Page 35 of The Art of Drowning

“Kiss me,” I begged quietly, tilting my head to chase his mouth with mine. “Kiss me,” I said again.

His lips were soft and gentle like the way he now moved against me. Touching him should have sated me, or at least started to, but the more we touched, the more we kissed, the greedier I became. The less satisfied. The weight of all we missed pressed on my chest and made it hard to breathe and that’s when Damien kissed me.

That’s when our mouths met again, and he breathed life into me. I wondered if he could feel my sadness, my grief at what we’d missed out on, my rage at Sam, at myself, at everything that wasn’t him, because he kissed me like he understood. He kissed me like he was battling demons. Everything in my world narrowed down to the fire that burned in my core, spreading outward from my center. I clung to him, so needy and so, so fucking close.

Damien came first. I knew it before it happened. Sensed it in the way his movements changed slightly. The way they grew faster and more frantic. I was almost sad that I’d kept kissing him, that I’d devoured him as he came all over me, and himself, and spread the mess around, still grinding, still hellbent on making me come. I’d wanted to watch him come apart. Wanted to know if it still looked the same or how he might have looked different when he came.

But this was better because I was close to breaking, and I wanted to shatter into a million tiny pieces. Crying during sex wasn’t something I did, like ever, but I was on the verge now. My eyes burned with need to unleash the most confused tears ever. I was elated, and angry, and fucking sad, but also the happiest I’d been in years, and the most afraid.

I almost didn’t come because I was so fucking mixed up inside, but then Damien broke the kiss, and I felt his lips move against my skin as he spoke.

“Callum, please. Please,” he paused briefly as though taking one last microsecond to choose his next words. “Come for me.”

I’d do anything for him, and as far as requests went, that was an easy one. His words kicked down the final hurdle and I crashed over the finish line with a gasp and a moan, and then he was kissing me again. Long and deep strokes of his tongue against mine as I came apart under him. The mess between us grew, and he didn’t stop touching me. Didn’t stop kissing me. His fingers were on my face, in my hair. His body only slowing its movements when I made a pained sound as I grew oversensitive after what seemed like a life-changing orgasm.

Damien rolled off of me, but not away from me. He stayed close, pressed to my side and we kept kissing. Because if we were kissing, we didn’t have to talk about what we just did and what it meant. We didn’t have to ask questions or think about what this meant for the future, what it changed.

If it changed anything at all.

We didn’t talk in the afterglow. Even when we stopped kissing, we didn’t move to clean up. We didn’t try to make small talk. We just lay there in each other’s arms, savoring the closeness that we’d missed.

For years, all I’d wanted was to talk to him again. And now that he was here and we were on the other side of the sexual tension, I didn’t want to say a single word. If we were quiet, we didn’t have to ask questions. If we didn’t talk, we didn’t have to figure out where to go from here and we could just stay here. Maybe. Probably not. But I let myself believe it for a few more minutes. After years of agony, we deserved a few minutes of respite.

Damien shifted around like he was suddenly uncomfortable. “I need a shower. Drying cum is kind of terrible, but I didn’t want to move.”

“Mmm.” I hummed an acknowledgement of his declaration to move.

“Shower with me,” he whispered. “I’ll wash your back if you wash mine.”

Of course I said yes. Because I wasn’t done taking whatever I could get for as long as I could get it. For now, reality was unwelcome and we’d locked it away on the other side of the hotel room door. But eventually it would creep back in. Soon, we’d have to go home and get back to our lives. Soon, we’d have to read those stupid fucking letters. I low-key wanted to burn mine.

Part of me wanted to say no to the shower, but only so I could run to the store for fucking lube and maybe a box of condoms. But I couldn’t pull myself away from him for any reason.

Not yet.

EIGHTEEN

damien

THEN

Christmas had come and gone and I hadn’t managed to get Callum alone again. January slipped by, icy and miserable. February brought a couple of snowstorms and the school’s Valentine’s Day dance, which I was relieved Callum wasn’t attending. Sam tried to get me to go, but there was no way I was going to a Valentine’s dance and letting some poor girl get her hopes up about us.

Did I still like girls? Yes. Absolutely. But I was hung up on Callum still. He was all I thought about. Him and that fucking kiss. Nothing had been as good as kissing him. It felt right in a way that I couldn’t describe, and that’s what sucked the most about it. I wanted Callum so fucking much, and there was no way Sam would ever be cool with it. I’d hoped that the kiss would be a dud, a complete failure to launch. Instead, it catapulted my crush into obsession territory.

Sam tried one more time on his way out the door to get me to go to the dance, but he knew he was fighting a losing battle. There was no way I was going to a Valentine’s Day dance alone.

When Sam was gone, I waited another half an hour, pacing in his room, staring at the clock. Finally I couldn’t wait anymore and crept silently out of Sam’s room and over to Callum’s door. It was shut and I tapped on it quietly. John and Milly were downstairs watching TV. Callum and I weren’t really alone, but it was the closest I’d gotten since Christmas.

His door opened a little, then a little more. His gaze met mine and, for a second, neither one of us moved or breathed or spoke.

“Can I come in?” I asked him. My hands were stuffed in my pockets, and I rocked back and forth on the balls of my feet. Anything to keep myself looking halfway normal instead of the tangled mess that I was.

Liking Callum as much as I did felt like a betrayal to Sam, who didn’t like Callum at all. Half the time he pretended that Callum didn’t exist. He’d stopped being openly hostile to him when I was around because he could tell that it made me uncomfortable. He assumed I was uncomfortable because I didn’t have siblings and wasn’t used to how siblings treated each other. In reality, it was because I detested watching Sam lash out at Callum for no reason.

Callum could have said no and shut the door in my face, but he opened it wider and stepped aside to let me in. I’d never spent a lot of time in Callum’s room, but it showcased how he and Sam were different.

Sam’s room always looked like a tornado went through it. It was the room of a teen who cared more about looks and parties and their social life than anything else. Sam’s room always had a load of dirty laundry draped on various surfaces or just tossed on the floor. Were it not for the fact that I practically lived with him, he would have drowned in his dirty clothes by now.