A call from Charlie’s number pops up on my phone three seconds later.
Clenching my jaw, I hit accept.
“If y’all got together last night, I win the pool.”
“Fuck off.”
“Does that mean youdidn’tseal the deal last night?”
“Why are you trying to get me to seal the deal? He’s a rescue.”
“You make him sound like a shelter dog, Erik. He’s not a rescue. He’s a human being who’s been in love with you since he first laid eyes on you. You’re the one who’s hemming everything up. Fortunes hang in the balance, my friend.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“You love me, and you know it,” Charlie drawls, his country boy-slash-Buddhist vibe damaging my calm. When I don’t have my usual smart-ass retort for him, he continues, “What the hell, Erik? What the fuck is going on up there?”
“I want him,” I answer, too fucked in the head to land on more flowery language.
“Well, you’re in luck. He wants you too. So that should make all this pretty easy.”
I glare at my phone, then put it back to my ear. “Are you on something? Do you even know me at all?”
Charlie snorts. “I know you very well, my friend, and you are in a world-class spiral over this. Have been for months. You can’t keep your hands off him, but your brain keeps spinning up the picture of him sitting in the back of your truck.”
“Shut up.”
“I love you too. Now listen up and tell the truth.Howdo you want him?”
In every way imaginable. Head down, ass up. My cock buried so far inside him he can taste it. My face buried between his cheeks. My cock shoved down his throat. Below me, above me. Bed, shower, pool, dining room table, on the floor, in the back seat, rolling around on the goddamn sand.
“Whoa,” Charlie whispers. “Are you building a list in your head right now?”
“Shut up. And yes.” I drop my head into my hands. “I feel like a pervert.”
“Do you plan on raping him, Erik?”
“What the fuck, Charlie!”I shout, scaring a jogger.
“Sorry!” I call out, then go back to the phone. “Seriously, Charlie,what the fuck?” I whisper furiously.
“Erik, your reaction? Means you’re not a pervert. The complete polar opposite, in fact. You do get that, right?”
I clench my jaw. “Yes.”
“So he could put on the makeup, put on the dress, go into little headspace, call you Daddy, ride you like a carousel pony, and you still wouldn’t be a pervert. You wouldn’t be an abuser. You wouldn’t be his rapist.”
“I know that.”
“Do you? Do you really? If you were both into it, you could play around with consensual nonconsent, and it would be fine. It would not be wrong, even with his history. You could even call it rape-play, and as long as he’s into it, you’re golden. He could tell you the filthiest thing anyone’s ever done to him, have you repeat it on him, and it still would not be the same. Do you know why?”
I cringe at the thought but answer anyway. “Of course I do.”
His silence tells me I’m not getting away with the abbreviated answer.
“Fine. It’s not the same because whatever two enthusiastically consenting adults do is between them,” I say like a child repeating some lesson in school.
“Yes, but no. It’s not the same because of who you are and who he is with you. So…you can get spun up in your head about it and keep him stuck in the past, or you can let both of you live in the now with orgasms and butt rubs.”
