Obligatory warnings and disclaimers:
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If reading this is in any way illegal where you are or at your age, or you don't want to read about male/male relationships, go away. You shouldn't be here.
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This story isn't based on anyone in particular, alive or dead, so any resemblance to anybody is unintentional.
Questions and commentary can be sent to "writerboy69@hotmail.com". I enjoy constructive criticism, praise, and rational discussion. I do not enjoy flames, and will not tolerate them. Unless I often hear from you and would recognize your address, please put the story title in the subject, or my junk mail filter may screen you.
Thanks to everyone who has written so far. To answer a frequent question from those who are unfamiliar with my other stories, they're called "Brian and Tommy", "Thieves", "JC's Hitchhiker", "Tangle", and "Rebound", and they can all be found in the boybands section.
"So, you're the neighbor Nate keeps talking about," Sam chirped, letting go of Casey's hand. Casey's head turned toward me, a slight smile on his face, but one of those small ones without teeth.
"You were talking about me?" he asked, a tone of amusement in his voice. At least he wasn't pissed. There was something about the way he said it, the way his eyes sparkled, that made me blush, and I was glad the backyard was dark enough to cover it.
"Not really," I stammered. "Sam's just being, you know."
"Not really?" Sam asked, grinning. He was still looking at Casey, seeming almost to size him up, his eyes ticking over him from head to toe. "The day you pulled up it was all, 'I have a new neighbor, and he has a motorcycle,' and where did I think you came from and what were you doing here and when were the Beckers coming back, and."
"Sam!" I said sharply, a little harder than I intended, and he jerked as he realized that I was a little embarrassed. I could tell by the look of confusion on his face and the way that he tilted his head to the side, a classic Sam move for as long as I'd known him. "Casey, I wasn't talking about you."
"Oh," he said, his smile slipping a little, his face going back to neutral. Did he sound a little disappointed?
"I mean, I was, a little," I clarified, not wanting him to think I didn't care at all. "Not, like, about you specifically, because I hadn't really met you, but, you know, just curious. Nobody ever comes here, and we're not really a motorcycle type neighborhood, anyway, so you kind of made a little bit of a scene when you pulled it, but that was before I talked to you, so I kind of asked Sam what he thought, but it wasn't like I was really, you know, talking about you like talking too much. About. You."
My voice trailed off as I realized that they were both staring at me now. Oh, God, I was doing it again, but now it was even worse! Now instead of only being able to say stupid things, I was just babbling an endless stream of whatever drifted through my empty head! I wanted the backyard to open and swallow me whole. First I couldn't talk to him, and now I couldn't stop talking to him.
"He had a lot of sugar before dinner," Sam said apologetically, rolling his eyes. Oh, thanks a lot, buddy. Casey chuckled, and Sam answered it with one as he glanced at me warily out of the corner of his eye. "So, where you from? Around here?"
"No, I came from," Casey began, and then paused a little, as if he wasn't sure what to say. My eyes fixed on his face, seeing the way that it seemed to close off a little. He still had that little half smile, but it didn't reach up to touch his eyes, and I wondered what was wrong. I remembered that impression I'd gotten the first time I saw him, that there was something hidden there, something guarded, and realized that it seemed like it might actually be true. "I'm just up staying here for a while. My aunt said I could."
"Oh," Sam said, cocking his head again. My eyes flicked to him, and I saw that he'd caught the same thing that I did. "How long are you staying?"
"The summer, maybe," Casey answered, shifting a little. I got the feeling that he was about to bolt for his house. As I looked at him, seeing his tan shoulders gleam in the moonlight, following the curved lines of his arms as they hung at his sides, relaxed, with his hands in the pockets of his shorts, he looked like he was tensed up a little, and his voice still had that guarded tone. We were making him uncomfortable, but I didn't know why, and he quickly changed the subject. "I haven't seen you, Sam, around here. Do you live in the neighborhood?"
"I live on the other side of town," Sam said, jerking his head back like he could encompass the entire city with a gesture. "I work over at the video store, though, the one by the Pizza Hut?"
"Yeah, I know where that is," Casey answered, nodding. I guess he'd taken some time to explore the town. It's what I would do if I were new somewhere, and was one of the first things I'd done when I went to college, having a need to know where practically everything was as soon as possible so that I would feel grounded, like I was at home there. Casey didn't seem to have that feeling, wasn't projecting that he was at home in these surroundings. Maybe he didn't really want to be here. Maybe it wasn't his choice. I filed that thought away for later consideration.
"You working anywhere?" Sam asked. I looked at him with a little surge of resentment. Why could he just look at Casey and fire off all these questions? Why didn't he have the same problem I did? Sam was always the more social of the two of us, the more outgoing with his aw shucks grin and his lanky blond good looks, and suddenly I felt a little twinge of jealousy that he could do this so much better than I could, that it just came naturally to him when I was always filled with hesitancy and doubt. At least Casey wasn't really giving him anything back.
"No," he answered, not adding anything.
The three of us stood in silence for a moment, a strange triangle. I could see the shape, the suggestion of something between the three of us, but didn't know what it meant yet, and I shook my head, wondering where a thought like that even came from. There wasn't anything between us. Sam was my best friend, and Casey was the guy I was crushing on, if I had to put words to it. Maybe that wasn't the right word, but in light of what I'd been thinking earlier, maybe it was exactly the right word. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to hold him, and feel him, and let him do the same to me, and if I'd wanted that with a girl I would have called it a crush, so I guess with a guy it was the same thing. I had a crush on Casey.
The sound of the screen door at the back of the house creaking open startled all three of us, and we turned toward it to see my mother standing in the doorway holding two plates out toward us.
"Boys, dessert," she began, and she looked a little surprised as she saw Casey standing with us. She walked out into the yard, still holding the plates out. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize that you had company."
"It's ok, I was just going," Casey said quickly, stepping back.
"No, no, stay," Mom said, handing off a plate to Sam. She held the other out between Casey and I, and I wondered if she meant for us to share it or fight over it. "There's plenty of pie. I don't think we've met?"
"I'm Casey, ma'am," he said politely, his voice very low and respectful. It seemed odd coming from someone our age, especially with the "ma'am" tacked onto the end. "I'm staying next door."
"Oh!" Mom grinned, nodding. "You're Amy's nephew! I was wondering if the boys met you yet."
Sam and I glanced at each other again, both realizing how easy it would have been to ask my mother what was going on. If we were watching the Beckers' house for them, it made sense that my parents would know about them having a houseguest. If I'd taken just a second to think it through, I could have saved myself a lot of wondering. I also realized that my mother might know more than just his name and that he'd be here, too, and suddenly I had to find out for sure.
"Casey, you take that piece," I said, nodding toward the pie.
"Are you sure?" he asked, and I nodded. He took it from my mother, the fork balancing on the side, and smiled at her, a wide, full smile, with lots of teeth. Oh, wow. For a second it seemed to light up the backyard, or maybe that was only the way it looked to me. "Thank you."
"Oh, well, it's no problem," my mother said, her voice a tiny bit higher. I realized that she was, oh, my God, my mother thought he was cute! Casey was charming my mother, and she was grinning back like she was, like, our age or something. But she was my mom! Oh my God! Now I really wanted to fall into a giant gaping hole, and I hoped and prayed that Casey and Sam hadn't noticed. Sam wouldn't let me live it down, ever, and I had no idea what Casey would think.
"I'll just go get another one," I said loudly, my hand on my mother's shoulder. "Be right back."
I didn't quite shove my mother back into the house, but my guiding hand in the middle of her back had to be hard to miss. Behind us, I heard Sam explaining to Casey that there was a picnic table around toward the side of the house, and I assumed they were going there to sit down. I wanted to run in the house to interrogate my mother, but at the same time I had a sudden twinge of jealousy at the thought of leaving Sam and Casey alone out there. What were they going to talk about without me? What were they going to say to each other? Would they talk about me? If Sam wasn't utterly and completely straight, I probably wouldn't have left the backyard at all. As it was, I was still a little worried that somehow Sam would say something that would distract Casey, something that would keep him from noticing me. I wasn't sure how I was going to get his attention, but I didn't want Sam horning in on it before I figured that out.
"Are we in a hurry?" my mother asked as the screen door banged closed behind us.
"I just want some pie," I said quickly, shrugging. There was a small stack of plates sitting on the counter next to the pie, a fresh baked cherry with red juices just barely oozing into the pan where several pieces had already been removed. I started to cut a piece out for myself as my mother stood watching, her arms crossed.
"I didn't realize you guys had met Casey already," she said. "You didn't say anything."
"I didn't realize you knew him, either," I countered, carefully lifting the piece of pie out of the pan and onto my plate as she probed again. Any second now she'd want to know when I met him and why I hadn't said anything, and I wasn't going to take this game any further, because there was no way in hell I'd be able to outmaneuver my mother. The move I'd pulled earlier, jumping up and running away, was about the only way I'd ever found to really win one. "He doesn't talk much."
"He's very polite, though," Mom said, handing me a fork from a drawer. "Seems nice enough, though."
"Yeah," I answered, shrugging. "Sam seems to like him. Did Mrs. Becker say anything about him?"
My mom's lips pursed for a minute, and I could tell what she was thinking. If she knew anything, it wasn't really her place to share if Casey hadn't told me herself. For once, though, my parents' natural tendency to talk everything out and be completely honest worked in my favor, and she spoke almost against her will.
"All I know is that he'll be here for a while, and she told him to come see me if he needed anything," she answered finally. "Why?"
"Just curious," I lied, the words tumbling out completely smoothly. Still, my mother looked at me in that way mothers have, her eyes drilling into me as if she could tell exactly what I had just done. Could she see what I was thinking? Had I looked at Casey the wrong way? Did I seem too curious? Was I just paranoid? I wanted to slap myself in the forehead. There had to be a way to turn my brain off. "I'm gonna go back outside, ok?"
"Sure," Mom answered, shrugging. She stepped back and I started toward the back door, eager to get back to Sam and Casey, but I stopped myself mid-stride, realizing I was forgetting something important.
"Mom?" I asked, half turning. I fought the urge to stare at the floor, but didn't win. I couldn't meet her eyes, and she knew it. "I'm sorry about before."
"It's ok," she said evenly, not angry.
"No, I was rude, and I didn't mean to yell," I explained, looking at her chin. It wasn't quite her eyes, but it was better than her shoes. I was just afraid, suddenly, that if I looked at her, she would look back and she would be able to see, really see, what was going on inside me. "I know you were just trying to help. I just, I don't know."
"It's ok," she repeated, walking over. She rested a hand on my shoulder, touching the top of my arm, and I felt very young suddenly, and very foolish over the way I had acted before. "I was young once. Just remember that your father and I are here, ok? I know that you're off at college and you're in charge of your own life and all that, but you're still my baby, ok?"
"OK," I answered, grinning. She patted my arm, and I took that as my release, turning to go. As I got to the back door, pushing it open, she spoke again.
"Oh, just so you know, your dad and I are going to that boat show this weekend," she said. "You and Sam can have the whole house to yourselves if you want it. You know the rules."
The rules were that we could not, under any circumstances, have a party, and with my neighborhood being what it was, she would know the second I ever decided to break that. Sam could sleep over the entire weekend if he wanted to, and we could even have a couple of beers if we wanted to, as long as we stayed in the house and there wasn't any drinking and driving going on. Sometimes it was really cool to have my parents.
"Thanks, mom," I said, letting the screen door close behind me. "I'll let Sam know."
I walked quickly around the side of the house, balancing my pie in the dark, trying not to make any noise. I wasn't trying to sneak up on them, exactly, but if they were talking about me as I walked over then I definitely wanted to know. As I rounded the corner of the house, I could barely make them out in the light, but I knew where the picnic table was, and could hear their voices.
"So the only person you know in town is Nate?" Sam asked. His tone was amused, almost lighthearted, and I wondered if Sam remembered what it had been like to be the new kid in town.
"Yeah," Casey answered. "He's nice, though. I like him."
I jerked to a stop, almost dropping my pie, my head spinning. Casey had been stonewalling Sam all night, and the first time he expanded beyond more than a word or two was to say that I was nice, and he liked me? Did he mean that he liked me as a friend, or maybe, you know, did it mean that he liked liked me?
"Hey," Sam said, catching my shadow as it fell across the table. The only light was coming from the porch behind me, so I couldn't really keep eavesdropping, which kind of sucked since it seemed like I was walking in right at the good part. "Come sit down. Casey and I were just talking about you."
"Nothing bad, I hope?" I asked, walking over.
"Just the truth," Sam answered, shrugging.
"Nothing bad," Casey said, shrugging as well. "Unless there's something about you I don't know."
"There's lots about me you don't know," I answered, finally managing to find my tongue. Sam snickered, used to my humor, but Casey looked a little surprised. His normally blank face shifted a little, his eyebrows going up, and then finally he smiled just a little, the small toothless smile that was almost the only one I'd ever seen him give anyone. I was feeling pretty satisfied with myself as I sat down and chipped off the end of my pie with my fork.
"I guess I'd like to get to know you a little better, then," Casey answered quickly, and I almost choked. I looked over, and caught the glistening of the porch light in Casey's eyes as he fixed them on me. It was like Sam wasn't even at the table, and as I watched Casey raised another bite of pie to his lips, his mouth falling open, his tongue darting forward to wet his bottom lip, just a little, before he slid the fork in.
"Actually, I was thinking that we needed to get you knowing a lot of people," Sam said, missing the staring contest between Casey and I completely. As I sat, awestruck, forgetting to even chew the lump of pie sitting in my mouth, Casey carefully pulled the fork back through his closed lips, getting all the cherry juice off of it, watching me watch him. I was transfixed by the movement of his mouth, the shifting of his jaw, and then he broke contact, looking away toward Sam.
"What do you mean?" Casey asked, swallowing. My own brain suddenly started working again, and I remembered to chew.
"Well, there's a party this weekend at this girl Sue's house," Sam began.
"Sue Mauser?" I asked. Sue Mauser was a girl we'd gone to high school with, a nice enough cheerleader type who had been in the chorus and hung out with the drama crowd. They weren't really my crowd, but Sam, being Sam, knew everybody, which was how we kept ending up going to all these parties. Sam nodded.
"Who's that?" Casey asked.
"Girl we went to high school with," Sam answered. "Her dad owns this big car lot on the other side of town, so their house is huge, and I guess her parents are going to a boat show or something this weekend, so she's having a bunch of people over to the house."
"Jesus, is everybody going to the boat show?" I asked, shaking my head, and they both looked at me. "Sorry. My parents are going, too, and I guess they're going to stay at a hotel or something. We get the house for the weekend."
Sam high fived me, grinning.
"Yes!" he cheered, waving his fork in the air theatrically. Casey snickered a little, and Sam beamed at him. "So this party, you should totally come with us."
"We're going?" I asked.
"Of course we're going," Sam answered, rolling his eyes.
"I don't know if I should," Casey began, and I just knew he was going to turn us down, but Sam wasn't having any of it.
"What are you going to do instead?" he asked, shaking his head. "Stay home? Watch TV? Come out, meet people, suck down the free beer!"
"I don't drink," Casey said quietly, but Sam didn't miss a beat.
"Be our DD then! That's even more perfect!" he said, grinning. "You can still talk to people, hang out, maybe, you know, meet a hot chick and maybe, you know, get a little summer romance going?"
Sam's grin shifted to a leer when he said that, and I felt a sudden stab as I thought of Casey in the arms of one of those girls I'd gone to high school with. Sure, they were nice and all, but I didn't want to see that, didn't want to look up and see him on the other side of the room leaning in close to some girl, smiling at her, letting her touch his shoulder or his arm or maybe even the ends of his hair. Why should some girl get to do that? Why not me?
Oh, yeah, probably because he was actually into girls.
I wanted to kick myself, thinking about being jealous of a girl that he hadn't even spoken to yet. My stupidity was soaring to new heights lately, or maybe sinking to new lows. Does stupidity sink, or fly? And why was I even thinking about that when I could be sitting here memorizing the way that Casey's face looked in the dark, or the way his smooth, rounded shoulders gleamed under the light from the porch and the moon. I could be saving this all up to jerk off to later, and instead I was too busy imagining Casey with someone else when really I just wanted him to be with me.
The sad part was that I didn't even know, then, what I meant by that. In my head I just had the vaguest picture of being able to touch him, of running my hands over him and having his hands running over me. I imagined the way they might feel sliding down my arms, or up my back, and I wondered what it would be like to kiss him, to feel his mouth against mine, but I hadn't imagined anything beyond that. Hell, I hadn't even imagined him with his pants off, and if I did somehow get into the position with him someday, what, exactly, was I supposed to do? I knew the basics of gay sex, how everything worked and where everything went, but what did it really all mean? Would I have to swallow his come? Let him put his dick in my ass? Wouldn't that hurt? What would it taste like? And what would happen after? That was the most important part. What would happen after I touched him, after I let him touch me? What would that make me, and what would that make us?
Casey shifted, disrupting my spinning train of thoughts, and I glanced up. Neither of them seemed to have noticed that I'd completely zoned out for a second, but maybe it wasn't as long an interval as I'd thought.
"Is that what you're looking for?" Casey asked, watching Sam. His eyes darted over to me for a second. "A little summer romance?"
"Me?" Sam asked, laughing. "God, no."
"Nate?" Casey asked, turning to me. His voice was even, and I couldn't tell what kind of answer he was hoping for. "Do you have a girlfriend, or are you on the market?"
On the market for a girlfriend, or just on the market? What was he asking, exactly, and, more importantly, why?
"No," I answered. "No girlfriend."
"Oh," Casey answered, taking the last bite of his pie. His face was blank, and when he leaned down a little to get the pie a wave of his hair tumbled forward over his forehead, hiding his face from me. I couldn't tell if he was pleased by my answer or not, and I couldn't see his eyes, so I looked down at my own plate, lost for the moment.
"So you'll come with us, then?" Sam asked, jumping in again. He was finishing his own pie as well, scraping the plate a little with his fork to scoop up a stray cherry that had fallen out at some point. Casey looked up, reaching up with one hand to push back the fall of hair from his face, and my eyes drifted down to the dark shadow of hair under his arm, wondering if it was soft or crinkly or both at once.
"Yeah, I'd love to, and I don't mind driving, either," Casey answered finally, smiling one of those little no teeth smiles again. He stood, and since he and I were sitting on the same side of the picnic table he was now standing over me, his toned stomach and the ripples of his abs hidden under that tight white beater were right at eye level. I looked and then looked away quickly, feeling myself blush again. I blushed even harder when I found myself hoping that he would lift his arms for some reason, so that the bottom of the shirt would lift up, too. "Tonight, though, I have to get going. Sleep, bed, all that."
"Sure, no problem," Sam said, taking his plate. "It was nice meeting you, and I guess we'll see you Friday?"
"Yeah," Casey agreed, stepping away from the table. His head shifted from Sam to me. I couldn't see his eyes with the light behind him, but it did make his hair seem to glow a little, and I caught myself watching individual strands dance in the light breeze in the backyard. The leaves rustled, and the wind seemed to carry something between us, as if his glance and the weight of his eyes were crossing to me on the breeze. I could imagine them in my head, that dark, dark blue, and I wondered what he saw when he looked at me. "What time?"
"I'm not sure," I answered. I hadn't even known about the party until Sam mentioned it.
"Nine-ish," Sam answered, gathering up my plate, too, stacking them all together with the forks on top. When Sam was at school, he had a job off campus at one of the local restaurants, waiting tables, and I'd noticed now that he always seemed to be cleaning up after we ate something. "Meet you over here?"
"Sure," Casey answered. "Goodnight, Sam, Nate."
Sam and I both called a good night to him, and I watched him vanish into the darkness of the yard. There was a hedge wall between the Beckers' backyard and ours, but all the way down at the end, back where the trees and the fort where, it ended, so you could slip around it from the front or the back. When we were younger it had been a big help to Sam and I when we needed to retrieve a ball or a Frisbee.
"Nate?" Sam asked, nudging my arm with his elbow. "You awake?"
"Yeah, sorry," I said, walking around the house with him. "Guess I tuned out for a little bit again."
"Jesus, we gotta get you laid," he sighed, waiting as I held the door open.
"Sam!" I blurted, blushing bright red again. Sam laughed, carrying the dishes to the sink.
"What?" he asked. "I'm telling you, once we get you settled down with a nice girl, all these mood swings and daydreams and stuff you're always having'll be gone like that. Like I said, there'll be a lot of girls at this thing, and, you know, you're kind of cute."
"You think I'm cute?" I asked seriously, shutting off the kitchen lights. The house was quiet, so I guessed that my parents had gone upstairs to their room already. If Sam thought I was cute, and he was a guy, maybe Casey did as well.
"Sort of," Sam answered, walking toward the stairs. "You know, for a guy."
"Cool," I sighed. Sam shook his head in front of me, probably rolling his eyes at the ceiling, and I threw one last glance over my shoulder at the kitchen window, hoping that Casey might appear again like he had the other night, shirtless, naked, standing in front of the refrigerator.
No such luck.
I followed Sam up the stairs to my room, ducking as he peeled off his shirt in front of me and almost cracked me in the head with one of his bony elbows.
"You mind if I crash here tonight?" he asked, flicking on my bedroom light.
"I kind of assumed you were," I answered, tugging off my own shirt.
The spare bed in my room was all made up, just like when we were little. I dropped my shirt into the hamper as Sam began to undo his belt. After we'd brushed our teeth, gotten undressed, and gotten into our beds, there was a long pause as we both rolled around, trying to get comfortable and trying not to make any noise in case the other one of us was already asleep. Sam sighed in the darkness.
"Party at Sue's," he whispered. "Think it's gonna be hot."
"Maybe," I answered, thinking about how we'd just seen all the same people at a different party last weekend and how nothing really happened at any of them anyway besides standing around, talking, and drinking. I figured that maybe, if we were lucky, maybe something cool would happen. If nothing else, I'd get to hang out with Casey, which couldn't ever be a bad thing.
If I'd know then how Friday night was going to turn out, my answer wouldn't have been maybe. It would have been, "Hell yes!"
To be continued.