Perfection? That was news to me. A strange warm sensation throbbed slowly through my chest, not uncomfortable, just brand new. “Oh.” That was all I could come up with, oh? Good grief.
Blaine seemed to come to a decision. “Let’s head back to my place. I’ve got
Five Deadly Venoms
on DVD, the greatest kung fu classic of all time.”
I laughed. “Dude, set your acting aspirations higher.”
“Impossible. My goal is to star in a film that gets poorly dubbed into Chinese so my mouth movements don’t match up with my words, like this.” He kept contorting his lips, and I chuckled again.
“I’d need to bring my laptop.”
“You’re always studying,” he said teasingly. “Give it a break for one night. I won’t get you drunk and debauched, don’t worry. You’ll be able to make all your classes tomorrow.”
Debauched? Man, I could have gone for some debauchery right then, especially if it came from Blaine. An uncomfortable tightness in my jeans attested to that. “Okay. Let me get my jacket.”
“Atta boy.”
Blaine lived in the dorms, but he had his own room. Actually, the room was kind of spacious for one person. His bed was up against one wall, a desk with a TV across from it. There was a slightly moth-eaten Persian rug on the floor, obviously a secondhand treasure, and the walls were covered with movie posters. The colors were dark and rich, crimson and chocolate brown and dark blue. A guy who actually thought about coordinating his colors? What sort of mystical creature was Blaine?
“No chairs, man. I always sit on my bed to watch movies.”
“Fine by me.” Me, on your bed, getting comfortable? Oh, yes,
fine
by me. I dropped my shoes and jacket at the door and scooted a little way onto his bed, tucking my feet underneath me. He rummaged around in his closet, then came out with the DVD.
“Here we go. This is my favorite, really. Right up there with
The Thirty-Seven Chambers of Shaolin
.”
“I prefer
Samurai Fiction
.”
“That doesn’t qualify as a cheesy kung fu movie. For one, it’s Japanese, and for two, it’s actually pretty good.” He put the disc in, grabbed the remote, and settled next to me on the bed, leaning against the wall. He turned the lights off and I was glad, because I knew my face was flushed and there was nothing I could do about it.
I like kung fu flicks, but I had gotten very little sleep the previous night after studying for a huge physiology exam, and about halfway through the movie I started dozing off. Blaine noticed. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I bit back a yawn. “Just tired. I had a big test today and I was up most of the night.”
“Lie down, then.”
Lie down? On his bed? “Nah, I’d just fall asleep,” I replied, trying to be casual about it when inside my heart was racing.
Blaine smiled. “That’s the point, Ty. Get some rest. Have a catnap. If you go home you’ll just stay up studying. I’ll wake you up, promise.”
“If you’re sure…” I didn’t want to protest too much. After all, where was the harm in fulfilling a fantasy?
“Totally sure. Lie down.” He pulled a pillow over and fluffed it. “Just stay awake long enough to watch the Iron Maiden scene, it’s hilarious.”
Blaine’s bed was wide enough that I could lie down in front of him without actually touching him, and that was what I attempted to do. I folded my arms under the pillow and lay down on my stomach, keeping my face turned toward the screen. It was hard to get comfortable, though. I was rapidly losing my aplomb in the face of temptation, worried about doing or saying something wrong. Fortunately, sleep took care of those worries. I really was tired. I couldn’t even stay awake long enough to get to the Iron Maiden scene.
I woke up to a warm hand on my shoulder and the smell of hot coffee. “Hey, Sleeping Beauty, rise and shine.”
“Rise and…” I picked my head up off the pillow and rubbed my eyes. “How long did I sleep?”
“About nine hours.”
I started up out of my reclining position. “What?”
“Ty, relax.” Blaine was looking decidedly chipper, already groomed for the new day. “It’s only seven in the morning, your first class isn’t until eight-thirty. Plenty of time to get home and clean up. Here, this is yours.” He handed me the paper cup. “The finest coffee my dorm has to offer, which isn’t saying much. I have a spare toothbrush in my bathroom, I’ll open it up for you.” He got off the edge of the bed and headed into his tiny bathroom. I sat up the rest of the way and looked around, trying to get a handle on what had happened. What
had
happened? I was under a blanket, and the other side of the double bed was still a little warm. We had slept together? We’d slept together, and I’d slept through it? Fuck! I sipped at the coffee to cover up any expression of dismay, which then turned into a real expression of dismay.
“Oh, my god, that’s awful.”
“Coffee snob. You can get Starbucks later. Brush and let’s go. I’ll walk with you back to your place, I need to get to the theater early anyway.”
“Okay.” I set the abomination in a cup down on his bedside table and scooted past him to the bathroom. A faint smile played on his face, as if he was enjoying making me squeeze by him. Honestly, I was enjoying it too, but I really did need to brush my teeth before turning him completely off.
I was worried he’d want to come inside when we got back to my home. I didn’t know why I felt guilty about spending time with Blaine—scratch that, I did know. I had a hellion she-bitch for a sister who made me feel like I was an inch tall every time I stepped out of line, and I knew she’d hate the fact that I was distracting one of her pool of admirers. Yes, we had issues.
He didn’t ask, though. “I’ll see you later, Ty.”
“Yeah. Thanks for having me over.” I knew I was blushing. “Sorry I missed the Iron Maiden scene.”
“You can come back and catch it later,” Blaine replied. He squeezed my shoulder for a second and then set off, hair catching slightly on the collar of his jacket as he walked away. I watched him go, trying to deny that I was watching his ass, and then slipped inside. Kacie was still asleep, it seemed. Awesome. She probably hadn’t even noticed I hadn’t come home last night.
I walked up to my room, stumbling a little, still seeing Blaine in my mind’s eye. He was so hot. He knew he was hot, but he didn’t flaunt it. It was just a part of him, like having black hair and green eyes, both of which contributed massively to his hotness. I was aching in my jeans again, and this time I had enough privacy to take care of it without coming on to the object of my desire like a stalker. I went into my bedroom and shut the door, stripped down and lay back on my bed.
I hardly had to touch myself. Everyone masturbates, but not everyone is lucky enough to jack off with Blaine tattooed to the inside of their eyelids. Thinking about being back on his bed, with him lying beside me but both of us awake this time, with him reaching out, taking me and touching me and bringing that small, secret smile to my lips and then lower, lower, down to my cock—
“Oh,
fuuuuuck
.” I came and came hard, shooting thick, clinging jets of semen across my chest and stomach. Pinprick stars consumed the edges of my vision, and I bathed in the sheer pleasure that dreaming of Blaine brought me. When the blaze died down to a glow, I realized something. What I had with him wasn’t enough. I didn’t know if Blaine was gay, but I did know that he was friendly and fun and that I had no reason to feel guilty about being with him just because it would upset my sister. I needed a friend more than I needed her approval.
By unspoken rule I hung out at Blaine’s place now, instead of the other way around. He still went over to work with Kacie, but we got together afterward. I’d study, he’d write and listen to music, we’d watch movies from his bed and basically have a good time together. I had no idea why he liked me, and I didn’t want to ask, in case he started wondering himself.
Hamlet’
s opening night came, and of course I got tickets. Through Blaine, not Kacie. “Front row,” he told me when he handed them to me. “So close you can see the pathos exuding from me.”
“Thanks.”
“Well, wish me luck.”
“Break a leg.”
Blaine grinned this time, and I felt the warm feeling inside my chest expand to suffuse the rest of my body. “See, you’re learning.”
Kacie as Ophelia was interesting. It was playing against personality for her, but my sister does have skills, and she pulled off a rather dramatic performance. Blaine ruled the stage, though. He was completely captivating, and when he soliloquized and prevaricated and agonized, you could feel his pain and confusion and passion. He was beautiful to watch and beautiful to listen to, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him.
Everyone else seemed to feel the same way: standing ovation, cheers and flowers, and then bows by everyone. Kacie and the wretched queen got red roses, Blaine got white. When he took them, he smiled, and we the audience gloried in the glow. Then he looked straight at me, and the glow exploded inside of me and I realized that I had lost it. I had fucking lost it. I was in love with Blaine.
Did I know this for certain? No. I’d never been in love before, and had experienced little enough of it in my family life. But I imagined that being in love felt like what the bard wrote, “For where thou art, there is the world itself, and where thou art not, desolation.” I never wanted to let him out of my sight. When he finally left the stage the sun had blinked out. I was dizzy with the sudden influx of emotion and had to sit down. This was completely crazy. He was a cool guy, he was my friend, he was my sister’s friend, and I didn’t have time to be in love. I didn’t want to be in love.
Too bad I wasn’t consulted.
I left with the crowd. I was confused and weirded out, and the last thing I wanted to do was fall all over him in front of my sister. Hell, I probably wasn’t going to get that chance anyway, but with Kacie around any interaction between us would be monitored, and scrutiny made me act even stranger than I already was. So I walked. I had nowhere else to go. I couldn’t go home because the after-party was being hosted there, of course, and I didn’t know anyone else well enough to bum a place to hang out or a spot to sleep, except for Blaine, and that just wouldn’t work. I walked for hours, shivering in my jacket and wishing I’d brought a hat and gloves, but too paralyzed by spasms of uncertainty to go home.
I finally couldn’t stand it any longer; I was just too fucking cold. It was around three A.M., and most of the party people had to be gone or sleeping by now. I could sneak in the back and use the stairs in the kitchen. Hopefully no one would be sleeping in my bed.
The lights were still on, but basically people had slept where they fell. No one was awake, thank god. I crept up the stairs and down the hall to my bedroom, opened the door silently, and slipped inside. My room was empty. I pulled off my jacket, rubbed tiredly at my eyes, and then finally noticed the new addition to my decor. A dozen white roses sat in a vase on my bedside table. Blaine’s roses. There was a sheet of paper under the edge of the vase. Sitting down on the bed, I picked it up with shaking hands and read the note scrawled on it.
Come see me.
Come see him? When? Now? Surely it could wait until morning, after I had gotten a little sleep. Except now I wouldn’t be able to sleep. My whole body ached with longing. I did want to see him, even though I had no idea what was going to happen. I leaned in and sniffed the roses for a moment, inhaling their sweet, subtle scent. He’d given me flowers. That was so cheesy, and so cute. I didn’t want to speculate about why, but I couldn’t help thinking that he wouldn’t give flowers to someone he wasn’t interested in. Would he?
Too many questions and not enough answers. I pulled my jacket back on and crept out of the house as silently as I’d entered. It wasn’t a long walk to Blaine’s dorm, but it was a cold one, and I was shaking by the time I got inside. I walked to his room, apprehensive and scared and a little foolish, and knocked quietly on his door. If he were asleep, he wouldn’t hear me, and I could leave without waking him and making a fool out of myself. If he was awake…
The door opened. Blaine was wearing sweats and a T-shirt that emphasized his sexiness. He grabbed my arm and pulled me into his room. I let him, moving stiffly. “Good grief, you’re freezing,” he muttered. “Where the hell have you been? I waited for hours at your house for you to show up.”