Heated Beat 01 - My Mate Jack (MM) (2 page)

Jack smiled, still half kissing Will. “That’s it. Not so bad, eh?”

Bad? Fuck, no. Will took another breath and went looking for another go. Jack chuckled and parted his lips. Will deepened the kiss, almost by accident, and sucked Jack’s bottom lip into his mouth. Tasted it. Ran his tongue all over it. Jack made a sound—a moan, a grunt—Will wasn’t quite sure, but,
God
, he felt it. Felt it all over him, from his tingling scalp to his curling toes. Will’s heart beat like a train. He pulled Jack closer, thrust his hands into his soft hair, and then they were kissing again… really kissing, like they’d never, ever stop. Will held Jack’s chin in his hand and explored his mouth with his tongue, every bump and ridge. He kissed Jack with all he had until he realized they’d both forgotten to breathe.

Will pulled away, slowly, his eyes squeezed shut, like if he opened them Jack would evaporate and his first ever kiss would be another figment of his overactive imagination.

Jack laughed, breathless. “Wow. Don’t think you’ve got much to worry about.”

“Really?” Will cracked open an eye. “Was I okay?”

“Okay? You might be a bloke, but that’s the best snog I’ve ever had.”

Will blushed; he couldn’t help it. He pressed his face into the pillow, glad they hadn’t bothered to turn on the lights. “I haven’t got much to compare it to, but it was pretty good for me too.”

Jack snorted. “It was better than good, mate. Like it should be.”

“Yeah.” Will didn’t know what else to say. His pulse had slowed to a steady gallop, but inside he still burned… his lips, his tongue. And he didn’t dare look down. Couldn’t face the swollen heat in his jeans.

Jack rolled onto his back. Will didn’t have to look to know he was staring at the ceiling. “Are you ever going to tell your dad?”

Will closed his eyes. It was a question he’d asked himself every day since the first time Jack’s mere presence had set his world on fire, and he was still no closer to an answer. Will’s dad was nothing like Jack’s, who spent much of his time away on dubious business trips, chasing any skirt who wasn’t his wife. Instead, widower Ned Barter was honest, hard faced and hard working. Loved Will and provided for him. Let him live his own life. Didn’t care if Will and Jack smoked fags on the porch roof or pinched his beer. But telling him his only child… his only
son
was gay?

Will wasn’t sure he’d ever be ready for that. “Maybe I’ll tell him before we go to uni. Drop it on him, then fuck off somewhere really far, like Scotland or something.”

Jack sniggered. “Sounds like a plan, for you at least, but I’ve told you a hundred times. I’m not going to uni.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Will had heard it all before. If Jack had his way, he’d be out of school… and Towcester… before the ink had dried on his last exam paper, but his parents, particularly his twat of a father, had other ideas. “You might change your mind if you get good A-levels.”

“Nope. No chance.” Jack sat up, though he didn’t move away from Will. Didn’t move the leg pressed against Will, warming him from the inside out. “Fuck that uni shit. I’m gonna get a residency in Ibiza. Spend the rest of my days in the sun.”

Will rolled his eyes. “You and your bloody DJ crap. What are you going to do when you’re old? Be Terry feckin’ Wogan?”

Jack sighed, like he so often did when Will didn’t understand him. “Drum-and-bass, Will. Not fucking radio.”

Will knew that, really, but winding Jack up was too much fun, and it helped him pretend Jack wasn’t so cool. That Will wasn’t his geeky companion, the trusty sidekick no one ever noticed hanging around the hot guy mixing it up on the decks at local underground raves. The raves not even Will’s dad knew they went to.

“Hey, Will?”

Will refocused on Jack. He hadn’t noticed him rolling over again. “Yeah?”

“How was it for you? The kissing, I mean? I know you hated kissing all those girls. I wanted this… I didn’t want it to be shit when you kissed a bloke too.”

Jack chewed on his lip, and Will stared. They’d been friends for more than a decade, and he’d never seen Jack do that. The gesture was uncertain… nervous, and not the Jack Will knew at all.

Will touched Jack before he knew what he was doing. He gripped his shoulder, then slid his hand down his arm, found Jack’s fingers, and twined them with his own. “Jack, it was amazing, but—”

“Yeah?” Jack’s voice was barely a whisper, his lips just a hairbreadth away even as Will closed the distance between them.

“You said it was practice, right? So I could get better?” Jack nodded. Will smiled. “Then I think I need to do it again… and again, just to make sure.”

2002

Towcester. England.

“C
OME
ON
,
mate. Plenty more fish in the sea and all that.”

Will ignored Jack and stared morosely into his empty pint glass. “Easy for you to say.”

Jack snorted. “Is it?”

Will glanced up. They were sitting in the garden of their local pub, nursing the beers they’d only just become old enough to buy and trying to drink off a heavy night of raving the night before. “Don’t give me that shit. You’re with a different bird every week. I was with Dave for six months.”

“I know, I know.” Jack slung his arm around Will in a fraternal, placating hug. He smelled of sweat and wood smoke and a long night mixing dirty beats under the stars. He smelled of Jack. “But look at it this way: at least you can go off to uni now without anyone tying you down. Live a little, mate. I know you really liked Dave, but it wasn’t like you were love’s young dream, was it?”

Jack had a point. Dave had been nice enough… good-looking in a boyish way and easygoing, the perfect guy to take home to his dad a long year after his big confession. But Will had known the whole time they were together that something was missing: that fire, that burn. Will had done everything he could think of with Dave, testing the waters, trying new things, but none of it compared to those simple kisses he’d shared with Jack so long ago. The kisses that would be seared on his soul forever.

Will wasn’t about to tell Jack that, though. It had been three years since his first kiss had lasted all night long, and they never talked about it. And since that very first time, Jack had never mentioned his mysterious Majorcan encounter either.

Will sighed and tried to pull his mind back to Dave, the lost love he was supposed to be mourning. “I can’t believe he dumped me over the phone. Said he thinks we should just be friends. That’s so bloody lame.”

Jack rubbed Will’s shoulder. “I know, but it just proves the bloke was a goon. He only wanted you for your sexy body.”

“Shut up.” Will shoved Jack off him. He’d filled out over the past few years, put some muscle on his lean frame, but he was still a skinny streak of nothing compared to Jack.

“Your dad didn’t like him.”

“Eh? What makes you say that?”

Jack shrugged. “He told me. Said talking to Dave was like a Coldplay album. One good song, then the rest like listening to a sofa yawn.”

Will glared. It sounded like the sort of gem his dad would say, but why the hell had he said it to Jack and not Will? Though, in truth, his dad had taken little notice of Will’s growing confidence in his sexuality. Even Will’s big coming out speech had been an anti-climax:

“Dad, I think I’m gay.”

“All right, son. Do you still like footie?”

That had been that, and Jack and his father aside, Will didn’t care what anyone thought. He hadn’t bothered to come out at school; he’d just stopped denying the rumors about him and the second guy he’d ever kissed.

Jack drummed his fingers on the table, full of rhythm and energy, even beneath the weight of two hours’ sleep. “Can I ask you something?”

Will stubbed his smoke out in the overflowing ashtray. “This isn’t about bum sex again, is it?”

Jack had the good grace to look sheepish. Once Will had come out and started meeting guys, Jack had been full of questions that often made Will squirm. “Kind of. You and Dave, did you ever, you know, actually do it? You never told me.”

“You never asked.” Will covered his flush with a swig of beer. Jack had asked lots of things, but never that, and come to think of it, he’d stopped asking questions when Will had started seeing Dave.

“Figured you didn’t want to talk about it.”

Will snorted. “So what’s changed? Did my flashing gay boy V-plates fall off?”

“What? No. I was just wondering. That’s all.”

Will felt bad then. Jack was his biggest supporter, strong and loyal. Will wasn’t naïve enough to believe being gay in their close-knit hometown would’ve been so painless without Jack by his side. Everyone in Towcester knew Jack would deck anyone who gave Will shit. “Okay, shoot. What do you want to know?”

“Um….” Jack drained his drink. “Hang on a sec.”

Will watched Jack disappear into the pub, presumably to get more drinks. Then he slumped and put his head on his folded arms. Trailing Jack around the southeast while he DJ’d at squat parties and dodgy underground clubs was a blast, but it was fucking exhausting. Will loved the grimy beats of a proper stomping rave, loved watching Jack do what he loved most, but after a long weekend of partying, he needed his bed.

“So….” Jack put two more pints of lager on the table. “Tell me as much as you want to.”

Will eyed the full glass, unsure what he wanted to do least: drink another pint or confess his boy-sex secrets to his oldest friend. “We did fuck, if that’s what you really want to know.”

“You did? When?”

Will thought back. “Just before Christmas. He stayed a couple of days while Dad was on nights and you were off shagging… what was her name again? Carly?”

“Charlie.” Jack scowled, but he looked too curious to be truly annoyed. “So what happened? Did you, um….”

“Get fucked up the arse?”

Jack grimaced. “I wasn’t going to say that.”

“I know. You were going to stammer through a bunch of bullshit euphemisms first, so I saved you the trouble. And in answer to your question, yes, I did get fucked.”

Jack took a long swallow of his drink. Will could tell he was bracing himself. “Did you like it?”

Will thought back to the night he’d decided he was finally ready to lose his virginity. It had been an awkward, messy encounter, but not one he regretted. “Not at first. It
really
hurt. I punched Dave in the chest and made him take it out.”

“Nice. Bet that ruined the mood.”

“Not really.” Will shrugged. “Dave had done it before, so he knew what it felt like. He got me through it and it was good after that.”

“Good?”

“Yeah, good.”

Jack traced the rim of his glass with his fingertip. “Sex should be better than good, Will. Remember?”

“If you say so.” Will let the sentence hang, hoping Jack would drop the subject. Talking about dirty stuff with Jack had never been awkward, but Jack looked uncomfortable, like he wished he’d never brought it up, and he didn’t say anything for a while.

Will let himself drift. Jack looked lost in thought and that suited Will. Companionable silences had always been one of his favorite ways to kill time with Jack. He’d miss it when they parted ways in just a few weeks, Will to visit his nan and then study graphic design at uni in Leeds, and Jack to see out the rest of the summer in the job of his dreams in Ibiza. For the first time ever, they wouldn’t be spending the summer holidays together, and it was the longest they’d been apart since they were six years old. Will was trying not to consider the very real possibility that Jack wouldn’t come back, that he’d find the life and love he’d dreamed of and never come home.

Yeah. Will was going to miss more than the silence. He was going to miss Jack so much his stomach clenched whenever he thought of it. They were both seeing through plans they’d cooked up years ago—together—and everything was slowly falling into place, but
fuck
it hurt.

“Wakey wakey.” Jack shook Will’s shoulder. “Let’s go home. I reckon I could sleep for a week.”

Will roused himself, dopey from an afternoon on the beer. They’d come to the pub to stretch out the day so they wouldn’t crash too early and wake up in the middle of the night. Their A-level exams were done, but they both had student jobs first thing Monday morning.

They walked home in another one of those easy silences. They bumped into each other from time to time, both exhausted and slightly drunk. When they reached their street, Jack turned toward his own house. Will caught his arm. “Do you want to come over for a bit? You can kip on the sofa bed.”

“The sofa bed?” Jack feigned offense and Will grinned. It had been years since Jack had last slept on the sofa bed. After that first night of kissing, they’d fallen asleep in Will’s bed, side by side, not touching, but feeling each other’s warmth. Since then, Jack had always slept in Will’s bed.

“Come on.” Will turned toward his house. “Let’s go home.”

They were side by side in Will’s bed before either of them spoke again, watching
Match of the Day 2
through hooded eyes. Will was half-asleep when he felt Jack roll over and face him.

“Will?”

“Hmm?” Silence. Will cracked an eye open to find Jack wide-awake and staring at him. “What’s up?”

“Do you remember a few summers ago when I let you practice, uh, snogging on me?”

As if Will could forget. “Yeah. Why?”

“Do you think…?” Jack stopped and twisted Will’s faded sheets into a tight, tense knot. “Do you think you could do that for me? I mean, not with just kissing, I mean… like, with, uh, going all the way….”

“Eh?” Will hauled himself upright. Jack looked like he wanted the bed to swallow him up. “What do you mean?”

Jack sighed. “I don’t want to go to Ibiza a virgin, but I don’t want to shag any of the mangy girls around here either. Don’t want the whole town’s sloppy seconds, you know?”

Will took a moment to process the news that Jack was still a virgin. He’d had a ton of girlfriends that year alone. Had he really not been shagging
any
of them? Then the gravity of what Jack was asking him hit him like a truck. “You mean… you want to… bloody hell, with me?”