The sleep the night before had been one of the worst of Adam’s life. He had been by turns horny and horrified. The remembered heat of Kyle’s body against his made him too warm, and he kicked off the blankets. Then shame crept in and left him naked and cold. His teeth chattered, and he shivered until he pulled the blankets back up around his neck. The friction of the sheets against his skin whispered like Kyle’s fingers on his back, and the whole cycle would start over.
At five o’clock he gave up. With a growl to the silent room, he heaved himself upright. He growled more when he realized his dick was upright too. Fuck. This was not how he’d planned to start his day. He needed to get Kyle out of his system.
He took a cold shower, but his erection persisted stubbornly, his balls aching. When he took himself in his palm, his hips kicked forward so hard he nearly slipped. It would serve him right if he cracked his skull in the shower over this. He wasn’t using his brain anyway.
The tiles were icy on his forehead as he leaned against them and jerked off roughly. He fought the memories that played through his head, the weight of Kyle pushing against him in the hall, the scent of him at the crook of his neck. He tried to take Kyle’s face out of the picture, pretend it was some stranger, but the memories played on loop for hours. They were followed by fantasies with Kyle, naked and gasping in Adam’s bed. Kyle on his knees as he stared up at Adam with those big brown eyes. His slick lips parted, his mouth opened wide as he took Adam into—
“Oh fuck.” Adam groaned as his balls spasmed and his hips lost their rhythm. He watched as long white lines of come spurted from his dick. They splattered against the tile and oozed down the shower wall. The orgasm spread down his legs and up his chest until his fingers and toes tingled. He whimpered as he remembered the sensation of Kyle’s hand on the straining fly of his pants. This was the orgasm Kyle would have given him, if he’d let him, now intensified with eight hours of tortured sleep and sexual frustration.
Shame crept back in. His behavior was inexcusable. From the second he’d kissed Kyle until now, as he’d unapologetically jerked off to the thought of a man he shouldn’t want, everything had been wrong.
The silence of his apartment closed in, like it wanted to suffocate him.
He flipped through his phone, checking for emails or anything else to distract him. There was nothing. He wrote a long text message to Rebecca, then remembered it wasn’t even six in the morning yet, so he deleted it. The message he tried to write for Kyle got as far as It’s not you, it’s me before he deleted the whole thing in disgust. He put on shorts and a T-shirt, grabbed his phone and a pair of headphones, and laced up his running shoes.
Outside, Adam turned the music up as loud as he could stand. He let the bass thump in his ears until he could feel it in his chest. His feet picked up a hard, pounding rhythm against the cement. He needed this, deserved it, maybe. Running always helped to clear his head, once his body fell into the rhythm. But that morning, every step jarred up his legs and spine. His lungs burned and his muscles ached. Despite it, Adam kept running.
He ran in no particular direction. When he reached traffic lights that were red, he turned the corner and ran somewhere else. After a while, the progression of street names told him he was running in the general direction of Kyle’s house, so he turned right suddenly. He ran past a series of industrial strip malls and big box stores, their parking lots empty in the early Sunday morning light.
The music screeched in his ears. It spurred him on like an electronica war cry. He ran until he could feel sweat trickling down his back in rivers and his brain finally went blank, while his lungs ached and his throat was raw. He ran until his shirt stuck to his body like a second skin, then he peeled it off, stuck it into the waist of his shorts, and kept running. He ran as the burn in his legs melted away and then returned again. He ran until the pain spread through his thighs and up his back.
He finally stopped when his right quad cramped up so badly he nearly fell. He had to brace his hands against his thighs to keep from falling over. Sweat stung his eyes. The inside of his mouth turned to slime, but he hadn’t brought any water with him. The sun was up now. It had already heated the asphalt, and it dried the sweat to his skin. His head spun.
In his ear, a chime played, grating against the music. His hands shook as he yanked the phone off the strap around his bicep and thumbed through the screens until he found the new text message.
fuck you very much, Mr. hathaway
There was a picture of a mostly naked Kyle attached, but Adam could barely see it as blood and the music roared in his ears. His vision blurred. His stomach turned over, and he lurched to the side of the road and vomited into a shrub. There was nothing in his stomach, so he retched up sour bile.
The wobbling in his legs was tightening to pain again. He would be in trouble very soon if he didn’t find some water and a place to cool down. He was in a subdivision, several miles from his apartment, but less than a mile from Rebecca’s.
The effort it took to get his feet moving took about as much effort as trying to roll a stalled car uphill on a slippery road, but he managed it somehow. Still, where his steps had been strong and sure before, now he shambled along the street like a zombie. His hands flopped uselessly at his side. Every part of him ached. His mouth tasted like roadkill, but when he tried to breathe through his nose, he couldn’t get enough air, and it made him feel sick and dizzy.
When he turned onto Rebecca’s street, his knees nearly buckled, and his vision wavered once more. He stumbled up the driveway. There was a light on in the house. He bypassed the garage and the front door, and staggered around to the backyard. His skull felt tight against his brain.
“Adam?” Rebecca’s voice was far away. He lurched forward, and at the last second remembered to drop his phone; he wasn’t sure where. Later, he would be surprised that the phone survived the fall, but right then he didn’t think of anything as he tumbled into the pool.
The welcome wet swallowed him, and he sank like a rock to the bottom. The water filled his ears, distorting everything. It felt cool against his overheated skin. He let himself settle on the smooth vinyl at the bottom for a second, before he tucked his feet under him. His weak noodly limbs propelled him, weightless, toward the surface. He broke through and gasped.
“Adam!” Rebecca’s voice was tight and high, full of worry. Before his head could go under the water a second time, he strained upward and opened his eyes.
Rebecca and Cameron were standing on the lawn. Cam was in sweats and had a T-shirt half pulled over his head, like he was thinking of jumping into the pool after Adam. The collar of Rebecca’s T-shirt was gathered up to her chin, her eyes wide. The yard was quiet, but there was a neighbor on the back porch of the house next door, a hose in one hand that dribbled water into a planter while she stared at them.
He dunked under one last time, enjoying the cool silence for a final few seconds. The throbbing in his head was subsiding. He swam toward the shallow end. It took some work; his shoes were still on, and they clunked in the water as he kicked. Over his splashing, he heard Rebecca clucking to her husband. When Adam reached the pool’s steps and climbed out, Cam was standing there with a towel, which Adam took as he toed off his squelching shoes.
“Good morning,” Cameron said. His eyes were quiet, his expression assessing. Adam buried his face in the towel.
A fist bounced off his shoulder, too small to be Cameron’s but still big enough to hurt.
“Ow!” He pulled the towel away from his face. Rebecca stood in front of him, hands clenched in fists. The blue eyes they shared narrowed at him and glared.
“What the hell, Adam?” She punched him again.
“Can I get a glass of water?” He ignored her as he mopped at his chest with the towel. He needed another moment before he faced down his sister. Cameron cleared his throat, looked between his wife and Adam, and then headed into the house. Rebecca continued to gape at him. He felt weirdly self-conscious in front of his sister, so he reached for his T-shirt and found it wasn’t tucked into his shorts anymore. A quick search found it floating, spread out like a drowning victim, in the pool.
Adam walked across the yard, and took a seat in one of the lawn chairs still arranged in the grass from the barbecue the night before. Rebecca followed.
“Are you going to tell me what just happened?” She pulled a chair around to face him and sat, watching him like he might start speaking in tongues. Cameron came across the yard, a green plastic cup in his hand.
“Thanks,” Adam said. It was lukewarm tap water, but he drank it anyway. It hit his stomach and made it twist. For a second he thought he might be sick again. He propped his chin on his chest and concentrated on breathing.
“Adam?” Rebecca was definitely in big sister mode. She wasn’t going to leave him alone until he explained at least a little of what had happened.
“Just a second.” Slowly, he sat up straight and opened his eyes. Rebecca was still there, hands clasped in her lap, expectant.
“I’m okay.” He forced a smile. His face felt tight, and there was a sunburn in his future, on top of all the other abuse he’d heaped on himself that morning.
“Coulda fooled me.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
He smiled again at her glare. “I went for a run.”
“So I gathered.”
“I may have overdone it.”
“Maybe.”
There was a pause. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say next, but that couldn’t be the end of the conversation. Rebecca wasn’t going to let him get off so easily. Not now.
As if she wanted to give him space, Rebecca stood and walked over to the side of the pool to grab the long extendable net by the fence, which she used to fish his T-shirt out of the water. After wringing it out and draping it over the back of another lawn chair, Rebecca sat back down in front of him.
“I drove Kyle home,” he said.
“And?” There was big sisterly anticipation in her voice. Her face was guarded though, like she was waiting for a punchline to a really bad joke.
“And . . .” He couldn’t think of how to continue that wouldn’t come off sad. “He . . . We . . . He’s . . .” He let out a long exhale, steady breath out his nose. “He’s . . . interested . . . in me.” What a bullshit understatement that was. It got worse when Rebecca flashed him a blinding smile.
“See? I knew it!” She wiggled her fingers toward him and scrunched up her nose.
His chest hurt. “I can’t, Rebecca.” His voice wobbled at her name.
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t be with him. It’s too much of a risk.” He dropped his head to his chest again. He didn’t want to see the sympathy on her face change to sadness. It was easier to focus on breathing and listen to the soft noises in the yard: a chirping bird, a car driving by around front. Rebecca’s fingers carded through his hair, the way their mother did when they were little and home sick from school, and he leaned into it like a cat.
“Being with anyone is a risk,” she said. Rationally, he knew that. But that last two years proved that he’d rather be safe than rational a lot of the time.
“He’s a parent,” he said. “If it went bad, do you know what he could do to me? What could happen? He’ll still be a parent, and Caroline will still be at the school.” This realization, that waiting until the end of the school year wouldn’t be enough, had kept him awake between midnight and one o’clock.
“He’s not Daniel,” Rebecca said. Adam didn’t want to hear it.
“I can’t go through that.” He couldn’t move again, pack up his life, and start all over in someplace new over a relationship gone sour. Especially since anywhere else he wound up wouldn’t have Rebecca to ease the transition.
He was too slow to stop her as Rebecca punched him again.
“Hey! What was that for?” He was going to have a bruise there.
“I needed to break you out of the funk you were getting ready to dig for yourself.”
“You’re too late. Where were you at five this morning?” He rubbed his arm.
“That’s what cell phones are for, dumbass.”
He bit back three sarcastic remarks before admitting she might have a point. He hadn’t wanted to intrude at such an early hour, but Rebecca had been there for him since he’d moved to Red Creek. Only his own misery that night before had stood in the way of calling her.
“Thanks for that.” Adam’s mouth lifted at one corner. Rebecca leaned back in her chair, out of punching range.
“This is so weird. We haven’t talked about boys in a long time. I feel like we should go inside, braid each other’s hair, maybe paint our nails.”
“Kyle would be good at that.” Adam smiled fully at that, his first real smile all morning. “You should see the things he does with Caroline’s hair.”
“Really?”
“YouTube,” he said. Rebecca nodded, like that explained everything. They sat for a minute, silent.
“So what do I do now?” He barely managed to get a protective arm up as Rebecca’s fist shot out. “Stop that!”
“Cell phones, dumbass! Do I need to dial his number for you?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is that simple!” She hunched in to catch his gaze. “You like him, he likes you. You could keep punching each other on the playground . . .”
“I think you’ve done enough punching for all of us.”
“Then get your head out of your ass and call him!”
“I can’t!”
Rebecca rocked back in her chair and heaved a world-weary sigh.
“Adam, sweetheart . . . I know things ended badly at Newcastle, and not just with Daniel.” Adam did not clench his teeth at that. He didn’t. Rebecca pushed on. “But you can’t be a hermit for the rest of your life. You have to get out, meet someone, try.”
“But, Rebecca . . .” He tried not to whine, but he didn’t succeed. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
The question hung in the air, and Adam’s face heated. It was too late to get off this train. “Because I’ve already screwed it up, okay? I drove him home and we . . . I freaked out, and maybe took off.”
“Maybe took off?”
“Okay, no maybe. I took off.”
“And?”
“And?” Adam picked at the hem of the towel in his lap.
“And you TP’d his house? You ordered a dozen pizzas and sent them to his address? You spray painted ‘Kyle’s Mom wears combat boots’ on his car?”
“Of course not.”
“Then? Adam.” She said his name like the rest was going to be obvious. “You’re a guy. You’re a little screwed up about relationships, but you’re still a guy. He’s a guy too. Do what guys do when they screw up. Apologize, punch each other, have a drink, and get on with it.”
“What is it with you and punching today?”
Rebecca laughed at him. “You know what I mean. Stop moping and get on with it!”
“That’s all?” Adam raised an eyebrow. It seemed too easy.
“Well, you could stand outside his window in the rain with your boom box turned up to eleven and see what happens.”
“You’re mixing your metaphors.” He went for grumpy, but his smile gave him away.
“Just try, okay?” She reached for him. He flinched a little, as a joke, but she settled one hand on his head and patted.
“Okay.”
“Good boy. Do you want some breakfast? The boys won’t be up for hours, but I think we could convince Cam to make his famous breakfast skillet.” She considered him. “And maybe lend you a dry shirt.”