On the Verge of Something True

Disclaimer: Okay, if you're not old enough to read this type of boy/boy love story, then leave. The fictional teen boys in this story do get naked with each other, but this is more about crushing on another boy than about any fictional friction that may take place, so reader discretion is advised, but expectations of hot creamy sex will be left unsatisfied.

Any resemblance to real people who are nonfictional is entirely due to chance and my lack of imagination.

Part 1

His locker was next to mine that year. That's what set things in motion, I guess. The second year of high school was a little more relaxed than the first. I had my routine, I wasn't worried about being eaten by the sharks, it was familiar to me by then, and even the things that were confusing, like the boys who caught my eye at times, had become part of my routine, something I dealt with in the back of my mind while I went through the motions of being a teenager.

The first few times we crossed paths at our lockers, we didn't make eye contact, and that was how it was for a while. He got his books, I got mine, and we went our separate ways. That went on for a few weeks. It felt like we were ignoring each other for some reason, but I had no idea why.

So one day, for no obvious reason, I just said hi. He looked up at me in surprise, with his silky brown hair falling into his eyes, which were scrunched up in confusion or frustration. He just froze there for a few moments, bent over at the waist with his head turned toward me.

"Huh?"

That's what he said, in a sincerely puzzled way, like, are you actually talking to me, and what's this about?

I peered into his locker and took in the degree of chaos he had been able to create in just a few weeks out of an assortment of notebooks and textbooks and loose papers and personal items.

"You know if you cleaned out your locker, you could find things a lot faster."

He straightened up and swept the hair out of his eyes and looked at me, with just a faint hint of a smirk drawing up one corner of his mouth.

Then he leaned around the open door and checked out my carefully organized locker.

"Ok, you're the expert. What's your secret?"

"Hey, I'm just sayin'."

He smiled at me for the first time. And it was great.

"Yeah well ...you should see my room. My mom finally just gave up."

That was it (I know, pathetic, right?) It was such a nothing conversation, I guess because I wanted to talk to him without having anything to say. But there had to be a reason that I wanted to talk to him. I just wasn't sure what it was.

And then we had our first moment, and I started to get a few clues. We just stood there looking at each other, and I forgot that I was supposed to keep the conversation going. He was looking into my eyes like there should have been something there that he wasn't seeing. But I was seeing him up close for the first time, and there was something about him that I hadn't expected to find.

He was awesomely cute. His brown eyes were amazing, just so alive and full of -- him, I guess, something I could only guess at and suddenly needed to know.

I just looked at him, and thought I saw some kind of answer in his eyes to a question I hadn't even asked myself yet.

And when we heard the bell, I realized why we had been able to have our moment, because we were the only ones still there.

After that, things changed, but not as much as I would have liked. We said hi at our lockers between classes, and we tended to linger there, making small talk, but we didn't eat lunch together or hang out after school.

I was thinking about him a lot, though, and he seemed to be more aware of me, too. When I saw him in the halls, my heart would kind of leap, like a fish flopping in a net, but I didn't know what to do about it.

Every time I talked to him, I tried to keep it light and pretend that everything was normal, that my heart wasn't racing because he was near me, and eventually I was able to almost pull it off. I was happy to see him, and I didn't feel like I was about to do or say something that would give me away.

And somehow we started to become friends, a few minutes at a time.

One day he was walking past my table at lunch, and I happened to look over at him. We made eye contact, and I could see him hesitate in mid-stride before he changed direction and headed towards me. He stood at the end of the table with his tray in his hands and smiled at me.

"Hey locker dude."

I looked his tray over and smiled back at him.

"Hey Jake. What is that, the chocolate milk diet?"

He nodded and dropped his gaze.

"Yeah, I'm an addict."

"Well at least you'll die with a smile on your face. Behind a dumpster somewhere, with a chocolate milk moustache."

He snorted through his nose, choking the laugh back, and then I thought he might have started to blush a little, but I couldn't tell for sure.

"I can grab a chair for you, if you want to squeeze in with us."

There wasn't an empty seat at our table, but since Andy and I were at the end, I thought I should at least offer.

He seemed to think it over, and then shook his head.

"Thanks, I gotta slam this down and then finish my writing assignment."

"You know, they call that homework for a reason."

"Yeah, I know. My other mom explained that to me one time. See you in 6th."

He smiled at me and moved away, then walked over to his usual table and sat down.

Andy turned to watch him walk away as if he had suddenly registered the presence of a visitor from another planet. Then he swung back around and stared at me challengingly.

"What the eff was that?"

"What do you mean?"

"Since when are you so friendly with him?"

"Since his locker is next to mine. We have a few classes together. I like him."

"Oh please, he's always ... off somewhere. Sneaking around town like a psycho on that freaky bike. Or running up the hill after school like he's being chased by zombies."

"So he's disturbingly ... fit?"

"I'm getting a serial killer vibe. Nice to everybody, and nobody knows about all the bodies in his basement."

He looked over at Jake's table and nodded sort of appraisingly.

"Look at who he's sitting with, that tells you all you need to know."

"So look who I'm sitting with. What does that tell you?"

He looked at me and just grinned, like he was the best thing that had ever happened to me.

Okay, Andy was cute. He had looks. Maybe not drop-dead good looks, but still, close enough. Sandy-colored blond hair, kind of hazel eyes, and a great if slightly sarcastic looking face that was a lot nicer when he smiled. He was one of those goodlooking guys who knows it and never lets you forget it, but I didn't hold that against him.

He was small, but athletic and super competitive. As short as he was, he played JV basketball, and he held his own, because he was really, really quick, and he never backed down from anything or anyone. We worked out together in his dad's home gym, but in spite of his small size he was a lot stronger than I was, with no body fat, and muscles that were compact but hyperdefined.

When I looked over at Jake again, Andy followed my gaze and just watched him for a few moments.

"Seriously, I don't think they even know he's there. "

"I guess nobody told him he was in a popularity contest."

"Yeah, I hate to break the news. You lose, dude." Andy had a kind of gloating look on his face when he said that that really bothered me for some reason.

"So why be a dick about it?"

He looked back at me and tried to read what was in my eyes, but I refused to let him.

"What are you pissed at me about?"

"I'm not pissed at you."

"Okay, what are you not pissed at me about?"

"I like him. I don't want to spend my lunch listening to what a loser you think he is based on your shallow view of him."

"Yeah, I'm sure he's too deep for me."

"That's not saying much."

He looked at me and didn't say anything for a moment. He was looking into me again, and I thought I saw him see something he hadn't seen before, I guess because it hadn't been there to see.

"Okay, you're right. I'm sorry."

"Huh?"

"I mean, I wouldn't listen to anyone say shit about you, so why should you have to, if he's your friend, right?"

"Thanks."

"We good?"

"Yeah, I just...we're good."

The table had quieted down, and I knew that people were listening. Andy and I didn't argue that often, and a lot of guys saw me as weak because of the way he made a point of taking any trash talked about me as an insult to him too. I told myself I didn't need him to protect me, but was that really true, or did I just resent how much I needed him?

"Chase, you know if there's a problem you can talk to me, right?"

I looked at him, and he was looking at me a little too closely for comfort, so I looked away.

"I know."

Scott Chambers cleared his throat, and when I looked over at him he had a strange look on his face. He'd confirmed something, but I couldn't tell whether it was a slight disappointment to him or something that he was feeling vaguely smug about because he'd suspected it for a while.

After that day, Jake started to go out of his way to sit by me in our one free seating class or stop and talk to me when we crossed paths in the halls, unless I was with Andy, in which case he just smiled and nodded and passed on by. I don't know if Andy was giving him intimidating looks, or if he just sensed that there might be problems if he approached me while Andy was around. We still didnt see each other outside of school, but he knew where I lived, and I had told him he could come over whenever he wanted and go for a swim or just chill. We just hadn't gotten that far yet.

I felt comfortable with him, though. We clicked. We didn't need to fill in the gaps, things just fell into place when we talked, so I didn't feel like I had to pretend to be someone cooler than I really was. He made fun of me because I was organized and always prepared for class, while he was the opposite in every way, but it felt like the kind of fun you make of someone you really like, and like he was actually making fun of himself for being so disorganized.

I'd watched him eating lunch at his table, though, on the outside looking in, and I started to feel the same way at mine. Andy and I were so much a part of each other that I couldn't quite see him as a separate person, but the other people we ate with or hung out with were really his friends more than mine, and they made me wonder if I was missing some critical part that got lost in the assembly process, something that would have made sense of all the things the people around me never seemed to question.

It was actually fairly easy not to fit into any of the various ridiculously simpleminded cliques -- kids who were trying to signal that they were rich, or athletic, or popular, or whatever combination of superficial traits they assumed to be cool. It was easy to feel like an outsider, if you started to think about things at all. And talking to Jake had made me think. Why were we on opposite ends of the room? And when I looked at it like that, the answer was always right there in front of me, looking pleased with himself, completely satisfied being Andy.

I could go on and on about Andy, but that's another story. This is more about Jake, and how he changed everything just by being in the picture, the way one thing comes into focus and suddenly everything else looks different, even though nothing else has really changed. What matters is always what you're focused on, and what you're focused on can change in the blink of an eye.

Part 2.

So one weekend Andy had a basketball retreat. (WTF, right? what were they supposed to do, pray for the ball to go in the hoop?) It started Friday afternoon and ended Monday around noon, so my weekend was blank. I didn't really have a plan, but I was fine doing nothing. When Andy was absent, I felt a little lost at school, because he was like a lifeline there, especially at lunch, but the weekend was different.

Friday was a half day, and after school I had gone home and was taking a nap when I heard my phone buzz downstairs in the kitchen. Then I drifted off again for a while until hunger got me up to fix a snack. I was almost done, when the doorbell rang. When I opened the door, Jake was standing there. For a few seconds I was stunned, just trying to process what I was seeing.

Jake was at my house.

He looked a little uncertain.

"Hey Chase, are you busy now?"

I looked at him and smiled. Suddenly I felt really good, without having any reason for it beyond the simple fact that he was there. I licked some of the peanut butter off the inside of my thumb and stared at him suggestively.

"Do I look busy to you?"

"You mean besides sucking your thumb?"

"You want to come in?"

"I was hoping you'd go somewhere with me. I tried your phone but ...."

"Sure, come in and let me get some shoes on and brush the peanut butter out of my teeth and I'm good to go."

He stepped inside, looking back over his shoulder at his bike.

"Don't worry about the bike. This is a really rough neighborhood, but most of these people steal through the legal system...on the stock market, things like that."

"Yeah, I noticed. Nice place."

He looked up at the high ceiling and seemed to take in something that wasn't visible to me.

"I got it for my parents since they were so good to me growing up."

"Ah."

"You want a snack? Or a drink?"

"Yeah, some juice is good if you got it."

"We do have juice. Unless that's some sort of veiled drug reference."

"Yeah, that's usually what I ask for when I invite myself over."

"Well, you picked the perfect time. I'm on my own all weekend. Andy's off praying away the jock itch or something."

"Yeah, I know."

I swung around and looked at him. He looked kind of nervous or guilty about something.

"How did you know?"

"I just heard someone mention it. I mean.... I wouldn't have come...."

I raised my eyebrows and waited for him to continue. He shifted his feet around and looked even more uncomfortable.

"I know you guys are close...."

"Hey, Andy's not the ...." He looked up at me then and I forgot whatever I was about to say. He was looking at me in a way I had never been looked at before, like he was memorizing my face, and it was very distracting. "It's ... complicated."

He smiled and nodded understandingly. "Yeah, I figured that."

"I'm glad you finally came over. You should eat lunch with us sometime. It's sort of like a reality show where you have no idea why you're watching but you do it anyway."

He raised a skeptical eyebrow but didn't say anything.

"What?"

He just looked away quickly for a 'how do I say this' moment, like he was trying to be diplomatic about something, then looked back at me and hesitated a little longer.

"He's ... scary."

I burst out laughing and bumped my head on the door of the fridge, which I'd left open while I forgot to look for his juice.

"What?" He looked a little offended.

"I'm sorry, it's just... Andy can be scary to some people, but I have a hard time seeing him that way. Maybe because I've known him so long, and he's not exactly huge."

"It's not only me. I've heard stuff."

I looked at him seriously for a moment. I was pretty sure I knew what stuff he was referring to, but I didn't want to get into that with him right then.

"How about cherry juice?"

"Huh?"

"And I do have your drug of choice." I waved the dark chocolate brew container at him temptingly.

"Thanks, cherry juice is good, I'm cutting back on the chocolate milk ...diet." He emphasized the word diet, like he was taking a little shot at me.

I set him up in front of a bar stool at the counter and watched him take a sip. He made a face, and then took a bigger drink. It tasted like cherry, but there was beet and pomegranite in there, too.

"Wow, that's ... sour."

"Yeah there's a reason they call it tart."

"Good, though." He knocked it back and looked at me expectantly.

"Okay, I was afraid it would be too strong for you. Guess I was wrong."

He was really into the juice.

I poured him another, much taller one, and after he gulped it down, I took his glass and rinsed it out and put it in the dishwasher.

Then I turned around and really looked at him, and busted out laughing. He had a huge deep red stain around his mouth from the juice.

"What?"

"You should see yourself. You look like your lips are... begging for a picture."

I picked my phone up off the counter and got off a few shots before he realized what was happening. Then I showed him, without letting go of the phone.

"Hey, you're gonna delete those, right?"

He gave me a series of pleading or commanding looks that didn't make sense with his enormous red lips.

I just laughed at him. He looked so ridiculous, I couldn't stop laughing.

But at the same time, for the first time in my life, I really wanted to kiss someone.

I didn't kiss him, though. He grabbed at my phone, and I held it out of reach, and we stumbled through a series of awkward dance steps as he tried to get it away from me.

We were both laughing a little to ourselves, sort of huffpuffing through our noses as we struggled over control of the hand that was holding the phone.

He had his hand on my upper arm and as I twisted it away, I turned my hip into him and felt his body press against my side for a moment. I felt his other hand reach awkwardly around my waist and grab hold of me and then I glanced back at him and he was looking at me sort of uncertainly.

Then he let go of me and stepped back, and I put the phone in my pocket and smirked at him and waited to see what he would say or do. He looked serious for a few seconds, and then he smiled at me with his cherry-stained mouth. I started laughing again, and he stepped towards me. I started to fend him off, but left my hands on his chest.

He came closer to me and I leaned over with the top of my head on his shoulder and laughed convulsively. My hands fell to his hips like that's where they were meant to be. We were so close to something I couldn't put into words.

Then he reached into my pocket and grabbed hold of the phone, and I grabbed his wrist and kept him from pulling out his hand with the phone in it.

I was laughing kind of crazily and I could hear him breathing heavily in my ear. Then the pressure of the back of his hand on my thigh was too much for me, and I started to get hard and pull away from it.

I twisted his wrist and tugged his hand out of my shorts and grabbed the phone back from him and turned around with my back to him, then unlocked it and faced him again with it in the palm of my open hand.

He closed my hand over it and held it closed like that and shook his head.

"You can keep the pictures, I got something better."

"What?"

He smiled at me and shook his head again, then looked down at my bare feet.

"Are you gonna put shoes on?"

"Oh yeah. I need to brush my teeth too."

"What about me?" He grinned and showed me his beet-colored teeth.

"Yeah, sure, follow me."

We went upstairs into my bedroom, and I opened my dresser drawer and pulled out some socks and grabbed some shoes from the closet and flopped onto the bed to put them on.

He was looking around my room like it was something to see.

I didn't have anything all that interesting on the wall, just framed photos. It was kind of cold, I guess. Not like a kid's room -- very impersonal. There was nothing out of place.

My room was smaller than Andy's, with fewer electronics, so I didn't think of it as being especially impressive or whatever, but maybe compared to Jake's it looked that way.

Or maybe he was just interested in it because it was mine.

I went into my bathroom and pulled out a new toothbrush for him and tossed the package to him. He tried to open it while I leaned over at the sink and brushed away like a maniac.

After a minute or two, I looked over my shoulder and he was just standing there shaking his head at me.

"Are you, like, counting the brushstrokes or something?

"No, I always brush like this. It's a habit."

"Okay, you need to get some therapy for that."

I smiled at him with a big mouthful of foam bubbling out over my lips and onto my hand.

"Hey I take care of my teeph, sho shue me."

"Yeah, your teeph are gonna be just fine, it's your mind that I'm worried about."

"Shut up. You're just jealous 'cause I'm responsible."

"Is that what it is?"

"Yeah, Mister 'I never do my homework at home'. You could learn from me."

"We'll see about that."

He stepped in behind me and pressed out a tiny bead of toothpaste onto his brush and swiped it under the faucet and ran it back and forth a few times over his teeth and then spat and rinsed it off and set it down again and looked at me with a smirk on his face.

"So how long are these lessons of yours gonna take?"

I paused midstroke and stared at the part of his mouth that wasn't made of juice.

"Depends if you're a slow learner."

"Oh I can be a slow learner all right."

"Could take years then."

I tore my gaze away from his mouth and looked up into his eyes, and they were smiling at me too, but there was a question there.

I just stood there, kind of taking him in. He was looking right at me, and I had no idea how we had ended up standing so close to each other. We were in the same space.

"You ready now?"

I grabbed a washcloth and ran some warm water over it and reached up and rubbed off some of the cherry stain from around his mouth. He grabbed my wrist and held it for a moment and then pulled it away from his face but didn't let go of it.

"Leave it like that, I think I like it."

"You look like a clown, you know. People will laugh."

"Yeah." He was looking at me like that again.

"So where are we going?"

"Bike ride?"

"Sure."

He let go of me, and I steered him toward the stairs and followed him down.

Before we left, I texted my mom not to expect me for dinner, and stuck a note on the fridge in case my dad turned up before she did.

We went out to the garage, and I hit the garage door opener and set the alarm and wheeled my bike out as he followed me.

"Nice bike."

"Yeah, I made it myself."

"I sorta doubt that."

"Well I ordered it online, but it was still a lot of work."

"I'm sure it was."

"My allen wrenches got all sweaty."

"Yeah that's ... good to know."

We pushed off from the curb and pulled out of the cul-de-sac and onto the main cross-street heading out of my neighborhood.

He took the lead, and I gave him some space and looked at him as he stood up and started to pull away from me.

His butt was doing some of the work, and it was putting me into a trance watching it move around under the thin fabric of his shorts. I looked at boys' butts a lot, even though I saw that more as a harmless hobby than as a gay thing connected to sex. This was the one I'd been waiting for all that time. I'd noticed it before, but this was the first chance I'd had to study it the way it deserved.

His legs were obviously in really great shape, too, and he was easily pulling away from me on his heavy old-fashioned bike.

We rode down to the main street out of town and followed it into the countryside and through a checkarboard of orchards and horse farms, then headed up into the hills.

The traffic was light, and he let go of the handlebars and straightened up in his seat and pedaled away carelessly. The breeze flicked through his hair and puffed out his shirt behind him like a parasail.

I guess we were about 10 or 12 miles out of town.

It was green out there, lots of rolling pasture and a few windmills and barns and toy-sized farms that were probably more for show than for produce.

He pulled off the road at a farm and laid his bike up against the fence.

I could make out a horse at the other end of the field as it headed our way.

She came up to us, and Jake got a sack of carrots from the little nylon pack on his bike and fed her one.

"Her name's Mercy. Strange name for a horse, huh? You want to feed her?"

I propped my bike against his and walked over to her and stroked her forehead. He snuck me a carrot and I reached out and let her gobble it out of my hand with her huge soft bleached-looking lips.

Jake was leaning against me and stroking her and sort of sweettalking her under his breath, not baby talk but like he really loved her, like she mattered, and I felt a strange chill in the air, as if part of this must be mine, this moment, this hazy day in the middle of fall.

There was something special there. The horse was hanging on Jake's every movement. It was clear that he was the source of all good things to her, carrots and maybe things that didn't have names.

After a while, he said goodbye to Mercy, and we got back on our bikes and headed toward the next town. On the outskirts, he pulled into the big parking lot in back of the Playpen. Andy and I used to go there when we were in middle school, but I guess we had outgrown it. They had miniature golf and arcades and batting cages, stuff like that. Across the street was a bowling alley. It looked a little more run down than the last time I had been there.

He had discount cards already, so we just used those.

We hit the batting cages first, and it was obvious that Jake was pretty good. When I took my turn, I didn't do as well, even though I got a piece of something some of the time. He came over and moved me around a bit in front of the plate, finetuning my stance a little, and then changed my grip. It felt weird but good, like he was handling me, and I sensed the sort of charge that precedes a hardon before he backed off and let me try out the changes he had made. It seemed to help, and I started connecting more solidly.

After I'd finished my turn, we drifted over to the counter to get drinks.

"So you wanna bowl for a while, or play golf?"

He sounded like he was maybe leaning toward the bowling, but I wasn't sure.

"You call it. I suck at both if that helps."

"Let's bowl. It might be nice to be inside before we have to ride back."

We bowled, and I sucked as bad as ever. It had been a long time since I had bowled, but I'd never been any good. Andy was a lot better than I was, but not good enough to want to go often enough to improve.

Jake bowled really naturally. I realized that I would probably pay good money just to sit and watch him bowl, and I wondered what that said about me. It mesmerized me, and I basically gave up trying not to stare at his ass and his legs and just hoped that nobody who knew who I was would be there to notice what I was looking at.

When I looked back at him after I took my turn, he was looking at me too, sometimes, but I don't think it was in the same way. He looked more amused by how bad I was at bowling.

Eventually it was time to head back, and we bought some drinks to go, then unlocked our bikes and hit the road.

Jake was riding no hands, and my back was sore so I tried to do it too, but it didn't feel safe in that breeze, and I grabbed the bars again. I watched his handlebars roam around on their own as he steered the bike lazily with his legs and his arms, letting things take their course and sort of following the bike around in the gusts of wind.

As we came back into town he dropped back down and rode normally again, and when we came to my turnoff he pulled over and stopped at the corner. I pulled up behind him and leaned my foot on the curb.

"What's up?"

"I was wondering if you wanted to head over to my place for dinner and maybe stay over?"

He didn't look at me, and I could tell he was nervous.

"Sure, why not? I should get some things, though, right?"

"You mean, like a toothbrush?" He smirked at me.

"Well, yeah. Maybe a change of clothes, too."

"Actually, we're kinda running late. I told my mom I'd be back before dark. Can you just wear some of my clothes?"

"Ok, lead the way."

He lived on the other side of town, in the older section. There were a few nice old houses over there, but most of them were at least a little run down. It was sort of like traveling back in time. Oldfashioned-looking porches, lots of cars that had seen better days.

We rolled up into his driveway, and he picked his bike up and carried it up the porch steps and unlocked the door and dragged it inside. I hesitated at the foot of the porch, and he waved me in.

"You better bring it in. Some of the people around here didn't do so well in the stock market."

I picked my bike up and carried it inside, then leaned it up against his in the front room and wandered into the kitchen where he was pouring us some lemonade.

We sat down at the table by the window and looked out into the neighboring yard. There was a toddler out there all alone, tottering around in the overgrown grass enclosed by a colorful fortress of enormous plastic toys.

After a while, we went upstairs to his room. It was cozy, with a bed and a desk with a pc, and a closet with a broken louvered door, and a window with some curtains fluttering in the breeze. The floorboards were squeaky. It wasn't really all that messy, so maybe he had cleaned up for me.

"You want to shower before we start dinner?"

"Are you saying I stink?" I was pretty sure I didn't.

"Are you saying you don't stink?"

"Who am I to say?"

He grabbed me and leaned into me, with his soft hair brushing my face and his nose touching my neck, then took a deep whiff of me and leaned back and wrinkled his nose.

When he leaned into me like that, I couldn't stop myself from inhaling him too. I could smell him, but it wasn't a bad smell, just faintly sweaty and kind of toasty and definitely his.

The sudden movement, his hands gripping my shoulders, his complex scent and the unexpected contact with his skin as he sniffed me, his warm breath and soft hair teasing the skin on my neck and cheek before he suddenly drew away, as if a tide or a current had reversed itself without warning, then resumed its usual course, left me dizzy for a moment.

He was standing there and looking at me as if measuring part of me that only he could see.

"Actually, you don't stink at all. Maybe you're not human?"

He gave me a mock look of horror, and then grinned.

"Ok you figured me out, I'm an alien. I will stink later on, though, if I don't shower, so...unless you wanna find out about alien B.O."

He looked at me for a moment, then nodded and put his hand on my upper arm and turned me slightly and pointed me across the hallway.

"There are clean towels in there, and I'll find you something to wear when you get out."

The bathroom was really worn-looking, with a corroded shower head fixed over a big old-fashioned bathtub that kind of fanned out at the top. I pulled the flimsy curtain closed and turned the hot water on and waited forever for it to heat up, then adjusted the temperature and climbed in.

After my shower, I dried off, wrapped the towel around my waist, and carried my dirty clothes back into Jake's bedroom.

He had laid out a clean pair of gray boxer briefs and a teeshirt and cargo shorts for me.

He looked over at me from his desk chair and stared at my chest.

"God you're so... white. I mean, you look really clean."

He blushed really badly, and I felt myself start to blush too.

"I can't tan at all. Even Andy tans better than me, I hate that."

He was silent for moment. It looked like he had something to say and then thought better of it and looked away.

Maybe he was waiting for me to get dressed, while I was waiting for him to go take his shower.

Then he stood up and stretched and kicked off his shoes and headed across the hall.

I waited until I heard the shower start, and then let my towel drop and held up the boxer briefs. They were a little big for me but close enough to get by with. I was stepping into them when I heard him curse, and then the shower turned off again. I pulled the boxer briefs up in a hurry, and after some banging around in the bathroom, he walked back into the room with a towel around his waist.

He made a frustrated noise and looked out the window.

"The hot water's not reliable up here. I'll have to wait a while to let it heat back up."

"Oh duh, I used up all the hot water. I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."

"Yeah, you're not supposed to have to think about that. At least we don't have to put a bucket on the stove."

I finished getting dressed, and we sat down and chatted a bit, as I tried not to peak at the gap between his spread legs exposed by the opening in the white towel. His skin was smooth and brown all over, and his chest was solid but lightly defined. I could make out the shapes of a few ribs, but his stomach was coated with a faint layer of fat that softened him and made him look younger than Andy, like something that wasn't finished yet.

After awhile, we went downstairs and started to heat some water for spaghetti. Once the spaghetti was on, Jake headed back upstairs to finish his shower.

I stayed and watched the water boil. After a few minutes, the front door slammed, and I thought maybe I heard my bike knock into Jake's.

Then a bleached blonde lady came into the kitchen and dumped a sack of groceries on the counter.

I stood up and said hi to her, and she startled visibly, then came over to greet me.

"Oh hi, honey! You must be Chase!"

"Yep, that's me. Jake's upstairs taking a shower."

"Well I've been dying to meet you. I'm Jake's momma. You can call me Maggie. Jake's told me lots of nice things about you."

I blushed, really bad.

"Nice to meet you. Thanks for having me over."

"You come over any time. You're always welcome."

"Thanks."

I got up and stirred the spaghetti, and she walked over and took the spoon away from me and shooed me away.

"Go sit down, you don't need to cook for me until at least your second visit."

Jake came down and rescued me after a few minutes of Q & A from Maggie. She had already made up her mind to like me, so it wasn't too bad.

Jake made a red sauce, and we ate spaghetti and garlic bread sticks. I was hungry from all that pedaling, so it was good.

After dinner, Maggie went over to a friend's place, and Jake and I went up to his room and just talked for a while.

My mom called me, and I told her I wasn't coming home. She sounded a little suspicious, maybe because I'd never said Jake's name to her. But I reminded her that Andy was out of town with the basketball team, so I guess it made sense to her. She didn't see much of me on the weekends anyway, since I usually slept at Andy's.

Then she asked to talk to Jake for a minute, and I rolled my eyes at him and passed him the phone.

They chatted for a while, and then he handed the phone back to me, and my mom told me to bring him over on Saturday so she could meet him. Like otherwise I would try to arrange our drug deals right under her nose without arousing suspicion. It was kind of touching, I guess, in that casually insulting way that showed me that my mom cared about me but didn't have a clue who I was.

"Sorry about that. She can be very annoying sometimes."

"Maybe that's why you're so good at brushing your teeth and doing your homework, huh?"

"Yeah, maybe. So you're saying being annoying runs in my family?"

"Hey, I just talked to some lady on the phone. For all I know she wasn't even your mom."

"Who was she then?"

"Could be an imposter. A mom impersonator."

"Actually, you're right. Maybe I'll point that out the next time she tries to tell me what to do."

"Good luck with that."

We spent about an hour looking for something to watch on Myflicks, then just picked something and watched it for a while, but it sucked, so we turned it off and compared notes on all the ways it sucked until we ran out of comments to make.

Then we played an Azinaut game, but I was getting my ass kicked off the space station every time I turned around, and eventually I ran out of platforms and functioning technology. I just floated out there in deep space and looked back enviously at Jake's imaginary empire as my last remaining assets were slipping from my grasp.

It was kind of revealing, though, because Jake was merciless. Andy was such a tough guy, and so competitive, but he never would have massacred me that bad. He would have made some self-sacrificing moves until I at least had a chance to recover.

I yawned, so I guess I must have been getting sleepy, and Jake noticed and offered to get things ready for bed.

He went and got the cushions off the sofa downstairs and laid them on the floor next to the bed, then tossed a few blankets and a couple of pillows on top and flopped down onto it with his back propped against the pillows. I leaned over and hung my head off the edge of the bed and looked at him.

He was starting to drift off already. His cheeks looked so smooth and soft, I wanted to reach out and press them with the back of my hand. He had his legs drawn up, and I could see the tiny fine hairs on his calves and the swelling curve of his thigh.

I know this sounds stupid, but with his legs like that, he had the sexiest knees I had ever seen, which isn't all that surprising, because I'd never noticed anyone's knees before, and it had never occurred to me that knees could be sexy.

I could have looked at him like that all night, but he stirred around and stretched out one leg all the way and opened his eyes.

"Sorry, I guess I'm sleepier than you."

"You sure you'll be comfortable down there?"

"Hmmm. More comfortable than we would be if I slept up there with you. I don't have room for a big bed in here."

"Hey, I'm used to it. Andy's bed is a lot bigger, but he's so clingy, we might as well be in a twin."

"I'll be sure to mention that to him on Monday."

"Yeah, I wouldn't recommend that."

"I thought you said he wasn't scary?"

"It's not that ... he just has an image to protect."

"What about my image?"

I snorted.

"Like, you mean, your slacker boy image?"

He opened his eyes again and glanced at at me and then looked away.

"Just because I don't track my assignments on a spreadsheet doesn't make me a slacker."

"Hey, I like your image." I put my hand on his raised knee and shook it back and forth. "Seriously, Jake, I think you're awesome."

He looked at me again with a look I recognized from a few other times. It looked like he was asking me for a sign, or maybe the look itself was some kind of sign.

Then his face relaxed, and he looked down in his lap kind of shyly.

"Thanks."

"I hate to seem obsessed but ... do you have a toothbrush I can use?"

"Yeah, come on, I'll find one for you."

I rolled off the bed and gave him a hand up, but he almost tipped me over.

He banged around in the bathroom drawers, then sighed and went downstairs for a minute. When he came back, he had a sheepish look on his face.

"So...I kinda lied about the toothbrush. But we can sterilize mine before you use it."

He waved the brush at me and started to walk away.

"I'm not a germophobe."

I tugged him back by his arm and took the toothbrush from him and went ahead and brushed my teeth. He just watched me, like he was expecting to see me gag or something. I tried to do an abbreviated version of my brushing routine, then rinsed the brush off, spread another layer of toothpaste on it, and passed it to him.

"Your turn."

He looked at me like I'd made some kind of questionable countermove that he suspected wasn't legit.

"You think you're smart, don't you?"

"I AM smart. So yeah."

He brushed quickly and looked at me over his shoulder.

"You're not smart, you're ...evil," he said, pronouncing the last word right after he spat.

"Ha. Thanks for the compliment."

We purposely bumped into each other's shoulders, hard, a couple of times on the way back to the bedroom.

I dropped my shorts and crawled into bed under the covers and sat back against the headboard and watched him undress. He peeled off his shirt and kicked off his shorts and then stretched for a moment, up on the balls of his feet.

When he turned to open the window in his very slightly bagged gray boxer briefs, the almost inconceivable cuteness of his butt made me catch my breath.

He strolled back and turned off the light and crawled over the cushions and tossed around for a minute until he found the right position.

"Hey Jake?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for like...coming to get me and everything. I really like doing stuff with you."

"I knew it would be like this."

"Huh?"

"I mean I had a feeling we'd ... fit together. From way back."

"Way back when?"

"Back when I first saw you. A few years ago."

"So what took so long?"

"Well, you never talked to me, for one thing. And you were always with Andy, like joined at the hip, separated at birth, whatever. And he's really ..."

"Yeah, I know, scary."

"And sort of possessive and stuff ... like he owns you."

"He's just protective. We went through some things together, and he ... kinda tries to look out for me. You don't need to worry about Andy."

"If you say so."

"Well, he might be a dick to you, but join the club."

"I'm really looking forward to that."

"Haha."

"What time do you usually get up on Saturday?"

"Maybe 10 or so?"

"Yeah. Night, Chase."

"Night."

A few minutes later I could tell from his long slow breathing that he had fallen asleep. I listened to him breathe for a while before I fell asleep too.

Part 3

When I woke up in the morning, I felt weird. It was strange waking up in somebody else's bed besides Andy's. I wondered if Jake's mom was up, and if I needed to put shorts on before I went across the hall to pee.

I looked over the edge of the bed at Jake, and he was sprawled out all over the cushions, with the blanket twisted up underneath him, breathing audibly into his pillow. I felt an aching urge to cover him, but not with a blanket. He looked so right where he was, but I felt this nagging sense of loss at what I'd missed by not getting to share the bed with him.

I had a pee hardon I needed to take care of, so I quietly got up and checked to see if the coast was clear, then crept across the hall and sat down and peed as quietly as I could, aiming my dick away from the water so the peestream hit the side of the bowl. I didn't hear anything in the house, but it sounded like there was a block party outside, people shouting and car doors slamming and music streaming in through the open window.

I snuck back into bed and just lay there for a while listening to Jake's breathing weave in and out of the block party noises, as if they were part of the same story.

Then I fell asleep for a bit, and when I woke up, Jake was bouncing on the bed on his hands and knees, with his head hanging down over my face. I could smell the toothpaste on his warm breath, so I figured he'd been up for a while, but he was still in just his boxer briefs. He grabbed my wrists and pinned them down on the pillow and smirked at me.

"What are you gonna do now?"

"I'm just gonna lay here and rest. Later on I might kick you in the balls if I need to get up and pee, though."

"Ooh. You fight dirty."

"Like Andy always says, if you're gonna fight, fight to win."

"I guess Andy's the authority on that."

"Yeah."

I peered down at the crotch of his briefs and tried to see if he was getting hard, because I was. He didn't seem concerned by it though, and I guess he wasn't all that hard. Suddenly I felt this aching urge to hold him in my arms, and it hit me all at once that his apparent lack of a hardon probably meant that would never happen.

"What's wrong?"

"What?"

"You just look depressed all of a sudden."

It kind of scared me. Was I that transparent? And if I was, what else could he see?

"Sorry, I was just thinking about something. Did you eat already?"

"That look was because you're hungry?"

"No, I'm just changing the subject."

"OK. What do you usually eat?"

"Cereal?"

"What kind?"

"Whatever you have. I'm not picky."

"Well, are you a fruit loops, frosted flakes guy or a cheerios guy?"

"Definitely cheerios. That sugary stuff will rot your teeth."

He leaned all the way down again and showed me his fangs right in my face.

"What's wrong with my teeph?"

His teeth were actually perfect and amazingly white.

"Just don't come crying to me when they all fall out."

"I don't see that happening. Unless you become a dentist."

He let go of my wrists and played a drum pattern on my chest.

"Come on, get up, it's almost 10:30 already."

"How did that happen?"

I sat up and stretched, then swung my legs off the bed and stood up. As I turned around I saw his eyes drop to my crotch and take in the badly boned-up boxer briefs, but he didn't say anything, just sort of smirked.

I put on his shorts and went into the bathroom to pee again, but the boner was blocking my peestream, so it took me forever.

When I came back into the room he was pulling on his shorts. He still had the same slightly self-satisfied look on his face.

We went down and ate breakfast, and he was telling me about the neighbors and the block party. Apparently a lot of drinking and badassing would go down and the party might not end until late in the night when the cops were called.

He looked over his shoulder into the next-door neighbors' yard, and the same little girl we had seen the evening before was out in the same clothes, looking around and crying softly to herself.

Jake shook his head and muttered something under his breath, then got up and walked out the back door and over to the fence that separated the yards and started talking to the girl. She nodded at him and wiped her nose, then held out her arms.

He slipped over the fence and picked her up and walked back to the fence and set her down on the other side, then swung himself back over and picked her up and brought her inside.

He sat back down at the table with her in his lap and asked her what kind of cereal she wanted.

"Food loops." She pointed at the box and nodded. "Yeah."

"Chase, can you get this girl a bowl and a spoon?"

"Sure."

I grabbed a bowl and a spoon and opened up the box and poured the bowl half-full of fruit loops, then covered them in milk and set it down in front of her.

"Can you say thanks Chase?"

"Thanks Chase." She giggled and looked up at Jake. "Wha Chase?"

I waved my hand like a crazy man. She made a disgusted face and kept eating.

"Can you tell Chase your name, silly girl?"

"Haw? My Evie?"

"That's right. Evie, meet Chase."

"Hi Evie!"

"Say hi Chase."

"Chase?" She giggled again and shook her head dismissively. Evidently the name Chase was a little hard to accept for some reason.

"My mom will be back around noon, and she can look after her for the rest of the day. Or maybe the rest of the weekend."

"Wha?"

"Maggie's coming soon, Evie. What do you think about that?"

"Maggie. Ahng!"

She made a gloating face and nodded to herself, then aimed another spoonful of cereal and milk at her mouth and watched half of it fall down the front of her shirt.

We hung out at the table for a while and watched Evie play with the soggy fruitloops until she had distributed them fairly between her clothing and the tablecloth and Jake's hand.

When Maggie came home, she fussed over Evie for a moment, and then wrinkled her nose. She picked her up and held her a few feet away from her and took her back for a bath and a change of clothes.

Jake started wiping up some of the milk and fruitloops scattered around the table and chair.

"Where do you think her parents are?"

He shook his head and gazed out the window.

"She doesn't have parents, she has ... scumbags."

He glanced back at me and watched my face for a moment as if he hoped it would show what I thought. Then he looked down.

"Sorry, it just makes me angry. It never does any good, though. You want to get out of here?"

"Whenever."

"We'll give them a few more minutes and then go up and shower real fast."

"I'll let you go first."

"Good idea."

We went upstairs, and he went through his dresser and got out a couple of shirts and some shorts and tossed them on the bed with a handful of white sox and identical pairs of boxer briefs.

He walked across the hall and took about a 3 minute shower, then came back with a towel around his waist.

"It's all yours."

I waited for a couple of minutes to see if he would get dressed in front of me, but he didn't, so I sighed and grabbed a pair of briefs and shorts and headed for the bathroom.

I took a quick shower and when I came back he was already dressed.

I pulled the shirt he had picked out for me over my head and and went over to the mirror above his dresser to slick back my hair.

"Very smooth."

"You like?"

"Yeah, you're stylin' again except for my clothes."

"I like your clothes."

"Yeah, right."

"They're comfy."

I didn't tell him that wearing his clothes was turning me on. I didn't want him to think I was a freak. It was kind of like being in his skin in a weird way, and I guess that was where part of me wanted to be.

"Shall we go?"

"Yep."

We rolled out the bikes and bumped them down the steps and out onto the walk. Both sides of the street were full of parked cars, and the thumping bass sounds from the assorted speakers were shaking the windows of the nearby houses.

As we were pulling away, a huge drunk guy across the street screamed "Hey Jako", and made a grinding motion with his hips, then turned around and laughed his ass off.

Jake shook his head and pedaled away.

"Drunk fuck."

"Yeah, that was scary."

"I hate living here."

"Gotta love the neighbors, right?"

We pedaled out to Riverside Park and just rode up and down the bike paths until we got bored. Then he bought us drinks from the machine, and we sat down under a big old tree.

"You come out here a lot?"

"I guess. It's the only real park on this side of town."

"So what do you want to do today?"

"Umm. Maybe a movie?"

"Damn, that reminds me. I left my money in my shorts at your house."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out two twenties and rubbed them together.

"That's my cash for this week."

"Big spender."

"Yeah. I mowed lawns this summer, so I saved some up."

"Hey at least you get paid. That's on my list of chores."

"Must be tough."

"Yeah, I guess I'm a little spoiled overall."

"Ya think?"

"We should probably have dinner with my parents, if that's okay with you. My mom needs to make sure that you're not my drug dealer or something, or at least find out if your rates are reasonable. Then we can go catch a movie and you can crash with me afterwards."

He didn't look up, but I saw a faint smile flicker over his features. He looked shy again, like when I'd told him that he was awesome. I felt like I needed to know how such a simple statement could make him smile like that, so I could figure out how to do it again.

"Hope I pass."

"Huh?"

"Hope I pass the test."

"Please. They let me practically live with Andy. You'll be, like, their number one son in about 10 minutes."

"You mean they don't like Andy?"

"It's not that. They don't really take him seriously. My dad says Andy is always talking himself up. He thinks it's a little guy's thing, because Andy's short, but Andy would be Andy if he woke up one morning 6 feet tall, he'd just have one more thing to love about himself."

"Sounds about right."

"They like Andy, though. It's just ... they kind of know him too well."

"So I guess they're in the club."

"Yeah. They're not huge fans, but they like what he did for me."

"You mean the fight?"

"Oh...no. Not that. I mean, I was ... really shy, not a happy kid, when we first moved here. And when I met Andy, he changed that. I guess he kinda, I don't know, saved me from myself or something."

"You're lucky."

"Huh?"

"I mean, you're lucky in a lot of ways, but I guess ... having a friend like that, is the luckiest thing."

"Yeah. I know that."

He leaned over and rubbed my arm tentatively.

"What's that?"

"I guess it doesn't rub off."

"Don't be too sure."

I smiled at him and stood up, then gave him a hand up, bracing myself better than the last time.

Then I bent down and picked up my bike and mounted up, balancing with one arm against the tree while he got his bike up. We took the long way across town, following the river for a ways, and then cut off onto the access road that ran beside the freeway.

By the time we got out to my house, it was about 1:30.

"Hi Mom, this is Jake."

"Hi Jake, good to put a face to the name. You can call me Jane."

"Her name is really Myrtle, like the turtle, but she likes to be called Jane."

"No, my name is actually plain old Jane."

"Don't put yourself down, mom."

She rolled her eyes and herded us into the kitchen.

She fixed us a super healthy berry-flax-and-chia-based snack (don't ask) while Jake sipped carefully at his cherry juice, obviously making an effort not to allow his face to come into contact with it at any point. He ate the barely edible healthy snack as if that was exactly what he had expected to turn up on his plate.

Then we went downstairs and played pool for a while. Jake was about as good as I was, not all that good, but good enough to get lucky sometimes.

"So you want to go for a swim?"

"You got a suit for me?

"We're like, nudists, we don't use suits."

"Um. Maybe some other time, when your mom isn't home?"

"Actually, I have something that will probably fit you."

"Ok."

"It's a thong thingie. Very cute."

"Thanks. That sounds ... nasty."

"It is. You'll love it."

"Okay, maybe swimming isn't such a good idea."

"Seriously, we really do skinnydip at night, but only when it's just me and Andy, and my parents know not to come outside."

"Ok, that's better."

"You're relieved, aren't you?"

"Hey, I got nothing to hide. I just don't know your mom that well. I mean, I don't want to get to know her that way."

"I'm sure she feels the same."

"Let's hope so."

"Do you need to pee or something before we swim?"

"Yeah, maybe I should. It sounds like it could get stressful."

"It's right in there. I'll go get you a suit."

I changed into some boardshorts and looked through my drawers and came up with some other boardies and trunks I thought might fit him better than they fit me. He was definitely more muscular than me in the butt and legs, so I picked two I didn't wear much because they were too baggy on me. My mom ordered them for me online when she was shopping for herself, and they were nice styles, just cut wrong for me, but I never sent them back.

When I got downstairs he was wandering around the rec room looking at all the stuff on the walls and shelves.

"Do you want to call your mom and tell her you're staying over?"

"Yeah, I already did. She said ok."

"Here, try these on and see what fits best."

I tossed him the shorts and trunks. He went back in the bathroom and came out smiling and wearing the board shorts.

"They both fit, but these look coolest."

"Yeah, I like the styles, they just didn't fit me. My mom was internet shopping. They look way better on you than on me though."

"If you say so."

"Seriously, you rock them. They're yours, just don't forget to bring them when you come over."

He looked down for a moment, like he was trying to figure out the most polite way to accept or refuse the gift.

"Thanks, Chase."

"You sound like Evie."

He scrunched up his face into an imitation of her scowl and then smiled again.

"Okay, that was actually scarier than Evie."

I followed him upstairs, blatantly perving on his butt and legs, which were amazing in the board shorts. I realized that I needed to stop doing that to him, but I kept putting off the resolution until a time when his awe inspiring ass wasn't waving around in front of my face.

We hit the pool and splashed around in the shallow end. Jake was completely at home in the water, but hadn't really learned the strokes. He mostly just bobbed around and did versions of a breaststroke and a crawl that more or less worked.

We shot waterhoops for a while, first just trying to block shots but eventually wrestling for control of the ball and trying to pull each other out of range, until we forgot about the ball completely. I worked out regularly with Andy, so I had more upper body strength than Jake, even though he was stronger overall.

I can't even explain how great it felt to be like that, to have my arms around him, my head next to his, my chest pressed to his back, my hands on his arms, my legs gripping his thighs.

We were laughing and struggling for control, but there were moments when I felt him stop squirming and just lean back into me and relax in my embrace, and I felt like he was almost mine, like I could almost reach out and touch the moment in the future when he would give me something that no one else had ever given me, something that was only his to give.

Maybe I was kidding myself, but he felt so right in my arms, and for those fleeting moments he seemed so content to be there, that it was hard not to believe that he was feeling the same things, that we were meant to be together, that this was what we had always been or had somehow become, this mixed up bundle of nerves that couldn't easily be separated into things that were his and things that were mine.

He had to know I had a hardon the whole time, but he never pulled away, and if anything he laughed even louder when it bumped into his leg or his butt, as if it were the most natural thing in the world and part of the game he had expected to play.

Finally we broke apart, breathing hard, exhausted, and he floated there facing me from a foot away, grinning, looking right in my eyes, and I suddenly felt sure that it was going to happen eventually, that we would take a step towards each other and let ourselves cross the borders we'd already come so close to without acknowledging that they were there.

I picked up his hand and looked at the puffy wrinkled skin on his fingertips, then showed them to him.

"You're so waterlogged."

I threaded my fingers through his with both hands and lifted them to eye level and stepped toward him, slowly steering him backwards until he was standing against the side of the pool. We just looked at each other. I let our hands drop into the water and let go of him, reached out and squeezed his mouth into fishlips for a moment, then pushed the wet hair away from his cheek with the back of my hand. I put my hands on his shoulders and stepped onto the tops of his feet.

I wanted to kiss him so bad it hurt, and then there was this fleeting sense of panic that I might let myself do it, that it might be a terrible mistake, and I moved away again, as if stepping back from the edge of a cliff I hadn't realized was there, and turned and started walking towards the steps.

He surged up behind me and wrapped himself around my waist and back and chest and squeezed me hard, and I lurched and then kept moving through the water and took a step up and then another, until I was half out of the water, tottering under his weight before I suddenly launched us both backward onto our backs.

We went under together and he held onto me tight as we exhaled at the same time and I felt us slowly sinking until his butt came to rest against the bottom of the pool. We were curled up in a ball together, his arms and legs holding me in place. We just lay there like that until I could feel my lungs burning, and I moved against him impulsively before he let go of me and we pushed back up to the surface together, then separated as I turned around to face him.

When he came into focus again he was looking at me and smiling with this light in his eyes, and I was sure that he was telling me something, that he'd shown me something, but I still couldn't let myself step over the border and just kiss him.

I knew we needed to get out of the water and get ready for dinner, but I didn't want to let go of the feeling he'd given me. I didn't want to get out of the pool and walk away from whatever that was and start talking as if nothing had happened.

I grabbed his forearm and pulled him back up the steps with me. He followed me inside the poolhouse and stood beside me under the big shower head. I turned it on full blast and we rinsed off in the warm water and moved around in a semicircle facing each other under it.

Then I turned the shower off and grabbed a couple of towels from the shelf and wrapped one around my waist and one around his back and shoulders and lightly hugged him inside it from behind for a second and let him go. I tugged my board shorts off and fixed the towel around my waist again and walked around him over to the drier and and hung the suit up inside it.

When I turned back, he was bent over a little and stepping out of his board shorts. The shocking whiteness between his sharply defined tan lines distracted me for a second from the rest of him, which was perfect, too. I mean it was his, so it was perfect to me. He was chubbed up, maybe 4 or so inches of him, the base of it fringed with wet swirls of dark hair still dripping from his shower. It was darker than mine or Andy's, and cut, and I had a hard time looking away. I never really cared about dicks much, they were just part of the scenery, but this was different, because the scenery was him, and it was awesome.

I took the wet shorts from him and picked up the end of the towel hanging off his shoulder and swabbed at the wet hair around his ear.

"I'll get you some drops for your ears when we go upstairs."

"Huh?"

"You know, alcohol. To clean them out?"

"What for? I mean, I just cleaned them out for a couple of hours in the pool, right?"

"I don't know, I think it keeps you from getting ear infections from the pool water."

He made a skeptical face, and then nodded knowingly.

"You're the cleaning expert, I just follow your teachings."

"Oh good, my first follower. Soon I'll be unstoppable."

"I mean, if we still have some time after the toothbrushing lessons."

I tossed his suit in the drier with mine and turned the timer on.

"Come on, get decent and let's go up to my room and get ready for dinner."

"How decent can I be with just a towel?"

He was smirking again and I reached out and squeezed his cheeks into the fishlips again.

"Too decent."

I let his mouth go and he grinned at me.

"You really like doing that to me don't you?"

I started to blush really bad. I don't know why I was so embarrassed, because I had bumped my hardon into him more than a few times in the pool, and he had never blinked, just laughed, but for some reason I felt like he'd busted me for something less sexual, but maybe more intimate and revealing.

Plus now he was naked, and within a few seconds I was boning up for the umpteenth time that afternoon.

"Sorry, I just can't resist your chubby cheeks."

"Yeah, I know, I'm irresistable."

"Kinda. Just don't go getting a big head like Andy."

"I don't really see that happening."

"Are you hungry yet?"

"Yeah, I could eat anytime."

"Hopefully it won't be too healthy."

"Hey I liked that snack. And it didn't fill me up either."

"That's a basic design flaw in my mom's snacks."

He wrapped the towel around his waist and I pointed him toward the door and followed him through it as we emerged outside into the last bits of brilliant daylight before the sun started to set.

I could feel the wind picking up, scattering the leaves around our feet in lines that shifted together, hovered just above the surface of the cement pad, then settled in patterns that seemed preordained, like iron filings lined up along the poles of a bar magnet that was hidden from view.

We went upstairs, and I tossed him some boxers and grabbed a pair for myself and went into the bathroom and peed, then put the boxers on and hung up my towel.

I called out to him to toss me his towel, and he walked in and handed it to me, then I hung it up and got out the drops and told him to go lie down on the bed.

He kind of fake sighed, and threw himself back on the bed. I put a towel under his head and turned him on his side.

"You just want to play with my cheeks again."

"Fringe benefit. Just keep your head like that until I tell you to turn over."

I shook the bottle and filled up the dropper and lined it up over his ear, pushing his matted hair out of the way. He kind of shivered when it went in.

"Ooh, that feels weird."

"Yeah it's kind of creepy, but better than an earache."

"How long is this gonna take?"

"Couple of minutes. Then you can do me."

"Ok, maybe it's worth it then."

"Pervert."

"Hmm. I think we both know who the pervert is here."

"Takes one to know one."

"True."

After a minute, I put the washcloth around his ear to catch the runoff and told him to turn his head over.

"Oh that feels good. It's almost worth the creepy feeling just to get rid of it."

"See, now who's a pervert?"

"I'm just, like, the pervert's apprentice."

"Don't worry, someday you'll have your own perversion."

"Don't get my hopes up."

"I would never do that."

I filled him up again, and he seemed more resigned to it this time.

"Is this like ... some rich people's superstition?"

"Huh?"

"I mean I never heard of this before."

"Where did you learn to swim?"

"Rec center."

"I don't know, maybe it is kind of weird. Andy goes along with it, but his dad is a doctor."

"Maybe it's because you don't use as much chlorine in the pool. It didn't seem as strong as the public pool."

"Actually that might make a big difference. Go ahead and tip it out now, I've got it."

He shook his head and sat up and looked at me with a kind of devious smile.

"Ok, now it's my turn."

I traded places with him and he went through the process with a big windup and an exaggerated imitation of a mad doctor. He overflowed my ear, but I didn't complain.

"How much does this stuff cost anyway?"

"Fifty bucks a bottle."

"No way."

"It's like plain alcohol, it probably costs about a penny per ear."

"Oh. Well that's good anyway. At least your perversions are cheap."

He shook my head a little and pulled on my earlobe.

"Ow!"

"Did it go down deeper?"

"Yeah there was a little glugging sound, and I think I felt some of it go into my brainpan."

"You have a brainpan? What's that?"

"I don't know, I must have heard it somewhere. Maybe it's like the pan your brain sits on."

"I thought it was just floating around up there."

"Well, maybe it's floating in a brainpan."

"I think you've been watching too many cartoons, and not enough educational tv."

"Okay, maybe I just invented the brainpan."

"You can turn over now, I'm ready to do the other ear."

There was a devious expression on his face.

"What?"

I turned over and he grabbed me under the arms and slid me over the bed to the edge until my head was hanging over the side.

"What are you doing?"

"Don't worry, I've done this before. Just not with a live patient."

"Shut up."

He turned my head to the side and filled up the other ear. Then he twisted my head back and pulled on my earlobe a few times. I could hear the glugging sound again, and then nothing.

"You know you're starting to scare me, Jake."

"That's the idea."

"I'm glad you're enjoying yourself anyway."

"Yeah I had no idea all this sick hygiene stuff was so much fun."

"We haven't even gotten to the good stuff yet."

"That's what I was afraid of. Okay, say aaah."

"Aaah?"

He held the washcloth up to my ear and started tickling me with his free hand. I thrashed my head around and he let go of the washcloth and stood up and kept tickling me as I tried to slide away. Then he flopped down onto the bed and straddled me with his hands on my chest, looked down into my eyes and smiled.

I looked up at him and felt my heart leap, that ridiculous surging feeling when it skips or beats twice somehow, and then falls back into step as if nothing has happened, when something has obviously happened, even if you have no idea what it is.

It seemed to me that no matter how trivially we spent our time together, there was this current running between us that made every detail matter, that made his face radiant and his voice vibrant and his touch electric. And I was having a hard time denying the feeling that he was mine, that all of this could be ours, that this moment wouldn't be all that we shared.

I grabbed his wrists and just held them there with his hands on my chest and looked into him and tried to send some of what I was feeling back to him, but I wasn't sure it reached him.

I sighed and grabbed hold of one of his elbows, then let my fingers slide back down his forearm to his wrist.

"We should probably get dressed for dinner."

"What's wrong with boxers?"

"That sounds like a question for the suggestion box."

I let him go, and he got up and reached out for me and pulled me to my feet.

I walked into the closet and picked out a really trendy prosaïque outfit that was more Andy's style than mine, and laid it out on the bed for him.

"See if that's ok. If not just pick whatever you like out of the closet."

He picked the pants up and started to step into them.

"These look cool but ... kinda dressy."

"We're going out, right?"

He paused abruptly and looked up at me, with one leg in the pants, sort of wobbling on one leg, as if I'd surprised him somehow.

"Um, yeah. I almost forgot. Where to?"

"You choose."

He resumed tugging the pants on until they hugged his hips.

"I guess Maxi. I don't know what's showing."

"Maybe just go and choose the one that's about to start?"

"You don't drive yet, right?"

"No, I have my learner's, I still need an adult. Andy's parents are such good liars, he got his a year early. How bout you?"

"Yeah, I'll get mine in February. I won't have a car, though."

We went downstairs and my mom adjusted my shirt collar, even though I had checked it in the mirror before I went down and was sure it looked fine.

The table was set, and there was wine opened, so I went ahead and poured it. I poured some for Jake, too, in case he wanted some. We stood in the kitchen and watched my mom put things together and then set them on the table.

Eventually my dad arrived and shook hands with Jake.

"You guys look sharp. You going out on the town tonight?"

"Just a movie."

"What are you seeing?"

"I don't know, what's showing?"

"There must be an internet around here somewhere."

"Right, Dad. Or we could ask a real live human his own personal opinion."

"Hmmm. What kind of movie are you looking for? Maybe a good oldfashioned western? "

"Ha ha. Maybe not. I was thinking more like a perfect crime kinda film."

"That's a bit worrisome, Chase. You know, crime never pays."

"Except when it does."

"How about you, Jake? What are you voting for?"

"Um. Popcorn?"

My dad laughed, almost a belly laugh, which was unusual for him. He was generally more into the kind of humor that was a little too dry to get a belly laugh.

"You're my kind of guy, Jake. Just be careful, though. Chase has been known to choose movies that turned out to be in languages we don't understand, with very mystifying subtitles."

"That was one time, dad."

"That's because after that I started asking if there were subtitles involved."

"I'm sure it was a good movie, if we'd just stayed until the end."

"It was like reading fortune cookies all night long. I don't think the ending would have cleared things up."

"I think it won an Oscar, too."

"I'm sure it did. Most inscrutable subtitles in a foreign language."

"Okay, okay. It was bad."

My mom called us to the table, and we sat down and started to eat right away.

My dad toasted us "to the movies, and possibly popcorn, hold the subtitles", and we tasted the red wine, which tasted the way red wine usually tastes, like red wine.

"Are you a connoisseur of wine, Jake?"

My dad looked like he had another round of barely detectable dry wit coming on.

"Not exactly."

"You're not a drinking man?"

"Well, I'm not really legal yet, so mostly I stick to the kid stuff."

"Wise choice."

My mom gave my dad a disapproving look, and tried to steer the conversation in a more wholesome direction.

"Do you have any brothers and sisters, Jake?"

"No, it's just me and my mom."

"Your mom work here in town?" My dad really seemed curious about Jake for some reason.

"Yeah, at the hospital."

"Oh. That's nice. What department?" I could tell my mom was trying to identify mutual acquaintances.

"She's in the cleaning department."

My dad looked over at Jake with renewed interest.

"That's such a big place, sometimes we forget how many people it takes to keep it going."

"Yeah I guess. She's worked there since we moved here when I was 8."

"You two guys known each other long? At Anderson too?"

"Yeah, I went there too, but we didn't really know each other. Chase was kind of stuck up back then." He looked over at me with a sly smile on his face.

"I wasn't stuck up. I was shy."

My dad winked at me and looked back at Jake.

"That's very perceptive of you, Jake. We had a child psychiatrist talk to Chase back then, but he wasn't quite as perceptive as you. He was very concerned."

My mom gave my dad another disapproving look, but he ignored it.

"Of course, that was before Andy had really had time to work his magic on Chase."

"Thanks, dad. I was hoping you'd want to reminisce with us tonight."

"Any time, son."

There was silence for a minute, and then my dad looked over at Jake again.

"You familiar with Andy too, Jake?"

"Well, I guess mostly by reputation."

My dad chuckled appreciatively.

"That's a good choice of words. He's almost ...a legend of sorts. Especially ... in his own eyes."

He chewed his food contemplatively, as if reflecting on the merits of some historical figure we would all obviously have a shared interest in discussing, like Napoleon.

My mom looked at me with concern.

"You know we love Andy like our own son, Chase."

"I hope that's an exaggeration, Mom. For my sake."

She rolled her eyes and looked around the table for food that wasn't being eaten.

"I guess nobody wants the fruit salad?"

Jake reached over for it and dished some onto his untouched salad plate, and my Mom gave him an encouraging look. He chewed it in silence, then washed it down with some water.

"What's in that dressing?"

"Pistachios."

"Cool combination."

"Thank you Jake. That's sweet of you to say. Can I get you anything else?"

"No thanks. I think I'm satisfied."

"He's saving room for popcorn, Jane."

Jake coughed suddenly into his napkin, as his eyes started to water and his face heated up.

"You alright, Jake?"

He nodded unconvincingly.

"I'm fine. Sorry."

Jake and I helped clear the table and then went back upstairs to get ready to go out.

I brushed my teeth while he leaned against the door and watched me with a slight smirk on his face.

"You know you're making me self-conscious about my oral hygiene." There was a long trail of foam running down the side of my hand onto my wrist.

"Now you know how I felt."

"Hey, I'm the one who should be self-conscious about my crazy family. You're just an innocent bystander."

"It wasn't so bad. Your dad was sort of funny."

"I think almost funny would be more like it."

"Whatever. Not boring anyway."

"Stick around. Once you get used to it, it's more boring than almost funny."

"Are you anywhere close to being finished brushing?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, your turn." I rinsed my arm off to the elbow and handed him the tube.

He squeezed in front of me and brushed his teeth quickly while watching me watch him in the mirror. I knew I was admiring him more than I should have, and when our eyes met in the mirror I blushed and then tried to pass it off in exaggerated awe of his toothbrushing technique.

"You make that look so easy dude."

"Could that possibly be ... because it is?"

I stepped away from him without answering, and involuntarily looked him up and down for a moment. He looked great. I didn't want to say that, in case it made him selfconscious about wearing my clothes. They were the kind of clothes that made me look a little posy and pretentious, I guess, but managed to meet him halfway, since there was nothing else that was pretentious about him.

We went down to see who wanted to drive us to the movies, and my dad was volunteered, so he ushered us out into the garage, and we got into his ridiculously pampered A7, which he slowly backed out onto the street. Then he looked casually over his shoulder at Jake.

"Do you drive yet, Jake?"

"I have my learner's permit, but I don't get my license until February."

My dad pulled over at the end of the next block and got out of the car and walked around to the passenger seat where Jake was sitting and then opened the door.

Jake looked up at him like he was trying to decide exactly which kind of lunatic he was dealing with, and didn't make a move to get out of the car.

"Why don't you take the wheel on the way there, and Chase will log some miles on the way back."

Jake looked over his shoulder at me helplessly. Then he looked back up at my dad as though he might as well try to reason with him.

"Um, no offense, but I'm afraid I'd be really nervous about something happening to your car if I drove it."

"Let me ask you something, Jake. Do you like my car?"

He eyed my dad warily, obviously trying to calculate his odds of giving the correct answer.

"I really really like your car. It's a beauty."

"The thing is, when you see a beautiful car, you don't just want to sit in it like a corpse riding in a hearse, do you? You want to drive it. You see where I'm going with this?"

"Um. Not exactly?"

"If you wrecked my car, that would be embarrassing for you, wouldn't it."

"Very embarrassing."

"But if you decided not to drive my car, because of the small chance of something embarrassing happening to you, what kind of a life would that lead to?"

"Um. A safe one? Without embarrassment?"

"Exactly. I couldn't have put it better myself, Jake. Drive carefully."

Jake looked back at me one last time, this time without any visible hope of finding a rational way out of this, and got out of the car. He walked around to the driver's side and looked at the door for a few seconds, then got in and adjusted his seat belt. He checked the mirrors, put the car in drive, and slowly pulled forward, stopped at the stop sign, and then headed out toward the freeway, driving cautiously all the way.

As he approached the entrance ramp, it became clear from the dense but rapidly moving traffic pattern that merging into it would be a little tricky. There was a moment of hesitation, and then Jake saw a spot open up on the horizon where a semi had changed lanes.

He floored it, and as the g forces pinned us to our seats, he sped relentlessly toward the opening, braked hard as we approached the space, and then neatly slipped into the single open slot just as the accelleration lane we were in faded away.

He seemed completely calm as he spoke without shifting his gaze from the traffic in front of him.

"Nice."

My dad was absolutely silent in the passenger seat the rest of the way to the theater.

When we pulled up in front of the box office, Jake put the car in park and looked over at my dad with a polite smile on his face.

"You were right. That was a lot of fun. Thanks for letting me drive your car."

My dad cleared his throat.

"Jake, I have a feeling that you'll go far in life."

He got out and handed me some cash, waited for us until we had figured out which movie to see and what time it got out, and then got back in his car and drove away.

We had about fifteen minutes to kill after we bought our tickets, so we leaned up against the wall by the arcade games.

He looked over at me and caught me staring at his face.

"What?"

"It's just... I've seen so many people interact with my dad, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone come out on top quite like that."

"Hmmm. That's not really what I was trying to do."

"Well, whatever you were trying to do, it worked. He'll never make you drive his precious car again."

"That's okay."

He smiled kind of mischievously.

Just then this annoying girl named Lisa from school approached us.

"Oh my god, Chase, I never see you without Andy, is he not here?"

"No, he's at some basketball cult indoctrination session."

"You're so bad! That's what you get for being friends with a jock though."

"Yeah, Andy's not really a jock, you know."

"Well, I'm sure you know him better than I do."

"Didn't you go out with him for a while?"

"That's what I meant."

She turned her attention to Jake, after initially failing to acknowledge his existence.

"I almost didn't recognize you, Jake. You look ...different somehow. I mean ... just great."

"Thanks. I'm trying to change my image. Hanging out with the beautiful people. Like Chase here."

He hung his arm over my shoulder and gave her a 'your move' sort of look. She looked back and forth between us for a moment.

"Okay, I'm not going to delve into that comment. What are you guys seeing?"

"What I'm Here For?"

A couple of friends of Andy's walked over to us, and Lisa looked over her shoulder and gave us all a fake smile.

"Alright. Enjoy your movie. Just wanted to say hi."

She walked off as if she'd performed an unexpectedly distasteful duty to the best of her meager abilities.

Jake watched her walk away, and then removed his arm from around my neck.

The girls were smiling at us a bit conspiratorily, and I wondered what they were thinking.

"Hey Anne -- Steph -- what's up?"

"Just killing time before the show. We thought we'd rescue you from Lisa. How about you guys?"

"You know how it is. Somebody told us the sushi was good here, so here we are. You two know Jake?"

Steph gave him a big smile and put her hand on his shoulder and then left it there while I tried not to notice where it was so I wouldn't have to tell her to keep her hands off him.

"We have some classes together. Jake's pretty quiet, though. He's a bit of a mystery."

He smiled shily.

"I try."

"Well it's working. We all have our theories about you, but no one seems to have cracked the code yet."

She looked over at me and then let go of his arm and sort of smoothed out the front of his shirt over his collarbone as I glared at her.

"Unless maybe Chase has."

There was kind of a question hanging in the air there for a moment before Jake spoke.

"Yeah, Chase reads me like a book."

"It's sort of a Dr. Seuss thing, but without the senseless rhymes and violence."

I had no idea what it meant, I had just said the first thing that came into my head, which was totally focused on what Jake had said and the way he was looking at me when he said it.

And then for a moment we were having a completely different conversation with our eyes, and the girls didn't really exist.

Anne cleared her throat, and when I looked at her she was smiling at me as if she understood something I was still trying to explain to myself.

"So what are you guys here to see anyway?"

"What I'm Here For?"

She looked confused for a moment, as though I had started speaking Pidgin English, and then evidently realized it was a movie right before Steph interrupted her thought process.

"Have you heard anything from Andy, Chase?"

"No, he's incommunicado for the weekend. I guess a smartphone would interfere with the assimilation process."

"They're probably hazing each other", Steph speculated.

"Well, it's a nice thought, anyway," I conceded.

"Boys will be boys."

"Will they? Tune in next week to find out."

"Oh they never tell. Do you Jake?"

Steph looked at him pointedly.

"Huh?"

"You know, all that stuff that stays in Vegas."

"What goes around, comes around."

Anne stifled a laugh and looked at Steph like she wouldn't mind seeing her friend taken down a notch. Then it was time for their movie, so they said later and joined the line.

Jake watched them walk away, and then looked back at me as if he pitied me a little now, like he hadn't realized that my life was so hard.

"Is this what high school is like?"

I looked at him. He smiled at me, and I started laughing again. There was this smartassy sweetness about him, and I was starting to realize that the way he was with me was just for me, that he had let me inside somehow, and that I was getting a part of him that no one else had.

I just took him in, losing time for a moment, and then I caught myself looking at him that way, I guess I'd have to call it adoringly, just feeling lucky that I got to look at him at all. I suddenly wanted him to be mine, and I thought that I could see an opening out there, but I still wasn't sure if that was real or just another illusion i would eventually be forced to let go.

He grabbed my forearm and nodded with his head at the concession stand. The line wasn't too bad for a Saturday night, and we got a tub of popcorn and a couple of drinks.

I tried to pay, but he batted my hand away.

"I got this, you need to save your money for toothpaste."

The movie wasn't too bad. Maybe a little depressing, but this British actor I like (ok not his acting), Garrett Pryce-Jones, had a supporting role playing this disturbingly slutty teen boy, and he was really hot. I mean, the you're almost embarrassed to look at him kind of hot. I would have gone to see the movie just to see him with his shirt off, so it wasn't a total loss. I wanted to look over at Jake and see if he was appreciating this fineass boy, but I was too self-conscious to do that.

I spent a lot of the movie trying to suppress my own heartbeat as Jake's shoulder pressed against mine, or his knee bumped into mine, or his bare forearm touched mine, or his hand brushed mine in the bucket of popcorn. That was basically the most suspenseful part of the movie. I was completely focused on the magnetic force field around our bodies that seemed to ensure that every action had an equal and opposite reaction in the other person.

I wondered if he knew he was driving me crazy, overwhelming whatever ability I might have had to contain a happiness I had never had to contain, and whether it was even deliberate, or if he was completely unconscious of his effect on me.

I felt like I was on a date, like I wanted it to be a date, and for the first time in my life, I got it, I understood what all the boy-girl bullshit was about, holding hands and sitting close and sort of basking in the other person's presence. I would have been happy sitting beside him and staring at a blue screen all night.

The movie finished (yeah, that was a downer at the end) and we stretched and watched the people filter out of the theater. Jake looked thoughtful, as if the movie had made him think about something, but I couldn't imagine what it was. I guess the moral of the story was beware of things that seem too good to be true. Or sex always has a price, something like that. Whatever it was, it would have been depressing if Jake hadn't been there to distract me from it.

We got up and walked out front and looked for my dad's car, but it was my mom waiting out there in her car instead.

"So how was the movie?"

"Maybe a little sentimental for you, Mom."

"Your father had some things he needed to catch up on."

I looked back at Jake and smiled.

"He practically forced Jake to drive his car."

My mom glanced at me briefly, and examined what she could see of Jake's face in the rear view mirror for a moment.

"Is that right, Jake?"

"Yeah, I was ... a little nervous at first, but it turned out to be fun."

"Oh well that's ... unexpected. He never likes me to take it to the store."

"Mom, he hasn't really known you that long. He's waiting to see how reliable you are. It'll come in time."

"I'm sure you're right, dear."

"Plus, remember when you left the groceries in the trunk over the weekend? Dad remembers stuff like that. You're probably still on probation."

"Is that so?"

"Just sayin, Mom. There's probably a very simple explanation."

"What would I ever do without you to explain things to me?"

"You'd be in the dark about a lot of things, Mom."

"I'm not sure that's such a bad place to be. Are you two going for a midnight swim tonight? Or are you swimmed out?"

"I don't know. We might take a dip just for Jake's sake. He's still a skinnydipping virgin. I feel like I owe it to him."

"Just ignore him, Jake. It only gets worse if you give him a response."

I looked at him and he smiled at me.

"I kinda like giving him a response."

My mom glanced at him in the rear view mirror. She seemed to have caught my dad's sudden interest in Jake, even if it had taken her a while to catch up.

"What do you boys have planned for tomorrow?"

"We don't make plans, Mom, we just seize the moment and ...eat pancakes?"

"Is that a request?"

"Not if it involves any kind of rising and shining."

"Maybe a brunch thing."

"How about a lunch thingie? Like high noon?"

"We'll see. You may be on your own by then."

"I'm sure we can find something unhealthy to eat. Full of refined sugar and toxic chemicals."

"That would be a shame, dear."

"It would be. But hey, you can't always get nice wholesome pancakes when you need them."

"Maybe I can show you and Jake how to make your own pancakes sometime."

"I sorta already know how to make pancakes, I cook a lot for my mom", Jake interjected.

"Oh how sweet, Jake. Maybe some of you will rub off on my son."

"Um ... I'll try to arrange that."

She looked at him in the rear view mirror again but didn't reply this time.

"I would learn to cook, mom, but I know how much you enjoy it. I would never deprive you of that."

"At least you're thinking of me."

"Always, mom. And when I think of you, you know what comes to mind? Pancakes."

"That's very flattering, Chase."

"I'm just trying to boost your confidence."

"Well, it's working. Now that I've mastered pancakes, I'm ready to move on to bigger and better things."

"That would be a rash move. I don't think you're ready for that yet."

"I think I am."

"I just hate to see you get hurt, mom."

"I know you do, dear."

When we got back to the house we went downstairs and messed around at the pool table for a while, setting up crazy shots and then not making them, laughing at nothing. My parents had already retired to do whatever it is they do behind closed doors, maybe sex, maybe television, how would I know. As far as I could tell, I was the only evidence of any sex between them, but maybe that was just as well. I didn't go back there after they went to bed, and they didn't venture out to the pool or the rec room or my bedroom during the night either.

"You want some ice cream?"

"Hmmm. What kind?"

"There should be a selection down here. Take a look. There's more upstairs in my dad's stash."

He looked in the freezer and made a kind of inquiring, enticing face at me.

"Cherry Garcia?"

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me, mister cherry lips. Do you want to share, or do you need your own?"

"I can share."

I got spoons for us and we sat down at the bar. The ice cream was as hard as a rock, and there was no way we were getting a spoon into it.

"Let me defrost it for a minute or two."

He looked at me dubiously.

"Microwave ice cream?"

"What could possibly go wrong?"

I put it in for a few seconds and checked on it. It was starting to drip.

"Okay, dig in."

We were sitting as close as we could get to each other at the corner of the table, so my knee was bumping his thigh as we clashed spoons in the top layer that was soft enough to get out of the cup.

Okay, this was another of those things that that had never been sexy before. I had done this with Andy countless times, but it had never struck me this way.

I looked at the pink of his tongue in his open mouth, the precise gradations of red in his lips flecked with cream, and watched in a trance as he lapped the ice cream off his spoon like a cat or sucked the spoon into his mouth with a slurp.

He looked over at me and grinned.

"What? Don't you like it?"

"I do, I just really, really like watching you eat ice cream."

He made his own face into the fishlips for me and then smiled kind of slyly and returned his attention to the ice cream.

I wanted to take his face in my hands and kiss him, clean all the cream off his mouth with my own, and taste him from the inside out, but what hurt the most was the overwhelming need to tell him how ... essential he was.

I had never heard of anyone getting a hardon from watching someone eat, and I was starting to wonder if I really did have some strange set of perversions that were only activated around him.

When we finished up the ice cream, he looked at me like he wasn't sure what came next, like he was waiting for me to tell him something.

"So are you ready for your skinnydipping lesson?"

He glanced at me sideways briefly with a gleam in his eye, and then seemed to consider it for a moment.

"Your parents are really ok with that?"

"As long as we don't get too noisy and wake up the neighbors."

"I'm just kinda nervous they'll come out there and see us."

"Actually, that slight nervousness will just enhance your skinnydipping experience. You'll enjoy it even more than I will, since you're new to it and not sure you'll get away with it."

He fake-sighed a bit hoarsely.

"Okay, you convinced me."

"Hey don't let me pressure you into it if you don't want to."

"Oh I want to. I just don't wanna get caught."

"That's what they all say."

"Is it really that great?"

"It's like, the second best feeling you can have down there. Seriously, if you don't get a boner from it you need to see a doctor."

"Ok, that does it, I'm in."

We stripped down to our boxers and went outside. It was a little cool out, but I knew the water would still be pretty warm. There was enough of a moon to make things out by, in a kind of eery glow reflected off the surface of the pool. I slipped my boxers off and dove in, swam a length underwater and then made my way back to the middle of the pool and faced Jake.

He was standing there naked at the edge of the pool. I could see the shadows of the treebranches overhead breaking the moonlight into bits on the surface of his skin. The figure he made there was so right. Then he tipped over and broke through the water and disappeared under it for a moment and surfaced on the other side of me.

He went under and stayed there for a few moments and I guess touched bottom and swam to the edge of the pool, reached up and grabbed the ledge, and just hung there for a few seconds. Then he turned around, ducked under, pointed towards me and pushed off the wall with his legs. He shot through the water and then glided slowly to a stop in front of me as his momentum ran out. His head bobbed out of the water, and he moved his hair out of his eyes and beamed at me.

Then he laughed out loud, and I felt an overwhelming surge of happiness that didn't seem to be attached to anything in particular, as if it were floating there beside us in the water without actually being ours.

We made our way into the shallow end and stood up and looked at each other. I could see him looking back at me but couldn't make out the exact expression in his eyes. I felt that tightness in my chest that was becoming familiar to me when I was near him, and the knowledge that we were both naked made it almost unbearable.

I thought I saw him shiver.

"You cold?"

"Little bit."

"Let's swim a few laps and warm up."

"K"

"You start and I'll give you a little space."

He swam away and when he reached the other end of the pool I swam toward him. I caught up to him on the next lap after the turn, and then lay back and gave him a bodylength between us. He started swimming faster, and I moved back over at the turn and we swam quite a few more laps like that, until eventually he broke away and waded over to the steps and sat down.

I sat down beside him and listened to him breathe for a while, and wished for a way not to break whatever spell was holding this all in place.

"So do you ever get to ride Mercy when you go to the horse farm?"

"Sure. I only rode a few times, though."

"How'd you know about her?"

"We went out there one time for a school project, and the lady invited me back. I worked there sometimes after school. I like the horses."

"I could tell she really likes you."

"Yeah. She's ... sorta mine I guess. No one pays attention to her. She doesn't get along with the other horses."

"Maybe you should be like a vet or something."

"Ha. Yeah, maybe. More like a stable boy."

"At least now you're a skinnydipping stable boy."

"Yeah. I can put that on my resume."

"Plus you know how to ride a bike with no hands."

"Right, that's like a guarranteed good job right there."

"It would probably help if you were a midget."

He tisked and shoved me off the step. I slid down to the next one and hunkered down a little lower so my shoulders were under the water and then leaned my back and head against his leg.

"So do you and Andy do this a lot?"

"Which part?"

"Skinnydipping and all."

"Yeah. I guess it seems kinda weird, huh?"

"Maybe a little bit. Not in a bad way though."

"Andy's family. I don't really think about what's weird with him and me. It just is. Like he's my twin or something. Only I didn't meet him until I was eleven for some reason."

"You guys seem so different."

"We are."

"So I guess you're not identical twins."

"You think?"

"What's the other kind?"

"Fraternal?"

"Yeah. Fraternal."

"I guess he's almost the opposite of me in a lot of ways. It doesn't really matter, though. He's ...like an extension of me now. I can't explain it. I mean, maybe if I could, it wouldn't be the way it is."

"I never had a friend like that. Did you meet Andy at school?"

"His dad knew my therapist at work, so he basically set us up to be friends. I just shot him down for the first month or so. I feel bad now when I think back on it."

"So how did it work out then?"

"Andy's ...relentless, I guess. Maybe he just didn't want to fail or something."

"I feel kinda bad I misjudged him."

"Hey, you misjudged me too."

"Yeah, but not completely."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. I sorta always wanted to be your friend, I just thought you already had all the friends you needed."

"All you had to do was knock on my door dude. I didn't even try to push you away."

"I was actually a little nervous about that."

"You were?"

"Yeah. I thought maybe Andy would be there and he'd punch me out."

"He would never do that."

"He has such a ... I don't know... tough guy reputation."

"Yeah, I know, it's such a load of crap. He's not like that at all. "

"What about that fight in 8th grade, though?"

"Yeah, you get in a fight and suddenly you're a badass samurai warrior."

"So what happened then?"

"Well, these two older kids were pushing me around in the park and he happened to get there just as it started and sort of ... went berserk on them. We were just lucky we didn't get our asses kicked worse than we did. He surprised them, and got a few lucky shots in before they realized he was even there. Then it went all over school afterwards and turned into a comic book plot."

"That's not how I heard it."

"Well, don't believe everything you hear. Especially about that."

"I heard the cops arrested those guys."

"Yeah, they'd been harrassing other kids there for a while, and the people who called the cops to stop the fight had seen the whole thing."

"So you guys were the good guys."

"Haha. Yeah, maybe. They didn't give us a medal, though. We all had to go downtown and write out statements, but we didn't get charged, and they did."

"This one guy was saying that was because you guys were rich kids and the other guys were like ... not."

"Where'd you hear that?"

"One of those guys was from my neighborhood. And he was seriously messed up when he got back from wherever they sent him. Not just his face either."

"I didn't know about that. I mean, I never saw them afterwards. They were high school kids. Andy did kick one guy in the face a few times. At the time, I guess I thought they deserved it, though. I mean they were older and bigger than us. They were bullies, right? And they started it. I figured whatever happened to them was what they deserved."

"I don't know, Chase. It might depend on which ones you were friends with."

"Were those guys friends of yours?"

"No, not at all. I just ... can maybe see the other side on the cops part. I mean, the cops come to my neighborhood and it's like they assume they're dealing with scum before they even get there. And the sad thing is, a lot of times they are. But it's not supposed to be like that. Everybody's supposed to be equal ... in that one way...even if they're not equal in any other way. And where they sent those guys... was not a good place for any kid to be... even if they were bullies."

"I guess I see what you mean. The cops were on our side right from the start, but I kinda figured that was because we were younger and Andy was almost ... like a midget."

"A samurai midget."

"Yeah. He did pretty much snap. But I'm one of his buttons, and they pushed it. If they'd been pushing him around, I'm pretty sure he would have tried to talk his way out of it. He's really more of a lover than a fighter. I mean he wouldn't hurt anyone just to hurt them."

"I'm more of a lover than a fighter too. I have to remember that line the next time someone starts to kick my ass."

I stood up and turned around and looked down at him.

"I'm not gonna let anyone but me kick your ass."

I kicked the side of it gently under the water with my toes.

"What are you gonna do, sic your midget samurai on them?"

"If I have to."

I grabbed an arm and a leg and pulled him out into the middle of the pool as he tried halfheartedly to get away from me. Then I let go and watched him settle to the bottom on his back again, this time without me. I put my foot on his stomach, and he picked it up and started trying to tickle it, and eventually it got to me and I involuntarily jerked away.

When he surfaced again, I put my hands on his shoulders and turned him around and pointed him back toward the steps, and we waded over together and got out.

He followed me into the poolhouse, and I turned the nightlights on and then the shower and we stood under it and soaked up the warm water together for a few minutes as I tried to keep my eyes on his face and my hands to myself. As he turned his back to me, I could make out his whole body in the dim light as the funnel of water broke over him and ran down him in streams that flickered over his skin and played out in their own shadows.

I wanted to stay there forever, but I shut it off and walked over to the towels and tossed him one and wrapped one around my waist.

We went back inside and upstairs to my room and put on some boxers. Then we took turns peeing and brushing our teeth. I turned back the bedcovers and got into bed and sat up against the headboard, then turned the tv on and handed him the remote as he climbed in beside me.

There was some ridiculous horror movie on, and we kept it on with no volume for a few minutes for laughs, and then turned it off again.

After I turned the lights off, we lay there side by side and talked for a while.

"So how'd you like skinnydipping?"

"Nice."

"Was I right?"

"Um. Yeah. No need to see a doctor."

"Oh shit. Forgot about the drops. I gotta get up for a minute."

"Are you serious?"

"If we don't, then all of that earlier stuff was for nothing."

"Yeah, that would be... tragic, Chase. I had no idea what was at stake here."

I got up and turned the light on and looked at him. He was squinting up into the light at me like I was crazy but in a more or less harmless way that he found amusing.

I went into the bathroom and got the drops out, and some handtowels, and set the bottle down on my nightstand. I rolled him toward me over on his side with the side of his head resting on one of the handtowels. Then I moved some of his damp hair out of the way and filled his ear up and tugged on his earlobe a few times. I slipped back into bed and set myself up facing him and did the same thing for myself. We lay there like that looking at each other and trying not to laugh, but eventually he lost it and laughed, then breathed wrong and started coughing and spilled the alcohol in his ear out onto his neck and shoulder.

I laughed at him and emptied my own ear out, then rolled him the other way and filled his other ear up and settled in behind him back to back and filled up my own.

"Chase?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm seriously going to have to look this shit up on the internet."

We both broke out laughing and I rolled away from him onto my stomach and felt my ear clear.

I tried to tell myself that it was alright to break the spell and make whatever would happen happen now, and all I could think about was the sweetness of every ordinary moment that was just like this, that wasn't one thing or the other, but something in between. I almost couldn't bear to give that up. I wanted to hold onto the hope that was so real I could almost touch it.

Then he rolled over on his back beside me, even closer to me than before, and I could feel his arm touching mine. I held my breath as neither of us moved away.

"I don't know how you get any sleep with all this skinnydipping and perverted hygiene stuff."

"You wait and see. You'll sleep like a baby now."

The hair on his arm was touching mine, and as I pictured him lying there beside me in the dark in his boxers I willed myself not to grab him, not to roll onto him, not to do any of things I wanted to do. I tried to concentrate all my thoughts on how lucky I was to be lying so close to him.

Eventually I heard his breathing get deeper and slower until I could tell that he was asleep. I lay there and listened to him breathe and felt certain that even though there was something better than this, there was nothing I would ever feel this way about, nothing that would ever mean what this meant to me.

I wished that I could follow his thoughts as easily as I could sense the next breath before he drew it in. If I knew that he wanted exactly what I wanted, whatever that was, would it still mean the same thing to me? Or did all of this move me so much because I was as much in the dark as he was?

Part 4

When I woke up in the morning, the light from outside was all over the room, and I could feel his warmth in the bed next to me. He was on his side facing me, and I rolled over closer to him and felt his breath play over my face while I watched him sleep. The clock on the nightstand said 10:30, so I raised myself up on one elbow and put my hand on his bare chest and pushed him over on his back and shook him slightly. He yawned, and then after a few seconds opened one eye and looked at me and yawned again.

He put his hand on the wrist of the hand I was resting on his chest, and squeezed it as he arched his back and stretched his other arm out over his head and then pulled both his legs out from under the sheet and drew them up and lifted his butt off the bed and set it down again in front of his heels as he groaned slightly at the end of his stretched out yawn. Then he relaxed back into the bed and dragged my hand off his chest down onto his stomach and then pushed it off onto the bed in the space between our bodies.

He rolled over onto his side with his head resting on his arm and looked at me and smiled. His eyes were so soft looking, I don't know what it was about them. I hadn't ever seen that expression before, and I didn't want to ever look away. I wanted to drink that look in and bottle it up and live with it forever.

Then he rolled over a little more onto his stomach and groaned again and threw his arm over my waist and rested the side of his head on my chest. His hair was so soft, and it tickled my nipple as he moved his head slightly and nestled it in the space below my collarbone. I caught my breath and felt the force of all the unnamed feelings hit me all at once like a blow to the throat.

I told myself to keep breathing, and tried not to panic as my heart sped up. I listened to him breathe and watched his head rise and fall on my chest as if it were part of me that I had never been conscious of having lost. And then the weight he made on my chest changed subtly and I could tell from his breathing that he was asleep. His face was so warm. I could feel the insides of his lips at the corner of his mouth pressing a strand of spit against my skin, and his moist breath fluttered over it like a moth or a butterfly that might suddenly fly away.

I could feel the tightening in my chest, and I knew that if I had something like a soul I would give it away in a heartbeat to make this moment last a little longer.

When I woke up again he was still sleeping like that, and without thinking I rolled into him and squeezed him into me. He stirred against me and lifted his head and looked up at me sleepily and stretched again, then disentangled himself from me slowly and raised himself up on his hands and knees and looked down at me with his hair in his eyes. I reached up and held his hair out of the way and his eyes looked into mine and there was a question in them but I didn't answer it, I just looked back at him with maybe the same question in mine. And then I let go and his hair fell back over his eyes and he straightened up on his knees and stretched his arms up toward the ceiling and slid one leg off the bed and walked over into the bathroom to the toilet without closing the door.

He took his dick out and pissed and pissed and then flushed and walked back to the bed and stood beside me looking down on me with a smirk. He grabbed my arm and started to pull me out of bed and I resisted for a moment and then sat up and slipped my legs off the bed and sat there for a moment with my bare foot resting on one of his.

I rubbed the bottom of my foot on the top of his foot, and tried to come down from the euphoria that was generated by the slightest contact with his body. I leaned my head over and rested it against his stomach, and he put his hands on my shoulders and idly rubbed over them a couple of times and then let his hands linger there on my skin like he had forgotten that they were his. They were so warm and soft, and I felt my whole spine relax under his touch. As I soaked up the sensation of his warm hands and the scent of his crotch seeping through his boxer shorts a few inches from my face, I asked myself how I could ever say no to this, how I would ever learn to live without it again.

I slowly stood up and, leaning my weight on him for a moment, pushed off unsteadily toward the bathroom.

I was able to pee after a while for a long time too and then washed my hands and brushed my teeth, picked up his toothbrush and put some paste on it and walked over and handed it to him. He turned it around and pretended to run it through my hair and I giggled idiotically and evaded him. Then he walked over to the sink and brushed his teeth quickly and washed his face.

He walked back over to me and stood in front of me, and I smelled him again, the toothpaste on his breath and the faint boyish musk and the vague scent of chlorine from somewhere deep inside the structures of his skin.

He yawned and smiled at me expectantly.

"Sorry."

"Ok, sleepy head. Are you starving yet?"

"Not really. Are you?"

"No. I think we missed out on pancakes anyway, if they were ever on the menu."

"So you're a pancakes man, huh?"

"Nah. I just like to tease my mom about it. It's one of those mom things, I guess. She's not really a great cook, but she tries."

"I couldn't tell if she was being serious with you. I mean, I knew you weren't being serious with her."

"It's like a game we play. We're not really close, but we get along ok. Sometimes I think that's why we get along ok."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if they really knew what I was thinking all the time, they'd be horrified."

"Oh. That's probably true about everyone though."

"You mean everyone would hate me?"

"You know what I mean. There's a reason we can't read other people's minds. We never would have survived the stone age. Everybody would have stoned each other to death."

"Yeah, but some things would be so much easier."

"Like what?"

I looked at him, his mussed-up boy-in-the-morning beauty breaking through the clouds and confusion again as if they were nothing, as if it would always be stronger than anything that could ever stand in our way.

I stepped as close to him as I could get and tried to look into him for all I was worth, and to let him look into me.

"Like this."

We held each other's gaze for the longest time, and I knew that he was seeing something in my eyes that I would only ever show to him, even if neither of us could be sure what it meant.

Then when I couldn't have taken it any longer, he smiled at me like he'd never smiled at me before, and I smiled back at him before I knew what I was doing.

"Wait, I'm getting something here. It's ... yellow. I think it's ... a banana?"

We went downstairs and grabbed a couple of bananas and went out to the poolhouse. I tossed him his boardies and slipped out of my boxers and into the boardies I had worn the day before.

I looked up as I tied the drawstring and he was standing there naked eating his banana with the boardshorts draped over his shoulder.

He was the most beautiful being I had ever seen. The daylight made his tan look brighter and more golden somehow. All the lines and curves of his body were drawn taut and suddenly they struck me with the force of a knife thrown at a wall.

I could see ribs just under the flesh, and little spaces between them like the impressions of fingers left in clay.

He was completely soft, showing only a couple of inches shadowed by his bush, drooping over the compact pouch of his scrotum.

I felt dizzy for a moment and tore my eyes away from his body and walked up to him and took the boardshorts from his shoulder and traded them for the banana and took the last bite from it as I watched him bend over and tug the boardies on, with one shoulder leaning against me as he balanced for a moment on one leg, then adjusted the shorts around his waist and tied the drawstring.

We walked outside and approached the pool and I turned around to face him with my back to the water and put my arms around him and pulled him to me and corkscrewed over sideways into the pool and held on to him as we sank slowly and then floated together just under the water.

I let go of him and slid down his body until my head was under his butt and then worked it between his legs and grabbed hold of his shins to keep him from sliding away from me, and stood up with him balanced there on my shoulders.

He had his hands on top of my head and his fingers in my hair, and I could feel him against the back of my head and the base of my neck. I had my hands on his calves, and I could feel the muscles flex in my hand as he shifted around slightly to pull his crotch away from the back of my neck.

I slowly made for the ledge and then turned around with my back to it and let him slide his butt off my back and onto the ledge. Then I let him go and slipped out from behind his legs and pushed them out of the way as I pulled myself up on the ledge beside him with our legs and shoulders touching. We sat there side by side, and when he bent over to scoop some water up into his hands I watched the way his spine stood out from his back where it was flexed. I could see down the back of his boardshorts into the space between his pale cheeks at the top of his crack. I ran my hand down his back and he shivered and arched back up and leaned into me slightly.

I felt myself boning up, and I drew my legs up and wrapped my arms around my knees. Within a few seconds I was so hard that it hurt.

"So do you want to do something together today?"

"Of course." I just blurted it out without thinking about how it sounded.

"What do you mean, of course?" He gave me a look that I knew I needed to file away with all the others I loved to look at but hadn't learned to read yet.

"I mean, I don't want this weekend to end."

He nodded at me seriously, then looked down at his feet and idly fingered his toes.

"Yeah. Me neither."

"I want to go on a road trip with you. Drive until we run out of road. And then maybe keep going."

"Maybe your dad will loan us his car. If I promise not to drive." He smiled shily without looking up.

"Yeah, dream on. What do you want to do?"

"You mean realistically?"

"I guess."

"We could go to the lake."

"Ooh. Good idea. I like how you think."

"Yeah, I'm a genius."

"It's closer than the sea. We can ride our bikes there."

"Um... Chase...are you hungry yet?"

"Oh shit, I forgot to feed you. What kind of host am I?"

"I don't know. You did all this perverted shit to me, so I feel really clean, but I'm still gonna need to eat sometime if you expect me to ride out to the lake."

"Maybe we could just snack before we go and pack something to eat later at the lake."

"You mean like a picnic?"

"Does that sound too girly?"

"No, that's cool. They have those grills you can use there too."

"Yeah, if we kill a wild boar, then grill it, maybe it'll cancel out the picnic basket imagery."

"I was thinking more like wieners or something like that."

"Wieners, huh?"

"Or whatever. Something easy."

"I'll see what's in the fridge. Come on, let's rinse off first and then I'll feed you."

I stood up and bent over and grabbed him under the arms and started to haul him to his feet. Then I realized how badly I was still boned up, as my dick literally leapt up and stretched out my tented-up board shorts, so I let go of him, turned and walked away as he followed me to the poolhouse. I didn't know what to do about the boner, so I grabbed a couple of towels, jumped him as he followed me through the door and threw them over his head so he couldn't see.

I told him not to move, slipped my boardies off and rinsed off for a few seconds under the shower, then grabbed one of the towels off his head and adjusted it around my waist with a big fold in front. The boner was still there, but it wasn't tented out that bad. Then I took the other towel off his head and draped it over my shoulders. He was squinting at me with his head cocked and a puzzled smile on his face, but he didn't say anything.

"Go ahead, see if you can beat my time."

"Yeah, I thought I heard the shower run for a second there.

He stripped off his suit and walked under the shower and turned it on with his back to me and rinsed off while I stared at his ass. It was perfect in that Goldilocks way, where just a little less of it or a little more of it would have made it possible to explain why it was such a great ass.

Then he shut the shower off and started to turn around to face me and I stepped forward and traded him the towel for his boardshorts and wrung them out with mine and tossed them in the dryer.

When I turned around, he was still toweling off, and I tore my eyes away from him and walked toward the door and leaned against it. I opened it and held it open for him, and he whipped the towel around his waist and trotted toward me and then brushed past me and went out the door.

We went upstairs and put on some briefs and nylon shorts and tshirts and then went back down to eat. I got out all the stuff from the deli shelf in the fridge and cut a baguette in half and assembled two halves of an elaborate sandwich.

"You make a mean sandwich Chase."

"Yeah, that's about all I'm good for."

"How about at the lake?"

"There's a package of polish sausage in there. Will that be ok or do you want to stop and get wieners?"

"Polish sounds good."

"Mustard? Ketchup? Relish?"

"Buns?"

"Yeah, that would be nice, wouldn't it. There's four left, so hopefully that's enough."

"Fire?"

"Yep. We'll take a few handfuls of briquets and some lighter fluid."

"You know, we could just pick something up on the way over there. It might be easier."

"Yeah, I know. But somebody mentioned wieners, so here we are."

"That was just a suggestion, though."

"I know."

"Actually, polish is better than wieners. As long as you can make a fire."

"I think the lighter fluid is supposed to be flammable."

We loaded up a couple of small packs with the food and drinks and some ice and the grilling stuff, and threw in a couple of towels and and a frisbee.

I scribbled a note and stuck it on the fridge, then texted my mom that we were heading to the lake, and we saddled up and headed out.

It was windy and overcast, but it didn't look like rain, just a cloudy day with a lot of leaves blowing around on the ground and the smell of fall unfolding in the air.

Jake was riding no hands again, in that careless way he had of looking like he wasn't paying attention to what he was doing while he somehow steered the bike around in the wind with a series of haphazard course corrections that kept the bike more or less upright and pointed forward.

When we got to the lake, we found a good spot on the beach with a picnic table and a grill installed nearby, set our bikes and packs down, took our shoes and socks off, and waded out into the water. There were sailboats on the horizon, and the waves were flecked with whitecaps that made the boats look braver than they really were. All they needed was a storm brewing in the background, and they could have been in a movie.

I took a few phonepix of the boats out there, even though there was nothing really to see, and the camera couldn't really capture it anyway.

"We should go sailing sometime."

"You guys have a boat?"

"Yeah, my dad's a wannabe sailor. He lets me and Andy take it out if we promise not to heel it over too far or sink it or whatever. He doesn't usually have time for it anymore."

"Is it fun?"

"It's ... hard to describe. More relaxing than exciting. And there are a lot of little chores you have to do before you go out and after you get back. But it's nice and private out there. Nobody looking over your shoulder."

"Can you sleep on it?"

"It sleeps 6 in a pinch. Sometimes in the summer we stay out on it over the weekend and pretend to fish a little."

"Okay, I'm in."

"Did I mention the skinnydipping?"

"You're obsessed!"

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

He laughed and glanced at me and then gazed out at the boats again.

"Not really."

"So will you come with me?"

"Sure." He turned his head away from the boats and looked at me as if he expected to see the answer he was giving me reflected in my eyes. Then he looked away again. "Of course."

We threw the frisbee around for an hour or so, nothing really fancy because Jake wasn't all that good at it and it was too windy for it anyway. I tried to give him a few tips, reaching around him from behind his back with my head hanging over his shoulder and my hand next to his on the fristbee as I ran through the motion, but I was too distracted by his scent and the sensation of his warm body so close to mine to be a very good teacher. I just breathed all of that in, and closed my eyes for a few seconds, and tried to imagine the way it would be. I wondered if he knew it was all just an excuse to be near him, to touch something of his with something of mine.

As I leaned against him and steered his hand on the frisbee, I realized how familiar it all was to me already, the feelings of desire and frustration I had when I was around him, the little pockets of doubt and anxiety that hollowed out the happiness I felt every time we touched, the overwhelming need to hold him and the fear of making a mistake, the desire to show him what I felt for him and the fear that he would realize how much I wanted him and pull away.

Eventually somebody's dog bounded over and stole the frisbee from us, wandered away with it and then brought it back but wouldn't give it up. He looked like a pit bull, so I didn't want to stick my hand in his mouth until I got acquainted with him.

We sat down by the dog and Jake started petting him until he rolled over on his belly and let go of the frisbee. Jake didn't snatch it back, he just rubbed the dog's belly and told him he had amazingly bad breath and huge balls.

"He probably thinks that's a compliment."

"It is."

"I guess if you're a dog."

"Yeah, you'd better keep brushing your teeph."

"I guess I will. Just in case my balls don't ever get that big."

"So you think they're still growing?"

"Everything else is, right?"

"I'll take your word for it for now."

"What do you mean, for now?"

"I mean until I get to know you better."

"I'm pretty sure I'm still a growing boy. That's what they tell me, anyway."

"I always wondered what that meant."

"Now you know."

"Now at least I know what to look for."

"Maybe the next time we go skinnydipping."

He looked down at his foot and wiggled his toes in the sand.

"When will that be?"

"Next weekend?"

"Really?" He looked at me doubtfully for a moment, then looked away again.

"Why not?"

"I guess I thought you might have plans with Andy."

"Andy and I don't really make plans. We just kind of show up in each other's house. We usually tell each other if we have other plans, I guess. Mostly him, because he's such a social butterfly."

"So does Andy have a girlfriend?"

"Not really. He dates about 3 different girls. Sort of in rotation. Now that he drives, he's been going out more lately. Usually he and I do something Friday night if he has a date on Saturday. It sort of depends what's going on, though. Like if there's a party or something. I hate parties, so I try to avoid them."

"Why do you hate parties?"

"I guess I just feel out of place. Like everyone else is reading from a script and I'm clueless. People seem weird, or fake somehow, and if there's a lot of drinking or whatever...I don't know. It's like I can't tell if people are being assholes because they're drunk or if they're just showing their true selves. Either way, it sucks. Not my thing."

"Yeah, I don't like all that drinking, either." He was quiet for a few seconds, and when he spoke again his voice sounded different, like it was coming from a long way away. "Kinda reminds me of bad times."

He was looking down at the dog and scratching his belly again. I scooted a little closer to him so my knee was touching his but didn't say anything right away. I felt like there was a door somewhere between us that had opened slightly, but I wasn't sure whether to walk through it, because I couldn't tell what was on the other side.

He looked younger and more vulnerable somehow, surprised by his own memories, as if he'd suddenly remembered who he was.

"Did your dad drink a lot?"

He nodded without looking up.

"Yeah, he was ... a really mean drunk. I don't really remember all of it, but most of it isn't good. There were some good times too, it's just... the good things you barely remember and the bad things you can't forget."

"Did he ever like ... hurt you guys?"

He teared up and glanced out at the lake, then nodded and looked back down.

"Yeah, he did."

He swallowed hard and I saw a tear spill over and skate halfway down his cheek and hang there for a moment suspended by its own surface tension, until he reached up with the back of his hand and wiped it away. He put his hand down on the ground next to mine and rocked forward a little in the sand and bowed his head a little so that his hair was partly hiding his face. I put my hand on the back of his hand and felt the bit of moisture trapped there between us on the palm of my hand. After a while there was nothing between us but the warmth of his skin in the cool afternoon air.

The sun came out from behind the clouds for a few minutes and then the wind picked up and I could see that most of the boats had made their way back to the marina on the other end of the lake.

Jake looked over at me and smiled.

"You think the water's warm enough for a swim?"

"Yeah, sure. As long as we keep moving once we get in. You wanna try?"

He nodded and and stood up and brushed himself off. The dog lifted his head and looked up at him, and I patted him and stood up, too. We took our shirts off and then Jake took a chain out of his bikepack and locked our bikes together to the grill.

When we waded out into the water again, it was pretty cold. I stood behind him as he gazed out at the haphazardly plotted pattern of toy boats on the horizon, and the goldening sun glanced off his back and shoulders and caught hints of itself in his hair.

He looked over his shoulder at me and grinned, then sent a slice of cold lakewater my way with the back of his hand.

I stepped behind him and squeezed the back of his neck and brought my knee up into his butt and pushed him forward.

"Just swim straight out and try to keep me in sight to your right. I'll stay with you. Turn around before you get tired, though, okay?"

"Okay, mom."

He turned around and wrapped his arms around me and tried to tackle me into the water but I spread my feet and wrestled with him until he ducked under the water and pulled my legs out from under me.

It was pretty cold, but I didn't realize it at first because I was focused on how slippery his skin was under the water as I tried to keep hold of him. Then he pulled free and started swimming away from shore. I caught up with him easily and started to backstroke beside him as I felt the cold seep into my scalp.

We swam out for about 15 minutes, and then he slowed down and started treading water and looking back at the shoreline, which was pretty far away. We turned around and started swimming back, and by the time we got to shore he had slowed down quite a bit, so I figured he was tiring out.

The shorts we were wearing didn't have much structure, and when we waded out again we were both pretty much on display, though neither one of us had much to display after that long in the water. Nobody was paying any attention to us as we walked back to our stuff and dried off and wrapped the towels around our waists.

There was still an hour or more of daylight, but I was already getting hungry, so I was pretty sure Jake would be too. He unlocked the bikes and leaned them up against the picnic table, and watched while I lifted up the filthy grill and moved it out of the way a little and dumped the briquets under it. By the time I spread them out and got the grill back in place, my fingers were all sooty.

"Hey Jake, can you help me here?"

"Yeah sure."

"Okay just grab the lighter fluid and get it all over the briquets. You can squirt some on the grill, too, cause it's filthy. Maybe some of that shit will burn off."

He squirted it all over the place, making some of his mad scientist faces as he used up about half the can.

"Okay, now stand back because the explosion might set your towel on fire and that would be a downer for me."

"Yeah, it would be a downer for me too."

I stepped away and lit the match and tossed it toward the grill but it went out in midair. I lit another one and the same thing happened. Then the third one arced out at the last minute and for a second nothing happened and there was a sort of popping sound and then the whole grill erupted in flames. I felt the heat on my bare stomach and jumped back, but the flames settled down fairly quickly.

"Okay, that should do it."

"Yeah, it's a good thing we moved the bikes."

"I'm thinking neither of us should really have access to lighter fluid."

"Hey, I was just following instructions."

"My other apprentices didn't survive the training period, or they probably would have warned you about that."

I walked back to the edge of the lake and knelt down and tried to get the grime off my fingers. Most of it came off in the sand, and I alternated between wet and dry a few times, then walked back to the grill and carried our packs over to the picnic table.

I pulled out a couple of drinks and opened them, and we sat down across from each other at the picnic table and stared out at the lake. There were a few people walking on the beach now, with dogs and kids, and the sun was down low on the horizon but not quite ready to set.

I noticed Jake was squirming around on the bench a little.

"You look like you got ants in your pants."

He shifted around and scratched his ass.

"More like gravel."

He stood up and reached under his towel and rearranged something, then sat down again and untied the drawstring on his shorts, lifted his butt off the bench a little, tugged the shorts down under his towel and pulled them off over his feet and set them on the picnic table. After he slipped his boxer briefs off under the towel, he adjusted it around his waist again and stood up and walked over to the bikes with the wet shorts and briefs and hung them off his bike's handlebars.

"Feel better?"

"Yeah. That was driving me crazy."

"Just remember there are innocent women and children around here."

"You're one to talk. Mister skinnydipper."

"Hey, that wasn't out in public."

"Whatever. All I know is one of us is gonna have dry shorts on the ride home. You'll be the one with a diaper rash."

"Is this what peer pressure feels like?"

"I guess I'm not very good at it, if you're not sure what it is."

I looked around and nobody seemed to be paying attention to us, so I went ahead and tugged my wet shorts and briefs off together under my towel and hung them up next to his. I checked on the coals, but they still had a ways to go.

"How does it feel?"

"You were right. It actually feels kinda like skinnydipping, in a towel."

"You have a one-track mind."

"Hey, I'm a teenager, what do you expect."

"I hope those coals are almost ready. I'm about to eat the next pit bull that walks by."

"Pit bulls are a lot tougher than Polish dogs."

"Plus they have bigger balls."

"I'm not sure how nutritious those would be, though."

"I'm guessing they're high in protein."

"If you can get them down at all."

"Okay, that's actually kinda gross. No offense to the pit bulls out there."

"Luckily pit bulls aren't easily offended."

I walked over and looked at the coals again. They still weren't hot enough, but I decided to get the dogs ready anyway.

I pulled the icepack out of the backpack and removed the package of polish dogs and passed them to Jake.

"Can you open that for me?"

He put the end of the plastic between his teeth and tore a bit off, then worked it open with his fingernails.

"Very impressive."

"Yeah, I learned a lot of my survival skills in kindergarten."

I got out a dog and carried it over to the grill and set it on top. It sizzled faintly.

"I don't think the coals are ready yet."

"We have to actually cook these right? Not just warm them up?"

"What's the worst that can happen if we eat them undercooked?"

"Probably some giant worm grows inside us and gradually eats up all our internal organs. Then it moves on to our brains."

"Okay, that would suck."

"As long as your boner is intact, it can still make all your important decisions. About skinnydipping and things like that."

"Actually my boner hasn't come back since our swim."

"Does that mean you had a boner before our swim?"

"No comment."

"So the odds are pretty good?"

"Yeah, under the circumstances."

"What circumstances are those?"

"I'd rather not say."

"Hmm. Interesting. Remind me to ask about that after we eat."

"Shit, I better check that dog out."

The sausage I had put on first was thoroughly seared, so I rolled it over and put the other ones on.

"Won't be long now."

"Like 15 minutes?"

"Yeah, that should do it. Don't let me forget to turn them though."

"I don't forget about food when I'm this hungry."

By the time the dogs were done, I was starving, too. We sat down on the same side of the table and opened the buns up and doctored them with the mustard and catsup and relish, then laid the dogs down in them and closed them up and took the first bites.

There was a lot of overflow, and Jake had taken way too big a bite. Mustard and catsup and sausage juices were running down his chin and dripping onto his chest and stomach as he tried to stop laughing long enough to chew up and swallow some of the three or so inches of dog he'd taken on board. I managed to choke my first bite down, laughing at him so hard I was tearing up as I toppled over onto his shoulder and held my handful of bun and sausage away from my body so I wouldn't drop it.

I looked up at him and part of the sausage was still visible in his mouth as he tried to get it chewed up without being able to close his mouth all the way. He was looking down at me as if the whole situation was way more serious than I could possibly comprehend.

By the time he was able to speak, I had almost gotten my laughter under control, but the look on his face as he realized what a mess he had made set me off again.

"Shit, look what I did. Do we have napkins?"

"Do I look like a guy who brings napkins to a picnic?"

"Yeah, you do. So where are they?"

"Maybe use your shirt?"

"You mean your shirt, right?"

"Oh, right. Never mind."

"Damn, I might as well wait 'til I'm done. It's only gonna get worse."

"Yeah, go with the flow."

"How come you're not making a mess then?"

"I'm an experienced polish dog eater. These suckers do not melt in your mouth."

"I've had polish sausage before. I don't remember it being this ...chewy though."

"I think these are some gourmet dogs my dad ordered over the internet. His dad is from Chicago, so maybe this was some childhood memory he was trying to recapture. They taste pretty good though, right?"

"Are you kidding? They're delicious. I just wish they were more edible."

"They're totally edible if you know how to eat 'em."

He gave me a fake look of hate and took another overly ambitious bite.

There wasn't quite as much overflow this time, because most of the excess condiments he had loaded the dog with had already dripped down onto his torso.

"I think I'm getting better."

"You're not getting better, you're just running out of stuff to spill."

"You better watch your mouth or I will use your shirt."

"You can just wash it off in the lake after we're done."

"I don't want to get wet again."

I swallowed the last of my first dog, sucked the grease off my fingers, and used the palm of my hand to turn his shoulders toward me on the bench.

"Come here. Move your arm."

I nudged his arm out of the away and bent over and licked the goop off his pec, then leaned down and put my mouth over the biggest dollop of mustard and catsup on his stomach and sucked it into my mouth and licked the leftovers off.

"See? Life is good, huh?"

I'm pretty sure I made him blush that time.

"Okay, that was almost hot, in a perverted kinda way. I hope you don't expect me to return the favor."

I just grinned at him.

"I really like you, Chase, but that doesn't mean I'm ready to suck mustard off your stomach in public."

"How about in private?"

"I'll get back to you on that."

"You don't know what you're missing."

"Sometimes that's a good thing."

"You got room for another?"

"Do you just want to clean up after me some more?"

"Don't knock it if you haven't tried it."

"Okay, hand it over."

I passed him his other dog and picked up my own. He looked like he was waiting for me to take the first bite.

"What?"

"I don't know, I thought you were gonna show me how it's done."

I took a bite and chewed it carefully and swallowed, then tried to wink at him.

"You may know how to eat polish dogs but you need to work on your wink."

"Yeah, I know. My wink is like ...handicapped or something. I can't send the message to just one eye at a time."

"I can't wink either. I never really practiced, though."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. No reason to wink."

"I'll give you a reason to wink."

He stared at me with a serious look on his face. There were still people on the beach, and it wasn't dark yet, so he couldn't kiss me, but I still wasn't sure if he wanted to, or if he even knew how much I wanted to kiss him.

Then he gave me a wink without any obvious handicap and took another excessively large bite and threw his head back and started to chew. I took a bite out of mine and chewed it up while I looked at his throat and watched it contract as he began to swallow.

As we finished our second dogs, the sun was setting over the lake. The temperature dropped quite a bit, and we started to shiver, so we pulled our shirts on and retrieved our damp shorts from the handlebars and snuck back into them under our towels. Then we put our shoes and socks on and walked over to the grill and stood with our backs to it and watched the rest of the sunset.

By the time we got back to my house it was after 7:30.

My parents were in the den watching British people on TV.

"Hi, boys. Did you have a good time at the lake?"

"Yeah, the water was a little cold, but it was still nice. We were thinking of taking the boat out next weekend if the weather's good."

"Did you get something to eat already or do I need to feed you?" My mom managed to strike a vague note of motherly concern without looking up from the television.

"Actually, we stole those Polish dogs in the fridge. I hope that's alright, dad?"

"At least you have enough sense to know what's worth stealing, Chase." He had a glass of wine in his hand, and was obviously feeling no pain, but at least he looked at us.

"Thanks, dad. Glad you approve."

"How about those dogs, Jake?"

"They were great, thanks. Just a little hard to chew."

"Yeah, that's what makes them special, right Chase?"

"If you say so."

My mom and I ran Jake home so he wouldn't have to bike in the dark. It was a little weird, because I didn't want to let him go, and I didn't want to say goodnight in front of my mom. I don't know what difference that made. It wasn't like I would have kissed him or told him how I felt. I guess I wanted to try to give him a sign, even if it wasn't anything he could read, but I didn't know how to do that in front of my mom.

When we got to his house, I helped him get the bike out of the back and sidehugged him into me for a second and then let him go. He looked over his shoulder at me and smiled as he pushed the bike up onto the porch, then waved and went inside.

I stood there staring at his front door for a moment, gathering my thoughts, and when I got back in the car, my mom was looking at me as if she wasn't sure how to say what she wanted to say.

She drove in silence for a few minutes, but out of the corner of my eye I could see her glancing at me from time to time.

"Jake seems like a nice boy."

"That's because he is a nice boy. What you see is what you get."

"Is that right?"

"Yeah, mom."

"It seems awfully ...sudden."

"What?"

"Your friendship."

"If you say so."

"Does that mean I'm wrong?"

"No, not really. We've been friends at school for a while, though."

"How come you never mentioned him?"

"I didn't know you'd be interested."

"Why wouldn't I be interested?"

"Because your eyes glaze over every time I talk about Andy."

"Well, Andy's not exactly news to me. I think I'm pretty well filled in on all things Andy."

"Whatever."

"What's Jake's mom like?"

"She's nice, too."

"Must run in the family."

"Mom, what do you want? Why are you being like this?"

"Like what?"

"Like that."

"Can't I take an interest in my son's life?"

I rolled my eyes and looked out the window. "Sure, Mom. Have it your way."

Part 5

On Monday, Jake and I met up at our lockers before school. He was waiting there when I got there, just leaning up against his locker and looking better than ever. My heart was pounding, and I felt this pressure in my chest, like everything was riding on something that was out of my hands, but then he saw me and smiled and I felt everything shift as something else rushed in and filled the space where the pressure had been.

I was so happy to see him, and I could tell right away that he was happy to see me. It was as if everything might have been a dream, but it wasn't, and the fact that he was looking at me that way proved that it wasn't a dream, or maybe just that we were in the same dream.

I wanted to pull him to me and inhale him, but of course I didn't, and I settled for pressing against his chest with my forearm as we greeted each other and then leaning against him as I opened my locker and transferred the books from my bag. He was giving me one of those looks that I'd seen in the pool and later in bed, when I finally started to believe that he might be feeling something for me that was more than just friendship.

I saw him before 4th period and told him I would see him at lunch.

"I need to catch up with Andy first, then I'll come over and sit with you after a bit."

"Hey, you spent the whole weekend with me, go ahead and eat lunch with Andy. I don't want him kicking my ass or something."

"In his dreams. You could probably take him."

"I'd rather not find out."

"Okay, let's just play it by ear then."

At lunch, Andy was full of sarcastic comments about the basketball retreat.

After a while, though, he ran out of steam, and got quiet. I looked up at him and he was watching me eat with a strange look on his face.

"What happened to you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you're acting ... I don't know, different somehow. Like something happened while I was gone."

Sudddenly I wasn't sure that I could keep this from him. He knew me too well, and he was going to be trying to figure it out and worrying about it constantly until he did.

I looked at him and tried to imagine him being alright with it. He loved me, but this was going to raise questions about the way that he loved me.

I knew that he liked to see himself as the one who was stronger in our relationship, even though there were times when he had turned to me for support, like when his grandma died.

But I didn't know how to tell him.

I couldn't be completely sure of him, because we'd never had to face anything like this before. And if this turned out to be the one thing that he couldn't handle, we could lose each other forever.

I looked over to the table where Jake was sitting, a blur in the distance, shimmering like a dream I'd already invested countless hopes in but couldn't be sure of.

Andy stood up and walked around the table and pulled me out of my chair and propelled me toward the door. I kept my head down and followed him outside.

We pushed through the doors and walked down the long concrete ramp at the side of the building and out onto the grass that surrounded the track. He started walking toward the other end of the field, and I followed.

He didn't say anything at first, just waited me out.

"Andy, I can't do this here."

"Do you want to go home?" He looked like he knew something, but wasn't sure if I knew it too.

"No, let's just wait. I really need to talk to you, but I'm afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"I'm afraid you won't wan't to ..."

He spun around and glared at me, and I could see anger and confusion in his eyes.

"What the hell is wrong with you? Why would I EVER not want to help you? I care about you."

I couldn't look at him.

"I know you do, Andy. That's what scares me."

I tried to keep walking, but he pulled me around to face him again, like I was a stuffed animal, and I didn't resist, I just let myself be completely passive and tried not to look him in the eye.

"We're leaving. Go ahead and get whatever stuff you need from your locker and I'll check you out sick."

"I need to go back to the cafeteria first."

He just stared at me for a moment, and then he nodded.

"Okay, let's go."

We walked back in, and and I got my book bag and books together while he went to the office, and then we headed back to the cafeteria. He cleared our trays and then watched while I approached Jake's table and pulled up a chair and sat down beside him.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm alright, something came up with Andy. I'm gonna head home now, but I'll see you tomorrow before school ok?"

I started to stand up and he grabbed my arm and moved his chair around and leaned in closer and looked at me with concern.

"You don't look okay, what is it?"

"I'll be alright, can you let Mrs. T know I went home?"

"Yeah of course."

"See you, Jake"

"See you."

He turned and stood up and watched me walk away. I really tried not to look back at him, but I did.

When I walked up to Andy, he had an unreadable look on his face.

"Is that what this is about?"

"Just come on, Andy. Where are we going?"

He dangled the keys in front of me.

"I told them you threw up, just so you know."

"Thanks. There's still a good chance of that."

"Just don't do it in the car."

"K."

When we got to his car, he unlocked it and opened the door for me, then walked around and got behind the wheel. We just sat there for a couple of minutes in silence. He didn't start the car. He just looked straight in front of him.

He was waiting for me, but I didn't know where to start.

I knew I needed to say something, but I was weak. I needed him to tell me it would be alright. I needed to believe him.

When he finally spoke, his voice sounded like it belonged to a different person, to someone I didn't know at all.

"Look, if you're gonna tell me you're gay, now would be a good time."

I looked at him in shock. My mouth was hanging open. He was staring at the steering wheel, and when he looked over at me, it was with this look I had never seen on his face.

He knew me, and so he knew that. I could see in his eyes that he'd known for a while, that he'd thought about it a lot, and that he knew about it because he'd been paying attention to a lot of little details for a long time. And I could see that that's what this was to him, another of those details.

I tipped over onto him and buried my face in his shirt, awkwardly hugging myself into him and releasing the nervousness in a mixture of muffled laughs and sniffles.

"I'm sorry, Andy."

"What about?"

"I mean ... I'm sorry I wasn't ... didn't tell you."

"You know, it does hurt a little. I know you're smarter than me, but I'm smarter than people think. And I guess I thought you were the one person who knew that."

"Andy, I know you're smart, but I really did underestimate you. I mean, you already knew. I just figured it out last month."

"I know."

"But how could you?"

"I just did. You're not good at hiding things from me. Especially something like that."

"Yeah. I guess I was better at hiding it from myself."

"So what changed then?"

I didn't answer right away. I didn't know how to describe what was happening to me.

"I've kinda been ...crushing on a boy. And this weekend I think maybe I fell in love with him."

"Oh."

I rolled my head away from his chest and looked up at him out of the corner of my eye.

"That's all you can say? Oh?"

"I guess I'm surprised that you used the L-word."

"Yeah, I know. But I don't know what else to call it. He's all I think about. I can barely control myself around him. It's scary. I want to hold him so bad it hurts. I'm having these crazy impulses to kiss him every time I'm near him, and I'm afraid I'm going to slip up and forget that that's not okay. I think it must be love, because I have to stop myself from telling him I love him every time I look at him up close."

He sighed, and started playing with the sleeve of my shirt.

"Love, huh? What can I say?"

"I don't know. Are you happy for me?"

"If you're happy, then I'll be happy for you too."

"You sound like that's going to take effort."

"You're worth the effort."

"Aren't you going to ask me who it is?"

"You mean it isn't who I think it is?"

"Now I know why you were trying to get a reaction from me that time at lunch."

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Maybe I was a little bit jealous, and that's why it came out like that."

"Why would you be jealous?"

He didn't answer me. He was breathing funny, sort of deep breaths that moved my head around on his chest as he breathed, and I could feel him hesitating to tell me what was in his heart, even though I could hear it beating right under my ear.

I twisted my neck to look up at him but I couldn't see his eyes, and I didn't want to move my head from his chest.

"Andy? Why?"

"I don't want to put that on you, Chase. That's my problem, not yours."

"Yeah, but you have to tell me now, because I already know you have a problem. And it's my problem, too."

"It isn't gonna help to talk about it now."

"It isn't gonna help not to talk about it, either, and now that I know there's a problem, I need to know what it is."

He was rubbing the seam on the sleeve of my shirt, and I could tell that he was really worried about something.

"Look, I won't lie to you. I'm worried about this. I've been worried about it for a while. I know I shouldn't be thinking about myself, but I can't help it."

"What do you mean?"

He was silent. I put my hand on his leg and shook it.

"What are you talking about? You're my best friend. This doesn't change that."

"It's just, I feel like this is the beginning of us not being so close. You'll have a boyfriend, and he'll be everything I am to you, plus all the other things too. It really hit me when I saw how you were looking at him."

"That's not true, Andy. Nobody's ever going to be what you are to me. Even if you disappeared from my life, nobody could ever take your place. Not even if I wanted that, and I don't."

My voice had turned all scratchy and hoarse. The tears had come out of nowhere, and I couldn't hold them in. I could feel them burning my cheek and saturating his shirt where my face was pressed against his chest.

"It's not what people want, it's just what happens."

"You're not like that, Andy. You don't let shit just happen. You would kick my ass up and down the block if I started to let that happen."

"Yeah, I know. I'm just not sure it would do any good."

"So what, we can't do anything about it, that's how things are? I mean we're all gonna die in the end, too, right? That's how life is? It's not even worth fighting for it?"

He was quiet, but I thought I might have gotten to him. I lifted my head off his chest and looked up at him.

"Andy, you know I love you too right?"

He smirked and ruffled my hair.

"Yeah. I know. You don't exactly hide it very well. "

"Well neither do you."

He was looking into me again, without any bullshit defenses.

"I never tried to."

"Maybe that's why I love you."

He smiled and looked out the window.

"No, you love me because I'm awesome."

"OK, that too."

Then he pulled me back into him and rested his chin on the top of my head.

"Come on, let's get this gay shit over with and you can tell me about your weekend with loverboy. Did you get any?"

"Fuck you."

"I guess that's a no."

"Yeah."

"Is he gay too?"

I sighed and felt myself deflate a little.

"I don't know."

"Are you gonna ask him? Or tell him? Or show him?"

"I guess I want to try to show him. I mean I already kind of started to."

"And?"

"And I think we've given each other some signs that we might be ... falling for each other."

"But?"

"But I'm afraid it could be just, kind of a friend crush, you know, not sexual on his part."

"Well how would you ever know that for sure if you don't ask him or tell him or show him?"

"I feel like at some point we're going to both cross that line at the same time. That's what I want, I guess. I guess I have to be patient, though. And try to keep my boner from crossing the line first."

"Yeah, good luck with that."

"Shut up."

"You're not highly skilled at hiding your boners either."

"Compared to you, you mean?"

"Hey. If you did your job like a good gay boy, there wouldn't be any boner to hide."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"Any time."

"Andy..."

"Yeah?"

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

"Did you ever wanna ... you know... fool around with me? Like when we were kids?"

He was quiet for a moment. Then he took a deep breath too and sighed it back out.

"It crossed my mind a few times."

"But?"

"I didn't want to mess us up. I'm not gay, and I needed you, and I knew you needed me."

He squeezed me and rubbed his chin on the top of my head.

"And we were already as close as we could get."

After a while there was a rapping at the window on the other side of Andy's head. He pressed the button and the window rolled down. I started to move my head from his chest, but he held me tighter. The security guard glanced at me and then ran his eyes over the back seat of the car.

"You boys should be in class now."

Andy felt around in his shirt pocket and handed him the passes from the office with our names on them. He read them one at a time and then met my eye and looked slightly amused.

"You sick?"

"Just a little weak. I'm starting to feel better."

"I would think so."

Andy turned his head and probably glared at him.

"Was there anything else?"

"No, I don't guess there is. You boys take care now. Sorry for the interruption."

Andy rolled up the window and waited a minute before he spoke.

"Dick."

"I don't think he was being a dick. I think he thought we were cute."

"Even worse."

"Hey, he could have written you up for comforting me on school grounds inside a parked vehicle."

"Or failing to give each other proper blow jobs in a timely manner."

"Haha don't put ideas in my head now that I'm officially gay."

"You know, there has to be an upside in all this for me."

"The upside is you get all the girls."

"Gee thanks. I can tell how hard it must be for you to give them up. That means a lot to me."

"I'll throw in some of my mom's pancakes if you're not nice to me."

He made a gagging sound and we both started to laugh. I don't know why we were so mean to my mom behind her back, but it had been that way for so long that there didn't need to be a reason.

He started the car up and we drove home listening to some playlist I had made for him when he first started to drive. And just for the time it took to wind our way home, we didn't need to say any more, even though there was still so much that hadn't been said.

Part 6

It felt good that Andy knew about me, or good to know that he knew, but we hadn't really resolved anything, and I guess deep down I knew that if Andy felt threatened by the possibility I might end up with a boyfriend, the problem wasn't going to be magically wished away.

I ate lunch with Jake the next three days, and it was so great. We sat in a corner at the end of a table where no one gave a shit what we were saying to each other. Well, except Andy. He didn't say anything about it on the drive to and from school but I knew that it was only a matter of time, because I could tell that he was holding something in.

On Friday, Andy had a study period in the library right before lunch, and I got a pass to use the restroom and diverted to say hi to him before going back to class, which was almost over.

He was in a corner looking out the window, and I sat down in front of him and smiled at him. He looked at me strangely, as if he could tell how happy I was and didn't know how to feel about that. He looked way too serious, and with Andy that was never a good sign.

"Can you just, come home with me, or maybe we could go back to your place for lunch?"

He looked ... unsure of himself, somehow, which was so unlike Andy.

"Sure. Let me go get my books and text Jake, and I'll meet you out back at the car."

I got back to class and ignored the look the teacher gave me, gathered my books up, and pretended to be interested in the review she was finishing up when the bell rang.

Outside, I caught up with Andy not far from his car and fell in beside him as the alarm chirped and he walked around the car and opened his door. I got in and he started the car without waiting for me to get my seatbelt on.

"So what's up?"

"What's up is I hardly saw you this week except when I was your ride here and back home. I want to do something with you this weekend."

"Um... I kinda made plans with Jake to sleep over and then take the boat out on Saturday morning. Wanna come?"

He didn't say anything as he went through the mechanical motions of driving the car without looking over at me or acknowledging that I had spoken.

When we got to his house, he pulled over in front of it instead of parking in the driveway, and turned the car off but made no move to get out.

"I guess I'll take that as a no."

"Let's just go inside." He sounded like he wasn't surprised that I'd disappointed him, if that's what I'd done.

We went in and ate lunch, then made our way upstairs to Andy's room. He was pacing around it, looking over at me from time to time, while I watched him pace and waited for a sign that he was ready to talk. Finally he stopped pacing and stood looking out the window for a few moments and then gazed down at his feet.

I cleared my throat and he looked up at me expectantly.

"Look, Andy ... if I told you that you're my best friend, but once you have a girlfriend, that would mess up our friendship, that would be crazy, right?"

"That's different."

"It's not different, it's exactly the same. It's just that it's missing the gay thing, which is keeping you from seeing that it's the same."

Suddenly he looked furious.

"That's just like you. You make some bad analogy and think you understand everything. It's not even close to the same thing."

"Okay, so how's it different?"

"First of all, if I have a girlfriend, she's not gonna be sleeping over at my house like you do. We'll do stuff together, sure, and you and I will spend a little less time together, but the time we have that's just ours will be exactly the same. You and I will stay up on Friday talking or whatever and sleep in and eat breakfast together and go for a swim, and later in the day on Saturday, my girlfriend and I will go out and do something together. And I'll have to have her back home at a certain hour, and then you and I will stay up late again and we'll wake up together on Sunday and just do whatever we feel like and be best friends like always. The only thing different will be that one of us will have a girlfriend too. Your boyfriend thing is totally different."

He was talking so fast, in this scratchy voice, hardly pausing to breathe.

"He's gonna be the one sleeping over with you, and staying up and sleeping in and eating breakfast and just hanging out together because that's how it is. He's gonna be like your best friend plus, he's gonna have everything that used to be mine and I'm gonna be left with crumbs. And don't you even say that I can hang out with you guys, because that's not the same. That's not the same."

I looked at him in shock. I don't think Andy ever made a speech that long before. His voice was cracking, really hoarse, and suddenly I realized I had tears streaming down my face and I didn't know when that happened. I backed him into the corner and wrapped him up in an awkward onesided hug and tried to keep him from fighting me off.

Eventually he gave me a quick hug back, wiped his face on my shirt, and then pushed me away.

"Fuck, this is so gay. You're contagious."

"So what you're saying is you want to still be able to sleep with me?"

"It's not that, it's like what it represents. Plus, I do like sleeping with you. And it's not a gay thing. I mean, you're better than a dog or a pillow. I sleep better with you. And after all this time, I feel shit that's not going to go away, just because it's in your way."

"Andy, you're forgetting something."

"What?"

"All of that stuff you're worried about can't just happen. You and I would have to let it happen. And we're not going to."

"That's what people say, people say that all the time, and nobody believes it. Look around you, how many grownups do you see who are friends like us? "

"Okay, you're right about that, but how many guys in our grade do you see who are friends like us? We're not friends like everybody else."

"You think I don't know that? Why do you think I would fight with you like this? When I know I'm just gonna push you away?"

"You're not going to push me away. Andy, I would never give you up for a boyfriend. Nobody I would ever want for a boyfriend would ask me to do that, and I couldn't do it if I tried. You're right, I didn't think about the sleepover thing, that's something we do that I wouldn't want to give up either, that I would want to have with my boyfriend too. We'll just have to have, like, dibs on each other on certain days."

"You know I'm not gay, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"It's just, sometimes I think ... I would be if I could, just to stay close with you."

"Andy, that's not how things work."

"What if I'm bi?"

"What if you are?"

"What if you're the one chance I have to find out?"

"If you're really bi, you get a lot more than one chance to find out."

"Yeah but...maybe only one chance to find out with someone I already love."

"I know you love me Andy, but that's not the same as being in love. You can't turn one into the other just to see what it's like."

"Maybe I'm already in love with you. Maybe you just never noticed."

"Andy, we've been sleeping together for a long time, I think I would have noticed."

"Yeah but we just got in the habit of being really comfy, but not like, sexy together, so maybe that's why nothing ever happened."

"No, it never happened because you didn't lie in bed dreaming about it happening. I would have come in my undies if you'd ever mentioned fooling around."

"Well I'm mentioning it now. So show me those undies."

He snuffled, and grabbed my shirt in both hands and kind of shook it. I looked at him, and tried to figure out what he was trying to tell me, but all I could see in his eyes was confusion.

"We're not going to just fool around and see what happens. I probably couldn't say no if I knew it was what you had always wanted, because there's a part of me that's always wanted that too. But that's not how it is. You're feeling threatened by changes that aren't what you're worried they're going to be, and you're offering to take big chances to reassure yourself that things will be okay, when that would just make things more uncertain."

"I guess that means you didn't come in your undies, huh? That was just a figure of speech?"

He was looking up at me with what I knew was love in his eyes, but it came out more like an accusation.

"Andy, I'm gay, of course I think you're hot. But you're not gay, and I'm your best friend, so why would you want to fool around with me?"

"Oh come on dude, look at you. Yeah, you're too pretty for a guy, but that's okay, you're gay, so it fits. Of the girls in our school, you would easily be in the top five."

"So you want to fool around with me because I'm pretty like a top 5 girl? And you might be bi? And maybe you're in love with me? Or you always wanted to fool around with me? Have you thought any of this out, or do you just plan to throw it out there and see what sticks?"

"I've been thinking about this for a while, it's just this sudden thing you have for loverboy has kicked my ass into gear to do something about it."

"When you say for a while, what do you mean?"

"Like since I wondered if you might be gay, and if so, what about me."

"So even then, before you knew I was gay, you were worried that my imaginary boyfriend would come between us? And that made you consider letting me have my gay way with you, even though you weren't bi and for all you knew I wasn't even gay?

"Hey, I told you, I might be bi."

"Hey, I told you, I don't believe you. What guys have you fantasized about?"

"Seriously, you're the only guy I've ever thought about that way."

"Yeah but, I mean, you're bi, there must be other guys who do it for you. Other really pretty, girly guys, like me but more so."

"You're not girly. Yuck. That would be nasty. I just said you're pretty, like a pretty girl is pretty, not that you're girly. I just mean, like your face. You're, you know, severely pretty, Chase."

"Yeah but, what about other guys, even prettier than me?"

"I don't feel anything for them."

"So use your imagination."

"What's your point? You're the one I'm wondering about. I don't think about other guys like that."

"It's normal to wonder about that, it doesn't make you bi, it just makes you a normal guy with a good imagination."

"And maybe with a best friend I'm in love with. I mean, we've been cuddling in bed together for 4 years, it's not such a big leap."

"Andy, I love snuggling with you, but you don't want to do this. We're too good together, and we're going to mess everything up if you don't stop and think about this."

"What do you think I've been doing? All I do is think about it. It's making me crazy. That's why I want to just stop thinking about it and find out ... what it means. And there's only one question that I can't answer by myself, and that's the one I'm asking you."

"What do you mean?"

"If we could have that. You know, sex, friendship, love. All in one person."

"All we're missing now is the sex. But sex is something you have to want for its own sake."

"Well I want it. I mean I want to know."

"Andy, I'm sure you and I could have sex, and it might be great. It could be great for me, because it's you, if I knew it would be great for you too. But if you just want it to answer a question, or to reassure yourself that our friendship will be ok, it won't be good for us."

"Why are you making this so hard for me?"

"Because you're trying to make it too easy."

He was quiet again, looking down at his feet as if they could tell him which path to take.

"I just want it to be like it was."

"That's what I'm talking about. It's never going to be like it was. Having sex won't turn back the clock, it'll just flip it forward and then you'll still have to figure out where you are and where you belong."

"Look, if you don't want to, just say so."

"Andy, of course I would want to if I thought it would work out. Just tell me this, have you ever, even once, jacked off thinking about a guy, all the way to climax? Even one time?"

He was completely silent for almost a whole minute.

"Are you sure that you could do that if you tried? And what would you fantasize about doing with him?"

Eventually he started nodding, like I'd finally said something that had changed his mind.

"Okay. I think I see your point. So maybe I'm not bi. I just thought about having sex with you, but I didn't actually get all the way off on the idea. I was hard while I was thinking about it, though."

"Oh thank god."

"Shut up."

He held his fingers about an inch apart.

"I was this close to being bi."

"I was afraid I was going to have to start giving you blowjobs before you go to sleep."

"I haven't ruled that part out yet."

"It can't be that bad being straight, can it?"

"No. It's just that I'm jealous of him. I mean he gets everything. The whole package. It's not fair. Just because he's into the whole, like, buttsex thing."

"This has nothing to do with buttsex. If you were really bi, I wouldn't have to explain that to you. I have no idea what he's into, or even what I'm into except for him. Look, Jake's already nervous about you too. And I can't really blame him. I try not to talk about you too much, but you and I are so close it almost looks like there's something there to be jealous of."

"Whatever. Let loverboy be jealous. He can't have everything."

"You gotta stop calling him that. You need to figure out how to be friends."

"Now I have to like him too? Don't even ask that."

"Okay, forget it. Just try to be polite."

"I'll be the Dalai Lama of politeness."

"Right, maybe it's better if you just ignore him."

"I can't ignore my best friend's boyfriend."

He poked my chest with his finger.

"My best friend who could have been my boyfriend."

"Oh please."

"Just sayin. You snooze you lose."

"Yeah, if I'd been paying attention, I could have snuck some buttsex into your 15 minutes of being bi."

"You'll never know."

"I'll know."

"You'll always wonder what this ass of mine would have been like."

"You really should write Hallmark cards, Andy. You have the gift."

"That's what I'm sayin'. This is my gift. The gift that keeps on giving."

He leaned it out a little and slapped his ass.

I rolled my eyes.

"Fine. It'll be on my list of things I regret on my deathbed. Are you happy?"

He was quiet for a moment, and then he shook his head dejectedly and looked down.

"No. I'm just ... I'm not. I feel like I almost did something to change the situation, and it's still the same, and I'm not liking it."

"Andy, you can't change everything that makes you uncomfortable. Sometimes you just have to give yourself time to get comfortable with the things you can't change."

"I don't even know what that means. It sounds like an AA slogan. And I am not an alcoholic."

"I just mean, I didn't ask to be gay either. And this isn't any easier for me than it is for you. But the one thing that makes it okay, every day that doesn't make sense, is you."

"Yeah, I know that. I am the best. No one else could love your gay ass the way I do."

"You love more than my ass."

"Yeah."

He nodded and looked down at his shoes, grabbed my arm and let his hand run down it to my fingertips and then let go.

Then he just looked up and rolled his eyes at me and put his hand on my chest and shoved me, and for a moment it was like it always was, even though it would never be like that again.