Though I hadn’t been near there in five years, I could picture Graham’s house so clearly in my mind. We always did our fooling around there, because he had the basement lair, complete with a tattered old sofa and an XBox. During middle school, we were all about the XBox.
Ninth grade, we were all about the sofa.
Whenever I looked back on that time, it was hard to pinpoint the moment I realized how I felt about him. We were two dorky teenage guys, not exactly big on talking about our feelings. Even after we’d started fooling around, we never had a conversation about it. Not even, “Do you like girls?” “Not really!” “Me neither!” For all I knew, maybe Graham did like girls now. I wasn’t going to ask.
But five years ago, he liked me.
We were best friends first. Together we survived middle school. We played hockey on a club team, and we went to the same Christian school. In fact, Christianity was a big deal in the corner of Michigan where we grew up. Kids on the playground would ask each other, “Which church do you go to?” Because that’s how our parents looked at the world.
My parents were more religious than Graham’s, though. I knew this because at Graham’s house, nobody cared if we played video games on Sunday. And I’d heard Graham’s dad mock some of the things that our classmates’ parents thought. “If I take you to the Harry Potter movie, you won’t start worshiping the devil, right, guys? I didn’t think so.”
Nobody found it unusual that Graham and I were so close. Including me. During middle school, I never let myself think about himthatway. But even then, I was always incredibly aware of him. When he walked into a room, I knew it without looking. By the time we turned fifteen, his voice was already deep and smoky. And the sound of it resonated inside me like no one else’s.
Girls never affected me like that. Some of them were nice, and fun to talk to. But they just weren’t Graham. I noticed that he never seemed to pay much attention to them either. We went to the middle school dances with a group of our friends, where we all danced to the fast songs. But Graham never pulled me aside to ask, “Do you think she likes me?”
Not once.
Meanwhile, we played video games in Graham’s basement like it was our job. And there was a different way that we looked at each other when we were alone. Graham has always blushed easily. In time I realized how easy it was to make him do that. All I had to do was hold his eyes a little longer than necessary, and pink spots would appear on his cheekbones.
I liked that. So I did it all the time.
The long looks — and sitting a little closer than necessary while we watched movies — that went on for two years. And then one Friday night during our first month of high school, we were tussling over the remote control. In order to win the fight, Graham put his knee across my thighs to hold me down. And then he stretched his long body toward my arm, where I was dangling the remote as far from him as I could. It was then that I realized Graham wason top of me.Finally. And without thinking, I put my free hand on his chest.
I’ll never forget the wild jerk that his body made under my hand. And then he was staring down at me, cheeks flushed, breath coming fast. I lifted my chin an inch, and that’s all it took. Graham dropped his mouth onto mine.
Our first kiss was hot and sloppy, and it lit my body up like a flare.
Yes.This. Yes. Yes. Yes. It was all shock and awe for maybe two minutes. And then Graham’s mom called down from the top of the basement stairs. “Hey, Guys? Do you want popcorn?”
Graham jerked back onto his own end of the sofa. “Uh, sure,” he called.
Then he got up and switched the TV over to video games. And we playedCall of Dutyuntil the popcorn was ready.
We didn’t speak about it after that. Not one word. But the following week, I thought of almost nothing else, and wore a perpetual boner every time I saw him. And the next time I went to Graham’s, my hands sweat through two rounds of whatever video game we were playing. Then Graham’s mom yelled down that she was going to the grocery store, and could Graham think of anything they needed?
“Nope,” he called up to her.
We heard the sound of shoes clicking a couple of times across the kitchen floor. Then the door to the garage, and finally the sound of her car’s engine backing out and driving away.
There was a beat of silence in the basement. “So…” we both said at exactly the same time.
“Jinx,” I said.
Graham gave a nervous laugh. “The jinx machine is out of order. Please put in another quarter.” He wore a lopsided smile, and his cheeks were flushed red.
“Dork.”
Two seconds after that, Graham had tackled me, pushing me down on the couch. He moaned on the first kiss, and I felt that sound everywhere.
There is nothing so explosive as two horny, fifteen-year-old boys finally getting a taste of something they both crave. As we made out, Graham rode me with his hips. The motion, and the feel of his hard body pressing down on me was better than any of the fantasies I’d cooked up every half hour since our first kiss.
It was probably only five minutes later when Graham closed his eyes and gasped twice. And just the look on his face took me there, too. I locked my arms around him and hauled him down for one more kiss — wet and dirty and more satisfying than I’d ever dreamed.
And by then, I’d dreamed plenty.
Forty minutes later, Graham’s mom came home to find us playing a round of Realstix hockey on the XBox. She would never have noticed that a couple of paper towels were newly buried in the bottom of the family garbage bin.
So it began.
