CHAPTER fifteen
The town had a large multiplex that played a nice variety of blockbusters and art house films. One of the benefits of Duncannon was the better selection of movies than Ethan’s hometown. Greg scanned the list while a bored employee waited in the box office.
“The New Wonderfuls is supposed to be really quirky, like a Wes Anderson film,” Ethan said.
Greg wasn’t impressed.
“It’s gotten great reviews.”
“I don’t care about reviews. When did it come out?” Greg asked. He wore a polo and green shorts with flip-flops. It was the first day of fall. Ethan was already in a light sweater.
“I think it just came out this weekend.”
“Pass.” Greg continued scanning the board. Ethan wondered if he actually wanted to see a movie, and the possibility made his heart beat even faster.
“What about Liberated?” Greg asked.
That was a movie Ethan and his friends had seen opening weekend. Not his choice. It was about some imprisoned journalists in the Sudan. That was all Ethan remembered before he had dozed off.
“It starts in twenty minutes. How long has it been out?”
“At least since school started.”
“Perfect.” Greg slapped Ethan on the back. His brown eyes made his smile seem even warmer.
Greg paid for his ticket.
“Thank you so much!” Ethan sounded overly grateful, but it had been a long time since anybody had paid for his ticket.
“Don’t worry about it. You can cover snacks.”
“I don’t know if we’ll be eating.” Ethan nudged his side. Then he realized they were still in front of the bored employee, and he looked down. So much for being smooth.
“Get some popcorn,” Greg instructed and headed into the theater.
“With butter?”
He shrugged. It seemed to be the last thing on his mind. Ethan decided against it. What if butter on his hands caused irritation to certain body parts? He also got a Coke, just in case they got thirsty.
Greg sat in the back row, and Ethan’s nerves stood on-edge. The anticipation and excitement consumed him. Knowing his skin would be making contact with Greg’s tight, tanned flesh momentarily, all while in public view, made him dizzy and caused his knees to clack together. Climbing those stairs felt like their own form of foreplay, getting his engine revved.
“Hey,” Greg said. He tossed popcorn into his mouth. “Sweet. You got soda, too.”
“I got Coke.”
“That’s fine.”
“What do you usually drink when you go to the movies?”
“This.” Greg pulled out a flask from his pocket.
“Seriously?”
“Trust me, it makes movie-watching that much better.” He poured the contents into the Coke.
“Maybe I should get another,” Ethan said. Either that or he’d have to add public intoxication to his list of illicit activities on a Monday afternoon.
“It’s not that much. It’ll calm you.”
“I am calm.”
Greg shot him a disbelieving look. And he was right—Ethan would never be calm. He seemed destined to always have thirty thoughts running through his head at once.
Suddenly, a thirty-first thought occurred to him: this is totally illegal.
“Are you sure this is okay? What if we get arrested for like indecent exposure?”
Fooling around in a public place off-campus was a whole new ballgame. They didn’t run the risk of getting caught by their college rent-a-cop. They could be apprehended by real police. Ethan shriveled up, and his leg shook with a new kind of nervousness.
“We’ll be careful,” Greg said. “C’mon, Folly. We need to step up our game, keep things interesting.”
Ethan wanted to stay interesting. He took a sip of the soda and felt the faint alcohol sting hit the back of his throat. “That’s all I’m having. I’m not getting drunk.”
“Just promise not to shove your feet in my face.”
He remembered! Ethan’s heart fluttered, but he quickly put it in its place. So he was listening outside the coffee shop; that did not mean anything except that he wasn’t a complete asshole.
Just before the lights went down, Ethan heard a familiar voice, and it set off a panic alarm.
“Let’s go! The movie’s starting,” Jessica whispered loudly. Her orders carried up to the top of the theater, and she would be rounding the corner into the auditorium any second.
Ethan gasped. He pointed to the entrance. “My friends.”
“Get down,” Greg whispered.
Ethan kneeled on the floor next to Greg’s knees and made a mental note of his tree-trunk legs and strong calf muscles.
“I like sitting here so I can put my feet up on the railing,” Jessica said.
“Is that too close?” That was Dave, who was about to be overruled.
Ethan tapped on Greg’s knee. “Who’s down there?”
“I count five. Three guys, two girls.” Greg offered the popcorn bag to Ethan. He refused.
“Five?”
The whole gang was here. Ethan reached into his pocket, which was no easy task in this position, and felt for his phone. No messages. Full cell reception.
The theater went dark, and the trailers started. Ethan got back into his seat and glared down at his friends. Hurt bruised his insides. Blake leaned his head against Preston’s shoulder.
Greg leaned in. “We’re going to have so much more fun than they are.”
He proceeded to massage Ethan’s thigh, his calloused hand rubbing the muscle with a firm grip. Ethan watched his fingers guide their way around his thigh and into a more sensitive area.
Ethan pushed him away. The mood was gone, down in front with his friends. Once again, he was the odd man out.
“Relax,” Greg whispered in his ear. “Fuck ‘em.”
Nerves ate at him. Mega-public place. Friends a few rows away. The movie was a quiet drama, not an action blockbuster, so they couldn’t be loud.
Greg massaged Ethan’s shoulder—thorough rubs that calmed him down. He tried to reciprocate, but Greg pushed his hand away.
“My turn,” Greg whispered into Ethan’s ear, his stubble chafing against his ear lobe. Passion rumbled within Ethan and made him rise to the occasion.
Greg ran his hand down Ethan’s arm and grabbed his erection through his jeans. A wave of excitement slammed Ethan’s body.
“Hold this.” Greg gave him the popcorn, and Ethan held it at his knees. Greg lifted up the armrest and unzipped Ethan, and his cock sprung out of his underwear, empowered by the cooled air of the very open theater. Their legs were touching, which, in spite of what was happening, was what drove Ethan craziest of all.
Greg wrapped his hand around Ethan’s hard-on and stroked it with deep, forceful movements. Ethan’s hips rose to meet Greg’s hand. They had a system down, but this never got old. Ethan tried to act as lookout, but those dark brown eyes drilled into him, down to his core. Greg leaned down and took him in his mouth.
Whoa! Ethan struggled for breath as his heart seemed determined to pole-vault out of his chest. He dug his nails into Greg’s back as the ecstasy of this moment possessed him. His whole body was on the best part of pins-and-needles, when things just tingled.
To Ethan’s surprise, Greg knew his way around a dick. Ethan wondered if he’d had much practice or if he’d learned by watching others. He ran his fingers through the prickly hairs at the back of Greg’s neck.
Greg went even faster. Ethan loved entering his warm mouth, having his tongue slobber all over Ethan’s hardness. (Now he got why they called it slobs.) He couldn’t moan, so he took in a deeper breath of air. He looked down and was turned on by the sight of his dick out in a place he’d been tons of times. And there was Greg, fully into the blowjob. This was the very definition of living on the edge.
His nervousness and the forced silence made the pleasure rocking his body all the more intense. The popcorn bag shook in his trembling hand. A stray kernel landed on Greg’s bobbing head. Ethan could feel his orgasm throughout his body, spiraling from the tips of his toes, heating up his chest, making his eyesight fuzzy. He wanted to warn Greg, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t speak. His motor functions were on a delay. At the last second, he yanked Greg away and shot his load into the bag of popcorn.
Once Ethan’s body returned to stasis levels, he looked over at Greg, who sat back in his chair and smirked. His lips were wet with saliva, and it made his mouth glisten in the darkness.
Ethan was still hard, turned on by Greg and the moment. His heart raced back up, and before Greg could utter a witty comment about not needing butter on the popcorn, Ethan’s face was in his crotch.
He unleashed Greg’s dick and inhaled every inch. He sucked with the force of a hundred vacuums. His ears perked up at the sound of someone munching popcorn, but that couldn’t stop him. It only made him want this more. He glanced up at Greg, who leaned back in pure joy, a relaxed smile on his face. He winked at Ethan.
Ethan gripped Greg’s cock with both hands and let it plumb the depths of his mouth. Greg came soon thereafter, also onto the popcorn.
“Maybe I should get a refill,” Ethan said.
They both leaned back and watched the movie for a few minutes—as a way to relax, not because they gave a shit about what was going on on-screen. Ethan stood up and brushed off the sex and popcorn bits stuck on his shirt.
“Where are you going?” Greg asked.
Ethan thought this was the part where they left. He doubted Greg would sit through this movie. He barely could.
Greg nudged him. “Stay.”
And so Ethan did. They continued to watch the movie, and Ethan felt a deep sense of relaxation. But somewhere during the film’s clichéd and seen-from-a-mile-away third-act twist, Greg did something that made his heart begin racing again.
He held Ethan’s hand.
At first, Ethan thought it was a mistake, but nope. Greg remained clasping his increasingly sweaty hand. Ethan stared down at the armrest—doing nothing, saying nothing, thinking everything. He was too scared to make eye contact.
Out of everything he had done today, this was the most nerve-wracking moment—when Ethan realized he couldn’t avoid the feelings he had for Greg.