If you're still out there and a fan of this story, I'm proud to pick this up after a 4 year absence. So much has changed, but I never forgot about the stuff I wanted to tell here.
My email has changed and you can now reach me at: connorstories@proton.me
Enjoy. Let me know if you're still reading this story. :)
I flipped straight from Henry's Snapchat to our messages to see what I must have missed that was so important it had led to a multichannel hunt to contact me.
"Bro, whenever you go home, it takes you like 4 years to respond." I rolled my eyes and flopped down on my childhood Spiderman blanket to reply. Henry is adorable, but sometimes his adorability stretches into nibbling puppy territory.
"4 years is a little dramatic for closer to..." I checked the timestamps of our last messages, "40 minutes, maybe?"
"Ok, sorry for trying to BE YOUR FRIEND." He replied instantly, using the 'slam' iMessage effect. Sorry Android readers, you either get it or you don't. Maybe look it up on YouTube if you really need the visual.
"It FELT like 4 years." He followed up, with fewer graphical effects but the same knife-twisting motion in my gut.
"Sorry" I replied with a sufficiently sad-looking gif attached. "How can we reconnect, my BFF?" I was just kidding around, but my face still warmed at my cheeks. I mean, he WAS my BFF. Nothing to be embarrassed about there.
"Well, you're in luck because I have just the offer for you." I grinned up at my phone like an idiot. Just as quickly, I lost purchase on the sides and the slab fell right on my face.
After recovering, I tapped back: "I love offers. Hit me."
"When's the soonest you can leave Kathleen and Eric?" Henry got a kick out of calling my parents by their first name, and in spite of myself, I was endeared to him that he bothered to remember.
"Uh, I mean I guess Friday morning at the very earliest."
"You mean Kathleen isn't down for you to take your turkey to-go?" Tomorrow was Thanksgiving and my mom would sob until Christmas if I bailed on dinner. It was unthinkable.
The thing about Henry is that he often thinks the unthinkable, but his pure little Golden Retriever heart wouldn't dare upset mommy.
"Relax. I'm kidding. I wouldn't steal you away from ol' Kathy. Next question: Do you need your car at school?" Somewhere in the distance, I was beginning to distantly see where Henry might be taking this line of conversation but was still missing some of the essential details.
"Not really, I don't think I drove it once before break. But I have no idea what you're hinting at."
"My cousin lives in Redding and is hosting a huge poker night. I was thinking we could make a road trip out of it."
Now our little game of Deal or No Deal was beginning to really take shape. There's a little background you need to know to get the jigsaw put together on your side though.
First, I'm actually a pretty prolific poker player and no doubt Henry was hoping to impress his cousin by bringing me.
I definitely wasn't the kind of kid that was going to bootleg poker games, but still, I was a child of the internet. What child of the 2000s didn't go through a brief fascination with online poker chat rooms? Just me? Well, poker was one of those games where I could go into my element and discard my social awkwardness for a few hours. I liked the sound of a poker game.
Second, this whole bizarre plan came from a place of sweetly empathetic pity. I had stepped out into the world of a sociable college student and gotten my face absolutely curb-stomped by Alex.
I saw straight through Henry. He saw my little turtle head pop back into my shell and now he was dangling a little leaf of lettuce drizzled with poker-flavored ranch to lure me back out again.
"I'm in." I took the bait. Salad for lunch sounded great.
Naturally, the little turtle trainer set to figuring out the details. Henry would pick me up from my parent's house on Friday morning and we'd stay the night at in Redding before the poker game. If we (or more likely, just me) were still in the game late on Saturday, we'd just stay another night and make the haul back to school on Sunday.
When I told mom the news that I'd be leaving Friday morning instead of staying the weekend after Thanksgiving, she actually floored me.
"Oh, that's perfect." She said, still folding and cutting orange and brown pieces of fabric at the kitchen table. My face surely reflected a stunned and hurt momma's boy, but she was too absorbed in her crafts to notice.
Fortunately, Kathleen can sense my emotions using some sort of common mom-telepathy.
"Not that we wouldn't love to have you, but I'm just trying to get all of these done before the holiday." She added, gesturing widely at the craft in front of her. Still no idea what exactly she's working on, but this answer is acceptable to me.
Dad took it a little harder, but not by much.
"Does this look like free long-term parking to you?" He growled when I told him I'd be leaving my car for the rest of the semester. Then, he clamped me on the shoulder and said, "Just kidding. But I might take it for a joy ride." With dad accenting to be my parking attendant, Operation Redding was a go.
"Can you bring snacks?" Henry texted after I confirmed my RSVP. My mom had already packed a full (reusable!) bag for the occasion.
Beyond assembling a cornucopia of snacks for our road trip, there were just... a few more things I needed to do before I set off.
Sometimes, when I have to do something really hard, I grit my teeth really hard and close my eyes. For a moment, I'm in 2nd grade again in a sunny classroom, sitting across a table from my teacher Ms. Holly. School is over and we are surrounded by chairs neatly stacked on desks for the night. Before me is a multiplication worksheet and my eyes are getting hot from struggling with Ms. Holly for so long.
When she sees me gritting my teeth, she grabs my pencil from my hand and sets it down. "You can do hard things, Connor. You were made to do hard things."
I summon this vignette up when I have to do hard things. You know, incredibly hard things like calling the doctor to make an appointment or trying to open a bank account. Today, I channeled Ms. Holly's energy to send 2 texts to the hometown ghosts I needed to leave behind.
To Porter: "It was nice to see you at the grocery store. Hope you're doing good! See you at Christmas, maybe?" I put our text thread on mute. I'd check his response later on my own terms, when I felt more... stable.
To Colby: "I'm headed out of town, but wanted to say before I go... your apology the other day was really good. See you around man." Then, I deleted Grindr because that cesspool of an app has no place on my Redding road trip.
Thanksgiving the next day was an unusually quiet affair. On the whole, it filled my stomach in a way that it hadn't in months of cafeteria pizza, but left me feeling empty in a slew of other ways.
I was so half-in and half-out of my parent's world. A few months ago, we had been a family unit. Then, the mitosis that was my departure for college. And then there was now: two cells trying to come back together again for a few days, and then break apart.
It turns out, my mom and dad weren't really empty nesters at all. On the one hand, I was happy to see they weren't moldering without me... but I would have liked to see them suffer my absence just a little bit.
I ladled a little more gravy over my potatoes. Growing up sucks.
Mom and dad fell asleep as soon as dinner was over. I laid in my childhood bedroom waiting for the house to fall silent with them.
When it did, I flipped on my bedside light and dove into my nightstand drawer. Henry might have lured me out of my shell for the weekend, but I was going to apply a little protective armor first.
One long, solid edging session on my dick before Redding. Just a little insurance against making any bad horny decisions by fully and completely draining my balls before getting in the car with Henry tomorrow morning.
Being back in my 'real' bed was perfect. This was essentially my throne for jerking off. I'd spend a solid 7 years jerking off right here in this bed. No knocking dormmates tonight.
I pulled my sweatpants down and hauled my cock out. It felt like it had been years since I had lost gotten off. I pushed my balls up over my waistband and let them hang out while I started stroking my cock to full mast. It had been so long since I'd jerked off with this kind of freedom, I'd forgotten how good it was to just stroke my dick so hard that my balls flew up and down, smacking into my hand.
My non-cock-wielding hand absentmindedly drifted over my milky white abdomen, playing with my treasure trail and sparking electricity up and down my thighs. My dick was throbbing in my palm from the attention as I poured oil over the tip, working it ceaselessly up and down my shaft.
If I was going to be comfortable, might as well maximize the situation. Still beating my dick, I kicked my sweats down to the bottom of the bed. With one hand tugging at my balls and another working itself over my cock head, I looked down to see the veins on my shaft popping. My dick looked hot.
Fuck. College sex had been good. It had been so, unbelievably good. But sometimes jerking off just... hit the spot in a whole different way. My legs were writhing under my covers. It was all I could do to bite the neck of my t-shirt to stop from crying out as my cock spurted a cannon of cum all over my abs and chest.
Insurance payment made. Poker game face on.