Enlightened (22 page)

“Right there, Jamie… Just like that… please… please!” I implored as I started to get hard again. My hand wasn’t on my cock; Jamie was just touching a place inside me that made me so hard. The pleasure of it coursed through me, making my balls tighten. I didn’t know exactly what had changed or why the way he was thrusting into me made it different, but he started to move in earnest now. I moved right along with him, my hips slamming against his of their own volition. Wrapping my legs around his waist, he slid his arms under my shoulders. We were as close as two people could be, and I suddenly understood why people called it becoming one person.

This was what I’d always thought making love was all about.

Grasping my shoulders for leverage, he started to thrust a little harder. I reached down between us and began to stroke myself in time with his thrusts. The feeling was incredible, and I felt as if my heart would burst with the emotion that was coursing through me as we made love. It was beautiful and sweet, and I knew that as long as I lived, I would always remember that night, those precious moments when we were one. I would remember the cadence of the rain as it pounded on the roof, the smell of Jamie’s hair as he pressed his forehead into the pillow next to my head, and of course every moan, every grunt, and every whimper that was forced from him in the heat of his arousal.

“Oh… God… Jamie,” I whimpered as I felt my orgasm build. My body was on fire, and the increasingly animalistic sounds coming from Jamie told me that he was also close. His head fell back onto my shoulder as I fisted his damp hair tightly with my free hand, just trying to get him closer. I needed him; I needed his love and his comfort.

“Please,” I begged, although I wasn’t sure what for, while my other hand continued to rub and stroke my erection with frenzied speed. Panting, I felt that bowstring in the pit of my stomach as he drove relentlessly into me. The muscles in my legs, my shoulders, and even my chest and neck tightened. Fuck, I was right there. Finally it snapped, and even over the sound of the fan and the radio, my cry was loud.

“Oh God… God….” I clung to him as I came, the jets of semen trapped between our writhing bodies. I felt myself tighten around Jamie, squeezing his cock inside me. With the added tightness around him, his hips bucked into me, and then he suddenly stilled, his body riding wave after wave of his climax. Crying out into my neck, he kissed it tenderly and then turned his face, pressing his forehead into my shoulder. His breathing was loud and labored in my ear as I wrapped both arms around him. Pulling back slightly, he sought my lips with his own and kissed me sweetly as he held me.

I pushed the guilt back into a corner of my mind. The line was crossed, and there was no way to go back.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt so close to you,” he revealed, his lips finding mine again and again. “I know that I was a little nervous at first, but I wouldn’t trade how I feel right now for anything in the world.”

“I love you so much, Jamie,” I told him between tender kisses.

“I love you too,” he replied breathlessly. “Always.” He rolled onto his back, throwing the used condom into the grocery bag we used for garbage, and then he pulled me to him. I wrapped my arm around his chest, and one leg over his. Resting my head on his chest, I listened to his heart, still racing a bit as his breathing began to slow. The breeze from the fan felt good on our overheated skin, damp from our exertion. I fell asleep in his arms, never wanting to be anywhere else.

Chapter 11

T
HE
scream woke me up.

At first, I thought it was one of the horrific half-remembered dreams about my parents, but it wasn’t.

Jamie and I both bolted upright and looked around wildly. After the disorientation and confusion started to clear, we saw Mrs. Mayfield’s horrified face, flushed and sweaty, transfixed as she stood at the top of the ladder. Only the top of her worn purple robe with small tufts of her floral nightgown was visible. Reaching down quickly, I grabbed the sheet from where it had been pushed to the bottom of the mattress during the night and jerked it up to cover us both, but it was too late.

The damage had been done.

Jamie’s mother had seen us, naked and entwined, sleeping in each other’s arms. The early morning sun filtering through the cracks in the closed shutters had been more than enough light to see us by. The silence, broken only by the repetitive grinding of the fan and the monotone of the voice on the radio, swelled in the confining space. I watched as her disbelieving eyes scanned the small space as if she were trying to find some kind of explanation for what she had seen. My heart jumped into my throat when her eyes landed on the bedside crate and the open condom box that was lying there.

The more Mrs. Mayfield paled, the whiter her knuckles became as she gripped the trapdoor opening. For a moment, I thought she was going to be sick or faint, but instead she began to pray. Her voice was low and rhythmic, almost like she was chanting. I caught a few words as she rocked back and forth, her head bowed and her eyes closed….

“Depraved….

My boy….

Your wrath….”

Jamie refused to look at me, no matter how long I stared at him. His terrified face was bloodless and drawn. I couldn’t tell in that moment if he was more frightened of God or his mother.

“Sinners….

Mercy….

Repentance….”

I wanted to hold Jamie, to tell him that it would be okay, but I knew any display of affection toward him right now would antagonize his mother even further. As I sat there, frozen, terrified for Jamie, I reminded myself that he would be eighteen in about six months. He would be an adult, and there was nothing they could do to him, or to us. Even if they tried to separate us, we would still be together at school. We could get through this if we just held on to each other. This mental reassurance went on for a few more minutes as I tried to tune out his mother’s crazed ranting. I had to be strong now, for Jamie. He would need me while he dealt with his parents.

As Jamie continued to tremble next to me, his breathing coming in sharp gasps, I wondered what he must be thinking.
Was he worried about losing his family? Was he scared that they wouldn’t love him anymore? Was he worried that his own mother would hate him?

Only hours before, we had shared something so momentous, so incredibly special, that I felt like I had been fundamentally altered. I was his, and nothing would change that for me.
Would being discovered ruin everything that we had built?
We sat side by side on the mattress, watching his mother’s nearly silent chanting. Jamie looked like he was going to hyperventilate, and I tried to take his hand under the sheet where his mother wouldn’t see, but he pulled it away. My chest began to hurt as the fear raced through it.

Then, inexplicably, she just… stopped.

She stopped swaying.

She stopped chanting.

As she stood motionless on the ladder, she may have even stopped breathing. Her eyes flashed as she looked up at us. Then, as her features relaxed into an eerie calm, she said, “Breakfast is ready. You boys need to come in and get ready for church.”

Without another word, she climbed down the ladder and was gone. It finally registered that she must have called us to breakfast, and when we didn’t hear, she had come up to get us. If we had just turned the radio off or dressed before we’d fallen asleep, none of this would have happened. We had been so careless.

“Jamie,” I whispered, terrified at his silence, too afraid to look at his face, sure that all I would find was hatred or indifference. As he sat still as stone next to me, the pain in my heart took my breath away.

Then without warning, he threw himself at me, wrapping his shaking arms around my neck, nearly choking me. “Whatever happens, we will be together, Brian. I am not giving you up, not for them, not for anyone. You are everything to me.” Tears burned in my eyes as I nodded fervently.

“Forever,” I promised.

We got out of bed quickly and gathered our clothes that we’d strewn across the rough floor in our need last night. In the harsh morning light, we dressed side by side, and unbelievably, I found myself admiring his beauty. No matter what happened when we got into his parents’ house, he would always be the most beautiful thing in the world to me. I would be proud to stand beside him and weather the storm.

Grabbing our stuff, we headed for the trapdoor, but neither of us had the strength to open it. Not yet.

Standing directly on the worn wood so that we could not be interrupted, we wound our arms around each other. Silently, we held each other, his head on my shoulder as I fought the impulse to take him and run.
If only we weren’t still in high school, that might work.
His breathing was still hoarse and uneven, and I wished that I could take away his fear, his heartache.
What would his parents do now?

Just then, the fan and the radio both stopped. Someone had pulled the other end of the extension cord, the one plugged in on the wall nearest the door. His mother was getting impatient. I was sure she had figured out that we were being emotional and affectionate.

We had stood in each other’s arms as long as we dared.

Placing a small kiss on Jamie’s forehead, wishing it were more, I stepped back, waiting for him to move, and then lifted the trapdoor. We climbed down the ladder, each step taking us closer to the hellfire and brimstone that certainly awaited us. I wanted to hold Jamie’s hand as we faced our fate, but knew it would only make things worse. The thought of running was ever present, foremost in my mind—but I knew that I wouldn’t.

We were in this together, whatever the cost.

Jamie stopped me at the back door and looked at me for a long moment, like he was solidifying a picture of me in his mind before he opened the door. He went over the threshold with a determined air, striding purposefully into the kitchen, where his mother was making pancakes.

“Oh, there you boys are,” she said in that eerily cheery voice. “Brian, darlin’, why don’t you go up and get ready in your church clothes while Jamie eats and then you can switch off.” She turned back to the stove and continued to mix up batter. I looked at Jamie, and after a brief glance at his mother, he nodded. I hated leaving Jamie in the kitchen alone to face the wrath of his mother, her fear and anger, but I didn’t have any other option. I turned and headed for the stairs. I was starting to get very tired of having no options.

As I pulled my clothes off in the Mayfields’ tiny second-floor bathroom, I felt the soreness in my body for the first time. I’d been so preoccupied since Mrs. Mayfield’s scream that I hadn’t realized just how much my body ached from the previous night. Gingerly, I stepped into the shower, the hot water relaxing my sore muscles. As my body calmed, so did my mind, and I couldn’t shut the images off, flashes of our lovemaking repeating: the way he brushed my hair out of my eyes, or the way his body tensed as he came, or the way he held me as we fell asleep. After the initial pain, the lovemaking had been beautiful. I felt closer to him than I had at any point since we had met.

It was infuriating that things had gone so badly that morning. I had wanted to wake up in his arms, kissing and talking. I had wanted to tell him how much the night before meant to me. I had wanted, just maybe, to make love again. The one thing I hadn’t wanted was for him to have to choose between his family and me. One more year and we would have been gone; no one would have needed to know. After being caught, we would just have to pretend that much more, pretend we’d broken up, pretend that we’d seen the error of our ways, pretend that we weren’t in love. Of course they would try to separate us, but no matter what they tried, it wouldn’t work. I would do anything for him, including waiting a year so that we could be together.

It hurt to think about the wedge that would surely be driven between Jamie and his family. I was the catalyst for taking away his family, just as mine had been taken from me. As I washed my hair under the pounding spray, I wondered if I should leave him.
I had been scarred and broken by losing my family; would it do the same to Jamie? Would he resent me? What if we stayed together, but our relationship was irrevocably damaged by the fissure with his family? He said that we would be together forever. Would he still love me for better or worse?

Even if I left Jamie, it wouldn’t change his sexual orientation, and that’s what his parents would be upset about. It wasn’t that he was with me; I think they had always liked me even if I was just the foster kid from down the street. It was that he was gay, an aberration, and a mark against God. He would be a source of humiliation for them and proof of their failure to produce a normal, healthy Christian boy.

I stepped out of the shower knowing that I could never leave him, not when he needed me. Drying off, I looked at myself in the mirror; I felt different. No longer the boy who had climbed up into the tree house, I was a man, and it was time that I started to act like one. Dressing quickly in the church clothes that I had brought, the only ones I owned, I went back downstairs. Jamie was sitting at the kitchen table, a plate of half-eaten pancakes sat in front of him.