Noah froze. It was as though his body was a few steps ahead of his mind. It understood, before he did, that Adam shouldn’t have seen that, that deep down Noah didn’t want Adam to have seen that.
Noah spun around, and Adam must have seen the panic in his eyes. ‘Don’t worry, Noah, I haven’t said anything to anyone. Your secret is safe.’
Noah tried to respond, but the words jammed in his throat.
‘What I’m trying to say is that I have been unfair to you since then. Punishing you really for something that’s not your fault. And I wanted to explain that it’s only because … I was hurt, and, well, jealous.’
Noah was confused. Adam was jealous of him? Noah couldn’t have imagined that Adam had designs on Opal … which must mean …
‘Oh,’ was all Noah could think to say. His heart was beating and his mouth was dry. Suddenly he felt like he couldn’t draw in breath fast enough, and his vision started to blur. As he crumpled to the floor, he saw Adam rush over, and huddle over him.
‘Noah, fuck, Noah, are you OK?’
Noah didn’t feel OK at all. He felt like his world was caving in, because what did it mean that the thought of Adam wantinghimmade Noah feel dizzy? It was hard to tell at first, because of the panic attack, but when that subsided, Noah realised that the overwhelming feeling that remained was joy.
They were hunched over at the base of the work station,and after Noah’s breathing had slowed, Adam made to pull his arm away. Noah stopped him by grabbing onto his hand and then before he changed his mind, Noah seized onto the millisecond of confusion from Adam and lunged for a kiss.
Adam pulled back, and Noah felt his stomach drop. He’d misjudged, catastrophically. He searched Adam’s eyes for answers to questions that were too numerous to air. Noah wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for, but he knew that if he stared into those dark deep pools long enough, everything would eventually make sense.
It was Adam who smiled first, and then it was Noah. They collided, and Noah felt the world click into place; that elusive, blurry promise of a reciprocal desire came into sharp focus.This was what it was meant to be like.
Noah couldn’t seem to get enough. He wanted to touch Adam everywhere, all at once, and be touched. Noah grasped at Adam’s shoulders, his hips, his face, his thoughts frazzled by his overriding longing to be consumed. He felt an ache in his stomach, and a tightening against the seam of his jeans. He couldn’t think of a time that he’d been aroused so instantaneously.
The handful of times he had ‘done the deed’ it had required a fair amount of concentration and concerted effort to get him hard. Now, without even being touched, he was throbbing with anticipation. Noah was impatient. Now that he was finally ready, there was no time to waste. He reached for Adam’s belt. And for the second time, Adam leant back.
‘Whoa, slow down.’ Adam chuckled as he tried to rearrange his hair. The left side of his high top misshapen by Noah’s greedy grasping.
‘I …’ Adam was shaking his head in disbelief. ‘I didn’t think that’s how this conversation was going to go. I just wanted to be honest with you.’
Noah smiled. He was on a high, and he didn’t want to be dragged back to reality quite yet. He leant in for another kiss, moaning with the sharp relief that it was as delicious as the last.
‘Noah!’ Adam was sterner this time. ‘Believe me I want nothing more than to fuck your brains out right here, right now, but we should slow down.’ Noah tried to contain himself at the sound of those words, and look like he was listening intently. ‘Is this your first time … ?’ Adam paused, eyebrows raised.
‘Um, well not ever, but, with a …’ Noah felt suddenly shy. He ran his hands through his hair exasperatedly, and felt the adrenaline seep slowly from his body. ‘I’m not gay.’
Adam flinched. He shifted slightly away from Noah.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean that …’ Noah felt that small distance like a wound. ‘I mean I don’t know what I am. I’ve never felt like this before so maybe I am …’ he looked Adam in the eyes and their dark calm soothed him, buoyed him to say the words he was so afraid to say ‘… so maybe I am gay.’
Noah felt stupid really that he’d never thought of it before, but it was true. He’d never been that interested in girls, but that was no bad thing. In fact his mother had always been proud of the fact that she’d never had to endure any gossip about him and someone else’s daughter. And then there was the fact that he didn’t really know any gay people. He’d met them of course, at the parties he snuck into, at the galleries he wandered around. But in hisreallife, the one in Birmingham,the one where people actually knew him by the name his parents had given him, there were no gay people. This retreat had been the longest he’d ever spent with anyone outside his extended family.
Finally, there was the plague. That’s something that hehadheard his parents talk about, in the disparaging tone they usually reserved for hooliganism. The message was not, ‘may God smite down the evil gays with pestilence’, it was more an expression of pity towards the nonsensicalness of it all. Why would anyone choose to have sex with a person of the same gender? If it didn’t stand a chance of producing children, it was almost entirely pointless. And then on top of that, if it could make you so very sick as to be a death sentence, why would you ever risk it? To his mother at least, homosexuality was a pitiful disregard for common sense more than it was a mortal sin.
Adam was watching him intently; maybe he was anticipating another meltdown, but Noah felt calm now that he had said what had felt so unsayable. ‘So to answer the question, yes this is my first time.’
Adam explained some logistics, and they had the sort of conversation that would make any of his aunties’ eyes pop out of their heads.
‘Do you think you’re more drawn to the idea of being a top or a bottom?’ Adam asked, and Noah frowned. He was pretty sure he could infer what he was being asked, but he worried that it was too sensitive a question to misunderstand.
Adam sensed his hesitance, and clarified, ‘Would you want me to fuck you or the other way around?’
Noah felt his palms grow sweaty. If he was being honestthe thought of both excited him, but there was something tantalising about giving himself up so completely to Adam.
‘I think I want you to …’ Noah was trying to be cool about it, but he was reaching the limits of his own candour.
Adam nodded. ‘OK, well in that case, you might want to clean up.’ Noah tried not to cringe as Adam detailed the various ways in which he might ‘prepare himself’.
‘Finally I want to add that you don’t need to worry about catching … anything. I got tested just before I came here.’
