Boys with matches, p.10
Boys with Matches, page 10
part #4 of Flint and Tinder Series
“Fucking awful,” Emmett said.
“Fine,” I said.
“The tour guide was this fucking cowboy—” He paused to do a forearm jerk in Austin’s direction, and for some reason, that made both boys break out in crazy grins. “—and he had this portable speaker he was wearing on a strap, and I shit you not, he screamed into it the whole time. I’m here for the music program, and this asshole blows out my fucking eardrums.”
“For a state school, it’s got a lot of exciting opportunities,” I said. “They have a lot of new money, and they’ve got scholarships for out-of-state students, which Emmett would technically be, and the music program is small.”
“Micro-fucking-scopic,” Emmett said around a mouthful of pizza.
“Which means Emmett could get a lot of personalized instruction from the faculty.”
“It’s a public school in the middle of the asshole of Wyoming, which is the asshole of the West,” Emmett said and drank deeply from his beer. He didn’t quite meet Vie’s or Austin’s eyes. “It’s whatever. All these schools have been fucking drips.”
“Just because the tours are bad doesn’t mean you won’t like the schools,” Vie said. “You’ve got to go somewhere.”
Emmett grunted and wiped pizza grease from his mouth with a napkin.
A chorus of shouts rose from the foosball table. Two boys with belt buckles the size of dinner plates bumped chests and whooped with excitement.
Emmett mimed shooting himself in the head. Vie hid a smile in his beer, and Austin rolled his eyes.
“How’s everyone doing?” I asked.
“Ok,” Vie said.
I laughed in spite of myself, and a small, self-conscious smile tugged at Vie’s lips.
Austin bumped heads with him, grinning, and said, “We’ve got a tiny bit more information than that. Becca has her own startup, believe it or not.”
“I believe it.”
“So what?” Emmett asked. “I could have my own startup if I wanted to.”
Austin paused just long enough to show he was ignoring Emmett and said, “It’s something to do with scraping personal data from the internet. I guess she got interested in that stuff when she was helping—well, you know. With the weird stuff.”
“She’s going to do great,” I said.
Vie nodded.
“She’s so smart,” Austin said. “She’ll make a fortune. Um, let’s see. Kaden is running this cannabis farm just across the border in Colorado. He’s stoned, like, ninety-seven percent of the time, and he’s making a fortune too, by the way. His parents would be mad if it wasn’t such a huge success.”
“And he hooks you two up whenever you want,” Emmett said.
Austin looked at me, of all people, and blushed, and Vie noticed and elbowed him, smirking.
In a rush, Austin said, “Jake and Temple Mae are, you know, the same.”
“They’re engaged,” Vie said.
“They’re engaged?” I asked.
“They’re, what, seventeen? Eighteen?” Emmett said. “What the fuck?”
“They’re not engaged,” Austin said, and the look on his face said he and Vie had skirted arguments on this before. “I mean, technically they are, but it’s just, I don’t know, a phase. They break up. They get back together again. They break up. They get engaged. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means they’re planning on getting married, dumbfuck,” Emmett said in what he probably considered a helpful tone.
“That,” Austin said heavily, and he rubbed one cheek, “would be a disaster.”
No one had much to say after that; TV voices droned, and the foosball game broke up, and somebody must have killed a lot of quarters on the jukebox, queuing up every Madonna song they had on the machine, and all through the restaurant, people were groaning and swearing and calling for somebody to unplug that fucking machine.
When I heard “Like a Virgin” for the third time, I got out of the booth. “I’ll settle up.”
“I’ve got to pee,” Vie said. He stopped halfway out of the booth, and in that voice where you couldn’t tell if he was serious or joking, he said to Austin and Emmett, “Don’t kill each other while we’re gone.”
For the first few steps, I thought Vie might have been making an excuse to follow me, that he wanted to talk about Emmett. Tension knotted between my shoulder blades, and I had to fight to keep my face forward instead of turning to watch the blond boy. But when we passed the restrooms, he broke off without a word, and I kept going. The relief was so intense that I forgot, for a few seconds, where I’d been going.
I figured it out eventually, and I paid. I was almost back to our booth when I heard Austin’s voice pitched hard and clear enough for me to make out what he was saying. He and Emmett were crouched over the table, face to face, and Emmett’s mouth was locked into an uncompromising line. I recognized the look; that was the way he looked the last time I’d brought up seeing a therapist.
“—rolling admissions,” Austin was saying, “and we both know you’ll be here in the fall. So, I want to know what you’re going to do.”
“Worried I’m going to steal your boyfriend?”
“Yeah, actually.”
“Well, that’s fucking pathetic.”
“I’m afraid to lose him; I can admit that. I don’t know what he’ll do. And I don’t know what you want. But I don’t want him to get hurt again.”
“I’m sure you’re real worried about him getting hurt.”
“What about Jim?”
Emmett’s silence was like an undertow.
“He’s got a job,” Austin said. “He’s got a life. You’re going to make him pack up and change everything, and then, whenever it’s convenient, tell him goodbye and fuck off?”
“You know what, Aus? You don’t know a fucking thing about me anymore. Or about Jim. Or, I’m starting to think, about Vie. So, why don’t you do us all a favor and shut your fucking mouth?”
“I’m not wrong. That’s why you’re getting pissed; because you know I’m right. These are real people, and you’re fucking around with their hearts—”
“Jesus. Don’t you ever get tired of it? Don’t you ever get sick of being everybody’s white knight?”
Madonna was singing in the background. “Material Girl.” Dishes clattered in the distance, and someone swore.
In a different voice, Emmett said, “He’s happy with you. And he’s doing so much better. And—and things are different now, for all of us. Whatever you’re worried about—” He stopped again. “It’s over.”
Austin sat back, shaking his head. He barked an unhappy laugh. “I don’t know which one of you is better at lying to yourself,” he said as he slid out of the booth. He saw me when he stood, and his face hardened.
As he passed me, I said, “Austin.”
He shook his head. His eyes were wet and held tiny neon reflections, and he kept walking. “Tell Vie I’m out in the car.”
5 | EMMETT
We drove to the motel in silence. It didn’t feel like silence, though. Austin’s words were ringing in my ears.
“How much did you hear?” I asked.
Jim’s face was ghostly in the light from the dash. “Enough.”
I dropped my head back. And, after a while, I said, “Fuck.”
It was a little, two-story horseshoe with stucco painted dove gray, although it was hard to tell in the weak light. Jim checked us in, and I waited in the parking lot. The wind had picked up; I’d forgotten that about Wyoming, about that fucking wind, how it never seemed to let up. Above me, the sky was brushed thick with stars everywhere except where the Bighorns loomed to the east. The air smelled like new sage and that familiar dustiness of the high steppes. My cheeks were flushed. I wanted another beer.
When Jim came back, we carried our suitcases into the room. It was like every other roadside motel I’d ever seen: the double beds, the polyester coverlet, the real-life lesson in irony of the stale smoke smell and the NO SMOKING sign. They’d chained the TV down, and the remote was velcro’d to the dresser. Through the thin wall, women were laughing, and one of them screamed, “If Julia Roberts doesn’t marry him, I will!” and then they all burst out laughing again.
A shadow of a smile etched Jim’s face, and he shook his head as he laid his suitcase on the bed.
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” I said.
“Let’s talk about it when you’re not upset.”
“I’m fine. I’m telling you, he has no fucking clue what he’s talking about.”
Jim unzipped his suitcase.
In the next room, one of the women said, “I’m getting more wine if I have to walk to town,” and that sent them all into hysterics again.
“What?” I said. “You think he’s right?”
“I said I want to talk about this when you’re not upset.”
“Too fucking bad. We’re talking about it right now.”
Jim laid a hand on the clothes in his open suitcase, and the rest of him was very still. Then he straightened and turned to face me.
“He has no fucking idea what he’s talking about. Vie and me, we’re done.”
Jim came toward me. His face was unreadable, those boyish good looks shadowcast in the light from the room’s solitary lamp.
In spite of my best efforts, I took a step backward. “I love you. I’m with you. If you’ve got any fucking questions about that—”
“Stop talking.”
“No, I’m not going to stop talking—”
He reached for me, and I slapped his hand away. The next time, he was faster, and he caught me by the jaw. I grabbed his wrist and tried to pull him away, but he held on—not too tight, not hurting, but not letting go either. He was stronger than I was. And warmer, too. I could feel the heat rising in him.
“I said—” He spoke in a level tone, each word measured and sawn off. “—stop talking.”
I breathed through my nose—harsh, ragged breaths. I clawed at his forearm.
He met my gaze. My heart pounded in my head. Then he released me, and he caught the hem of my shirt and turned me out of it. I tried to slap him, but he caught my wrist and spun me to face the door. He leaned into me, holding me in place while he reached around to undo the button on my jeans. When he yanked, the zipper stuttered down, and he forced jeans and boxers to my knees. The air was cold against my ass, against the small of my back, anywhere he wasn’t touching me.
“Get the fuck off me,” I said, trying to twist out from under him. “Get off!”
“You know how it works,” he said, using his foot to push my jeans down the rest of the way. “Say no.”
“Fuck off.”
“Say no if you want me to stop.”
“I’m going to murder you.”
“Keep shouting,” he said. “I bet the ladies next door will enjoy that.”
I couldn’t get enough air. My whole body felt like it was on fire, but when he touched me, he was so much hotter by comparison that I realized I didn’t know what fire was anymore. He maneuvered me over to the closest bed and forced me down across it, and then he rummaged around in the suitcase. A lid cracked open, and a moment later, his hand was sliding between my cheeks, the lube warm on his superheated skin. He teased me with his thumb and then, slowly but irresistibly, pressed in.
With my jeans looped around my ankles and with Jim already halfway to cornholing me, I couldn’t do much besides buck lightly and writhe across the coverlet. My dick was hard, and the writhing turned into rubbing. Jim laughed softly, turning his hand, his thumb scraping sparks inside me until he found that spot, and my whole world went white. I was distantly aware of making an embarrassing—and loud—noise, and when he eased up, I said raggedly, “Jim.”
“Ask nicely.”
I wrestled with that as he slid his thumb out. Then his first two fingers were pressing against me, breaching me, and “P-please,” broke out of me before I could stop it.
He laughed again and bumped a pillow over to me, and I bit down on the corner.
Two fingers turned into three. I was a wet, moaning, humpy mess by the time Jim pulled back. I’d started crying at some point, God only knows why, and the sudden emptiness made me cant my hips in Jim’s direction. The mattress shifted as he crawled up onto it. Denim scraped the sensitive backs of my thighs. He was still dressed, I realized. Then the head of his dick pressed against my hole, and his hands caught my thighs, adjusting the angle, turning me for his convenience and enjoyment. He pressed into me.
With Jim, it always felt like too much at the beginning: he was big, and then, on top of that, there was the intense heat of his body. He gave me time to adjust, and then he began to move. Chewing the pillow, I turned my face into the scratchy cotton, fighting to be quiet and losing over and over again. The slap of his balls against my ass kept measure with my groans, and then, as he sped up, my wails. He shifted, a hand between my shoulder blades, forcing my face into the mattress as he moved up to ride me harder.
“Go on,” he grunted.
I slid my hand under myself, and I came across my fingers, the whole world dissolving. For the next minute, and the one after that, the stimulation was too much as Jim continued to pound into me, and then I felt his body stiffen, heard the muttered “Fuck—shit—fuck,” and he pistoned into me as he nutted.
Ten seconds later, maybe twenty, he eased out of me, and then he lay and pulled me to him. My face got his t-shirt wet, and the heat of his body was pleasant, like a sun lamp.
I finally managed to croak, “Oh my God.”
He stroked damp hair away from my forehead. Then he cupped my cheek, the cradle of his hand unyielding.
I fell asleep, believe it or not.
When I woke, the room was dark, and Jim’s breathing was slow and even. The radio clock said it was five in the morning. I untangled myself and padded into the bathroom, and I took care of business and cleaned up with a warm washcloth, and then the air was cold against my wet skin, and I shivered as I let myself out of the bathroom.
Instead of bed, I sat at the little table, my legs curled up under me, the rough weave of the upholstery scratchy against my bare ass. I slid the curtains back. The high plains rolled out toward the darkness, but the sky was starting to lighten. Already, it was easing to gray. The Bighorns took on definition, dimension, mass. Day swept the stars away.
The mattress creaked when Jim propped himself on an elbow. He wiped his eyes, and then he found me, and he smiled a question at me. I nodded. He scooted across the mattress and sat on the edge of the bed, his legs wide, and after a moment, I joined him. I sat between his legs, and he wrapped his arms around me, and between the warmth and the fact that my ass wasn’t getting scratched to hell anymore, it was definitely an upgrade.
“I like that you tell me,” he said into my ear. “But you don’t have to be so worried. I know. I’m not going to forget.”
“If you fuck me like that again, I won’t be able to tell you.” I let my head loll back, my cheek scruffing his. “I’ll be in a coma.”
He tightened his arms around me. Outside, a pronghorn picked its way through the prairie grasses, a stick figure of compressed energy, head raised and wary as it scented the air.
“This is too much, coming back here,” I said. “This was a mistake.”
He kissed the nape of my neck. His lips were dry and chapped, the delicate rasp when they met my skin raising goose bumps. Dawn opened like a sail, a great white canvas unfolding against the sky. The pronghorn froze. Held itself. Trembled. I was trembling too when Jim’s lips followed the swell of vertebrae. He held me tighter. He held me together.
“I think we were always coming here,” he said, and there was so much gentleness in his voice that my eyes stung. “It’s going to be ok, Emmett; it’s time to come home.”
Acknowledgments
My deepest thanks go out to the following people (in alphabetical order):
Ruth Cannon, for catching even more of my errors, for her appreciation of Jim wanting to know all the tea, and for giving me the Ashton Kutcher square!
Raj Mangat, for all her love for these guys, and for helping me proof the final version of this text.
Mark Wallace, for his thoughtful reading of these stories, using his teacher brain to spot my many errors, and for doing it all in a pinch!
About the Author
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Gregory Ashe, Boys with Matches
