“It’s not like I’ve been chickening out for days. But yeah, Gabe booked tickets for us to head out on the late train tomorrow night.”
“I see.” He started tapping on his tablet while we talked. It was uncharacteristic for him to multitask while we were talking. He’d always been a firm believer in giving his family his undivided attention. “And when will you be back?”
“The night of the twenty-third.” It wasn’t like six days was a significant chunk of our break, but it was going to be about a week too long for Mom’s taste, and I knew her well enough to know Dad was going to hear about it for giving us his blessing.
The silence dragged on as he kept typing. I wondered if an emergency had come up at work.
“Okay.” He grabbed a piece of paper and wrote something down before handing it to me. It was an address and phone number. “You don’t have to if you don’t want, but this is one of my former colleagues. He and his partner bought a small apartment in New York, but they’re at their vacation home through the first of the year. If you’re interested, and as long as you promise you’ll treat their home with respect, you boys can stay there.”
“Seriously?” I kept staring from the paper back to him. “Why?”
“Because New York is an expensive city and I don’t want both of you blowing all of your graduation money at once. This way, you’ll be able to spend more on the things you want to do without paying holiday prices for a room you’ll only be using to sleep.”
Wow. That was pretty cool of him. Gabe was going to freak when I told him how awesome Dad was being.
“Besides, I think it’ll ease both your mom and Gwen’s minds to know you’re staying in a locked building with a door attendant.”
Sneaky and slightly devious. I loved it. I got up and hugged him tightly, promising we wouldn’t let him down. He didn’t think anything of it when I told him I was going to walk down to Gabe’s to give him the news. This was too awesome for a text message.
Gabe opened the front door before I could ring the bell. He took one look at me and pulled me inside. As soon as the door closed behind us, he pulled me into his arms. “I was wondering where that hoodie disappeared to.”
“Would you believe I grabbed it the other night when we all had dinner here because I forgot my jacket at home?” It was a half-truth, but it wouldn’t have killed me to walk home in my shirtsleeves. The rest of the truth was I wanted a piece of Gabe with me to remind me I hadn’t dreamed the past few months.
“Don’t care why or how you got it.” I tensed when he kissed me tenderly, cupping my face as he stared into my eyes. “I love seeing you in my clothes.”
Gabe deepened the kiss, pushing me against the wall. “We can’t do this.”
“No one’s home. Dad took Mom out to lunch and they were going Christmas shopping.” Another kiss, this time coupled with him grinding his growing erection against mine. It’d be so easy to forget every argument I’d ever given against doing this. He flicked his tongue against my ear, knocking another hole in my resolve to stay chaste in our parents’ homes. I wanted him. I missed him. Missed this. I blamed sleep deprivation caused by not having him in bed with me for what I said next.
“We need to go up to your room.”
Gabe practically ripped my arm off as he clamped a hand around my wrist and dashed through the house. The bedroom door slammed as he kicked it shut, and he locked it for good measure. “We’re totally alone for a few hours. Tell me what you want.”
Would he think my request was stupid?
“Just want to be next to you.” I couldn’t hold back a yawn, evidence that my body knew it was time to shut down now that we were together.
Being a true gentleman, Gabe led me to his bed and pulled back the covers. I laughed because I realized his bed at home was bigger than the one we shared every night at school. “What are we going to do with all this room?”
“Sleep,” he deadpanned. “Maybe without clobbering the hell out of one another. We’ll even have space to roll away from each other if we want, and no one will wind up on the floor.”
It’d only happened one time and I still felt bad for laughing at the look on Gabe’s face when he landed. The floors may have been carpeted, but according to him, that didn’t mean a damn thing when your hip made impact with the concrete beneath. I sniggered at the memory and he threw me back on the bed, straddling my hips as he started tickling me. “You wanna laugh? I’ll give you something to laugh about.”
I writhed, trying to get away from him. The problem was, every time I moved, I felt his dick against mine. I was about to beg him to make love to me when Gabe rolled off and flopped back on the bed, holding out an arm for me to curl up next to him.
“Missed you,” he whispered. I kissed his chest and returned the sentiment. He sighed, and I knew he felt the same peace I did. He lifted his hips to pull the phone out of his back pocket, quickly setting the alarm before telling me to put it on the charger.
“This is nice,” I admitted, the words slurred as I was already drifting off to sleep, surrounded by the scent of citrus and sandalwood.
I woke up first, a thought nagging at the back of my mind that I’d forgotten something important. I shot upright when I remembered the entire reason I’d come down here. Well, other than to see Gabe, because I would’ve done that anyway.
I shook him awake, unable to keep from telling him what Dad had done for us. He grumbled that the alarm hadn’t gone off and rolled over. I shook him again.
“You’re a pain in my ass,” he complained as he batted my hand away.
“But you love me,” I teased. “And you’re going to love me even more when I tell you what happened this morning.”
Now I had his attention. Not fully, because it always took him a few minutes to wake up, but at least he was semi-coherent.
“I told Dad about the trip,” I began, going through the mundane parts, skipping over the whole bit about Mom considering unannounced visits, and getting to the good parts once he was fully awake. “He talked to a friend and we can stay at their place for free as long as we don’t throw parties and we clean up after ourselves. And bonus, they live less than a block from the subway, so it’ll be easy for us to get around.”
“That’s fucking awesome!” This was going to be the best Christmas ever. The first, hopefully of many, where we took time to just be us, Gabe and Trevor, without all the other titles we wore most of the time.
