Ren

WHEN I WOKE up in the middle of the night to pee, I was completely disoriented by the fact that I was in a strange room, and nearly hanging off the edge of a small bed with a snoring guy in it. A really hot guy, with gorgeous bone structure and incredible abs that I’d had sex with just a couple hours before. He might have been my favorite person, but he really sucked at sharing a bed. I had been rationed a very stingy corner of pillow and blanket and just a sliver of mattress. Though to be fair, I don’t think we’d meant to fall asleep together at all. He seemed sure his dad wouldn’t come to check on us, but I wasn’t willing to bank on that fact.

Slowly and carefully peeling off the bed, I tiptoed across the room, giving him one final look before stepping out and silently clicking the door shut behind me. He looked so cute, all plastered to the pillow, with his mouth kind of hanging open.

Images from a few hours earlier kept popping into my head, a quick flash of how my cock had looked sinking into his tight hole, or how his jaw had clenched when he’d been desperately trying to hold back his orgasm. Those thoughts were not very conducive to peeing, so I pushed them away as I finished up and washed my hands.

I spent the rest of the night in the guest room bed, which was okay. I liked the idea of cuddling with Maddy all night, but not in a bed where I was banished to the outer edge. I happened to know his bed at the house back at school was the perfect size for comfortable cuddling. And now that we’d crossed the line into full on sex, I was pretty sure he’d be okay with me spending the night sometimes. Well, depending on how his housemates felt.

Hours later, when I woke up at a more appropriate time for humans to be awake, I took a shower. We’d briefly cleaned up the night before, but I was probably reeking of sweat and other fluids. After soaping up and rinsing off, I smelled like Maddy, which I definitely didn’t mind.

Creaking open his bedroom door, I saw he was still sleeping like the dead. I felt bad waking him up, since he got up so early all week for swim practices. But I wasn’t sure if Mr. H would get annoyed if we stayed up here too long. Still, I wandered around the room a bit before waking him, curious about his living space. There was a shelf that held trophies and medals and certificates, all sports related. I was surprised by how many there were, and how they ran the gamut of various teams and games. It seemed he’d done everything from baseball to football to basketball. And now swimming.

I felt my phone give one brief pulse of vibration in my pocket, the indicator of a text. I didn’t bother checking it. There was a 99% chance it was from Gwen. She’d been blowing my phone up for days, ever since Maddy had told me to stop responding to her. He’d definitely been right about that. It seemed to be driving her crazy.

Moving on from the shelf, I saw a desk with a few papers and knick-knacks on it, with a cork board on the wall above it. Pinned to it were pictures and keepsakes, some of which were from when he was really young. Something on the desk caught my eye, one of those cheesy little souvenirs that has what news stories were in the headlines the day you were born, how much a gallon of milk cost, and all that.

“Stop going through my stuff, you creep,” Maddy mumbled from across the room. Whirling around, I tried to plant an innocent smile on my face.

“Sorry,” I said. “Just looking around.”

He groaned lightly, clearly not thrilled about being awake, but got up.

“You feel okay?” I asked.

He inhaled a deep breath, stretching, and nodded. “Yeah. What about you?”

“I feel great,” I answered honestly. “Last night was awesome.”

He smirked a little, rolling his head on his shoulders. “You love that word, huh?”

“Only when it’s appropriate for the situation, which it totally has been.”

He stared at me for a few seconds, the corner of his mouth perked up, before leaning in and planting a firm kiss on my lips.

I waited around while he took a shower, finishing my little tour of his room. Noting down some info from the paper I’d noticed earlier, I sent a text to Aspen.

I’m going to need your help with a little project when I get home.

He texted me back quickly as always. Sure. What’s up?

I’ll talk to you about it when I get home later. It’s a surprise for Maddy.

LOL. Maddy???

I meant Maddox! I grimaced as I sent the text. Oops. It was autocorrect, I added, hoping he’d buy it.

Sure. You guys are so embarrassing. His message was followed by a puking emoji. I’ll talk to you later.

Thanks.

Once Maddy was out of the shower, we headed downstairs and ate breakfast. Mr. H seemed mostly over the night before, since it had ended on an okay note between the two of them. I brought up the shelf in the bedroom, filled with trophies and medals, which seemed to perk him the rest of the way up. He went on and on about Maddy’s sports accomplishments, obviously beaming with pride. I definitely wasn’t going to bring it up, but I wondered how he would react to finding out how miserable his son was on the swim team.

He wasn’t dropping us off at the bus stop until later, so we had awhile to relax. They turned the football game on in the living room, so we all sat around and watched that. When I commented on the game using the technical terms Maddy had taught me, Mr. H looked impressed.

During the halftime break, we got up for a stretch and Maddy took me out to the backyard to show me around. They had a trampoline, and a really cool and well-made tree house. When we circled around to a quaint little gazebo, we both froze.

Missy stared at us from her seat, an open book in her lap and a steaming mug on the table next to her. We’d barely seen her at all the whole day. I was pretty sure she was avoiding us. Well, she was avoiding Maddy. She probably didn’t care about me.

“Oh. We’ll just go,” he stammered out, jostling me with his elbow to get me moving. Before I could, she stood up, shaking her head.

“No, I’ll go. It’s fine.”

“No,” he insisted. His elbow jab into my ribs was harder this time, and I had to suppress a yelp. “You were here first. And we were just taking a walk during halftime.”

We turned around, ready to hustle out of there, but we stopped when she spoke.

“Wait,” she said. “I’m 27.” I watched Maddy slowly turn around to face her, but he didn’t say anything. “I never answered you, when you asked before.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said quickly. “I shouldn’t have said that, or the thing at the party. I’m an idiot.”

“No. I get it. Really,” she said. “I completely get it. I tried to get him to tell you over the phone, or when you first got here, but… Well, I guess you know how your dad is.”

“Yeah,” Maddy agreed. “He’s, uh… Yeah. I know.”

Missy looked kind of wistful for a minute, before lowering her eyes to her coffee cup. “I know what people think when they see us together, so I don’t blame you. But for what it’s worth, I’m not with him for his money.”

“I didn’t think that,” Maddy answered, but I was pretty sure he was lying. Not that Mr. H was a bad looking guy or anything. But also he wasn’t super rich either, so maybe she was telling the truth?

“I probably shouldn’t say this,” Missy continued, “But the guys I’ve dated before Manny…” She paused, looking thoughtful. “I didn’t have many great experiences. But your dad treats me so well, and we really have a lot in common. We have fun together. That’s why I’m with him. But I’m sorry that you found out like that.”

“It’s not your fault.” After a long pause of no one saying anything, Maddy cleared his throat. “Well, we’ll get out of your hair, then…”

“Um, wait,” she piped up. She looked like she was still debating whether or not she wanted to say something, but she said it anyway. “I just wanted to say one more thing, if that’s alright.”

“Okay.”

“People do give us weird looks when we’re out. And it is annoying to feel like I have to explain myself sometimes. But even if people think our relationship is strange or they don’t get it or they judge us… To me, it’s worth dealing with that, because I get to be with him. Do you get what I mean?”

Clearing my throat, my eyes darted over to Maddy without me even wanting them to. The look on his face made it clear he was thinking the same thing as me. Was Missy kind of hinting that she knew about us? Maybe she’d heard us doing it? I hoped not. That would have been seriously embarrassing.

“Sure,” he answered carefully. “That’s great… For you.”

“I just wanted to say that it’s worth all the drama to be with the person you want.”

Maddy’s eyes narrowed a little bit, like he wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about her speech. “Okay. That’s good to know.”

“I hope we can be friends,” she added, tilting her head a bit.

“I’ll be around for part of winter break, along with the twins, so…” He trailed off. “We can all do some stuff then. If you want.”

“I’d like that,” she said.

Maddy gave her a nod before elbowing me again, which I took to mean it was time to go back inside.

The rest of the afternoon was peaceful. Missy came inside to finish watching the game, seemingly no longer avoiding us, and Mr. H was happy about his team winning.

When he dropped us off at the bus stop, he shook my hand and this time it actually felt genuine. Knowing a few football terms seemed to have come in handy, in a way other than just making Maddy happy, which is all I’d originally planned for it to be.

On the bus, we were lucky enough to get the same spot in the back corner, away from everyone.

“Hey, I’m sorry that this weekend was so… Crazy,” Maddy said. “I didn’t plan on it being like that.”

“That’s okay,” I said honestly. “I had a really good time. And not just because of, um… You know.”

He blushed, just a little, before raising his gaze to the roof of the bus. “Yeah, I know. Well, I’m glad you had fun, at least.”

“Of course,” I said. “Any time I’m with you is fun.”

“Even creative writing class?”

“Well, the parts where I get to talk to you, yeah,” I said. “And anyway, just the fact that you were willing to introduce me to someone in your family, even just as a friend… That means a lot to me.”

He stared at me for what felt like a long time, with a lot of intensity in his eyes. They were so blue and so pretty, I could have looked into them forever.

“You say really embarrassing things, you know?” He finally said, but I could tell he was happy.

“You’re not used to that yet?” I questioned, and he chuckled, a really cute grin on his face.

“I guess I should be.”

Glancing down at the small gap between us, I noted his hand laying on the weathered cloth of the bus seat. Carefully placing my hand down, I hooked my pinky finger around his. His eyes darted down to where our fingers were joined, then back up to me.

We rode like that for the rest of the way.

Back at school when I got to my room, Aspen, Arie, and Che were already there.

“So Aspen says you have some super secret project you need help with,” Arie said. He was holding a glittery notebook with kittens printed on it and a pen with a fuzzy pom-pom on the end. “As you may or may not know, I am an amazing project coordinator.”

“Uh, well it was kind of supposed to be a secret,” I reiterated. “Meaning I didn’t want a lot of people to know about it.”

“Why so secretive?” Aspen wondered.

“I just don’t want Madd… Ox to find out about it,” I said. “It’s a surprise for him.”

“Oh, just call him what you want to call him. No one is fooled by you guys, anyway. Everyone knows you guys are all lovey-dovey and doing it all the time,” Aspen said dryly.

“We’re not doing it all the time,” I argued. “We only did it once.” The words tumbled out before I could consider that Maddy probably wouldn’t want me announcing that to everyone. Oops, again.

Arie’s eyes widened, and he glanced over to Che. They exchanged a look . One of those looks that only couples exchange, because they’d probably already had a conversation about us.

“Wait, how come you only did it once?” Arie asked. “Didn’t you like it?”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “But it was just last night, so…”

“Wait, you guys just fucked for the first time last night?”

“Can we stay on topic please?” I asked. “As long as no one mentions any of this to him, and we can keep it a surprise, then you can be the project manager, okay?” I said, glancing over to Arie, who nodded eagerly.

“My lips are totally sealed,” he promised, before glancing over to Che.

“Oh, mine too,” he said, smiling sweetly. He looked particularly angelic today, with the fringe of his bangs peppered with colorful clips in various shapes.

“And me,” Aspen said quickly, waving a hand dismissively and impatiently. “Hurry up and tell us what the secret is, or we’re going back to talking about you getting your rocks off.”

“Okay, okay,” I agreed, only because I knew Maddy would kill me if I gave away too many details about that. I sighed heavily when I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket again, for the 10th time that day, at least. Pulling it out, I decided to completely silence it. I liked knowing when I got a text or notification, but it wasn’t worth the aggravation of being reminded of her all the time.

“What’s up?” Aspen asked, noting my sour expression. “You getting hounded by debt collectors or something?”

I scoffed. “No. Just my ex.”

“Wait, your mean ex?” Arie asked curiously, furrowing his brows. “Haven’t you guys been broken up for, like, months?”

“Yeah. I don’t know what her deal is,” I admitted. “She’s been blowing my phone up ever since I stopped responding to her.”

“Let me see that,” Aspen requested, holding his hand out. I handed it over, and watched as he scrolled through her messages. “Dude, she’s totally guilt-tripping you.”

“Why don’t you just block her?” Arie suggested. “You don’t need that in your life, Ren.”

I winced, a curl of anxiety clenching in my stomach. “Isn’t that kind of extreme?”

“No,” Aspen answered flatly. “You’re not even responding to her anyway, and she’s just bumming you out with all these messages.”

“I know it’s hard putting up boundaries,” Che started, his dark eyes reflecting sympathy for me. “But when someone only wants to hurt and manipulate you, it’s time to cut them out. You’ll be a lot happier,” he promised me. He spoke so rarely that his words held a lot more weight, at least for me. When he finished, I noticed Arie rubbing a hand up and down his arm, like he was comforting him, before kissing the top of his head.

“Well, alright,” I finally agreed. “I’ll block her.”

“I’ll do it,” Aspen said, clicking through a few options before handing my phone back to me. “There. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding as I stuffed my phone back in my pocket. Part of me still worried about what her reaction would be, but I did feel better already. “So here’s the ideas I have for the project so far…”