Enlightened (8 page)

“What else did you get?” I asked, curious to see if we had any other common interests that we didn’t know about. I thought after being best friends for almost six years that we knew everything about each other. Apparently, I was wrong. However, Jamie didn’t let go of the bag and wouldn’t let me look in it.

“It’s nothing,” he insisted, and the note of urgency in his voice made me stop. Obviously there was something in that bag that he was either embarrassed about or that he didn’t want me to see. Immediately, I let go of the bag, and he relaxed a little back into the chair, pushing his soft hair back from his eyes. A ton of possibilities, from gay-related books to sex-related books, chased each other through my mind as I tried to figure out what he was hiding.

Nervously, he checked his watch. “Hey, we’ve got to go; we’re supposed to be in the food court to meet Derrick and John,” he said as he pulled himself out of the chair. I tossed the paperback in my chair as I stood, and together we made our way to the door.

“Aren’t you going to get that paperback you started reading?” Jamie asked curiously as we left the store.

“Don’t you have it?” I asked casually.

“Yeah, I have it.” He turned the corner and headed back in the direction we’d come.

“Then I’ll just borrow yours,” I told him with a smirk. He grinned sheepishly as we passed the jewelry store again.

“You’re such a cheapskate,” he said, chuckling to himself, and pulled his bag from the bookstore up, hoisting it over his shoulder.

“Being a cheapskate will help me pay for college,” I told him. There was nothing from my parents. Either they hadn’t had anything, or it’d gone to the state for my care. If I wanted to go to college, I would have to find the money. Being the only child of a middle class family, I didn’t think Jamie really understood that. He also never understood why I wouldn’t just let him buy the book, or the CD, or even the bag of chips, for me. When it came to matters of money, Jamie and I generally stood at an impasse.

“Of course you can borrow the book,” he said quietly as we walked quickly past the lingerie shop, and I remembered our earlier discussion with a grin. I could tell that Jamie had remembered too because he was blushing.

The food court was relatively empty, so we didn’t have any trouble finding the guys, who were feasting on Chinese. Jamie and I waved to get their attention and motioned that we were going to get food as well.

It had been a nice, quiet time, nothing special in the grand scheme of a teenager’s social calendar, but I liked being able to spend time with Jamie that was someplace other than school. The constant twittering of girls, the slamming of lockers, and the mocking laughter that followed me whenever I wasn’t with Jamie was absent from the low bustle of the mall.

It made me long for the school year to end.

Chapter 4

“
J
AMIE
, I don’t think we should be doing this with your parents right down the hall,” I told him between fevered kisses as we lay on the inflatable mattress that his parents always put out for me. It was comfortable and just a few feet away from Jamie’s own twin captain’s bed, which had a lot of his character. From the handsome yet functional bookcase headboard to the calming blue plaid comforter freshly laid across its surface. One of the things I loved most about his bed was lying on it while we did our homework together, and his scent would envelop me, and I could torture myself with the image of him lying naked in bed with me.

“You know as well as I do that they won’t come to check on us this late. They’re asleep, and if they’re not, they think we are.” He cocked his head to the side, and his face fell a bit. “Unless you don’t want to?”

I responded by using my arms that were still around his neck to pull his face back to mine. We were facing each other as we lay on our sides, wearing just our twisted and tented pajama pants. Our long-discarded shirts lay rumpled and forgotten, entwined under his desk. Excited and a little apprehensive, I rushed headlong into my first real sexual experience without any thought for what would happen after. All I wanted to think about was the feeling of his mouth melded with mine, or his hands as he rubbed my bare skin.

It was beautiful and sensual.

I wrapped my leg around his and pulled it between both of my mine, feeling my eager erection press against his thigh as his pressed into my hip. The friction, coupled with the emotion that flowed between us, made it the best sexual experience I’d ever had. It was already incredible, and I hadn’t even gotten off yet. Slowly but deliberately, he began to grind his hips against mine, intensifying my need for him, and he emitted soft, mewling whimpers. His excitement just escalated my own. I nearly lost all control of myself when, after sliding his hand down and grabbing my ass for leverage, he gasped, “Oh God, Brian,” almost too quietly for me to hear. Those desperate sounds of pleasure, of sheer need, nearly made me come in my baseball-themed pajama pants.

I had no idea where it was leading; all I knew for sure was that I never wanted it to stop.

A noise in the hall drew our attention. After a brief look at me, during which I nodded my head frantically to indicate I had heard it as well, Jamie scrambled out of my arms, stood, and dove onto his bed. We both jerked the blankets over ourselves, feigning sleep. No one entered Jamie’s room, but it was several minutes before I heard anything else, and what I heard brought my erection back in full force.

The sound was Jamie’s labored breathing.

“Jamie,” I whispered, “are you….” I trailed off. I just couldn’t force myself to say “masturbating,” or even “jacking off.” It didn’t matter though. He knew what I meant.

“Uh huh,” he replied in a low moan. Again, that excitement, that need, pulsed through me, making my already hard cock throb. Silently, I lifted myself up and pulled my sleep pants down so that the waistband was around my upper thighs and I was exposed. I stroked myself lightly as I listened to him. Then I rolled onto my side and watched his profile in the moonlight that came in from the nearby window. I could see movement under his blanket, but I also saw his other hand rubbing his chest.
Did that make it better?

Tentatively, I brought my right hand up to my chest while my left was still wrapped tightly around my hard-on. My hips jerked as I rolled one nipple between my thumb and forefinger. It was almost as if there were a single electric current from my nipple straight down through my stomach. The small slapping sounds coming from the other bed were making me crazy while I watched him. Jamie’s head was pressed back into his pillow, and from what I could see in the dim light, his eyes were closed. Having progressed from labored breathing to harsh, ragged pants, it was obvious that he was close to reaching his peak. The blanket rose and fell rapidly, and his blond hair was matted on his forehead, either from exertion or the extraordinarily warm spring night. My heart nearly stopped when, without slowing his piston-like hand, he used the other to push down his blankets. I wasn’t sure if he did it because he knew I was watching or to keep them from being soiled.

With a deep, poorly contained groan, his back arched and his hand slowed to uncontrolled movements. Sharp, hoarse gasps accompanied the jerky rhythm of his strokes, and I imagined his semen landing across his flat stomach. His hand, which had been a blur the moment before, slowed to a languid rhythm as his orgasm began to wane.

It was the most erotic thing I had ever witnessed. In the silence that followed, I felt so much closer to him for sharing that deeply intimate act with me. The wild impulse to crawl into bed and curl around him was almost overpowering, but I held back. We could never take that kind of chance.

Then he turned to look at me, and our eyes met. The playfulness and hunger in his expression told me that it was my turn to share. I felt immediately self-conscious about my lewd display. For some reason, watching Jamie was beautiful, but I felt a little guilty about letting him watch me. It suddenly felt like we were doing something wrong. However, I knew that he would love watching me as I had him. So I put my fear, shame, and pajama pants aside, and I masturbated for Jamie. His look of hunger and something else I couldn’t quite understand were worth the slight embarrassment of jacking off in front of someone else. I had to admit, however, that the thought of him watching me really fucking turned me on.
Did my sounds, my inability to control my own desire, make him excited?

As my cock throbbed, all I could think about was straddling his perfect face, seeing it between my legs as I looked down at him. I wanted to feel his lips, his tongue on my balls while I stroked. Damn, I was so close, and I knew he could tell as I tried to keep my whimpers quiet. If he ever did actually suck me off, if we ever got that chance, as much as I imagined the scene, it would take only seconds for me to come. Kind of like masturbating in front of him, God, I was close.

Afterward, we both cleaned up with our discarded T-shirts, and after a fairly awkward goodnight, we fell asleep.

W
E
DIDN
’
T
talk the next morning about our shared experience, but I think both of us realized that we had crossed a certain line in our relationship. No longer just friends, we were officially something more, something yet to be defined.

It wasn’t until Jamie’s mother came to wake us that I remembered about church. As she closed the door, reminding us that we only had fifteen more minutes before we had to get up, I rolled over to face the opposite wall, faintly sick. Jamie guessed what was bothering me. He slid out of bed and quickly climbed onto the mattress beside me. I felt his hand slide over my bare stomach, and I shivered.

“Jamie, you can’t be here; what if your mother comes back?” I didn’t have the strength to roll and face him, so I pulled my knees up to my chest and continued to stare at the wall. We were going to have to sit there, side by side, listening to how much God hated us and how even though Jamie was such a good person, he was going to hell right along with me. I didn’t know if I could stand sitting through that again.

“Brian,” he said while his hand came up to stroke my hair. “He just did a sermon on that; he’s not going to do another one again so soon. Besides, we know it isn’t true. Don’t listen to what he says. We know in our hearts we’re supposed to be together.” At that, I rolled over to face him, and his lips quickly descended to mine before he got off my makeshift bed. I lay there for a few more minutes, thinking about what he’d said as he went to shower. Jamie was right, of course. Nothing that the preacher had said, or was going to say, would have made any difference to us.

Rather than worry about what would or wouldn’t happen that morning, I decided to imagine being in the shower with Jamie.

As it turned out, the pastor’s sermon wasn’t about homosexuality. Instead he preached about adultery. Apparently, someone’s secretary had been caught in bed with someone else’s husband. The scandal was all over the church. Men talked about it in low voices behind their copies of the hymnal while women gossiped more openly in the doorway. It was a feeding frenzy, and the sharks were in prime form. With a mounting sense of unease, I wondered what kind of frenzy they would go into over Jamie and me.
Which was the worse sin: being a whore, an adulterer, or a fag?

After the service, while we were getting ready to leave, two of our friends from school, Karen Simmons and Emma Mosely, came by to say hi. Emma, the smaller, shy, soft-spoken girl with glasses and frizzy brown hair, kept sneaking furtive glances at Jamie. She had an annoying habit of dissolving into a fit of giggles each time his gaze fell upon her. Karen, on the other hand, was a bigger girl with a loud, grating voice. Her black hair fell in waves around her boyish face, and she moved awkwardly in the heeled shoes she apparently wore only on Sunday. Today, her acne was acting up again, and it was hard to draw my eyes away from the torrent of purplish spots along her cheeks and chin.

Mrs. Mayfield beamed as she watched the exchange between Jamie and Emma, and I got the feeling that she had sent the girls over to us. It was obvious that Emma was attracted to Jamie. I mean hell, who wouldn’t be? He was smart, sweet, and beautiful. Mrs. Mayfield was obviously pleased that such a wholesome, churchgoing girl was interested in her boy. Then they could get married, live in town, and have a dozen wholesome, churchgoing babies.

“Hi, Brian,” Karen said, sidling up next to me, her voice a little loud to be polite for post-church chatter. I wasn’t sure if she was interested in me as much as she was interested in getting Emma and Jamie together. They had never displayed this kind of attention in the cafeteria at lunch. Maybe they had just worked up the courage, or maybe there were fewer teenage witnesses at church. More likely, however, was the idea that Jamie’s mother had given them a little pep talk. In any event, they were working their advantage.

“Hi, Karen,” I mumbled, wondering how I could put off a vibe that said “not interested” without actually giving myself away.