Wow. My heart wasfull. Even so, I had a question. “Who’ve you done that with?” We hadn’t really had this conversation before, and I was desperately curious.
“Only Skippy. He said I couldn’t call myself queer if I didn’t give bottoming a try. We never got the hang of it, though. So we went back to what worked best.”
“I like a challenge.”
He smiled at me. “Just don’t be mad if I don’t see fireworks, or whatever.”
“Okay,” I laughed. “But I hope you do. Because… damn. Seriously. If you haven’t had your prostate pounded, you haven’t lived.”
“Now there’s a slogan.”
“I’m going to make bumper stickers.” I made myself comfortable again. Or, I tried to. My head was still spinning with needy thoughts. “Rikker?” I whispered, in case he was sleeping.
“Yeah?”
“Are you still in love with Skippy?” After I asked the question, I regretted it. Did I really want to know?
“No,” he said slowly. “We had our thing, and that’s over now. But I’ll always love him. He was really important to me.”
“I understand,” I said quickly.
Rikker put his hand on my hip, his fingers stroking my skin absently. “See, Skippy had a vision for life as a gay man even when he was only seventeen. He was like… ‘Look at all the fun we’re going to have! We have to go snowboarding. We have to go dancing. We’re going to Montreal this weekend, even though we don’t speak the language.’” Rikker laughed to himself.
“Sounds pretty good,” I said, hoping it didn’t sound too bitter.
“It was just what I needed at the time,” he said. “But you know what? Skippy is awfully controlling. He means well, but he likes to get his own way. I’m pretty easy-going, so for a long time I was fine with it. Then, at some point, I wasn’t. But our roles were set, and I could never seem to renegotiate the balance of power in our relationship.”
“Interesting,” I said. Because it really was.
“Yeah. Sterotypes don’t always hold up, G. He was the bottom in bed. But he wanted to be in charge every other damn minute. He picked the restaurants, he made the plans. When I had an idea, there was always a reason why his was better.”
“That would get old.”
“It did, and that’s why I thought I should move on. Then when he dumped me, I was so pissed.” He chuckled again, and I felt his breath tickle my neck.
“You’ll tell me if I’m a pain, right?” I was twenty-one years old, and I’d never been in a relationship before. I didn’t know what I was doing. But tonight we’d had some tricky conversations, and I felt better for it. Not worse. Who knew?
He kissed me between the shoulder blades. “Getting along together was never the problem with you and me,” he said. “We’re both easy. It’s just the rest of the world that’s hard.”
Aint that the truth. I tugged his arm closer to my body, stretching his hand up to my mouth, where I kissed his palm.
He gave a happy sigh. “I used to dream about sleeping with you. In Michigan, I mean. Just like this.”
My throat got tight. “Me too.”
“Yeah? I don’t mean sex. Well, I dreamed about that, too.Plenty. But when I got in bed every night, I wished you were there. You know I love you, right?”
“Yeah,” I choked out. I was happy that the lights were out, so that he couldn’t see my eyes shining again.
“Goodnight, G.”
“Goodnight, Rik.”
—Rikker
After all that heavy conversation, I forgot to set the alarm on my phone.
So I woke up the next morning in Graham’s bed. The sunlight streaming in through the windows was a bit of a surprise, as was the sight of Graham’s broad shoulders.
