a thing he was. But it definitely wasn’t the moment for that shade of distinction to be meaningful to Will.

“Especially not now that I know you.”

Will snorted at this though I hadn’t actually meant it as an insult. Then he lifted himself up to sit on the counter, leaned back against the cabinet, and stared moodily out the window.

“You seriously think that I just want to… to fuck you because you’re pretty and that’s all? How could you possibly think that?”

He shook his head, and his expression was confused, like he honestly couldn’t quite figure out if I meant what I said.

“I just get tired of not knowing.” Will’s voice had a darkness to it that was completely different from his pissed-off tone of a minute before. But he shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “Never mind.”

“What?” I followed him with my body, standing between his knees and putting my hands on his thighs.

“Would you even have liked me when we first met if you hadn’t thought I was hot? You totally wouldn’t have. I was just some asshole your friend’s boyfriend used to date. I made fun of you, gave you shit. Why would you have wanted to spend time with me if you didn’t want to fuck me?”

His intonation was flat, like these weren’t even questions, but stories he’d told himself for so long he already believed they were true.

And I wasn’t sure what to say. Because the truth was that, sure, the first thing I’d noticed about Will was how he looked. And could I honestly separate that from who he was? Not with any certainty.

“Well, okay,” I said. “But, attraction’s… mysterious, right? At some level that happens whenever people are attracted to each other. Like, someone says something that would one hundred percent annoy you if someone else had said it, but because it’s that person it’s charming or funny or whatever. And in case you forgot, we aren’t fucking, and I basically want to hang out with you all the time.”

“Yeah, but you want to. Wanted to.”

“So… I was supposed to—what?—prove that I was different, that I care about you, by not being attracted to you? Now who’s being the romantic?” I squeezed his knee to soften my words. “Besides, you wanted to, too, right? At least a little bit?”

He shrugged. And even though I didn’t exactly think he meant it, it cut kind of deep.

“Seriously? You have no interest in sleeping with me, but you said okay totally out of pity? Damn, Will, that’s kinda cold.”

“No, no, fine, yes, I want to, I guess.”

“Wow, that’s so incredibly flattering.”

Will grabbed my chin so I had to look up at him. He looked intense, but he was biting his lip in this maddening way that made him look kind of lost at the same time.

“You’re probably my best friend,” he said. “And I’ve been honest with you about not wanting a relationship. So I can’t help but wonder.”

My brain had short-circuited somewhere back around the words “best friend,” and now I was struggling to keep up with Will’s logic, which, at its most clear was often inconceivable to me.

“Wonder?”

“If you know that I don’t want a relationship, and you wouldn’t just be thinking of it as sex, then where does that leave us? Because it kind of seems like it’d leave us someplace where you end up feeling like I’ve betrayed you, and I end up losing my friend.”

“That won’t happen, I swear,” I said, but my heart was pounding because with a few sentences Will had pretty much blown to smithereens every avenue I’d thought we might walk down together. “I want to—we like each other, right?” Will hesitated but nodded grudgingly. “And we have fun.” Another nod. “And you know we have a… like, a thing.” I ran my hands up his thighs and felt the energy spark between us. Will bit his lip, eyes never leaving my face. “Sooo….” I nudged his knees a little farther apart and stepped closer, leaning in to kiss him.

“You sure?” he murmured, eyelids going heavy.

“Yeah.”

And this time when I kissed him it was with the full weight of knowledge behind it that this was really going to happen. This wasn’t just We’re kissing now. It wasn’t on an against-all-odds hope that Will might suddenly be taken over by his passion for me and push things further. It was a kiss with intent.

He slid his hands up my arms, squeezing my biceps, holding us together and keeping us apart at the same time, and I pressed myself against him, trying to cast my vote on which way things should go.

“God damn it, Leo!” Will bit off, leaning backward. “Are you sure we should do this?” He looked savage, sprawled across his own counter, hair mussed, and pupils dilated.

Lust blasted through me, but his question seemed sincere, and I made it my duty to obliterate every doubt he might have. I threw myself back against him, kissing him with everything I had.

And Will came alive. His hands were in my hair and running up and down my spine. He kissed like a whirlwind. There was nothing tentative about it anymore. He finally kissed me like he meant it. After a few minutes of a make-out session so hot I was trying not to come in my pants, I pulled away long enough to tug Will down off the counter and over to the couch.

Nothing about being with Milton or Terrence, the guy from my statistics class last year, could have prepared me for how things would be with Will. It was like every sensation I’d ever had was amplified, every millimeter of skin sensitized like it had never been touched before. I felt flushed and light-headed with lust as I buried my face in Will’s neck and kissed under his jaw.

His pulse raced beneath my mouth, and I licked along his neck, unable to get enough of his skin, his heat, his smell. I traced the shell of his ear with my tongue and licked inside, wanting to taste every inch of him.

“Ah, fuck!”

Will was wild. Not like he was trying to seduce me, but like he was desperate to get at me. I wasn’t complaining—hell no—but it was so different from the calm, detached way he’d approached things in the bedroom earlier that it was as if he were a whole different person. Though I don’t know why I was surprised that Will’s shifting personality would show itself in bed as well as out.

I’d pictured the suave Will who dressed impeccably for work, but I was getting whirlwind Will who stomped around the apartment ranting about weird stuff that I’d never imagined anyone could care about.

And I loved it. Because it was real. I wasn’t just another nameless hookup, and this wasn’t something that Will could shrug off, deny, sideline.

His pale skin was perfect, just a few of those dark beauty marks clustered near his belly button and one near his left nipple. I kissed it, sucking his nipple into my mouth, and then bit it lightly. Will groaned and let me kiss my way to his other nipple before he lost patience and rolled us so he was on top of me and pulled my pants down to my knees. He tapped my hip bone.

“You’re so damn skinny,” he muttered.

“Wow, not the moment I want to feel self-conscious,” I gasped.

Will kissed the spot he’d tapped, his lips a soft apology, and I groaned as his chin hit my crotch. I was ridiculously hard just from kissing him. He pressed his face to my crotch and inhaled my smell.

“Fuck, that’s the sexiest thing anyone’s ever done to me,” I said.

Will let out a scornful breath. “Yeah, not the moment to remind me you’re basically untouched.”

“I’m not untouched! I—” But then he pulled my pants down and swallowed my erection, and suddenly it didn’t seem like a point that really needed to be made just at that moment.

His mouth was hot, and he slid a hand between my thighs and started rolling my balls in this way that made me feel like I was going to die.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” I said. I twined my fingers in his hair as he sucked me, trying to look down and see myself sliding in and out of his gorgeous mouth, but my brain couldn’t do more than two things at once, apparently, and touch Will’s hair and have my mind blown were currently occupying those slots.

“Will, fuck, Will,” I gasped. I could track the pleasure as it spread across my skin, from my dick and balls up my spine, curling in the pit of my stomach and flushing my chest and throat with heat, tingling down my trembling thighs. Then, in an instant, it all coalesced into a giant heartbeat that throbbed and then exploded, sending shocks of pleasure through me, leaving me light-headed and gasping as the world was swallowed in blackness, my awareness dwindling to my pulsing dick and the halo of Will’s hair.

I heard a sound from a long way off. An undignified whimpering sound that I didn’t want to believe was coming from me.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry, I meant to warn you,” I slurred.

Will raised his eyebrows at me and wiped his mouth. That tore another groan out of me because holy mother, Will had just sucked me off, and I could see the evidence of it gleaming on his perfect fucking lips. It was too much.

“Oh god, shit, I just came in like five seconds didn’t I?” I put my arm over my eyes as I flushed, this time from embarrassment rather than arousal.

Will snorted and then his mouth was on mine and I could taste the salt of my release on his tongue. The thought of us mingled together like that totally turned me on all over again, and I moaned into his mouth. Will reached down, and I jerked at his touch.

“Jesus,” he muttered, but it was fond, appreciative. His kisses were less desperate now, and he positioned us so we were lying on our sides on the couch facing each other.

“Take your pants off too?” I couldn’t believe I’d come before he was even naked.

Will shimmied his pants down, and I slung a leg over his hip, pressing our erections together as we kissed slowly.

“Mmmm,” Will murmured. I slid a hand down and felt the curve of his ass, pressed him tighter into me, making him shiver. So I did it again, squeezing the round muscle and digging my fingertips in. Will gasped into my mouth and grabbed my ass too. We ground together, the heat building between us, legs tangled together, hips pumping, chests and stomachs sliding together, tongues entwined, every place we touched its own warm point of connection.

I held his face to mine and kissed him, the taste and smell of him gradually taking over my mouth and nose, settling on me like a private atmosphere.

Will pulled my hand between his legs and used both our hands to stroke us off. I came again when he ran a finger over the tip of my cock, gasping as it twitched, spent.

Will smiled wolfishly, his eyes raking over me. He was flushed and panting, his erection throbbing against my hip.

“Ah, youth,” he said. And I made a new resolution on the spot. That, inexperience or no, the next time I had the chance I was going to make Will Highland beg me to let him come. I grinned at him and flipped him onto his back, sliding his dick between my thighs, grinding us together even though my sensitive skin protested.

“Oh fuck,” he muttered, his breath coming faster. I leaned down and put my lips to his throat. His pulse was racing, artery throbbing with every heartbeat. I nipped at his neck, and he grabbed for my ass, pulling me tighter against him. I bit harder, felt his pulse jump under my tongue. Then I kissed him with everything I had, squeezing his cock with my thighs. I bore down on him, bending my knees so I could squeeze his perfect ass.

Splayed on the couch, his pale skin and blond hair made the black leather look almost sinister. His chest was flushed, his throat bruised from my mouth, and his pupils blown wide. I dragged my fist up and down his erection, tightening my grip until Will moaned and reached for me. I kissed him once more, then set a brutal pace, jerking him off until his eyes rolled back and his mouth fell open.

When Will came, every muscle tightened, and he squeezed his eyes shut. His cry was silent. He looked like he was in pain, his jaw clenched and his mouth in a snarl.

“YOU ARE seriously the worst at choosing produce ever.”

As I was unpacking bags from the market, Will was pulling certain things toward him and assembling a pile on the counter.

“These are all bruised. This shit’s like misshapen or something. And—are these all broken?” He pointed to the chocolate bars. “Do you shop blindfolded? No, even blindfolded you could feel that these are broken!”

I squirmed, putting a box of pasta in the cabinet and cheese and eggs in the refrigerator.

“Seriously, Leo, have you never been grocery shopping before? Oh shit, you haven’t, have you?”

“I have,” I couldn’t resist saying, no matter how many times I’d tried to learn the lesson that if I responded to Will, he’d eventually get any information out of me that he wanted.

He was gaping at me, eyebrows raised expectantly.

“I just… I don’t want them to get thrown away… so….”

“What?”

“Well, I just worry that no one else will buy them if they’re a little bruised or funny looking. You know. People always buy the most perfect ones. And I feel sorry for the ones that aren’t because maybe people won’t want them.”

“You buy the fucked-up ones on purpose,” Will said slowly.

“They’re not fucked-up—they’re still totally good! They shouldn’t have to get thrown away just because they look funny.”

Will was shaking his head at me.

“Oh my god, you personify produce.”

I started to say something, to defend myself. But he backed me against the counter and slid close, kissing me until my mouth felt as bruised as those rescued apples.

AFTER DINNER a few days later, Will groaned as a text appeared on his phone, and stalked over to the intercom to buzz someone up, muttering.

“Fucking Gus!” he said, like his coworker’s presence was the most outrageous intrusion he could imagine.

“Did he just show up?”

“No, he told me earlier.”

“Jesus, you’re so cute,” I said. Will’s grouchy, shocked at the burden of other people thing really did it for me. It was like, maybe since he let me hang around and didn’t seem as horrified by me as he did by others, then I was special.

I don’t know what I’d pictured, exactly. But based on what Will had said about Gus I had definitely not imagined the totally average-looking white guy in his midforties who walked in the door wearing gray corduroys, a red-and-blue sweater, and a black overcoat. Will had called him arrogant, pushy, obsessive—hell, he’d referred to him as Captain Ahab at some point. This guy looked like… an accountant.

“Gus, Leo. Leo, this is Gus Martelli.”

Gus smiled at me and shook my hand. I suddenly felt very weird being here, dressed in sweats and one of Will’s perfectly cut white T-shirts (which was totally not perfectly cut for me).

“Um, should I just….” I gestured toward the bedroom, to indicate giving them some privacy, but immediately blushed because that made it seem like I was a fuck toy or something, waiting for Will in bed when he was done with his business meeting.

Will snorted like he could read my mind.

“You’re fine here. If you’re interested, that is. I’m certainly not sure whether I am or not yet. You want a beer, Martelli?”

“Oh, it’s Martelli now, huh?” Gus turned to me. “He only calls me that when he’s trying to remind me that we aren’t friends.” He winked, like we shared a secret about Will.

“I don’t know why I’d need to remind you of something so completely self-evident, but whatever. Beer?”

“Sure.”

“Want one?” Will asked me, hand on my arm.

“Oh. Um, okay. Thanks.” I didn’t really, but I wanted to feel like I belonged there with them.

As Will took Gus’ coat and got beers, Gus started complaining about things at work. They were things Will had complained to me about before, but he didn’t agree with Gus, just let him talk.

“God, do you ever replace yourself thinking, ‘How the hell did this become my life’?” Gus said finally when he’d tired himself out.

“No,” Will said. “The only people who think that are the ones who assume their lives will turn out great from the beginning.”

Gus opened his mouth, then shut it again and nodded, like he was evaluating Will’s mood and recalibrating.

We sat at the kitchen table because that’s where Will put the beers, as if he wanted no confusion that this was a business discussion.

“Okay,” Will said, leaning back and crossing his legs, drinking deeply from the beer. “Convince me this isn’t idiotic.”

I decided I liked Gus when, rather than bristling at Will’s challenge or taking it as a criticism, he leaned forward, excited, and started to talk.

“Okay, so,” he began. And then he proceeded to lay out what sounded to me, at least, like a pretty compelling list of reasons why he and Will were not only qualified to strike out on their own but would actually benefit from it, both in terms of money and job satisfaction.

Will listened, beer dangling between two casual fingers and eyes slightly narrowed, but I thought he was intrigued at the very least. He wasn’t doing the impatient thing he does where his jaw and nostrils are tensed as if stuck in a constant inhale trying to draw breath to interrupt something that bored or irritated him. Little by little he started asking questions, leaned forward slightly, and got another beer for him and for Gus without asking if he wanted one.

When he sat back down at the table, he held his beer out for me. I took a sip and passed it back and he barely looked at me, but he’d known. Known that I wouldn’t want another but had wanted me to know he hadn’t forgotten about me.

Will herded Gus out when he’d finished his beer, and cleaned up the empties.

“So, what do you think?”

“You want my opinion?” I asked, startled.

Will didn’t respond, just wiped down the counters.

“Um. Well, I don’t really know much about your business, and… you’re way better at reading people than me….”

“I know that. Just, what did you think?”

“It seemed great. Like, I don’t get why you wouldn’t want to do it, great.”

Will sighed. “Yeah.”

“So… why wouldn’t you?”

Will was staring out the window like maybe the answer was out there.

“It’s a lot,” he said slowly. “To just start over. Start from scratch.”

“Yeah, I know, right?”

He looked over, startled, as if he’d forgotten that starting over from scratch was exactly what I’d done when I moved here.

“JESUS GOD,” Will muttered. Sweat trickled down his chest, and he clawed at the sheets.

For thirty minutes I’d kept him on the edge, touching, licking, biting, kissing, but not letting him come.

I had a theory that Will was secretly a hedonist, but he disguised it as an insistence that he just had good taste. It was little things that’d made me think so. The way he inhaled from his coffee cup before taking the first sip of the morning. He bought beans from a shop on the corner and ground them himself. He boiled water and poured it over the coffee, taking note of the time so he got the extraction right. With most things he was all about convenience, but he liked his coffee this way, and he liked the ritual of making it.

It was other things too, though. How he’d adjust a flower in an arrangement on a restaurant table to make it more pleasing. How he kept the heat turned a few degrees warmer than was practical so that he could sleep naked in the winter because he liked the feel of the sheets on his skin. The way he leaned into my hand if I touched his hair, like a cat deepening a caress. He loved food, too, even though he ate like an animal, his terrible table manners oddly out of step with the rest of his polished persona.

I knew that Will was way more experienced than me, that he’d been with a ton of men who were probably better than I was in bed. But ever since the other night, I couldn’t get this fantasy out of my head. The fantasy where Will came totally undone. Where he dropped his guard and forgot that he was the sexpert and I basically knew jack squat. Where he begged me. Gave himself over to me and showed me something vulnerable. Something real. Something that he didn’t show any of the other men he was with.

Because if I could make sex totally satisfying for him then he wouldn’t need to go sleep with all those other people. Right?

So in pursuit of my fantasy, I’d decided to test the theory. No way was I going to be able to fuck Will as well as those other men with a ton of experience. Not yet, anyway. So I had to use other means at my disposal to get him so wound up that by the time I did fuck him, he was desperate for it. And so far I thought it was going pretty well.

At first he’d been all, “What are you doing, Leo? Quit it and fuck me.” Once he realized that I was committed to driving him out of his mind, though, he’d relaxed a little bit.

Will’s skin was like velvet, his hair like silk, and I could’ve touched him forever, even without the added bonus that it was making him fall apart.

I traced the line of his ribs with my tongue, feeling his heartbeat beneath his flushed skin. Every breath and swallow sank me deeper into the sense that I knew this man whose body I was exploring. I knew him, I saw him, I could touch him however I wanted, and he’d let me. Will, who was usually bossy and impatient and a know-it-all, was lying on the bed, hair clumped with sweat and eyes blazing, completely open to me.

I followed the cut of his abdomen down to the groove of his thigh, hot and salty, and pressed his knees up and apart. I lapped at the base of his cock, holding his hips down when he tried to thrust. He was leaking precome, and I rolled the taste of him around on my tongue. I couldn’t take him all the way into my mouth yet, so I licked every inch, the feel of him straining beneath me exhilarating and intimidating.

“Fuck, Leo, I’m gonna—”

I grabbed the base of his dick and shook my head. Will threw his head back and groaned, cursing me again.

I kissed him as he calmed back down a little bit, loving the feel of his full lips on mine, his needy tongue playing against my own. He wrapped his arms around my neck, pressed tight against me. I hadn’t realized how intoxicating it would be, the power I had to control Will’s pleasure. To watch him made desperate at my hands.

I moved down his body, licking the cut of his stomach muscles, nipping at a hip bone. I scraped my teeth lightly around the base of his erection and smiled as he hissed, thrusting his hips up and clutching my shoulders. I rubbed up and down his thighs, encouraging his legs farther apart for me, then I rolled his balls in my hand and tugged gently, making him cry out. I kissed beneath them, following the thin skin to his ass. I rolled his hips up and tentatively traced his hole with my tongue.

“Oh shit, shit, shit,” he groaned, voice gone tight.

“Is that—do you like that?” I asked. It seemed only polite.

“Yes,” he said so quickly I almost laughed. But then Will groaned as I increased the pressure and it was anything but funny.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was supposed to do, but I figured being thorough was always a good policy? I pressed into the muscle around his hole with my thumbs, massaging it while I licked and sucked.

“Holy hell, Leo.”

I made an inquisitive sound and Will made a confirmatory one, and then I lost track of everything but the slick and give of his skin, the muskiness of his scent here, the muscular clutch of his legs around me, everything in his body clenching and quivering as I worked him open with my tongue.

I loved this. Loved him like this. Loved routing all my attention to the place where I could actually be inside Will, be a part of him. A place where he opened to me. I squeezed his ass and pressed deeper into his hole with my thumbs so I could taste him inside. He relaxed to me and groaned, letting out a shaky laugh.

“That’s like full-on merit badge material, kid.”

“Gah! Don’t call me kid when I’m… erm….”

“When you’re what, Leo?” he purred. “What are you doing? Tell me.”

“When I’m… you know.”

Will chuckled and that was not what I wanted to hear from him right now. I wanted him back in the state where he was so desperate his only words were curses and he barely had breath for them anyway.

“Why don’t you tell me what I’m doing to you since you’re feeling so chatty, and I’ll just keep on doing it,” I said, with far more bravado than I felt. “And,” I added, “if you stop talking, I’ll stop doing it.” I thought Will might tell me to piss off, but he gave a shaky moan and started talking.

“You’re stretching my hole with your fingers and licking all around—ungh, shit—inside me. Sliding the tip of your tongue in and out of my ass. Licking—fuck…!”

He went on and on, the filthy narration creating a feedback loop of arousal. I did something to Will, Will described it, and it turned me on even more. Which was sort of a problem since the whole point of this was to get Will so turned-on that I could maximize my, uh, staying power. So I kissed Will’s hole and pulled away, sliding up his body.

I ran a finger up the length of his erection, smearing precome when I got to the tip. He moaned, words gone, and I did it again. I kept the pressure light as a whisper, tracing patterns on his skin until he was panting and his face and throat were flushed, his lips wet. He had one arm flung over his eyes and he was trembling.

“Just a little harder, please,” he whispered, but he made no attempt to touch himself. I leaned down and touched my tongue to the tip of his cock, tasting the bead of moisture there, and Will jerked, every muscle tightening, and cried out. I grabbed the root of his cock to make sure he didn’t come, and he whimpered.

“Do you want me?” I asked, and he nodded immediately, eyes still covered by his arm. “Tell me.” I kissed his mouth.

“I want you.”

“Look at me and tell me,” I said against his lips.

He moved his arm. His eyelashes were clumped together wetly, his lids half lowered. “I want you,” he said, looking at me.

He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. They were the most beautiful words I’d ever heard.

I knelt, just looking at him for a moment. He looked like a debauched angel. Like if a classical painter had ever rendered sex scenes. His flushed skin made him look like he glowed from within. His soft mouth was a daub of glistening paint, his blue eyes heated and bright, blond hair mussed and stuck together with sweat like it had been put in with the hard edge of a palette knife. He looked inhuman. But then he smiled, and he was Will. My Will, who I could taste on my tongue.

“You gonna fuck me finally?” He’d found his attitude again, but his voice was raw.

“Yeah.” I nodded.

He flipped the condom at me and lay back, an arm beneath his head like he was sitting on a chaise longue around the pool, his grin a challenge now that he knew he was going to get what he wanted.

I leaned forward and licked the powdery pale skin on the inside of his arm, the muscle sliding as he tensed. I had the sudden conviction that I had to kiss every inch of his skin. That somewhere on his body lay a place that I hadn’t attended to and that, if I didn’t taste it, I would be leaving something important unfinished. Then his mouth was so close that I couldn’t help but kiss that too.

I ran my fingertips up and down the tendon at the back of his neck, the skin hot and sweat-damp, and kissed him, wanting to layer every taste of him on my tongue. I handed the condom back to him.

“Put it on me,” I murmured into his mouth. “So I can keep kissing you.”

I could feel his intake of breath in the kiss, and then felt the slick touch of the condom.

“Yeah, come on,” he said against my lips, positioning me where he wanted me, the challenge in his voice replaced by want.

I tilted his hips up, and slid inside him, the clutch of skin and muscle ripping a groan from my mouth. I sank into him, shaking with the sudden buzz of pressure along my cock.

“Fuck, fuck,” I muttered into his neck, overcome. With one finger, I traced his opening, felt the place where we were connected. I’d tasted him here. Speared him open with my tongue as he moaned, totally undone.

I was so turned-on I was shaking. Will started to move his hips but I grabbed them and held them down.

“Wait, just wait.”

I tried to slow my breathing so the arousal would recede enough for me to actually… do something.

“Leo.”

“Hmm?”

“Are you doing yoga breathing right now?”

“Um. Yeah, I’m trying not to come.” It wasn’t working very well. The creep of arousal wasn’t receding. If anything, just the knowledge that I was inside Will’s body got me amped up all over again. “This is basically like plank pose, so.” I nodded to the way my arms were braced on either side of Will’s body.

“You’d better fucking plank me right now.”

I started laughing, which helped a little.

“Come on, Leo, fuck me.” Will was breathless, pressing me deeper inside him.

I did as he said. “You’re. So. Fucking. Bossy,” I said as I thrust into him.

“You love it,” he gasped. And it was true. I loved that I didn’t have to guess what Will wanted because he always told me. That I wasn’t left wondering if he was faking his reactions to anything because he would never bother. But that all paled in comparison to how much I loved, at this moment, the feeling of fucking him. The cling of his skin and the way he clutched my ass to pull me to him were quickly becoming my favorite things in the world.

Will changed the angle of his hips and started moaning as I slammed into him, tightening his ass around me. I was so turned-on I lost the rhythm completely, almost wincing away from the pleasure skittering up my spine and spreading through my lower belly.

“Lemme just—” Will pulled off me and flipped onto his hands and knees, reaching a hand back to me. I slid back inside him and froze so I wouldn’t come at the sound of his groan. He dropped down to his forearms, his gorgeous ass in the air, and I fucked down into him as his ass bounced against my hips, his perfect profile like a cameo against the pillow.

“Will, I’m gonna—”

He made a broken sound and started jerking himself off.

“Oh fuck,” I gasped. “That’s too hot. Shit.”

I closed my eyes and dropped my forehead down to his spine to try and get myself away from the edge, but it was no good. Even with one sense blocked, the rest were saturated with him. The smell and taste of sweat and precome and Will were in my nose and my mouth and the sounds of his moans and his breathing in my ears, and his skin was slick and hot beneath my mouth and my hands.

“Oh god,” Will moaned as I thrust into him, holding him at the hip and shoulder. He shook against me, muscles tightening, caught on the edge of his pleasure with his head thrown back and his throat bared.

I pressed even deeper inside him, pulled almost all the way out, and slammed back in. Will let out a sharp cry and came over his hand and his expensive sheets. As he clenched up, pleasure blasted through me, blackening my vision and making me shudder. I let myself fully focus on the feeling of him still clenching around me, his slick heat pulsing around my dick, the gorgeous curve of ass and thigh slick with sweat. I stayed deep inside him, giving short thrusts and feeling every inch of my dick sliding against muscle and skin. The pleasure skittered down my spine, throbbed in my gut, and exploded from me, my orgasm taking me over completely.

I collapsed on top of Will, and he clenched his ass around me, shooting a final spark of pleasure up my dick and through my ass and my thighs and my stomach. I held his hips and inched myself forward, tensing every muscle against the last shudders of pleasure. When I slid from him, I was trembly and spent.

“Mmmmm,” he said, reaching a hand back to pat my flank in a listless attaboy gesture. Then he rolled onto his side, avoiding the wet spot by throwing an arm and a leg over me as he stretched luxuriantly.

I kissed him, tasting the metal of salt in his mouth until it faded into the heat of his tongue. We were holding each other’s faces as we kissed, inching closer and closer together like the space between us could be obliterated.

In Zeno’s paradox, halving the distance between you and what you sought meant that you would go on forever, always moving closer but never actually reaching it. But maybe if you set your sights on a thing beyond what you sought then you would eventually replace yourself smack in the middle of it, having tricked the universe into rendering up exactly what you really wanted.

WE HAD fallen asleep tangled up in one another, and I woke during the night to feel fingers in my hair. I made a contented sound and pressed back against Will, but the second he realized I was awake he stopped.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” he said. “Go back to sleep.” He sounded half-asleep himself. I tilted my chin back, and he pressed a kiss to the side of my neck. I pulled the covers tighter around us, but then he sighed and kissed the back of my neck before rolling away to sit on the side of the bed.

“Hey, what’s up?” I slid over to him and rested my head on his thigh, looking up at him.

“Nothing.”

“Come on, what’s wrong.”

He was quiet for a long time, and at first I thought he had fallen asleep sitting up.

“I’m not used to sharing a bed with anyone,” he said softly. “That’s all.”

“You never—with the guys you….”

“Christ, no. Nightmare.”

“What about with… that TA?”

“Yeah right, like he would’ve ever let me spend the night,” Will said sharply. I wanted to kill this guy, but I didn’t want to say any more about it and make Will feel bad.

“But you must have with Rex, right?”

“Yeah, sometimes. That was a long time ago.”

“What was the deal with you and Rex, anyway? How’d you guys end up dating?” I was totally awake now and hoped maybe Will was in a sharing mood.

Will still stared ahead into the dark room, but his hand came down on my head, and he started playing with my hair again, brushing it off my forehead and running his fingers through it.

“Rex is… you know. Rex-like. When I first saw him, I made certain assumptions.” He said this slyly, as if I knew what he meant, but I didn’t really. “I came on pretty bratty, you know, thinking he’d be into it. When it was clear that wasn’t the right tactic, I was just honest. Basically said, ‘hey, wanna bonk?’ Which he did. It started casual, but you know what a small town Holiday is. There wasn’t anything else to do, so we just kind of kept… doing each other.”

I sat up and stared at him. “You’re not seriously expecting me to believe that you were with Rex for like a year because Holiday is a boring town. Get real.”

“I’d just graduated,” he said slowly, and I tugged him back into bed, pressing him down. “I had no clue what I was doing. I had no money. And Claire….” He shook his head. “Things weren’t… okay for her. Nathan was five and Sarah was three and she was fucking up bad. Sarah’s father was kind of around, but he was a sociopath. Just completely morally bankrupt, seriously. And when Claire was with him, she was just as bad. They brought out the worst in each other, really.”

I threw an arm over his waist and put my head on his shoulder, close enough to his chest that I could feel the reassuring thump of his heart against my ear.

“I was scared of what she’d do, scared of what would happen to the kids, scared of what Darren might do to Claire. Just fucking scared of everything. So I went back to Michigan. And it was a shit show. She didn’t want me there, and then me being there was the only thing that would help. She wanted my opinion on everything, from what kind of bread to get at the grocery store to what color she should paint her nails, and then if I tried to tell her my opinion on something she’d scream at me that I was trying to control her life. She wanted me to watch the kids twenty-four-seven so she could go out with Darren or her friends, and then she didn’t want me anywhere near them because she was their parent, not me, and she was convinced I was going to turn them against her.

“I helped as much as I could when she let me. Or I left her alone when she asked. Sometimes. Sometimes I couldn’t, and then she’d just hate me for doing what needed to be done. Rex—” He lingered over the name. “Rex was calm. Predictable. Consistent. He didn’t play games, and he didn’t fuck with my head. He didn’t stop me from leaving whenever I wanted because he never expected anything of me in the first place. Around him I was….” He shrugged like the memory embarrassed him.

“I was shallow and capricious. And I couldn’t fucking believe this good person wanted to spend even one second around me. Couldn’t believe he thought I was funny, or fun. Couldn’t believe he just accepted it when I told him I had to take off and then disappeared for a week without a word, taking care of stuff at Claire’s. And after a little while I got used to him, I guess. We got along really well. Rex is smart, you know, even if he’s not smart like your friend Daniel.”

“I know he is,” I confirmed, and Will hesitated before nodding, like he’d been prepared for a disagreement.

“You know the way he and Daniel are,” Will said, “where they’re just kind of… attuned to each other? Like, they aren’t close together but if you were standing far enough back to see them both you would see that they were moving in relation to one another?”

“Oh my god, yes.” I didn’t want to admit how often I’d noticed that and wished that I could have something like it. It was basically the most romantic thing I’d ever seen. Like even through space, even separated, their bodies or spirits or whatever it was, could sense each other and move accordingly.

“Rex wasn’t like that with me. We weren’t like that. And we never would’ve been. It just wasn’t that kind of thing. It was a good fit at the moment. He got a little infusion of fun in his life, and I… was looking for a wall I could keep running into. Anyway, we’d never have actually fit into each other’s lives. But I was on pause, and he was kinda locked away. I felt like the girl in that book… what’s it? The Secret Garden.” He looked embarrassed and when he spoke again it was as if he was mocking himself.

“I got to skip into Rex’s little garden, and I shook things up for him—he was so damned serious; even worse than he is now, for real—and at the same time I got a place to hide away for a while. A place I could relax, I guess. But yeah.” He snorted. “It would never have worked long term. Rex needed a safe space, and I… definitely wasn’t. Never would’ve been for him.”

“Wow, and you think of Daniel as a safe space? I more saw Rex as a safe space for him, I guess.”

Will bent his head awkwardly to look at me, his stubble catching my hair.

“Everyone’s safe space looks different, kiddo. For some people, like messy, messy Daniel, it’s someone who takes care of them, sure. But for others it’s someone who they can act out certain parts of their personalities with. Or all of their personalities.”

Maybe he was half-asleep, but this didn’t sound quite like the cynical description of a relationship made of self-annihilating compromise I’d heard from him before.

He rearranged us so his back was to my chest, pulling my arm around his stomach, and smashed his face into the pillow, clearly done with the subject.

I gave him a little squeeze and settled in. Just as I was starting to drift off, though, Will spoke, so softly, and so muffled by the pillow that I almost couldn’t make it out.

“It just turns so easily.”

“What does?” I said against his neck.

“Love.”

“How do you mean?”

He pushed the pillow off his face and stared into the darkness beyond the bed. In the ambient light from the window, I could see that his eyes were open.

“Love and beauty… they look good. On the surface. Perfect. So people think they are good. But sometimes they’re just… rotten.”

I was afraid if I said anything, the spell would break. But I couldn’t let it go in case I never got another chance to be sure of what he meant.

“Are you still talking about you and Rex?”

“No, I wasn’t talking about me.”

“Oh. So, who, then?”

I nuzzled into his soft hair, and he pressed against me just enough that I knew now was one of those moments when he liked me, here, with him.

“My sister. My parents. Whatever.”

“What happened with your parents? They just stopped loving each other?”

Will snorted. His voice, when he spoke again, was dark. “No. They were obsessed with each other.”

“What do you mean?”

“They met in high school. Sophomore year. And that was it. They just… didn’t see anyone else. High school sweethearts.” Every word was a dagger.

“Wow, that’s romantic,” I said automatically, but Will tensed the second it was out of my mouth, and I knew it was the wrong thing to say.

“No. Not romantic. Or sweet.” He murdered the word. “All they cared about was each other. Couldn’t be bothered with me and Claire. It’s not sweet when your parents are making out in the living room when you bring friends over and run off giggling like a couple of kids when you interrupt them. Not romantic when you have to shoplift from the grocery store if you want anything fresh because the only food in the house is canned soup and boxed mac and cheese since they never hesitated to just go out for a date night.”

“Fuck.”

“I got caught once. Shoplifting. Apples and tomatoes. When my parents came down to the store to get me, my mom smiled this calculated smile. ‘Oh, he probably just wanted to make a surprise dinner for us. Isn’t that sweet?’ And everyone fucking agreed, because in a world of ugliness and divorce and desperation people will do anything to feel like they played some small part in someone’s tale of true love. Especially if they don’t have one of their own.

“And they were fucking proud of it. Proud I played along. It was this big joke, like they were the romantic leads in some movie and everyone else was just extras. Like they didn’t matter. And forget trying to tell anyone that they weren’t perfect. That’s all anyone saw.”

Pieces fell into place as he spoke, and I wanted to ask him a thousand questions, but before I could say anything, Will was on top of me, kissing me fiercely. I opened my mouth to ask if he was okay, but he just slid his tongue against mine, grinding us together hotly. I groaned into his mouth, caught up in his whirlwind, and we moved against each other in the stillness of the night.