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Eric followed Adam into the cabin. Adam’s dad and uncles used it for fishing weekends. It was nothing fancy. The main room had a card table, a propane stove and refrigerator, and some cupboards. There were two bedrooms in the back, a tiny bathroom, a small lounge with a chesterfield so wildly patterned Eric might wear a shirt made of the same fabric, and an old tube TV with an antenna.
Eric sat down primly on the chesterfield. “We’re alone. We should talk about us.”
They hadn’t talked about what they meant to each other. They’d sexted a bunch, then last holiday Adam had come home from school they’d made out for an hour and traded blow jobs while barely speaking. One of the reasons Eric had agreed to come away to the cottage with Adam was that he’d have to talk, wouldn’t he, if they were away for the weekend?
Not so far. Not even in the nearly hour long car ride.
So Eric waited with baited breath for Adam’s reply.
Adam narrowed his eyes. “You ever been rimmed?”
They did that instead of talking, and then they fucked, Adam topping and absolutely being better at it than anyone who’d never done that particular sex act had any right to be. Eric had been nervous about being with a guy who was so well endowed, but Adam very thoroughly and pleasurably insured that Eric had a good time.
A great time.
He shook his head and glanced over at Adam. “I think you use sex as a way to avoid intimacy.”
Adam sat up and grabbed cigarettes from his coat, lighting one. “I think you spent too much time with a fake sex therapist.”
Eric nodded. “Fair,” he conceded. He liked that Adam was naked. He hadn’t seen him completely nude before. He was fucking hot and his muscle definition seemed to be getting better all the time. Eric couldn’t resist running a hand over Adam’s shoulders and then down his arm. “Have you been working out?”
Adam half turned to look at him and raised an eyebrow. “No, we spend our time reading Jane Austin in military school.”
Adam wasn’t thick. If he was thick his acerbic comments wouldn’t be quite so stinging. But he did seem it quite a lot of the time. Eric had discovered that Adam wouldn’t hit him now that they’d kissed so he didn’t mind asking him about it. “You aren’t thick. So what happens to you at school? Do you just not try, or do you like, have a learning problem or something?”
Adam frowned. “That really what you want to talk about?”
Eric pulled Adam down on the bed and started exploring his chest with both hands. He’d definitely developed some definition there. “Well, we could talk about our relationship if you’d rather.”
Adam turned his head to blow smoke away from Eric’s face. “Excellent choice. You want to talk about either how dumb I am or how gay I am. You really know how to show a guy a good time.”
“I never said you were dumb. I said you were the opposite.”
Adam exhaled loudly and snubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray on the bedside table. “You said it like you were surprised, because in every situation you know me, in school or socially, you think I’m thick.”
“Man you are touchy.” Eric snuggled closer, still touching Adam wherever he could reach him.
Adam finally swung an arm around Eric and brought him closer. “I think it’s because of my dad. I used to be fine in school, when I was a little kid. Like average. I was never a genius or anything. But he kept on comparing my grades to my sister’s and telling me how stupid I was, and eventually I just stopped thinking I could do it. I sit down to write an essay or a test and I just—I freeze. And maybe I’m afraid to try, because what if I really try and he’s right? I can’t do anything. Plus I used to smoke a lot of weed.”
“I think I hate your dad.”
Adam reached over and ran his other hand—the one not wrapped around Adam’s shoulder, over Eric’s stomach. “I know I hate yours.”
Eric raised his head. “What? Why? He’s lovely.”
Adam nodded. His arms squeezed around Eric’s shoulders briefly. “And if he were my dad, I might be lovely, too. Like you are.”
Eric blinked, then lowered his head slowly back to Adam’s shoulder. This was the nicest thing that Adam had ever said to him that wasn’t somehow connected to sex. He’d complimented Eric’s face, his clothing choices, his skin, even his eye-makeup, but calling him—his personality—lovely was something else entirely.
He wanted to say something nice back, but what does one say about Adam? Eric suspected he was nice. There had been moments of niceness. But then there was the angry façade he put on so often. The mask that was all he’d let people see. Finally he said, “I wish I knew the real you.”
“You know more of the real me than anyone else.” He leaned over and kissed Eric, and that put an end to that discussion for a while, and then they fell asleep right after.
In the morning Adam fried them some eggs and Eric made toast. After they’d eaten in near silence, Adam said, “I don’t know what to say when you ask me what this is between us.”
Eric nodded. “Me either.”
“Before we hooked up I was so jealous of you. You might not be the kind of gay I am, but you’re absolutely yourself. I don’t even know who I am so I wouldn’t know how to act like it. And you’re smart, and good-looking and kind, even though being kind isn’t exactly rewarded in school. It’s why I bullied you so much.”
“Because I was kind?”
“Because I was jealous of you. That you got to be whoever you wanted. Make mistakes. Get a boner in front of the whole school and still stay friends with that little pale kid. You just seemed to have it all figured out. You were cool.”
“So what does that have to do with—” he gestured between them—“this?”
Adam smiled sadly. “I realized one day when you turned and walked away from me to avoid me that I was disappointed. I’d been looking forward to talking to you all day. I know you didn’t talk to me because you wanted to—I forced you to notice me by shoving you around and taking your shit—but you were still nice to me when—when I let you be. I knew I liked guys always, but I was fooling myself thinking I could be bisexual or just—just not gay. I was already such a disappointment to my dad.”
Eric took his hand. “You know for a fact he’d be against you being gay?”
“I know what he says about gay people on TV. I can’t imagine his love for me would change his opinion. Maybe if he—if he really loved me. But I’m not convinced that he does.”
“So what made you kiss me?”
Adam shrugged. “I realized I’d been twisting myself into someone who wasn’t even real to please my dad, and the shittiest part was it wasn’t even working. He didn’t like me, my mom struggled to like me, and I fucking hated myself. So I might as well be who I wanted to be.”
“I like you. But you’re right. It’s not the person you’re pretending to be that I like. It’s those cracks in the façade that get me. You know the cracks are how the light gets in?”
“That a quote or something?”
Eric nodded.
Adam frowned. “I don’t know what this is. But you’re all I’ve got. Like. I don’t want to be your boyfriend because if you and I ever broke up…and it’s not right to put that on someone. You should be allowed to break up with me.”
“I don’t really want to, at the moment.”
Adam smiled. Eric wasn’t sure he could remember seeing Adam smile before. It was kind of beautiful. It was more in his eyes that his mouth. Adam had very expressive eyes. He could be vulnerable or aggressive seemingly without changing expression. You had to really look at him.
Eric took Adam’s hand. “You’d tell me if you were really like, depressed or something?”
“I’m not. I’m just…I’m just really fucked up.”
Eric laughed. “I know that better than anyone, Adam. You know this.”
“I love you. I’m so glad you’re in my life.”
Eric felt his eyes open wider. He opened his mouth and then closed it again.
Adam laughed. “You always look at me like I’m crazy. But to be fair I say shit around you I would be afraid to tell anyone else. I don’t know what it is about you.”
Eric squeezed Adam’s hand. “I wish you were going to school here. Although I guess you wouldn’t talk to me. Have to protect your image and all that.”
“Fuck that. I’d be your friend. I don’t have an image anymore. I’m just an angry sex pervert, as far as most people are concerned. I’d be lucky to have you as a friend.”
“What about your dad?”
Adam exhaled heavily. “It doesn’t matter. He’s not going to let me come back.”
“What if your grades got better? Or like, stopped getting in trouble?”
Adam rolled his eyes. “If I knew how to do that, I wouldn’t be there to begin with, would I?”
Eric put his hand on the back of Adam’s neck and pulled Adam’s forehead close to his. “I want you close to me so I can take care of you. You’re worrying me right now.”
Adam changed the subject. Everything was great for the rest of the trip. Adam went back to school and he kept in touch with Eric on text.
One day, out of the blue, Adam showed up at school standing by Eric’s locker first thing in the morning, just like old times.
Eric tried to contain his excitement. “What are you doing here? Do you have another holiday I didn’t know about?”
Adam shrugged. “They kicked me out. I’m enrolled back here. Or at least, my dad’s working on it. He wouldn’t let me sit around the house while he got things straightened out, so here I am. I don’t even have a class schedule yet. I’m supposed to hang out in the library until they know what to do with me.”
“What did you do?”
Adam shrugged and walked away.
Eric called after him. “Adam, what did you do? How bad was it?” He got his books from his locker and closed it hurriedly, and then ran after him. “Adam! What was it?”
Adam grinned. “Doesn’t matter. I’m here now.”
“And what will you do with your newfound freedom?” Eric asked.
Adam gently pushed Eric into a locker. “Maybe I’ll ask out this boy I like. Or maybe I’ll kiss him right here.”
Eric gasped. “What will Anwar think? He disapproves of public displays of affection.”
“He’ll be sad he missed his chance with you, probably. But fuck that guy and his fucking pink blazer.”
And then he kissed Eric right in the hallway in front of everyone. People talked about it for days. Eric loved the attention. And Anwar did seem kind of jealous.