CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Cole

Another week went by, and with Marla having left the previous weekend, the house was too quiet again. I filled my days working on updates and training materials for the software I'd written eleven years ago. My job was limited to a couple of times a year of committing large chunks of time to the updates, but for most of my year, I was free to pursue other activities. The problem? I didn't have many of those.

My old life in New York, when Alan and I were a couple, was filled with a full social calendar of must-attends. Dinner exchanges with other couples, restaurant openings, gallery shows, the usual people with money New York City, pursuits.

Whereas I stayed home and worked, Alan was a clerk in a law firm, having not been able to pass the bar exam and finally giving up. The next best thing? Clerking. The next best thing after clerking, fuck one of the partners of the firm, your boss.

I needed a hobby, a distraction, a boyfriend, anything to start living again. I recognized I was stuck, and the realization did nothing for my mental attitude. I'd backed off thinking about my neighbor Chad nonstop. Obviously, the attraction wasn't mutual on his part, and me staring through binoculars at every man on the beach looking for him was beginning to feel creepy.

I walked across the large living space just off my kitchen, very similar to Alex and Maggie's interior layout, and gazed at the ocean. The sun had set only minutes ago behind me, in what would be my front yard, but the light was still abundant. Alan used to say that this was his light. The gloaming, he called it.

Three figures with surfboards lying near them were lounging on the sand around a fire. I imagined them reviewing their runs from the day of riding waves and having casual conversations. Three buddies hanging out without a care in the world. Their comradery made me feel even lonelier, if that was possible.

One of the guys stood and faced me before raising his hand and waving at me. I was tempted to grab the binoculars, but how strange would that be? I couldn't make out a face, but the body was definitely fit and attractive. I waved back, and he tapped his chest and then pointed back at me. I didn't make a move. He finally turned his palms skyward and raised them in front of him, like he needed a response. For some unknown reason, I waved.

I watched as he high-fived the other two people, placed his board under his arm, and began jogging toward my trail. It appeared that he was coming up to my house.

"Fuck!" I hissed under my breath. "You've gone and done it now, Hicks."

I dashed down the hall and to the downstairs bathroom to check my appearance. What if it was Chad? I hoped the visitor would be Chad. I removed my black tank top, shook it vigorously to get lint off of it, and pulled it back on, then checked my face and hair in the mirror. Yikes.

"Please be Chad. Please be Chad," I whispered, wishing God owed me a favor I could demand at a moment's notice.

I hurried down the hall just as someone was coming up the stairs on the side of the house, stairs that led to my roomy deck. There were no exterior lights on, so all I could make out was a shadow outline of a very fit male body as I made my way to the retractable glass doors. I slid one open and found a beaming Bodie standing there with nothing but board shorts on his ripped body.

"Hello, Mr. Hicks," he said. "Thanks for letting me come up."

I wanted to ask him to leave, tell him I'd hoped he was Chad, but I was too tongue-tied at my error, and too busy gawking at his incredible body. I'd forgotten just how sexy this creature was. Buzzed blond hair and tan face, teeth like Chiclets gum, white and huge. I lost count of his abs after six, and his obliques were practically illegal in fifty countries. They were obscene as they pointed at the low-hanging shorts below them. Like sharp diamonds, daring me to remove my eyes from their overt sexuality.

I had a sensation hit me so hard that I damn near dropped to my knees, mouth open. I want to fuck you so hard, punk.

"Bodie," I barely managed to say, clearing my throat and a filthy mind, unsure of what I might do next. I drew in a long breath and sighed. "Nice to see you."

"You okay?" he asked.

"What do you want?" I asked, a bit too blunt to be considered welcoming. I'd lost all sense of decorum and didn't really give a shit how my question sounded.

"To say hi," he responded. "Is it okay that I came up to your house?"

"I'm not interested in you."

He looked confused. I wondered if the same aggressive fella from the beach a week ago was a real person. He stood his ground though and sat down on one of my deck chairs, placing his leg over the arm of it, and grinned.

He grabbed his dick through his shorts. "But you're interested in this, ain't ya?"

I watched as he pumped his hips and leered at me. "Maybe," I admitted.

He pulled his dick out from the Velcro opening of his shorts. He was hung. Typical skinny dude. No body mass, just a huge cock. His eyebrows raised. "I know, right?" he whispered, glancing at his dick and nodding like a dirty street hooker. "It's big, wouldn't ya say?"

I was transfixed by him. Literally in a trance when he rubbed his cock up and down the shaft, licking two fingers and sliding them back and forth across the tip.

"You're dirty," I muttered. "A real nasty little fucker, aren't you?" I couldn't believe my mood, let alone my mouth. I was disappointed he wasn't Chad, but that was no excuse for my behavior.

"I was actually hoping you were the fucker," he corrected. "I've been known to ride dick on occasion."

I was at a proverbial stoplight. My brain saw a big flashing red. Don't even think of it. My cock saw green. Fuck the shit out of him.

I stepped away from my door and motioned toward it. "Get off my deck and go inside," I ordered. "You're indecent out here."

"I thought indecent was on the menu, Cole," he stated, standing and yanking his shorts off and then casually walking past me.

His ass was bright white and round. Two small melons moved up and down as he walked past me and into my house. My dick was rock solid. He needed to be drilled hard, made to pay for his insolence at coming to my house uninvited.

"Shower is down the hall," I said, pointing. "Wash that ass good."

"What about you?" he asked, still unafraid and acting cocky, holding his sack and stroking his dick. "You wanna join me, stud?"

"Don't worry about me," I spat. "Meet me upstairs when you're done. First door on the right at the top of the stairs."

"Are we gonna be bad?" he asked. "You gonna finally fuck one of us, Mr. Hicks?"

"Keep yapping, and you and I are not doing shit."

Bodie saluted me with a smirk on his face. "Yes, sir. Anything you want, sir."

I waited until he disappeared into the bathroom. "What the fuck are you doing?" I murmured. I'm going to fuck him is what I'm doing.

I ran upstairs, two stairs at a time, and stripped. I then grabbed a towel from the master bath and laid it over the end of the bed, standing at the foot of it and feeling like I was about to make a huge mistake. Ignore it. It's been two years. You deserve a piece of ass.

I heard him coming up the stairs. Bodie walked into the room, his hair still damp even though he had buzzed hair. He walked past me and I noticed his back was still wet from showering.

"You could have dried your back with a towel," I pointed out, getting nervous as well as reluctant.

"Why bother?" he stated. "I'm about to get sweaty, so who gives a flying fuck?"

He stood by the wall and crossed his arms, watching me carefully. His cock had deflated but was still big. A shower and a grower? A rarity indeed.

I sat on the edge of the bed and glanced toward my cock. "You going to suck it, or what?" I asked.

He was on his knees in front of me quicker than a nun on a Sunday. "I thought you'd never ask," he said. He smiled at me as he massaged my balls. "You're so fuckin' hot, dude. Don't come too fast because I want this dick buried in my ass."

Bodie leaned forward and placed his mouth on my cock, sliding his tongue along the ridge of the head while he continued squeezing my balls. I put my hand on the back of his head and pushed him further down, burying half of my cock in his mouth.

"That's it, cocksucker," I hissed, reaching for and squeezing one of his nipples. "Take all that dick, punk." I had no idea where my words came from. I felt angry, even pissed that he'd violated my privacy, yet I wanted to fuck him hard.

I closed my eyes and laid back on the bed, my legs spread wide, so he had access to my nuts. "Fuck yeah," he mumbled, removing my cock for a second so he could speak. "Keep talkin' that smack, dude. Treat me like a whore."

After his commentary, he came over my cock again, opened wide, and slid his mouth down the shaft until he was nostril deep in pubes. His deep-throating skills were on par as I pumped my hips off the bed. I held the back of his head and forced him further down my cock. He gagged and slobbered, nearly puking, but kept at it like a trooper.

I was fantasizing about how I was going to sink my dick into Bodie's ass after I came the first time. I'd shoot this load so I could last a long time as I pounded a second load out. The pleasure of having the hot piece of ass between my legs blowing me was wrecked when Chad entered my mind. My eyes popped open. Bodie was throat deep in cock and slobbering like a basset hound.

You don't respect this person.My conscience was correct. I didn't, but I needed to drop some seed. "I thought you were hoping Chad visited? You think a classy guy like him would respect you if he could see this?" I couldn't turn off the voice in my head. "You're blowing any chance you ever had with Chad."

"Shut up!" I yelled out loud, pushing Bodie off of my cock.

"What the…" he asked, landing on his ass, hand still stroking his massive dick.

"Find your shorts and leave," I said. "Get out of my house and don't ever come back."

Bodie appeared dumbfounded. "What'd I do?" he asked, reaching for my dick. "Let me finish you off first, dude."

"Get the fuck out of my house… right this second," I growled.

"Dude, like, what the fuck, man? Lemme jack off or something," he complained. I pointed at the door.

He stood and gawked at me like I was insane, pointing a finger at me. "You're one crazy asshole. What the fuck is your problem, man?"

"Out!"

"Fuck you, dude," he raged. "Asshole," he repeated, swiping at the framed pictures on my side table.

The picture of Jack and I went flying, along with a few others, crashing against the wall, while glass scattered across the hardwood floors. My face must have sent a stern warning to my guest to exit because he ran for the stairs. I followed after him while he called me names and exited my house, grabbed his board shorts from the chair he was in earlier, and ran off the deck. I hurried to the large glass door in time to see his bare ass, shorts in hand, run down the trail to the beach. He stopped halfway down the path at a point where he could still see the house and gave me a proper middle finger salute. Both hands for extra impact. I deserved his parting shot.

I stood silent, looking around, wondering what the fuck I was thinking, letting a near stranger into my home for the purpose of casual sex. This wasn't who I was. Was I so desperate for something, anything, that I'd stooped to this kind of behavior?

After a few more minutes, I grabbed a broom and dustpan and headed for my bedroom. There was a mess to clean up. A mess of my making. Not to mention how much more of a mess my actions could create once word of my foolishness got out?

Once at the top of the stairs, I found the scene not nearly as bad as I'd been imagining while commiserating downstairs. Fortunately, the direction he'd swept the pictures from the table was away from the door, so I wouldn't encounter glass fragments with my bare feet when I entered.

First, I picked up the two pictures where the frames had held, but the glass broke, placing them on the dresser top. The one of Jack and I had not only shattered the glass, but the frame had snapped on two corners and the picture itself was dislodged. I carefully moved the image to the side while I swept up glass and debris. After a thorough vacuum with my cordless Dyson, I picked up the picture of Jack and me.

The photo was from a weekend trip to upstate New York, three years ago, just before Christmas and before Alan and I had split. The four of us, Jack, Perry, Alan, and me, were at one of those pumpkin farms where they turned Halloween into a major event with hay rides, corn mazes, and a million pumpkins for sale.

Jack was in a particularly goofy mood and had been entertaining the three of us all day with his shenanigans. Perry motioned us to stand together for a spontaneous picture while Jack and I were in mid-laugh over a rude comment I'd made about a dick-shaped gourd. His mouth was open, and he was laughing while I grinned like a madman, leaning my cheek against his. The image was a perfect metaphor for our relationship. Laughing together. Loving together.

My eyes filled at the memory. I stared at Jack and how handsome he was. My dearest friend in the world. Through thick and thin, he always liked to say. Jack had given me the picture as a birthday gift, framed and ready to display. The frame with the picture inside had never been opened until Marla had reframed all of my personal pictures to match my bedroom wall. She had done this when she designed my new home.

I flipped the photo over and was not so surprised to see a handwritten note on the back.

C,

Look at us in this image. Time was frozen, and we were caught in an everlasting moment of joy. You and me. So young. So handsome. Forever together. Through thick and thin.

Let's make a promise to one another to be forever young and forever looking for the humor in life even when we aren't young any longer. Let's always look forward, never backward, as we endeavor to truly live our best lives each and every day.

Nothing stops us. No matter what. We will always be reaching for the stars.

J.

I'd stopped reaching lately, but I still had a promise to keep.