Crash: M/M Straight to Gay First Time Romance
Read Crash: M/M Straight to Gay First Time Romance Online
Authors: Jerry Cole
“Crash”
M/M Straight to Gay First Time Romance
Jerry Cole
© 2016
Jerry Cole
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. If you have not purchased this book from Amazon or received it directly from the author you are reading a pirated copy. If you have downloaded an illegal copy of this book & enjoyed it, please consider purchasing a legal copy. Your respect & support encourages me to continue writing & producing high quality books for you.
This book is intended for adults (18+) only. The contents may be offensive to some readers. It contains graphic language, explicit sexual content, and adult situations. Please do not read this book if you are offended by such content or if you are under the age of 18. All sexually active characters are 18+.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner & are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover images are licensed stock photos, images shown for illustrative purposes only. Any person(s) that may be depicted on the cover are models.
Edition v1.00 (2016.07.03)
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“It’s a senior tradition. You should go too,” she said, the ruby red lip gloss smeared thick and heavy on her lips.
I shook my head, not wanting to tell her no and not wanting to go either. Just being in school day after day was hard enough for me. The thought of a party, surrounded by people who I would just as soon forget, didn’t sound like fun. She reached out and grabbed my arm, the way she must have done a thousand times to a million boys. Shifted her weight to one foot, she popped one of her slim pubescent hips and tilted her head to the side like a confused cocker spaniel. I almost laughed out loud. This routine must work well with the others. Sadly, she was barking up the wrong tree with me. I am immune to feminine charm, even when it’s not covered in drugstore makeup and offensive perfume.
“Everybody is going. Me, Tranice, Reid, Dougie, even Krishan,” she said.
Is Reid going? My eyes must have asked the question for me because she smiled slightly and looked over her shoulder at the broad-shouldered senior, sitting with a group of guys huddled over a magazine.
“Hey Reid, you are going to the bonfire, right?”
“Yeah, wouldn’t miss it,” he said, smiling back at Brooke. His smile sent a surge of electricity through my veins and momentarily short circuited my better judgment.
“See, you and Reid are buddies. You should come too,” she urged me. I was still doubtful. It would most likely be one of the last times I would ever see him again, but I didn’t trust myself in the company of so many people.
“Come on Liam; it will be fun. I promise,” he said.
Reid Cummings just said my name out loud in front of the whole class. It will be fun, he promised. I nodded my head and took the yellow flier from Brooke and escaped from the classroom without saying a word. I ran all the way home and hid in my room until my mother found me. I told her what happened, and she was just as surprised as I was.
*****
“You don’t have to talk much. Just be sure to smile,” my mother said that night. If it were up to her, she would dress me and comb my hair in preparation for the first party I have ever been invited to attend.
“Everybody w-w-was invited. N-n-not just me,” I said, my nerves making my stutter worse.
“Well then you are super brave by going, knowing that EVERYONE will be there,” she added with a wink. “Especially since HE will be there.”
I looked at my reflection in the mirror and took a deep breath. The red hair that I had compulsively dyed brown since I was eight was swept away from my face for the first time since my cousin’s wedding. My mother’s ice blue eyes stared back at me from my face. I looked like a catalog model. I wanted to look confident, but ended up looking like a model for a local outlet store, right down to the silver ring on my fourth finger. After this, it would all be over. I didn’t want to leave high school regretting all the words I never said, so I made myself a promise.
“S-s-say ssss-something,” I hissed at my reflection. He might laugh at me, but he might not. He called your name, and he promised it would be fun, didn’t he?
“Relax and have a good time,” my mom said as I grabbed the keys and walked through the door.
When I arrived, the bonfire was in full swing. There was no way you could miss it. The flames leaped so high into the night sky you could see them, glowing embers on the horizon, from miles away. The annual senior bonfire raged on at a camping ground close enough for locals to drive to but remote enough to avoid prying eyes.
There were several dozen tents pitched around the perimeter of the firelight. I didn’t need to look to guess what was happening behind the quivering curtains of vinyl and canvas.
“Leeland!” Brooke screamed, once she caught sight of me.
“L-l-liam,” I corrected her, as she threw her arm around my shoulder.
“I was waiting for you! The drinks are down by the river, just in case we have to dump and run,” she informed me, stumbling a little despite being stationary.
I nodded and offered a tight-lipped smile as she peered at me from under heavy lids. Her breath smelled of cheap beer and peppermint. The pungent combination burned my eyes and made my stomach turn. I decided at that moment that I would not be visiting the keg laden pickup trucks parked along the water’s edge.
Escaping her drunken grasp, I made my way through the throng of swaying bodies. After bumping into several fellow seniors, I managed to find a safe spot in a tree near the fire to observe. The music was the same top 40 radio garbage that you heard everywhere. Every few minutes the opening bars of a new song would send a group of girls into a frenzy of “that’s my song” and the discordant gyrating would amplify, accompanied by jumping and undulating. Liquid sloshed from red disposable cups, making the ground damp despite the unusual lack of rain in recent weeks.
“I’m glad you made it,” said a familiar voice. Looking down, the soft glowing eyes and horrific dye job could only belong to one person.
“Reid.”
“Come on down, man,” he said, waving a beer-laden cup at me.
My vision narrowed so that all I could see was Reid and the shadows dancing along his face. I took several deep breaths before attempting to get my limbs to move. In my mind, I knew that if I climbed down, I’d have to TALK to him. And if that happened, he would know that I stuttered and lisped my way through life.
If I speak to him, he might get frustrated as I try to push my thoughts out through my teeth while my tongue stays stuck on repeat. If I talked to Reid Cummings, I may regret it. As I looked down at his beautiful face, I was sure that if I didn’t come down out of the tree and talk to him, I would regret it for the rest of my life.
My body rejected the idea as I descended. My hands clung to each branch so tightly that my fingertips were numb by the time I reached the bottom. We both sat on a fallen log and watched the fire for a few silent moments.
“Hey man, Brooke just told me you were here. It’s good to see you,” he said. I eyed him for a minute. His pupils remained dilated, but his breath didn’t stink of alcohol. Despite holding a red cup, he didn’t seem interested in its contents.
“Thanks,” I breathed out, using the trick my speech therapist taught me to help calm my stuttering.
“You know, it’s weird that this is the first time I think I have ever seen you outside of school. Now we are getting ready to graduate, and we have been in the same school for how many years?”
“S-s-six,” I lisped. He didn’t seem to notice. He just stared up at the stars and nodded his head.
“Yeah, six freaking years and it’s all over. Isn’t that crazy,” he said, smiling like a crazy cat.
“Yesss,” I said, convinced that although he was sitting right next to me, he was light years away right now.
“You know what else is crazy?” He looked at me with his hazel eyes glistening in the firelight. I shook my head, and he smiled. The warmth of that smile made me forget the anxiety and fear of being in a large crowd of people.
“I am going to miss you, Liam,” he said, my name rolling off the tip of his tongue like a precious pearl he has been hiding for years. I looked down at our feet in the beer-soaked dirt. Sitting beside him like this, with his knee resting gently against mine seemed like the luckiest moment since the year that I spent sitting behind him in homeroom.
“Me too,” I said without any impediment.
Then it happened. Reid Cummings touched my hand. I looked down at my unworthy appendage, confused by what was happening. His hand rested comfortably beside mine for a minute, our pinky fingers touching. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my vision. In six years, the only time Reid Cummings ever touched me was when he was helping me up off of the floor. That was usually in the form of a quick yank on my elbow. This was something else. This was something more intimate and deliberate.
When I looked up, he was looking at me.
“I never knew your eyes were blue,” he said.
What was I supposed to say to that? To this day, I can’t think of anything to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. I took a deep breath and slid my fingers across the back of his hand. In reality, it was probably only a few inches, but it felt like I reached across an ocean to find the shore.
He flipped his hand over and placed his fingers between mine, not holding my hand exactly, but letting me hold his. I took the hint and clasped his large, calloused fingers in mine. The thought occurred to me: maybe he was just drunk. Maybe he had no idea what he was doing. I didn’t care. Maybe this moment was the only one I would ever get with him. After carrying a torch for my entire high school career, I deserved to sit next to somebody who knew my name and noticed that my eyes were blue.
“You were, like, always there, you know?” He started talking again, but not really to me. His face was turned to the sky again. “Even my dad didn’t show up to my games, but you did. I saw you. You always hid by the exit. Why did you do that?”
I wanted to tell him I was scared. I wanted to explain to him that I would have said more, done more, came closer if the crowds and the noise didn’t cause crippling panic attacks and hours of anxiety. I wanted to say that he lived those moments in the sun for both of us, and I was so grateful for all the times he looked my way and nodded his head, letting me know he saw me and was happy that I was there. But I knew none of those words would come out.
“You have too man-n-ny f-f-fans,” I said, watching my feet in the dirt.
“Yeah,” he laughed. “I have a lot of fans, but not too many friends. You can never have too many friends, and I happen to know I don’t have many at all.”
His voice dipped low, and his eyes fell back down to earth. I watched as he surveyed the people around us. Everybody passed by us, laughing and howling as if they were trying to convince the world that they were having the time of their lives. It all seemed to make him even more upset.
I squeezed his hand in mine, and he turned that sad gaze on me. The firelight cast grim shadows on his face, and his eyes focused on me with an intensity I wasn’t sure I deserved.
“We are friends,” I exhaled, using a sing-song voice to avoid the stutter. I needed him to understand me. “I care about you.”
Reid let the corners of his mouth turn upward slightly.
“Do you remember this?” he asked, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a worn silver pendant. “You gave this to me a while back. It’s been a lucky charm for me,” Reid said, as he dropped the warm piece of metal into my palm. I looked at it again in the firelight. I could barely make out the inscription.
“You probably don’t even remember. It’s Saint Christopher; you gave it to me before my first game on the JV team. We won, so I kept it,” Reid explained.
“Athletes-s-s are s-s-so s-s-uperssstitious,” I hissed. He watched my mouth carefully as I spoke, and then smiled at me.
I was an expert at interpreting people’s expressions. I knew instantly when a smile was given out of pity or hid a malicious intent. His smile held no contempt or pity. It was something else; something that I didn’t dare examine too closely or even hope to see again. The sincerity of his intense gaze overwhelmed me, and before I knew what to say, Reid Cummings kissed me.
It wasn’t the sloppy kiss of a lustful teenage boy. There, in the shadows of the senior bonfire, I had my first kiss with a boy named Reid. It was powerful and undemanding. It was the kind of first kiss you hope will happen to you but only seems to happen to girls named Blake in teen movies. I couldn’t tell you if I kissed back. What I remember, what I will always remember, was the way he took both of my hands in his and held them as his lips pressed against mine. Even as my mind screamed paranoid warnings at me, I was sure I never wanted the magic of that moment to end.
But, it did.
Reid pulled away from me, his breathing ragged and his eyes round like saucers. I said nothing as the muscles in his jaw jumped as he gritted his teeth. I said nothing as he dropped my hands as if they were hot embers. I said nothing as he turned his face from me and rubbed his palms on the thighs of his jeans.
“You will keep this to yourself, right,” he said, still not looking at me.
I nodded my head because I knew words wouldn’t come. I didn’t even try. My silence forced him to look at me again. I nodded my head again, slowly, resolutely.
“Good. See you around,” he said, as he got up from his spot and marched back out into the firelight.
A group of passing kids embraced him as they sang loudly to the song thumping through the speakers. I said nothing as he disappeared into the crowd, the way he did so many times before. It was only right that he would return to his world, and me to mine. Still, there was a dull ache in my chest that was never there before. The kind of ache that comes from asking “what if…”
I decided to go home. I stood up, plotting the quickest way to get back to my car without having to face anybody. I didn’t think I could take it if anybody tried to talk to me or get me to sing. I didn’t know that there was no way to hide. Brooke and her pack of monsters were already scouring the campsite for me. I didn’t know that they had no intention of letting me leave as quietly as I came. If I had, I probably would have braved the throng of partying teens to find my way back to my car. I would have found Reid and clung to his wrist, even if he hated me for it later. I would have screamed and yelled and made a scene as I collapsed in the dirt from a panic attack.
