Full Release (8 page)

I pulled Jeremy to a standing position and started sucking him. While I did it, I held tight to his balls and squeezed gently. He moaned exactly the way I knew he would. After I worked them a while, I slide my finger back, behind his balls, and found his anus. I rubbed it with a circular motion until his hips began to move.

Getting off the couch, I pushed Jeremy onto it. I lifted up his legs and began to rim him. I licked him until he was slick, then I made my tongue as stiff and hard as I could and slid it into him. He grabbed the back of my head and held me there.

Moments later, I came up for air. I slipped a finger into him, easily locating his prostate. I gently rubbed it until it hardened. Then I slipped another finger into him.

“I want you to fuck me,” he said, his voice hoarse and raspy.

I pulled my fingers out of him and replied, “I’ll get a condom.”

The look on his face said that he didn’t want me to. We’d never used them when we were together. But he knew if we got into a discussion about all the reasons we should be using a condom, the whole thing would be off. He smiled and said, “Well, hurry up then.”

I ran into the bedroom and pulled a condom out of the nightstand. I grabbed the bottle of lube and rushed back to the living room. Jeremy was leaning over the back of the sofa with his ass arched in the air. It made a pretty picture, and he knew it.

“Fuck me from behind.”

I rolled the condom on. Dabbed some lube in my hand. Then drizzled some into the crack of his ass. Seconds later, I slid into him. I placed my hands on his buttocks and began to thrust. He pushed his ass back to meet me.

“Slap me,” he whispered.

I whacked him hard on his right buttock. Hard enough to raise a pink hand print seconds later. Jeremy was moaning again and whispering an occasional, “Yeah, that’s it. That’s it.”

Sweat began to form on my forehead. It wasn’t that hot, but I was exerting myself more than I usually did on the elliptical at the gym. I ran my hand up and down Jeremy’s spine. Then I said, “Turn over.” I wanted to see the look on his face while I fucked him.

He flipped over, and I pushed him into a corner of the couch. Pulling his legs up, I rested them on my shoulders as a jammed my cock back into him. Eyes locked on mine, he reached up and ran his hand across my face while I fucked him. I pushed forward so I could get better leverage, allowing his legs to splay open and bounce with each thrust.

The harder I fucked him, the more he liked it. I couldn’t help thinking he was asking me to punish him somehow, as though if we just fucked hard enough our problems would disappear. I jerked him with one hand. His dick was so hard, I wondered if it hurt.

“Squeeze my neck,” he whispered.

“What? No.”

“Do it.”

I was getting close, and fucking him, even in a harsh punishing way, was too perfect to stop, so I did it. I slipped my right hand around his throat and squeezed. A moment later my left hand joined it. I continued to pump into him again and again. Pounding him. Grinding him into the couch. His mouth stretched open as he gasped for air.

His hands reached up to his neck and tried to pull mine away, and just as they did, I felt his sphincter contracting and looked down to see him coming all over his belly. I released his neck. He gasped. While he struggled to catch his breath, I gave him a few hard, merciless thrusts and came.

Almost immediately, I felt uncomfortable with what we’d done. I went into the bathroom to dispose of my come-filled condom. There were so many things wrong with this. It had been totally hot, and part of me wanted to just focus on that. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t pretend that what had just happened was okay.

I went back into the living room and began to put my clothes on. Jeremy was lolling on the sofa, his belly covered in come. With a dirty smile, he said, “You’re still pretty good at that.” His voice was a tiny bit hoarse.

“What was that choking thing?”

“I read about it somewhere. Wanted to try it.”

“Why didn’t you try it with Skye?”

Jeremy shrugged. “He’s not good at change.”

I almost laughed. It sounded like Skye was every bit as vanilla as Jeremy had accused me of being. I sat down in a chair and wondered when Jeremy might get dressed.

He got up and started wandering around the house naked, checking it out. I realized I really wanted him to leave. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to spend time with Jeremy, it’s that the morning had actually been almost okay when I thought about it. He’d come over to comfort me and then we’d had some really good sex. I wanted him to leave because the longer he stayed the more likely he was to screw the whole thing up.

Jeremy came back to the sofa and said, “You know, I miss this place.”

“Thanks,” I said dryly.

“I miss you, too. That’s just more complicated.” He gave me a look and bit his lip. “Matt, I’ve been thinking about something.”

Here it comes, I thought. He wants to get back together. The sex had been hot, and despite the number of times he’d talked to me about dissolving our domestic partnership, he hadn’t done much to actually make that happen. I didn’t want to get back with him, though. Too much had happened.

“Maybe you shouldn’t--”

“I’ve been thinking you and I should have a three-way with Skye.”

And there it was. He’d manage to screw up the whole thing before he got out the door. “I think you should leave,” I said.

Chapter Eight

I slammed the door behind Jeremy, thrilled he was gone, and saw something I hadn’t noticed before. On the table next to the front door sat a stack of take-out menus. They’d been there since last night; I’d seen them but hadn’t seen them.

The table by the door was teak, about three feet wide and a foot deep. It had two small drawers that opened with wrought iron pulls and a shelf at the bottom where I kept a blown glass vase I’d bought in Pasadena. The table was roughhewn and had cost thirty-five dollars at a garage sale. I threw my change in a Chinese bowl on top and kept take-out menus in the drawers.

The fact that the menus now sat on top of the table meant that Eddie had looked around for them, found them in the drawers, and left them out so we could decide what to order when I got home. I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise. Something was obviously wrong.

My landline rang. I found the cordless phone and clicked the talk button. It was Tiffany. “Is it true?” she asked.

At first, I thought she was asking about Eddie, but then I had no idea what she was talking about. “Is what true?”

“Charles says you’re applying for jobs…for yourself. I thought you were helping me.” She sounded like a petulant child. I wanted to slap her.

“I did put myself in for a job at Monumental. It’s a VP position, I don’t think they’d consider you, and if I leave then there’s room for you to stay.” I didn’t like being made to feel guilty for thinking about myself and it was making me pissy. “How the hell did Charles find out?”

“Merilee is a wiz with fax machine.”

“Shit.” I should have gone to Kinko’s. “Look, Tiffany, I have to go, all right?”

“Is the interview today? Is that why you’re at home?”

“No, I’m at home because a friend of mine hung himself in my garage,” I said rather meanly.

“Oh crud,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m really losing it over this job thing. Look, don’t worry about me, okay? Do you need anything? Can I do something?”

“No, I’ll be okay.”

After I hung up, I hunted up the coffee Jeremy had brought me. It was in the kitchen, on the butcher’s block next to the microwave where I’d put it down when we started making out. It was also ice cold. I considered nuking it, but reheated coffee always tasted like reheated coffee. I decided to grab a quick shower, pick up a cup of coffee, and head over to the police station. I also promised myself to never have sex with my ex again. It had been a shitty, emotional twenty-four hours, and fucking Jeremy, while undeniable fun in a nasty way, hadn’t helped.

When I was clean again, I grabbed my sunglasses, keys, and wallet, and left the house.

There’s a Coffee Shack on Sunset, but finding a parking place was insane, so I went to the one on Santa Monica that had a drive-through even though it took me out of my way by about a half a mile. Once I’d gotten a very large cup of dark roast, I slipped it into my cup holder and drove over to Wilcox Avenue.

Taking up most of the block, Hollywood Station is housed in a low-slung, brick building with a concrete cap and an enormous parking lot next to it. Out front there’s a standing plastic sign that says POLICE that lights up at night surrounded by rows of freshly planted, spiky, drought-resistant succulents.

The parking lot didn’t look like it was meant for visitors, and even if it was, I didn’t want to wander around a police station looking for a parking validation. It took a couple spins around the block, but I eventually found a spot two blocks away on DeLongpre. The morning was cool and beautiful, the sky a brilliant blue.

At the Wilcox entrance there’s a mini-walk of fame inlaid in the sidewalk. It’s exactly like the one on Hollywood Boulevard, but instead of movie stars the names are cops who died in the line of duty. There’s a plaque on the wall near the front door explaining that.

I asked for Detective Tripp at the reception desk. An officer made a call, and Tripp came out a few minutes later. He wore the same well-tailored suit he had the night before. It was now creased and rumpled. Patchy stubble covered his cheeks, and his eyes were a bit bloodshot. It wasn’t hard to figure out he’d been up all night.

He led me down a corridor to a large room in the back corner of the building. It was a little like the squad rooms on TV, except instead of desks pushed up against each other, it was crammed with too many cubicles. I guess it’s easier to shoot scenes without the annoyance of half-walls. Each chest-high box was big enough for a desk, a guest chair and a filing cabinet. The furniture didn’t match and at best could be called rag-tag. Most of the cubicles were empty.

When we got to his cubicle, Tripp said, “Usually we do this in an interview room, but they’re booked right now. We’ve been interviewing witnesses from last night’s shooting.”

“Was it bad?” I asked.

“A couple teenage girls got caught in the crossfire. Yeah, it was bad.” Tripp looked like he was ready to punch someone when he said that; it made me kind of like him.

I sat in an uncomfortable, wooden chair next to his desk. While he poked around looking for a pad and something to write with, I looked over his desk. A framed photo of the detective and his partner at some kind of ceremony sat in the center, toward the back of the desk. She held an award while they both smiled. The rest of the desk was a mess, but as I studied it, I began to detect some order. In one corner sat a couple of binders, one an LAPD procedural manual, the other from the union. Also on that side of the desk was an upright, metal file holder, which held the forms they commonly used. On the side of the desk nearest me sat an ancient computer, a multi-line phone from a company that had gone out of business a decade ago, a stack of miscellaneous business cards held together by a rubber band, colored post-it notes with phone numbers stuck to the desk in neat rows across, and a couple worn spiral notebooks like the one Tripp had pulled out the night before.

There were two very telling personal items. One was a cup that said “Easy Does It”, which presumably meant Tripp was in some kind of twelve step program; the other a memo in the center of his desk from the LAPD LGBT Advisory Board. I wasn’t close enough to read it, but I could see it wasn’t a general memo sent around to everyone in the department. It was addressed to Detective Aaron Tripp.

I had a big “Oh” moment. My gaydar hadn’t gone off the night before, and now I felt a little dim-witted. It did make sense out of the moment when Tripp pulled his partner aside before she melted into the background. Tripp’s own gaydar had obviously been working just fine; he’d sized me up in a couple of seconds. It bothered me a little that they were strategizing about how to talk to me about a suicide. But I suppose they didn’t know for sure it was a suicide at first. And to be fair, I did tell a white lie or two. As cops, they probably assumed everyone was lying to them.

“We’re going to go over everything, slowly and clearly,” Detective Tripp said. “I may ask some questions along the way.”

How had I not noticed him the night before? His eyes were the color of honey, an arresting complement to his skin. I couldn’t help but wonder what he looked like without the suit. I realized I was gawking and turned away. He mistook my reaction and said, “I know this is difficult. But we have to do it.”

We spent about twenty minutes going over my relationship with Eddie, such as it was, and my discovering his body. During that time, Detective Hanson peeked into the cubicle and asked a couple of questions, barely glancing at me. We seemed to be finishing up when he reached into his desk and pulled out Eddie’s cell phone.

“Do me a favor,” he said. “Call your friend.”

I pulled out my phone, found Eddie’s name and tapped it. Putting the phone to my ear, I listened to it ring. The cell phone in Tripp’s hand remained silent. Eddie had another phone. Immediately, I realized that Eddie must have had a business phone, one used exclusively for massage, and a personal phone. Tripp held the personal one.

I felt my cheeks flush under his glare. Then his eyes flicked up, over my shoulder. His partner was back, standing behind me. She stepped in front of me and, with a dirty look, asked me, “Did we get all of Javier’s belongings while we were at your house?”

The massage table was still in Jeremy’s old office, and there might be an extra phone lying around. I felt pretty stupid. I should never have lied about how I met Eddie. Now I could see that it could turn into a real problem. I was stuck.

“I think you got everything,” I said, with a lame smile.

Hanson stared at me long enough that I thought for sure she’d call me out on my lie. I stared back, hoping to brazen it out. Bulkier than I remembered, she was thick in the hips and heavy in the shoulders. She wore a man-ish suit, a heavy crucifix around her neck, and her hair pulled back into a severe bun. The full effect was imposing, which I imagined was good for busting perps. But lousy for getting dates.