I need a figurative splash of cold water—and quickly.
“I can keep this goin’ aaaall night,” Jimmy sings, his voice tiny and teasing and full of twang.
My dick flexes urgently at his words.
Stuff is happening in my guts. My heart is thrashing. My face seems to be getting squeezed more and more by his legs, like a vise-grip slowly tightening.
I think he’s enjoying this power over me a tad too much.
“Yeah, and I can last all night,” I throw back at him.
Wait. Why am I taunting him back?
Jimmy smirks with dark amusement. “Good, ‘cause I sure ain’t lettin’ you up ‘til I hear the magic words.” He flicks my forehead. I flinch and scowl at him from between his thighs. That makes him laugh. “I forgot how much fun it is to play with you like this, Bobs. Why didn’t we do this more on campus?”
“Likely ‘cause you act like a dignified human being on campus, instead of some dominance-seeking ape like you are now.”
He laughs—finding that hilarious, apparently—then starts to casually play drums on my forehead with his fingertips. “Y’know, Bobby-boy,” he goes on, oblivious to my grunting as I struggle to get free again, “it’d really mean a lot to me if you told me—your best friend, your best buddy, your pal—how much better I am at everything than you. It’d mean so much to me.”
I resort to kicking my legs, trying to throw Jimmy off of me. I guess that makes me the unruly horse and Jimmy the rider. It doesn’t matter, because it does nothing but make him clamp his thighs tighter around my face and press his ass heavier onto my chest.
He’s determined to keep me pinned right where I am.
“Really?” he teases me. “You don’t wanna make your best bud feel good? You don’t think I deserve that?”
“Jimmy, I swear …”
“Aww, c’mon. Don’t you love me?” He pinches my top and bottom lips, then pretends to speak in my voice. “‘Why yes, Jimmy, I do agree, your legs are so much betterer than my scrawny ones …’”
I shake my head, freeing his fingers from my lips. “I swear …”
“If you keep swearin’, Bobby Parker, someone’s gonna have to wash your mouth out with soap.”
I don’t say anything now. I just lie there in the dirt, helplessly caught beneath the weight of Jimmy Strong, and stare up into his rich brown eyes, which are so dark with triumph that he looks like some bully who’s just won a schoolyard wrestling match with the shrimp-kid in class.
A decision flickers in his eyes. Then he lifts himself off of my chest, rises to his feet, and extends a hand down to me.
I can thank every gay god from here to Jupiter that my boner is (mostly) gone by the time he gets off of me. Otherwise, we’d be having a totally different conversation right now.
“Given up?” I ask him casually from the ground.
“Nah.” He shrugs, all charm and sweetness in his eyes. “Just bein’ the better man.”
I snort, then reach for his hand.
He retracts it the second I’m about to clasp it, then snatches the soccer ball up off a patch of grass and races away with it.
“Hey!” I shout, then clamber off the ground and chase after him while he laughs. We run around the yard like dogs chasing each other’s tails, Jimmy hopping over a tire and twisting his way nimbly around and between trees as I pursue him. I nearly catch him once or twice, but he’s always quicker and gets away.
I think this is a perfect representation of my life with Jimmy Strong: always chasing him, just a step or three behind, forever within reach, yet never quite reaching.
A hand always extended, but never taken.
Not that I like to draw symbolism out of every little thing, but you can’t help but notice it after a while. Or maybe it’s all of those critical-thinking reading classes I’m taking as part of the honors college.
Several hours later, it feels like the whole town of Spruce is asleep, and the only motherfuckers awake are me and Jimmy. We are in my bedroom, sprawled out on a sea of mismatched blankets and throw pillows, watching some dumb late-night shit on TV.
He’s on his stomach on the floor, elbows propping up his front as he stares up at the TV, and I’m seated next to his feet leaning against the foot of my bed, a big pillow at my back. My legs are crossed with my feet right by his arm. We’ve since showered and changed out of our clothes and into some comfy gym shorts—his, red and shiny like basketball shorts, and mine, gray and cottony. He’s shirtless while I’ve got on a loose blue tank.
Jimmy laughs every five seconds at the dumb Adult Swim show that’s on, and every time he laughs, I watch his bare back jerk and jump, little muscles in it flinching and flexing. I also watch his red, shiny bubble butt in those shorts wiggle. I really can’t help it; those two shiny red glutes of his in those shorts are practically demanding to be stared at—especially since I’m having doubts he’s got on any underwear, as the shiny, slinky, loose material settles between his muscled cheeks, outlining his butt exquisitely.