11
Morning.
I’m spooned, snuggled. I push my ass into the crescent of his body and feel his fingers splay on my hip. His hair falls down over my face as he presses his mouth to my shoulder. Somewhere beyond the present is something I should remember, but I don’t, because everything is skin and love and warmth and Rocco. He makes a soft, half asleep sound and moves his hand over my body, pulling me in by the waist. The movement stirs a pocket of warm air from beneath the sheets and I breathe it in contentedly. It smells brackish, like the come we spilled all over each other last night, but the hours have ripened it into something rank and sexy.
He loves it, too. I can tell by the way he breathes, deep and savoring. What time is it, anyway?
“Hey, Rocco, have you seen…”
Matt flings open the door to the porch. Oh my God. We forgot to lock it.
Our cozy morning moment comes to an abrupt end. We’re naked together in the bed, curled around each other, our clothes still scattered on the floor. “What the fuck?” says Matt, covering his eyes. He slams the door shut, but in the awful silence that follows I can hear him breathing hard just outside the door.
Rocco stares at me. He’s way too pale and there is nothing in his expression that inspires confidence. “Get dressed,” he says, in an undertone, and wriggles quickly into his discarded jeans.
I scramble for my clothes, but Rocco is already out the door. “Okay, long story…” I hear him say, and then there’s a scuffle and the unmistakable sound of a punch being thrown. I race out onto the porch still hopping into my pants. Rocco is on his back on the deck, his lip bleeding. Matt has his fist raised for another blow, but I leap up behind him and grab his wrist.
“Get off him. Jesus Christ – what is wrong with you?”
Matt shakes me off like a terrier. “You fucked my brother?” he says, still staring like a psychopath at Rocco. “You fucking fucked my brother?”
Rocco gets to his feet, leaning heavily on the porch rail. There’s blood streaming down his bare chest and I think he might have lost a tooth. “It’s not like that,” he says. “We’re in love.”
Matt roars in outrage and I plant myself in front of him. “Stop it! Leave him alone!”
He looks at me, his gaze somehow dislocated in a way that reminds me of the way his eyes used to swim in their sockets whenever he was drunk. “He isn’t even gay,” he says. “What the hell did you do to him, Daniel?”
I can’t help it. I know it makes him furious, but I can’t help but smile. “Everything,” I say.
Next thing I know his hand is on my throat. I stagger backwards against a chair and fall, the side of the chair catching me painfully in the back. Matt comes flying at me, Rocco behind him, trying to pull him off me.
“You little bastard,” Matt yells, fist raised. “You seduced my best friend?”
Rocco gets an arm around his neck and crooks it in such a way that Matt gulps for air. I lie breathing hard for a moment, my back on fire, and slowly sit up. Matt and Rocco have fallen in an untidy heap on the porch, but the insane, lashing-out look has gone from my brother’s eyes. Now he just looks petulant, pissed off that someone was having fun he wasn’t part of. My brother. My best friend. We were always accessories to his greatness, after all.
“I don’t fucking believe this,” he says, rubbing at his throat. “You two? Why would you do this to me?”
“You?” says Rocco, with a slight snort of incredulity.
I’m done. I laugh in Matt’s face. “You, you, you,” I say. “Of course you’d take it as a personal affront, wouldn’t you, Matt? Because everything is about you, isn’t it? You selfish fucking piece of shit. Did you even credit us with interior lives of our own or are we just here to shore up your ego, like everyone else on the face of the earth? It’s always your pain, your drama. You have a multi-platinum selling album and that’s still not enough for you, so you dive to the bottom of a bottle of Stoli.” I get to my feet, unable to stem the flow of the poison that’s built up inside me for so many years. “Meg and I work our asses off to earn livings, but you were a fucking millionaire before you turned twenty-one, and you want to know why?”
I point to Rocco, who seems to have staunched the bleeding. “It was him,” I say. “He did that. You sang his music, his words.”
“So what?” says Matt. “So he’s allowed to stick his dick in my little brother?”
“No. He’s allowed to stick his dick in me because I love it, and because I love him. Grow up, Matt. Get over it, because this is none of your fucking business. Not everything is about you. Have a little gratitude for once in your goddamn life.”
Rocco straightens up the chairs and holds a hand out to Matt, who takes it with bad grace and agrees to be helped up. I’m still seething, but I get the sense that the worst is over. At least the violence part. Ten minutes ago I was cuddled up in bed with the man I love, and now there’s punching, and screaming. Good old Matt. He’s always the life and soul of the party like that.
“I realize this isn’t ideal,” says Rocco, putting an arm around my waist. “Given where I am in my recovery, but Daniel and I have really worked at this relationship…”
Matt rolls his eyes to heaven. “Oh, hey Therapybot. Haven’t heard from you in a while.”
“Matt, don’t be a cunt,” says Rocco, and that seems to pull him up sharp. Matt sits down heavily on a porch seat and rubs the centre of his throat.
“You don’t like rehab,” says Rocco, taking his own seat. I perch beside him, wary. “We know. We get it. I know you think talking about your feelings is sad and stupid, but for fuck’s sake, man – this is what’s going to keep you alive in the end.”
Matt shakes his head, but Rocco keeps talking.
“There were times in Seattle when I thought I was going to open a vein if I had to see the inside of another psychiatrist’s office, but you have to do it, Matt. You have to keep going. You don’t have to love it, but you have to keep putting one foot down after the other, because if you sit down you’re never going to get up again.”
My brother raises a sardonic eyebrow. “Profound, Rocky. Where’d you hear that one? Pinterest?”
“Actually it was from Daniel.”
“It was?” I say.
“Yeah. You were talking about high altitude edema or something, but the principle is the same. Keep moving in the right direction or you’re dead.”
Matt makes a low noise of tired disgust.
“Stop resisting,” says Rocco. “Stop complaining about platitudes–”
“–I can’t help it. Jesus. It makes my skin crawl. All those dumb things that sound like your girlfriend’s Instagram posts…well, obviously not your girlfriend, since you’re not in the girlfriend business these days…” He looks over at us and shakes his head. “This isn’t a joke, is it? Or is it? Did you two just get naked and into bed just to get a rise out of me?”
He sees the look on my face and realizes his mistake. “Right,” he says. “So, not a joke.”
“Hilarious,” deadpans Rocco, tonguing the side of his lip. “I’m really fucking into jokes that leave me spitting out blood.”
Matt looks back and forth between us. “Okay. So…just so you guys know, this is really, really weird.”
Rocco takes my hand. “We know,” he says, but his smile is everything to me in that moment.
There’s a hush, and I can see Matt’s processing. He’s not the fastest chip in the world, but he gets there, usually once the initial gut reaction simmers down. He looks at me and then says something unexpected. “Are you happy?” he asks.
“We’re getting there,” says Rocco, squeezing my fingers. “We’re trying to be good for each other. We had our problems and we’re not always the best at following the rules our therapist sets, but what we have is…well…I think it’s worth fighting for.”
Matt laughs. Rocco glares. “What?”
“No, nothing. I’m sorry. It’s not you. I know you’re trying to be serious, but Danny’s still giving me a faceful of ‘fuck you’ right now.”
“Yeah. Because I’m still mad as hell at you,” I say.
The way he laughed at my anger always made me furious. If I felt any kind of pain or fear that he didn’t understand he’s laugh it off as an oddity of mine, casting me squarely in the role of the family weirdo.
“The last time you look at me like that,” he says. “I needed stitches.”
“You all but asked for them, and you know it.”
“Daniel, honey…” Rocco touches my arm, trying to calm me.
“Honey?” says Matt. “Jesus Christ.”
Rocco doesn’t rise to the bait. “Why don’t I make us all some coffee?” he says. “I don’t know about you, but I can’t think straight before my first caffeine fix.”
Matt nods, and I try to simmer down, reminding myself that a lot of the time my brother doesn’t mean to be an asshole. He’s just not that sensitive.
“Talk,” says Rocco. “Try not to kill each other, okay?” He goes indoors, leaving Matt and I to gauge the texture of the unpleasant silence that’s settled between us.
“So,” Matt says, breaking first. “You got him pretty well domesticated then? He cooks you dinner, makes you coffee, calls you honey…”
I unclench my back teeth. “This is really none of your business.”
Matt looks across at me. I could never see the resemblance between us. He’s stocky where I’m wispy, smoothly muscled where I’m all angles. His hair has more of a curl and his face is much more handsome, more masculine. We don’t even have the same nose. He has Dad’s wide bridge, and I – like Meg – have Mom’s ski-jump tip.
But then he narrows his lips and shakes his head, and it’s uncannily like looking in a mirror. “How is it none of my business?” he says. “Two of the people I love more than anyone else in the world have got themselves into a situation where they might get hurt. And make things weird forever after, I might add. What happens with me and Rocco if it all goes south between the two of you? Did you ever think of that?”
Selfish as ever, but somehow he gets to me. All that frustration pours out at once. All those years of holding back tears in front of my big brother. I let out a loud, snuffling sob and start to flat out howl, desperate to figure out why we just can’t seem to connect.
For once in his life Matt seems to realize I’m in the throes of something he can’t laugh off, and he gets up and sits down beside me. He puts his arm around me, but luckily for him I’m in too much of a mess to throw it off and start smacking him around the way I want to. I have to remind myself that he’s trying.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “But this is nuts, Daniel. You have to understand how this feels for me. I come out of rehab and find my brother is banging my best friend? My straight best friend?”
He’s not straight. Isn’t it obvious he’s not straight? Why does Matt have to be so fucking obtuse about everything?
“I don’t want you to get hurt,” he says, rubbing circles on my back like I’m a baby and he’s trying to burp me. “That’s all it is, Daniel. You’re my brother and I love you.”
“I know.” Oh God, why is this so hard to say? Why is it so hard to feel. “I love you, too, but you make me so fucking mad.”
There. It’s out. Finally coughed it up. Maybe that hand on my back had the desired effect after all.
“Yeah, well,” says Matt. “You always did have a temper.”
And just like that it flares again. “I had a temper?” I say, nodding to the blood on the porch. It got smeared under my bare foot in the scuffle.
“Okay.” Matt lowers his hand. “We both do.” He looks down at my bloody foot, turns to me and lifts my chin to see if he’s left bruises on my neck. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”
“Yes. And Rocco.”
“I’m sorry. You know I react badly. That’s why I can’t do all this pastel colored New Age serenity shit they try to teach you in rehab. I’m fucking Irish, for God’s sake. You want to make a point to me, make it with an elbow in the throat and a knee in the nads.”
“Well, that’s healthy.”
He sighs. “It’s not, I know, but I wish you’d got mad at me sooner. All along I knew there was something not right about you.”
“What do you mean?”
“The intervention,” he says. “You were so quiet, and I knew that wasn’t you. I remember catching your eye and you didn’t say a word, but I could tell you wanted to beat some sense into me with a two by four, didn’t you?”
I nod. Perhaps he has more sensitivity than I gave him credit for. “I did,” I say. “But Meg said no. She said we had to keep everything calm and loving and constructive…”
“Didn’t work, Danny. I busted out three weeks later.”
“Yeah.”
He nudges me with his shoulder. “I only went back because of you, you little shit. Threatening to tattle to Mom like that.”
The giggle bubbles up out of me from nowhere. So childish. So stupid. “I was desperate. I can’t believe that worked.”
“You have no idea how much I hate that it did,” he says. “You always did know where to hit me where it hurt.”
“I did?” News to me. Most of the time I always felt as though I was playing defense.
“Yes,” he says. “Like with Rocco.”
“Huh? Wait, you think I went to bed with Rocco to piss you off?”
“God, no,” says Matt quickly. “No, not that.”
“I was going to say. At absolutely no time when I’m having sex with him am I ever thinking about you, because…ew.”
“No,” he says, turning slightly green. “Jesus fuck. I know we’re dysfunctional, but we’re not that fucked up. No, I meant just now. When you were ranting, about how he was the reason I was famous.”
“Oh, I see,” I say, relieved. “Yeah, that was…um…that was out of line.”
Matt sighs. “No, Danny. It was the truth. You know what he’s like. He’s just…he’s so fucking good at everything.”
I deliberately steer my brain away from thoughts of Rocco’s surprisingly skilled mouth and reach for the relative safety of other things he does well, like ravioli and foot massages. “Yes, he is.”
“You remember the awful noise we used to make in the garage before he showed up,” he says. “We were just a bunch of snotty boys with delusions of grandeur, then this guy from Philly turns up, saying ‘Oh, I can kind of play the guitar,’ and does this fucking perfect Stevie Ray Vaughn number and is like ‘Is that the kind of thing you’re looking for?’ We’re all there with our jaws on the floor and he has no idea how good he is.”
Matt relaxes a little and looks out at the water. The sun is all the way up and he squints at the glare from the lake. “You know when the record company first realized they had a cash cow on their hands, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, we were barely twenty and partying like beasts, but they needed to get a second album out of us, so they practically kidnapped us and locked us up in this mansion in Malibu.”
“Sounds awful,” I say, and for once he picks up on my sense of humor.
“It was,” he says. “Total shithole. Only had two Jacuzzis and the one lap pool. And a concert Steinway grand.” He smiles at the memory. “It was more than just an instrument. It was a work of art, this thing. Over a hundred years old and still playable. They don’t build things like that any more. Rosewood. Even the music stand was a work of art in its own right, like it had been hand-carved. All intricate. Fucking stunning. God knows what they were thinking letting a bunch of hooligans like us run amok in the same house as something so beautiful, but you know what Rocco did?”
“What?” I say, although I think I can guess.
“Just taught himself to play it, like it wasn’t even a big deal. Came in, looked at it, admired it and then the next thing I know he’s asking the record company gofers if they can bring him some books on learning the piano and…boom. Fucking Mozart. That’s how we ended up with keyboards on the second album. Because the goddamn genius taught himself to play piano on an antique Steinway grand.”
This time I can’t help but think of Rocco’s hands. His tongue, his lips. The soft, hollow noises his mouth makes when he’s exploring. “Is this okay?” he’ll say, his breath fanning my wet cockhead as he looks up from between my legs. “Am I doing this right?”
“He does love to learn,” I say.
Matt shakes his head. “It’s the same with rehab. He’s…he’s wise. He goes to rehab and comes out all Zen. He’s fucking Obi Wan all of a sudden, and it’s like…it’s effortless. Everything he does is just golden.”
Finally, I think I get it. “No, Matt,” I say. “He’s struggled, too. This whole thing has been hard on him. It’s been painful. There have been times I had to spend the night with him because I was so afraid he was going to hurt himself. I know it’s easy to picture him as this perfect person, but he’s not. He’s human, and vulnerable, and he doesn’t love therapy and meetings and affirmations and all that shit. In fact some days he fucking hates it, but it’s like he says – he’s doing this because it’s the only way he can stay alive. It keeps him from the thing that could kill him.”
Matt puts his arm around my shoulder again. “Come here,” he says. “I’ve been such a dick to you.”
I lean into his embrace and say nothing.
“You’re supposed to say I haven’t,” he says.
I snort. “Yeah. You know I can’t do that.”
“Yeah. I know.” He gets up. “Come on. Let’s go get some coffee.” I stand up and he looks me up and down. “All those years I told Rocco that I’d break his fingers if he ever so much as thought about dating my sister,” he says, and slaps me lightly on the arm. “Funny how things work out, isn’t it?”
*
We’re a little more sedate in the evening. Nobody is getting naked or jumping in the lake. It’s been a long day of conversations that should have happened years ago, and I’m yawning over my hand as we wrap up the day with a game of gin. Rocco rubs the bridge of his nose and reaches into his pocket with a sigh.
“Don’t laugh,” he says, and takes out a spectacle case.
It’s a red rag to Matt, who cracks up to see the tattooed rock god popping on a pair of hornrims like a college professor. Me, I’m into it. He looks stupidly hot.
“When did that happen?” I ask. “You never wore glasses before.”
“Oh, it was when I was in LA,” says Rocco. “I decided to get myself checked out. Everything. Eyes, heart, lungs, teeth, testicles – all the essentials. Kind of my way of telling myself that I had health to take care of now, instead of the mess I used to be when I would have smoked my own toenail clippings if I thought they contained heroin.”
“So what’s going on with your eyes?” says Matt. “Is it serious?”
“Nope. Just age. We are limping towards our middle years, Matthew. May as well accept it.”
“Fuck that,” he says. “Thirty-five is young. Look at Mick Jagger. Steve Tyler. They’re still doing their thing. What else are you going to do if you’re not doing this? Start a pumpkin farm like that guy from Faith No More?”
“Maybe,” says Rocco, with a secretive smile that makes my heart flutter at the thought that I could be part of his future. “There are a lot of things I want to learn to do.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Learn to play the theramin,” he says. “Learn to fly. I always thought it would be fun to join that small club of musicians who are also fully licensed pilots – like Bruce Dickinson and Gary Numan.”
“Sounds dangerous,” says Matt.
“It’s not. It’s safer than driving in some instances.”
“Tell that to Buddy Holly,” I say. “And Richie Valens.”
“Otis Redding,” says Matt.
“Exactly. Ricky Nelson.”
“Aaliyah,” says Matt. “Patsy Cline. Stevie Ray Vaughn, man.”
“Seriously,” I say. “Musicians and aircraft clearly don’t mix. The only way your odds could be worse is if you were also a Kennedy.”
Rocco laughs. “If I’d been born a Kennedy my life would have been a whole lot different.”
“Bullshit,” says Matt. “If you’d been born with two silver spoons in your mouth and a third up your ass, you’d still be making music. It’s just who you are.”
“I guess.” Rocco stifles a yawn and sets down his cards. “Anyway, I’m old and I’m tired and I’m going to bed.” He gets up from the table and touches my shoulder. “You coming?”
The familiarity of it gives me a weird subdued thrill. I squeeze the hand on my shoulder. “In a minute,” I say. “Go warm the bed for me.”
He leans down and plants a kiss on my lips. No tongue, but a lot of tenderness. As he walks away I can feel myself glow, a blush sneaking up into my cheeks.
“Oh my God,” says Matt. “You’re an old married couple.”
I laugh, not sure if I’m embarrassed or elated. Like everything he does, Rocco plunged into treating me like a boyfriend from the get go. He held my hands, touched my knees, instructed baristas to put hearts in the foam of my coffee, but to do it in front of Matt – oh boy. That feels like a new level of official.
“Jesus,” Matt says. “Look at you. You’re fucking dizzy.”
“I know,” I say, pressing my hands to my burning cheeks. I can’t seem to stop smiling. “I’m just so…I don’t know. Sometimes I look at him and I can’t believe it’s real.”
Matt raises an eyebrow. “Yeah. I know the feeling. Would never in a million years have predicted you two hooking up. I mean, he loves women.”
“Yes. And he also loves men. It’s not complicated.”
He laughs and shakes his head. “Men? Plural?”
“Yeah. I guess so. I’m not the only one. I mean, he also has feelings for Hugh Jackman.”
“Yeah, but that’s Hugh Jackman,” says Matt. “It’s like a rule or something. Everyone would go gay for Hugh Jackman. I’d go gay for Hugh Jackman.”
“I know, right?”
We laugh about it, but Matt sobers a little too quickly for my liking. “Don’t fuck this up, Daniel,” he says.
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
“Good, because he’s…well…I haven’t seen him at look at anyone the way he looks at you since Mona, and he always said she was the love of his life. That guy is gone over you.”
“I know,” I say. It is so weird to be hearing this from him, of all people. And also kind of frightening. After all, he knows Rocco pretty damn well.
“So,” he says, sloshing out the last of the diet soda. “When are you guys making it official?”
“What? We’re not getting married.”
“No, I know, but I feel like we should have a party or something. You know? I’m out – of rehab. Rocco’s out – of rehab, and a closet I didn’t even know he was in.” He waves a hand at me. “You bought a house. Did you even have a housewarming yet?”
“No, but parties? Really? That’s going to be so many triggers at once for you.”
Matt sighs and rakes his fingers through his curls. “Danny, I told you. I want people to be normal around me. I don’t want to be that person everyone tiptoes around and they’re like ‘Oh shit, Matt’s an alky so we’re not allowed to drink around him, ever.’ I don’t want to poop the party just because I have issues.”
“Okay,” I say, skeptical. “But don’t try and run before you can walk?”
“I know. Take it a day at a time. Therapy clichés 101.”
“And I’m sorry if I talked out of turn last night. Going on about my freshman year shenanigans. I’m sure that wasn’t helpful for you to hear.”
Matt shakes his head and smiles. “Nah. I was the one who brought it up. And if you can’t look back and laugh at how fucked up you were, what’s the point?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “About the only thing I remember with any real clarity about that night is the hangover the next day. I have never vomited anything that color before or since. I think it might have been part of my bile duct. That I remember, but the night itself? No. It’s just…”
“Comes back to you in flashes?” he says.
“Yeah. Exactly that. Big spaces of black in-between. You know, it’s interesting – apparently when you clobber your brain with enough alcohol you disable the parts of the brain responsible for creating memories. There is nothing in those blank spaces. I guess that’s why they call it ‘black out drunk.’”
Matt takes a sip of his soda. “I know,” he says, cocking the glass like a drinker. “Why do you think I did it?” He sighs and sets it down. “Always did remember things a little too clearly for comfort.” He curls a hand around the back of my neck. “We’re not so different, you and I. Bad tempers, good memories. You just channeled yours into–”
“–nerd shit,” I finish, and immediately regret it. There we were, almost connecting, and I had to open an old wound.
“There’s that perfect memory,” he says. “You remember all the hurts so clearly, don’t you?”
“Don’t we all?”
Matt gets up from the table. “Guess so,” he says, and plants a smacking kiss on the top of my head. “Okay, I’m going to bed. Please don’t have noisy sex, because I didn’t bring any earplugs.”
“Goodnight.”
I tidy the cards and set the glasses down by the sink. The night is cool and quiet, insects tsseeping in the dark. Maybe it’s just because it’s been a long, emotional day, but everything has a slightly surreal edge. I’m here, in a place that’s been the setting of so many dreams since childhood, wondering if it’s possible to ever really know someone, even your own brother. Oh, and my teenage wet dream just kissed me goodnight and asked me to join him in bed.
It doesn’t seem real, even when I walk into the bedroom and see Rocco there. He’s sitting propped up on the pillows, reading a book I lent him about the K2 disaster of 2008. He wears a thin white t-shirt and those bizarrely sexy glasses, and looks – as Matt said earlier – domesticated. Like someone’s husband.
“Hey,” he says, and sets down the book, takes off the glasses. He pulls off the t-shirt, ruffling his hair and baring even more tattoos, and looks like himself again. No longer the off-duty rock star but the sexy, stark naked lover who can’t wait to roll around between the sheets with me. He rearranges the pillows and snuggles down as I strip off.
“God, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” I say.
Rocco smiles and holds out the covers for me. He’s naked and half hard already. “Get in here.”
I roll gratefully into bed, sighing with pleasure as he wraps his arms and legs around me. I don’t think there’s a hurt in the world that the touch of his body can’t soothe.
“Are you okay?” he says, as we snuggle down into our usual pillow talk position, curled on our sides, face to face, but not too far apart, in case we feel like giving in to a case of wandering hands.
“I don’t know,” I say. It’s been a long day. Lot of talking, lot of old angst. “I feel…mauled, somehow.”
“Baby,” he says, and reaches out to caress my cheek. I take his hand and kiss the knuckles, one by one. “Did you at least have a good talk with Matt?”
“Yeah, I think so. We cleared the air. Or at least some of it. There’s a lot of air to clear.” I shuffle closer again. “Can you just hold me again, please?”
He wraps me in his arms. I love the small, soft noises of contentment he makes now that we seem to have shifted into a different gear. We used to fall on one another in frenzies, but the break up seems to have made us more appreciative of what we didn’t have, and now we handle each other with a new and deeper tenderness. Lots of lingering kisses and long sighs as we rock our bodies together and let our lust carry us off into delirium.
“You’re very cuddly tonight,” he says.
“That’s because you feel exceptionally good.”
“Mmm. So do you.” He squeezes me tight around the ribs. “You know I used to fantasize about this? Just…cuddling.”
“Really?”
“Yep. Back in my bicurious days, I used to imagine going to bed with a man just for this. Naked, but no pressure. Just to cuddle. Just to get a feel for it, and maybe build up to more.”
“Oh,” I say, kind of sad that I didn’t make that happen for him. “And I tossed you straight in the deep end by sending you a dick pic. I’m sorry.”
He laughs and kisses me. “I’m not. I hadn’t had sex for about two years and then it’s like ‘Oh, Daniel’s naked again, and this time he’s not passed out.’ I can take a hint.”
“Naked again?” I frown and move away slightly, puzzled. “What are you talking about?”
“Your freshman year,” he says. “When you passed out in my bed.”
“I was naked?”
Rocco stares at me. “You seriously don’t remember?”
“No. I was really, really drunk.” Okay, this is fucked up. “How come you have never mentioned this before?”
“Well, I figured if you weren’t talking about it then it was because you didn’t want to,” he says. “I just figured it wouldn’t be gentlemanly to bring it up. And it was a weird moment.”
“I’ll say. How’d I end up naked?”
“I assume you took your clothes off,” says Rocco. “I went looking for a basin for you to puke into and when I came back in the room you were lying on my bed wearing nothing but your jeans all bunched around one ankle. Everything else you’d just kind of yanked off and tossed everywhere.”
I lie back and cover my face with both hands. “Oh my God.”
“You were lying on your back,” he says. “So I had to kind of wrangle you into the recovery position. And I was trying to get you to drink some water. Then you put your arms around my neck and I…”
He trails off and I peer over my cupped hands at him. He looks at me like I’m some rare jewel, and I’ve never felt more desirable.
“I had you in my arms,” he says. “In my bed. And you were eighteen, stark naked and drunk out of your mind. And you reeked of vomit and yet you were still…” He gives me a look of such yearning that I think my heart will explode. “You were still absolutely beautiful.”
“You wanted me?”
“Of course I did,” Rocco says, pulling me close under the sheets, now that he can. “But you were barely legal, piss-ass drunk and my best friend’s little brother. I may have done some shitty things over the years, but I’m not that much of a scumbag.”
“Oh my God.” I don’t know whether to laugh or cry over what could have been. “After all these years. Did I ever tell you how I used to have these elaborate sexual fantasies about begging you to take my virginity?”
His eyes widen and I can feel him hard against my thigh. “No-o…” he says, in his deepest bedroom growl. “But we should probably get into that. Like, right now. Tell me more.”
I lie back, embarrassed. “It was stupid,” I say. “For a start it would always begin with me finding you alone backstage, and I’m pretty sure that never happened.”
Rocco reaches out and teases my nipple with a fingertip. “I was alone more often than you’d think,” he says. “But go on.”
“I don’t know. You’d be alone and bummed out for some reason…” I trail off, gasping at the sensation as he lowers his head and begins to lick. “What are you doing?”
“Messing around,” he says, nibbling me gently. “God, I love your little tits.”
“I do not have tits.”
“Tits, nipples.” He grins up at me, pinching with his fingers. “Call them what you like. They turn the same shade of pink as your cock when I play with them.”
“Keep your voice down. Matt didn’t bring earplugs.”
“Matt doesn’t need earplugs,” says Rocco, his hand wandering below the covers. “He never wore them when he was supposed to and now he’s half deaf.” He humps my hip and takes me in hand, his touch like a balm after the day I’ve had. “Now…about these sexual fantasies…”
“I told you,” I say, sighing as he strokes me. “It was stupid. I’d find you alone and somehow we’d end up kissing, and you’d be like ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that,’…”
“Go on.”
“And I’d say something about how you had every right to, because in a way I always belonged to you.” I meet his eyes. So dark. So blue. “That the first time I ever masturbated and it came out wet…I was thinking of you.”
He squeezes me and groans softly. “Jesus Christ, Daniel…”
I can scarcely believe I just said that, but I keep going. “All through my teenage years, whenever I had my dick in my hand, I was thinking of you. And I’d tell you that you woke my sexuality so completely that it was yours to take.”
Rocco moves above me, sliding his hands between my thighs and under my ass, making me spread my legs. “And I’d say I shouldn’t,” he says, against my lips.
“Yes.”
“Because you were so young.”
“Yes.”
“And a virgin. And my best friend’s brother. And I was married, and straight, and I shouldn’t want you. But some part of me did, because you were off limits in every possible way.”
“Yes. Oh yes.”
He moves down the bed, his tongue describing circles on my skin, his hands on my hips. I arch, wanting his mouth.
“But your skin is soft,” he says, shifting tenses, giving me my fantasy. “And your mouth is so hot.” He licks and I bite my lip, winding my hand into his hair. “And your cock is so, so hard.”
“Oh God…Rocco. Please…”
“See?” he says, his breath cooling my wet skin as he teases my cock with soft, sloppy kisses. “How can I resist when you want me this much?” His hand works between my legs. “You’re so ripe for it. Your balls are heavy for me…the way your body rises to meet my touch. You want me so much that you’ll let me do anything to you, won’t you?”
“Yes,” I whisper, and his mouth covers me, soft and hot and wonderfully wet. “Anything. Oh God...yes. Anything.”