Maddox

SATURDAY MORNING, I wolfed down my high protein, low carb breakfast with the rest of the guys on the swim team. We only had practice one Saturday a month, which had unfortunately fallen on today.

Nothing was out of the ordinary, other than the fact that in a couple of hours I’d be boarding a bus to have a weird little sleepover with Ren at my childhood home. Maybe it was the thought of him seeing my actual bedroom that gave me jitters in my stomach, but I wasn’t sure why I’d be so nervous about that. I didn’t have anything too weird in there. My room here next to the school was the one with the big dildo hidden away in my bedside drawer.

As I ate, the other guys talked about how excited they were for the trip that Coach Larson had announced for the team today. Our winter break was three weeks, and the trip would take up the first week of it. We’d be going to an out-of-state training center to practice grueling hours every day and living together for that time. It was maybe the worst thing anyone had ever said to me. Even worse than my parents telling us they were getting a divorce. At least that hadn’t been a surprise.

According to Coach Larson, the trip was supposed to help us bond and strengthen our relationships with each other. I was really not too keen on that idea, and frankly not too sure it was even possible. But everyone else seemed excited. For some reason.

When pushed by Garrison to answer if I was excited for the trip or not, I lied and said I was, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t fooled. I half expected him to bring up that Ren and I had been at the pizza place together, and try to bust my balls over that. They hadn’t acknowledged me then, but I was pretty sure they’d seen us. To my relief, he didn’t bring anything up.

The second I was done eating, I booked it out of there and headed up to Ren’s dorm. I’d already stored my weekend duffel bag in there, so we’d just head over to the bus stop from the school in a bit. I knocked on the door, but when it opened, I was greeted by obviously post-shower Aspen. He was still in the process of getting dressed, tugging jeans up his legs over his boxers.

“Ren’s still in the shower,” he explained, stepping back a bit. “But you can wait in here if you want.”

“Cool scars,” I pointed out, as I sailed by him and plopped down on Ren’s bed.

He glanced down at his chest before shrugging into a black t-shirt with some edgy band on it that I didn’t listen to. “Thanks. They were expensive.”

“Your family have money?” I wondered. Not that I knew anything about how much that kind of surgery would cost. But I was pretty sure living in a country like the one we lived in, they probably didn’t make it cheap or easy for shit like that.

Aspen scoffed. “Fuck no. I had to reach out to a bunch of foundations for donations and then a Kickstarter for the rest.”

“Nice. I didn’t really know that was a thing.”

He hummed a noise of assent, sitting across the room from me, tapping his black-painted nails on the dark bedspread. “You play Federation of Fables?”

I vaguely knew what the game was, mostly from Ren mentioning it here and there. I knew it was something he, Aspen, and Che all played together.

“I’m not really a gamer.”

“You should try it. Ren would love if you played with us.” When I hesitated, thinking of how much I sucked at video games, Aspen went on. “He watches football now, for fuck’s sake.”

“Something wrong with that?”

“Besides the fact that football is lame and boring?”

“Ren seems to like it okay.”

“He just likes you,” Aspen pointed out. He tilted his head a little, watching me intensely. “You like him too, right?”

“Obviously. I wouldn’t bring someone I don’t like home for the weekend, would I?”

He shrugged. “Just saying, there’s a lot of you sport-o frat boys that love to use other guys as an experiment, then dip when you decide it’s too much for you.”

“You think I’m using Ren for dick?” I repeated flatly. I wondered if Aspen had maybe seen Ren’s dick at some point or another. If so, I could kind of understand why he’d think that. But I really, really hoped he hadn’t seen it. The thought of that made me feel irrationally jealous.

“I don’t know. Are you?”

“No. That’s stupid.”

“Alright,” he retorted, shrugging.

“And I’m not in a fucking frat,” I added belatedly. I despised frat bros.

“Okay. Whatever you say.”

Annoyed with the implication that I would ever use someone like Ren for any reason, I opened my mouth to tell him off, but at that moment the door opened and Ren stumbled in, balancing a basket of shower stuff in his arms.

“Oh, hey!” He greeted me happily as he put down the basket next to his bed. “I didn’t know you’d be done with practice already!” Then after another moment, he seemed to recognize the tension in the air. “Is everything okay?” He asked, glancing between Aspen and I.

“Everything’s fine,” Aspen answered smoothly. “We were just talking.”

“About what?” He asked, furrowing his brows a little. He was so sensitive to tension. It was probably because of his dumb bitch ex-girlfriend.

“Federation of Fables,” I stated quickly, only because I couldn’t stand that worried look on his face. “I’m, uh… I’m going to download it. So I can play with you guys.”

“Really?” As expected, he perked up pretty much instantly.

“Yeah,” Aspen cut in. “I was saying how he’s probably going to suck, and feed the enemy super hard while we’re teaching him how to play.”

“That’s okay,” Ren chirped, happy as a clam. “We’ll totally just play casual mode while you’re still learning.”

“Great,” I said, forcing a smile on my face. When he turned around to put some stuff away in a drawer, I saw Aspen smirking smugly at me from his bed with one eyebrow raised like he’d beat me in some kind of contest. Asshole. He reminded me a little of Caelyx. I put my middle finger up at him, but his expression didn’t change.

The bus ride was uneventful, but not too bad. We holed up in the back corner the whole way, and no one paid much attention to us. I probably would have spent the time people-watching, pointing out bad hair and lame outfits, but Ren was way too nice for that. So we mostly just talked about life in general, and played against each other on a trivia game app on our phones. I whooped him in sports, but he had me in pretty much everything else.

When we were close to our destination, I brought up the subject I’d been thinking about how to word for a while.

“So, just so you know, my dad is kind of… Overbearing,” I decided on the word, though I wasn’t sure it was exactly what I was trying to say.

“How so?” Ren asked.

“He just has really high expectations of me and wants me to do everything a certain way, so… If you could just not mention how I’m not exactly getting along with the guys on the swim team or whatever.”

“Oh. Yeah, of course. No problem. Is there anything else I shouldn’t mention?”

“Besides the obvious?”

He grinned, running a hand through his thick mop of black hair. “Well, yeah, I already know not to say anything about that .”

“That conversation’s going to be pretty miserable.”

“Is your dad conservative?” He wondered, and I shook my head, grimacing a little as I tried to articulate my thoughts.

“No, not really. He doesn’t have a problem with gay people, or at least not that I ever heard him mention. I feel like if it was some random person then he wouldn’t care, but because it’s me… He just has this really specific vision of what he wants me to be. And I’m pretty sure I don’t live up to that vision.”

“Well… I think you’re great,” Ren said. “You’re totally a vision.”

I shook my head at him, but couldn’t help smiling anyway.

“A vision of what?”

“Hotness. And coolness. And being really fun to hang out with…ness.”

He made me feel so goofy and dumb, but when I was with him I didn’t feel like I had to worry about how I looked. It was really freeing, and he was the only person I could let go with.

“You’re that kind of vision to me, too,” I admitted, though I felt really fucking embarrassed saying it.

“You think I’m cool?” He asked doubtfully. I didn’t want to lie to his face. I respected him too much for that.

“Uh… You make up for it in other ways.”

He stared at me for a few moments, absorbing what I’d said, before breaking into a fit of laughter, covering up his face with his palms. How someone could be that hot and that cute and that adorable at the same time was really beyond me, but he managed it so consistently, and without even trying.

When we got to our stop, we hopped off the bus with our bags slung over our shoulders. My dad’s car was already there, and he was leaning on the outside of it, talking to someone from work on the phone. When he glanced up and saw us, he wrapped up the call and stood up straight. He gave me an awkward one-armed hug and then shook Ren’s hand.

On the ride to the house, he mostly talked to Ren, trying to get a read on him.

“You on the swim team with Maddox?” He questioned, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel.

“No,” he answered from the back seat. “We met in a class we have together.”

“Mm. Do you know what degree you’re going for yet?”

“Software engineering.”

In the passenger seat, I raised my eyes up to the ceiling. I knew my dad would be polite, but he was probably wondering what I was doing hanging out with a guy like Ren. Little did he know, I enjoyed hanging out with Ren and his weirdo friends a lot more than I’d enjoyed my friendships in high school. We didn’t need to have that particular conversation just yet though. Let alone the rest of it.

At the house, we piled in and I prepared to usher Ren upstairs to show him my room and the room right to it, where he’d be sleeping. But the moment we were in the door, we were approached by a woman with long, blonde hair tumbling down her shoulders in loose curls. She was already dressed for the party apparently, in a short, sparkly dress and high heels that looked like they belonged on a stripper. She barely looked any different or older than some of the senior girls at school.

“Oh my gosh, hi! It’s so great to finally meet you!” She rushed toward me like she was going to hug me, and I instinctively raised my bag to my chest to block her from doing so. Her eyes darted down to it, and she stopped in front of me, giggling awkwardly. “Not a hugger, huh? Well, that’s okay. I’m Missy. Manny’s told me so much about you!”

Manny? My dad’s name was Manfred, and I’d never heard anyone call him any shortened version of that. Not even my mom. I was already a little squicked out by it to begin with, but then when the realization hit me that her nickname for my dad was only two letters off from Ren’s nickname for me, I wanted to die.

“Great.” I forced my answer out because I didn’t know what else to say. I really, really hadn’t expected this to be the woman my dad was dating. Did my mom know about her? Surely not, or I’d have seen post after post from her about men not valuing the women who had mothered their children and trading them in for a younger model, or some other lame, passive aggressive sentiment. Maybe she knew he was seeing someone, but didn’t know how young she was. Had the twins met her? Had they felt weird about it too? “Sorry, but how old are you?” The words tumbled out of my mouth like vomit I couldn’t hold back.

Ren’s eyes widened, and he choked, trying subtly to turn it into a cough, but it didn’t quite land. Leave it to him to take an awkward situation and make it even worse.

In that moment, my dad came up behind us and into the door.

“Oh good, you guys met Missy already,” he said, stepping over and putting his arm around her shoulder affectionately. She looked up at him, kind of helplessly, with a thin, weak smile on her face. I felt bad but at the same time… It was weird. He was, like, 45. “We’ll have lunch in a minute, so head up and put your stuff away and I’ll call you down when it’s done.”

“I’m making lettuce wraps, with curried chickpea salad,” she added, but the cheer in her voice now sounded kind of forced. Shit. I’d done that with my big, stupid mouth.

Our trudge up the stairs was silent but once he’d tossed his bag onto the bed in the guest room and we were safely barricaded behind my closed bedroom door, Ren gave me an incredulous look.

“I can’t believe you asked her how old she is,” he said, shaking his head at me.

“I know, I know,” I answered, rubbing my temples with my fingers. “It just came out. I’m an asshole.”

Ren looked sympathetic, but he didn’t disagree with me. “Well, maybe she’ll just forget if we’re nice to her for the rest of the night.”

I smiled, despite feeling like a huge jerk. His suggestion was just so sweetly innocent and blindly optimistic. It was so him.

Hooking my fingers into his t-shirt, I pulled him toward me, sliding my hands up into his hair as I kissed him. He made a little noise of surprise against my mouth, but didn’t back away.

“Are you sure we should be doing this here?” He asked when we had to breathe, glancing toward my closed door.

“The middle stair squeaks if someone tries to come up,” I said. When I tried to kiss him again, he dodged my mouth.

“Yeah, but I don’t want to go down to lunch with a boner. It’s kind of hard for me to hide it.” I glanced down between us, and he was already hard, the thick outline of his cock mostly visible through his shorts. I was too, but mine was a lot easier to tuck up into my waistband if needed. “I don’t want your dad’s girlfriend to see my dick,” he added, sounding somewhat terrified by that notion.

Groaning, I flopped down onto the bed. “Fine, fine. But you owe me tonight.”

“I owe you?” He repeated, sounding amused. “Maybe you owe me. You’re the one who got me all horny and now we can’t do anything.”

“Okay,” I agreed. Either way, I’d be getting what I wanted. “I owe you, then.” Throwing my arm over my forehead like a fainting princess from a cartoon, I sighed. “What kind of dirty, naughty favor are you going to force me to perform for you?”

He groaned, adjusting his dick in his shorts. “Come on, Maddy. I’m trying to make it go away.”

“I could make it go away,” I offered slyly, running my tongue over my bottom lip.

“ Stop ,” he whined, deliberately turning to face away from me. “You’re torturing me.”

In truth, I knew I looked good. I’d been hearing that most of my life, basically. And girls had never shied away from trying to get with me. But I’d never really relished having this kind of power over someone. Teasing Ren and turning him on and being sexy for him was like this new drug I’d only just found out about and couldn’t get enough of. And then getting each other off was yet another kind of addiction. Part of me wondered if he felt the same way about me, but I knew it wasn’t exactly a good time to ask.

Right on cue, the middle stair squeaked, followed by the sound of my dad pounding on the wall like he always did to alert us to come down.

“Lunch is ready,” he called out, before stepping back down.

“See!?” Ren said, sounding just anguished enough that I had to hold back a laugh.

“Just chill in here for a few minutes and calm down,” I advised him. “I’ll tell them you’re in the bathroom.”

“Oh, great.” He threw his hands up in frustration. “I’m so going to get you back for this.”

“Ooh, I’m so scared,” I murmured, making a kissy face at him as I strolled out, clicking the door shut behind me.

Once I’d made it down to the table and explained that Ren would be just a minute, I surveyed the lunch spread. Everything was arranged just perfectly so on the plates, and even garnished with little sprigs of herbs.

“This looks pretty fancy,” I commented.

“Missy’s an amazing cook,” my dad said, with obvious pride in his voice. I’d never heard him sound like that when talking about my mom. Was he actually really fond of this girl? Or maybe he had felt that way about my mom in the early years, before the stress of marriage and kids had gotten the best of them.

“Looks like it,” I said, giving her what I hoped was an encouraging smile. I wasn’t too good at portraying that particular emotion. “Are you a chef, or…?”

“Oh, not really,” she answered. “I just play around in the kitchen.”

“She’s being too humble,” he piped up. “Missy’s a very accomplished food blogger. She’s even won some web awards for her videos.”

“Wow, that’s impressive.” I could see this kind of food getting lots of likes on Instagram for sure.

“I made this recipe because your dad told me you’re so serious about your diet,” Missy added, increasing my guilt over the rude question. It also made me want to laugh. Sure, I mostly watched what I ate. I didn’t have a choice if I was swimming every day. But the pizza and soda I occasionally indulged in, a little more often since meeting Ren if I was being honest, kind of betrayed that whole serious idea. But she didn’t really know me. She only knew my dad’s vision of me.

“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

She congratulated me on finishing second in my meet and told me she’d played on the volleyball team in college. I wanted to ask when she’d graduated because I never had gotten an answer to that other question, but I held myself back.

Eventually, Ren came down the steps and sat, and we started eating. His compliments toward her food were genuine and she seemed flattered. As the meal progressed, most of the tension dissipated and we all just chatted about general stuff like work and school.

We got roped into helping set up for the party, which I didn’t mind too much. It was just menial tasks like dusting and moving tables around and whatnot. But as we finished everything up and people started milling in, I couldn’t help but wonder what my dad had been so urgent about calling me here for. In my excitement for having a little mini vacation with Ren, I’d all but forgotten we were here for an actual reason.

I hoped it wasn’t anything traumatizing, like a cancer diagnosis or anything. As guests arrived, some of them being members of my family and friends of my dad’s that knew me, it was clear that they didn’t exactly know what the big news would be either.

So all I could do was stick close by to Ren and wait.