“I don’t think this one is the right fit either. If we get his measurements, is there some other way we can go about this?” Raiden asks, eyeballing me in the mirror.
“Sure!” The helpful attendant chirps, probably ready for us to buy a suit and get out so she can make commission off of someone who truly needs a fancy suit.
I can hear her footsteps fading away as she goes off to find whatever she needs. I whirl around on Raiden. “Don’t let her do it.” I beg him and he cocks his eyebrow at me, the perfect arch of it carving out the angles of his face.
“Why?” He asks, but stands up to come stand by me. He tugs on the collar of the suit, unbuttoning the first button and itslips a little farther off my shoulder. His brown irises catch mine, a hint of playfulness in them.
“She looked at me like a piece of meat when I walked in here. And she’s old, dude, it's weird. Just take my measurements and give them to her.” I plead, and he unbuttons the next button down, the light smattering of hair at the top of my chest beginning to show.
“I guess, but you owe me ice cream. The good kind. I’m not a cheap date.” He remarks, turning his back to me and walking out of the door to the changing room to go talk to the sales associate. I carefully take the suit off, not wanting to rip a stitch or pull a button off. When I’m down to only my boxers and socks, Raiden comes back in. He’s seen me nearly naked enough times it doesn’t phase me. I stand there, waiting patiently for him to measure everything.
I watch him in the mirror, his nimble fingers working quickly to tighten the measuring tape against me. When he gets to the front I look down at him. His gaze flicks to mine, and I’m caught in a trance. Even with the shitty overhead lighting, my best friend is beautiful. I’m smart enough to be able to acknowledge that. There isn’t anything weird about thinking your best friend is good looking. It’s a compliment, and I know how much he loves compliments.
But the words die in my throat, my mouth drying as I see his gaze drop to my lips. I lick them reflexively, feeling the chapped skin and rough ridges. His tongue does the same thing, a hint of pink and a swipe of saliva across his lips giving him the same glossy look as the lipgloss he loves to wear.
His hands are shaky against my waist, and my chest rises and falls in steep staccatos until I’m panting. The room isn’t providing enough oxygen for both of us, and I would gladly give up mine to keep him here with me like this.
“All done!” He says, his voice too loud and sharp in thesmall room. I flinch from the sudden burst and the sales associate announces her presence right out the door.
“Be right back,” Raiden says to me. His eyes aren’t on my face anymore, instead he’s looking off to the far wall. He isn’t looking at me anymore. Why is he not looking?
He leaves me standing alone, a cold breeze dusting across my skin as the air conditioning kicks on, leaving goosebumps in its wake. What the heck was that? My heart is still thundering in my chest, and my mind is racing through every moment of the interaction we just had. Did I do something to scare him off? That wasn’t my goal.
Fuck, what if he thinks I’m trying to be like Josh? Use him to be a pretty display piece but not anything worth depth.
“Raiden,” I call out, my voice cracking slightly and I cringe in embarrassment.
“Be right there, give us a second Jer.”
I pace the dressing room, counting my steps and checking my reflection in the mirror when I get too close to it. My dark green eyes stare back at me, deceiving me into complacency. It’s fine. I’m fine. We’re fine. I’m not going to lose him because there was a quick second of tension between us. He was probably realizing how much I’ve actually grown since we first met. I’m no longer the skinny thirteen-year-old-boy, instead I’m an eighteen-year-old-almost-man. The distinction is vast.
He comes back in, a smile on his face and he motions for me to get dressed while he types quickly on his phone. His fingers are flying across the screen as I tug my shirt on over my head and pull my pants over my waist. Raiden glances up as I’m zipping and buttoning my jeans and he slides his phone into his back pocket.
“Ready for ice cream?” I ask him.
Twenty minutes later, he’s sitting on a barstool on the far end of the ice cream shop away from everyone else, swinginghis feet as he happily hums around the spoon full of ice cream in his mouth. I lean against the top beside him, people watching from a distance as people order their ice creams and start walking down the street. I take a lick off the top, trying to prevent the vanilla ice cream from running down the side and making my hand sticky. The only reason I’ll risk a sticky hand for the cone, because the crispy cone is the best part of getting ice cream.
“Do you have any other plans today?” He asks, licking the blue ice cream from around the corners of his mouth. His tongue is stained blue and the inside of his lips are changing colors as well.
“Nope, my parents are out of town until tomorrow. My dad took mom to a cabin about three hours away, the one we went to spring break our freshman year?” I remember it like it was yesterday. My parents and his spent the whole time doing their own thing, leaving me and Raiden to our own devices. We sat in the hot tub for hours on end. Raiden watched music video after music video trying to learn the moves and then tried to teach me. It was a disaster. And we spent way too much time talking about what we wanted to do after graduation. He wants to go on to be a professional dancer, performing for the masses and showing off the way he’s learned to move his body. At the time, the only thing I knew I was going to do was join the military, just like my dad.
Thinking about it now causes my stomach to fall, I graduate in less than two months and I’ll have to make a decision. Do I follow in the footsteps of all the men before me? Or do I blaze my own path and hope I can make it on my own? Both options terrify me.
“Isn’t that the one where you got food poisoning on the last day, and you spent the whole ride home throwing up?” His upturned lips tell me he is accurately remembering one of theworst moments of my life. My body shudders when I think about what I went through on that long drive home.
“Yes, yes it is.” I say, popping the last bite of cone in my mouth and chewing it and swallowing it while he delicately carves bits of ice cream out of his cup and eats it. It’s how I picture Mythological Gods eating their food, slow and unhurriedly. Doing it because they enjoy it, not because it’s a life-sustaining need.
The pulse in my neck thrums as I watch his lips close around the spoon, and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because of that weird moment we had in the dressing room, that has to be all it is. Built up tension. All of the other guys on the football team are constantly talking about how they left off steam by fucking their way around willing participants. I’ve never felt that all consuming need, to plow into something and let loose the control that I pride myself on having for two minutes of pleasure.
The more I think about it, the more the reasoning makes sense. I have some pent up lust that I need to work out. I’ll go home, watch a few videos that I’ve heard Kody talking about, and take the next leap into becoming a man or whatever.
“Wanna come over? I have a dance I have to learn and I need another opinion on how I’m doing.” He knows that I don’t know how to judge if he’s doing a great job or not. Probably because I’m biased, but he’s the best dancer I’ve ever seen. I will never pass up an opportunity to watch him dance, though.
He throws away his cup and spoon, and follows me to my truck. I open the passenger door for him and make sure he’s in before I shut it.
In no time, we’re zipping down the road to our houses. Raiden is fiddling with the radio, flipping through the channels at breakneck speed to find a song he likes before we pull into my driveway. He hasn’t settled on one by the time I turn downour street, and he huffs out an irritated breath. “You seriously need to get an aux cord or bluetooth or something in here.”
Little does he know I’m one step ahead of him. The brand new radio is still in the box in our garage, tucked away for safekeeping until I have the time to put it in. And I tell him as much, “Do you want to help me do it now before you practice?”
