I can feel his lips on my neck, even still. My dick has gone soft, but the feeling of his mighty, strong hand sliding up and down the length of my cock with expert skill still lingers, teasing it to the brink of oblivion. I can smell his heat, feel his breath, and hear his soft groans and horny whimpers.
We just did all of that. Chad Landry and I.
We did all of that together.
I take a deep, long breath.
Then I let it all out in a disbelieving fit of laughter. The laughs grow and grow until I have to stifle them with my hand—not the wet and sticky one. And even then, I can’t stop chuckling behind my fingers, staring at the floor full of his disheveled, fancy clothes, his big pair of shoes, and a thin black loosened tie, still knotted.
12
The Things We’ve Done
By the time I get to the showers, he’s already washing in his partition, the curtain closed. Then when I finish rinsing off, he’s already out of the shower and drying off in the other room. I get dressed in the closet while he waits for me in the locker room, and when I finally reunite with him, the both of us are back in our nice and fancy reunion getups.
And he’s clutching our two used, stained singlets.
I lift an eyebrow. “Really, Chad?”
He wrinkles up his face. “I ain’t just gonna leave these here. You think I’m crazy? They’re covered in our DNA.”
“DNA?” I laugh at that. “What is this? An episode of CSI? Did we just commit a murder? What are you going to do with them?”
“Take ‘em home with me, I guess. Clean them. Sneakily return them some other day. Or …” He shrugs. “Keep ‘em for next time.”
His playful eyes meet mine.
I smirk, lean back against a set of lockers, and cross my arms. “Next time?”
“There will be a next time,” he tells me, then balls up the pair of singlets and shoves them into a small mesh laundry bag, which I guess he grabbed from the closet while I was still showering. “Are we goin’ back to that reunion? Or we sayin’ fuck it and headin’ on out of here? ‘Cause I need to get these to my truck, and—”
“Well, we left our phones on our table,” I remind him, “so we kinda have to go back, at least to get them before we go.”
“Shit. I forgot.”
“Isn’t there an exit to the outside from this gym?” I ask, throwing a thumb over my shoulder. “We’ll have to walk around the school to get back to the parking lot where your truck is, but it’s a nice night out, and I wouldn’t mind it. We can swing by, drop off your little gross souvenir—”
“Hey, it ain’t that gross!” he interrupts me with a laugh.
“—then grab our phones from the reunion, say our goodbyes, and head off to the Evans’.” I give it a thought. “That is, if there’s anyone left at the reunion to say goodbye to. We’ve been missing for quite a long while.”
“Best ‘long while’ of my life,” says Chad, staring me down.
I press my lips together and glance away, fighting off a smile.
The next moment, Chad and I are slowly strolling along the unlit perimeter of the school. We pass by dark classroom windows and other locked exits to the tune of crickets chirping and a calm, night breeze making the grass sigh.
“So are we going to talk about what just happened?” I ask.
Chad has one hand in his pocket, the other dangling the mesh bag over his shoulder like Wrestler Santa Claus bearing gifts. “Sure we can. What’s on your mind?”
“Everything,” I answer. “You said it wasn’t your first time?”
“No. I’ve …” He struggles a bit, bobbing his head left and right as he figures out what to say. “I’ve sought out guys to be intimate with over the past few years. About seven or so years ago, around the time Tanner came out publically. Oh, you don’t know nothin’ about that, do you? Shoot, that was quite the scene.”
“Spruce’s big football star coming out? What could be so big about that?” I ask sarcastically. “So his coming out made you come out. And then you went out hunting to satisfy your new thirst.”
Chad shoots me a humored look. “You make me sound like a vampire or somethin’.”
“Aren’t you, basically?” I casually kick a pebble off the grass as we stroll. It dances into the darkness. “When you realize you’ve been craving something your whole life that didn’t have a name, until some big football guy comes out and says he’s into men, too? At least your thirst for men doesn’t exsanguinate them.”
“I ain’t gonna pretend to know what that word means.”
“So where did you satisfy yourself?” I ask, glancing at the side of his face—or where his face would be, if there was any light at all around us. “Where do you go to meet men out here in a place like Spruce fucking Texas?”