Chapter 9

Nine

Josh

E z seemed awkward and embarrassed at times during our walk through the woods, as I was telling him our story. It was damned adorable the way he tried to hide it, tried to show me the most PC side of himself. The most charming. Best-foot-forward Ezra.

Now it’s my turn to be embarrassed. I feel weird about this whole thing as I drive through the intersections along South College Street and take a darker cut-through road toward my apartment. Ezra’s holding my hand, and it feels good—it feels so good—but he looks nervous, too. He’s chewing his cheek, looking out the window.

We’re holding hands, and I love that he’s here. He seems better. In a way I can’t articulate. Less haunted.

He’s so…into me. Like he just wants me. I believe him when he says he has deep feelings for me. But I—

“What’s wrong?” Ez asks, so softly. I look over at him. “I can tell that something is,” he says. “So don’t lie to me, Miller.” He gives me the cutest little smirk. His hand squeezes mine. “ You have to tell me or I’ll think it was the D.” He lifts his eyebrows.

“Your dick was perfect, dude,” I tell him. “Better than tacos.”

Ez laughs. “What? At least compare it to a Ball Park frank or something.”

“Your dick was better than some common frank . Hot dogs are meh, dude. Tacos are up near the top, and so is your dick.” I force a smile for him. “It is the top.”

“Josh, man, you’re freaking me out.”

“I am?”

“Yeah.” Ezra’s hand gives mine another squeeze. “You’ve got a readable face. I can tell there’s something bothering you.”

I can’t help a laugh. “You’re pretty good, Ez.”

“Only when it comes to my Josh Miller.” He gives me a sad smile.

“I am…being weird,” I breathe. I squeeze his hand, too. “I feel weird about this with us. Not about us. I guess it’s me I’m feeling weird about.”

“Why?” Damn, his face is gentle.

“I don’t know,” I say slowly. But that’s not true. “I’m not the same person you met. I think…if you don’t remember that guy… How do we really know you like me? If how you feel for me is based on memories, but you don’t remember them…what if you wouldn’t like me? What if I’m so different you don’t even recognize me? If you remembered. You said there’s still a chance you could, right?”

Ez nods slowly, his brows furrowed. “Yeah, I might. But Josh, we love each other. Right? I feel so good with you. I like it when…” He shakes his head. “I like everything.” He fixes his eyes on the road. “I feel like I don’t deserve it. I feel like a weird…knockoff or something. Like I’m not the one you really want.” He bites on the inside of his cheek, he shifts his shoulders like he’s trying to get comfortable, and I can see his eyes gleam in the streetlight as we pass below it .

“No, angel. It doesn’t work like that.” I bring our joined hands to my lap. “I love you for who you are. It was the little things like how you’d smile at me when you were reading at the kitchen table. Your biting wit. Disarming humor.” I grin, and Ez squeezes his eyes shut and wipes them.

“You were so good to me,” I tell him. “Even though you hid that side of yourself at first. You were so damn sweet. Thoughtful. We started out as enemies, but you became my closest friend.” I squeeze his hand hard. “I love you for you, Ez. You seem almost the same. In all the ways that matter. Just breathing the same air as you gets my dick up. I wanna tuck into the bed with you and stay there for a year.”

I sigh. “Those things aren’t the issue, for me. I just feel like…I’m not the same Josh. I feel like if you remembered me—” Just say it, Josh. Damn . “I feel like if you did remember me, you would be really disappointed now.”

Ezra looks shocked. “Why?” Then his face falls—so dramatically, I know exactly what he’s thinking.

“Not like that,” I tell him quickly. “Not for that reason.” I’ll tell him about Dom Bryant at some point soon, but I don’t count that as a hookup. I was drunk off my damned ass, and I still called it off because of Ezra.

“Because I didn’t handle it well when you left,” I force myself to confess. “I did so much dumb shit. And all that time, you had real problems. I was so stuck in my own head, I almost fucked this second chance up.”

I can see the wheels in Ezra’s head turning as I stop at the last red light before my street. Finally he says, “You can tell me, Josh. I did some pretty bad shit, too. Stuff I’m not proud of. You tell me your stuff, and I’ll tell you mine. It can be like a confessional.”

I can’t help a snicker at that. “Hell yeah, it can be.”

He grins. “You’re the worst.”

“I’m only second worst. You’re most definitely the worst. Remember that whole story I just told you? Grabbing dick on the roof?”

I shoot him a judgy look, and Ezra laughs at that. “C’mon, Miller. I’m not a hundred percent sure where we are, but I think we’re near your apartment. Why don’t we both spit it out. Tell me your fuck ups, and I’ll tell you mine. We can offer up the context later.”

Another deep breath in, and puff my cheeks out…blow it out. “You sure?”

“Hit me,” he says, looking stoic. “I can take it.” Ez lifts his brows.

“Okay. I’m just gonna say it,” I tell him. My stomach knots up, but I push through. “I started drinking when you left, and taking pills. I got high and drunk and ran my car into a tree. It fucked my mom up. Made her so sad. I gave up a soccer scholarship to Montevallo because their team did twice a month drug tests. Went to Auburn, got here, started drinking every day and taking Xanax sometimes. No prescription, so I bought the fake stuff you saw in my bathroom. One night I took too much different shit, and when my friend was over, I basically overdosed. Started getting sick, couldn’t stop, passed out. Jenna was scared that I was dying, so she called an ambulance. After that, instead of quitting all that shit, I just cut back. Tonight I felt…feelings.” I roll my eyes at myself, and then swallow so my voice won’t break. I whisper, “I felt lots of shit. All for you. So I thought about the Xanax.”

It’s a long second before I can bring myself to look at Ezra. Even though he doesn’t remember how I used to be, I do, and it’s still embarrassing as fuck for him to know how much I fell apart.

I’m thinking what a fuck up I am when he lifts our clasped hands, pulling mine into his lap. He lifts them again and kisses my hand. He presses the back of it to his cheek.

“Mills, the only thing that makes me feel is sorry —that I fucked your shit up. It makes me wish I was here.” Ezra laughs, the sound soft and choked up. “Damn, dude. I’m really sorry.” He tucks my hand against his chest, his hand on top of it, rubbing. “You feel okay when you take that stuff. Or does it make you feel like shit?”

“It makes me feel like shit,” I whisper. “At first, I started doing it so I could sleep.”

“After I left?” His voice is low and hoarse.

I squeeze his hand. “Yeah.”

Then I’m turning into my apartment parking lot. I’m parking in the shadows, and he’s hugging me so tight and hard, it almost hurts. His lips brush my cheek and my temple. He drops little kisses on my jaw.

“I’m so fucking sorry, Miller.”

I hug him back. “Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault.” I run my fingers into his hair. “I don’t blame you. Not at all.” I pull away so I can see his face, and I’m surprised to see tears on his cheeks. “Not even one percent, Ez.”

He nods. I hug him again. I’m hugging Ezra. “You wanna tell me your stuff inside?” I ask quietly. “Let’s go to the couch again, or to the bed.”

“You’ve gotta change those pants, Millsy.” I feel him smile.

We walk up the steps, not holding hands this time, but when we reach my level, his hand grabs mine and holds tight as I unlock the door for us.

Inside, I tell him to get himself a drink or whatever he wants, and I step into the bathroom to wash up and change my clothes. When I get out, I find him on the couch, holding a photo that I realize he got from the fridge.

It’s him and me. Ezra is behind me—wrapped around me—and he’s smiling like he’s so damn happy. I’ve got my head leaned slightly back against him, and I look downright blissful.

I don’t even realize Ezra’s emotional until he wipes at his eyes. He does it quick, discreet, so I don’t ask about it, just sit on the couch beside him, wrap my arm around him, and lean my cheek against his shoulder .

“Hey, angel. You found my hidden fridge pic?”

He smiles, or he tries to. He seems drop dead tired, and his eyes are looking puffy. “Yeah. Noticed you had it on the side between the fridge and cabinets.”

“Sometimes I couldn’t look,” I manage.

He runs both his hands into my hair, cupping my face, and then he kisses my lips—so soft and gentle. He gives me a sad smile. “We looked happy.”

“We were.”

He sucks in a deep breath, looking down, and I take his hand. “Come to my bed, angel. Let’s turn off the lights and turn on this light machine we used to like. Plus, I think you owe me a story.”

Ezra

I tell Miller everything, there in the quiet comfort of his bed. I have to force myself to do it.

His face goes still and somber when I tell him about taking the whole bottle of Xanax in my dorm room. I decide that I won’t tell him what exactly set me off—me seeing him with that blond guy in Tuscaloosa. When I tell him about my head-fucked trip to see Luke McDowell, his eyes are huge, but by the end—the part where I tell him I’m now friends with Luke and Vance—he’s grinning, shaking his head, saying, “Only you.”

Somehow, that becomes a segue into his celebrity story—about Dom Bryant. Mills seems anguished when he tells me, but I’m not upset. If anything, it makes me feel good to know he turned down pseudo porn star sex while drunk at a bar—because he was still hung up on me. Me, who left him almost a year before. I ask him about it, and he looks almost embarrassed .

“Loyal guy,” he mutters, rolling over, giving me his back in the bed. I climb over him, stretch out in front of him, and kiss his freckled cheek. “My guy.”

It turns out to be pretty funny, because I find out Miller didn’t know what OnlyFans was until his friend Jenna told him, in a convo about Dom Bryant.

“How did you know?” he asks, looking skeptical.

“I might be fucked up, Miller, but I’m not dead.”

“You’re not fucked up.” Mills wraps himself around me, urging me onto my back, and then he lies on top of me, dropping gentle kisses on my cheeks as he smirks down at me. “So, you jerking it to OnlyFans porn, angel?”

“I don’t think it’s always porn,” I tell him.

Miller hoots, then grins down at me. “Is that a yes?”

“I’m jerking it to screen shots of you doing bench presses on Snapchat. And when I couldn’t do that anymore, I stopped.”

As soon as I say that, I wish I could unsay it. What a downer. But Mills murmurs, “I sorta stopped too.”

“Because of me?”

His lips press flat, and he looks away.

I reach up and give his cheek a gentle slap. “Just say it, bitch.”

He tugs my hair. “It’s because of you, bitch. Because you left me, and I fucking needed you.”

He’s giving me this funny evil eye face, so when a tear falls from his face down onto mine, it hits me like a kick in the gut.

“Fuck,” I whisper.

I roll us onto our sides and wrap him with my arms and legs, and hold him tight while he wipes at his eyes. I can feel his chest jerk like he’s crying.

“I’m not mad,” he says, all choked and teary. “I’m sad this happened to us. And I’m sad it’s all because we’re gay.” His voice is a soft, bitter rasp. “Why does no one fucking value us? ”

I rub my hand over his back. “Who doesn’t value you, my Miller?”

I don’t know who goes for whom first, but we end up kissing, our mouths salty from his tears. Between fast, hard, urgent kisses, I whisper things I think might make him feel good.

“Such a king…”

“I love you…”

“Gay is the way…”

That makes him laugh.

“I don’t know how you’re so strong,” he whispers, as we both pant between going at it.

I kiss him again, nice and deep, my dick throbbing in my pants. “I’m not. Just doing my best impression.”

I choke out a laugh. Then we’re rolling all over the bed, kissing the shit out of each other again.

“You’re gorgeous,” he pants.

“You are. You’re my prince with freckles.”

“Are you sleeping beauty then?” Mills whispers.

“I was till I found you.”

We end up back on our sides facing each other, rubbing our dicks together. We’re both thrusting our hips and panting, trying to kiss and also jerk off with two dicks and four unsteady hands. At one point, I laugh, but then Mills catches our cockheads in his hand. He rubs his palm over the tips of them, then squeezes as his other hand rubs our shafts together. I cup his balls, and he starts panting pretty loud.

“Look at that fat cock,” I rasp. “I wanna see you blow, baby.”

I’m about to come, but I don’t wanna go before him. We’re both groaning as we try to work the both of us.

“Fuck,” he moans.

I grab his cock, thumbing the groove under the flanged head. I stroke that spot, and Miller’s hips jerk.

“Fuck my hand, Mills. Lemme feel you come.” My other hand pushes his balls aside and prods the warm, soft spot where I want to put a finger. I’m teasing him there as he grabs my balls.

“Look at me,” he groans.

I look at him.

“Wanna see your face.”

I lean over close to kiss him. His body shudders as our lips brush, and his cock spurts warmth all over me. I use it as lube, slathering it all over my shaft. Miller bites my throat, and it’s my turn to get messy.

Once my heart rate returns to normal, Miller kisses my cheek. I kiss his mouth again. “That was so good.”

“You want to get a shower?” he whispers.

“Let’s do it.” I’m tired as fuck, but I don’t want to waste a moment with him. He looks sleepy in the bathroom light, too.

“Sorry I’ve kept you up tonight.”

“Are you kidding?” He slaps my soapy pec. “So worth it,” he says.

I soap up his junk because I’m evil, giving Mills a semi. I fuck with him till his legs won’t hold him and he’s on his back in the tub, spreading his knees, lifting his ass so his dick bounces. I use the soap to give him the one thing I haven’t yet—besides my dick: a finger.

Fuck, he’s perfect. Dark hair slick with water as he leans his head back, his cock jutting straight up, bobbing as I stroke it. His slim hips are pumping, bringing my finger deeper into his warm, tight hole. I add a second finger, and he’s flat on his back, his hands fisted as the shower pounds down on him and he sucks in steamy breaths.

“Oh fuck. Oh fuck.” Mills lifts his knee, and I start humping it, just as a joke at first, but I’m so hard, we end up coming at the same time. Then we’re both laughing.

“Why is this so funny?” Mills gasps.

I help him up. “I don’t know. You look so damn cute all the time. It makes me happy,” I confess in a whisper.

“You make me happy, too.” His hand strokes over my pec. “You look healthy. Like you’re eating okay.”

“I make myself.”

“Fucking good on you, dude,” Mills says.

Then we’re getting out, and I remember the drawer.

“I don’t want to pressure you or anything, but can I babysit that pile of Xannies?” I ask as he towels his hair. “Thinking of you taking street shit scares me.”

“Thinking of you babysitting them scares me,” he laughs.

“God, we’re so fucked.”

“Let’s just flush them,” Josh says.

“No, we can’t. The fish!” I explain about the fish, and he nods slowly.

“Then let’s bury them,” he suggests. “Outside. We can go walking when we wake up in a little while, and pick a pine tree.”

“Then we’re poisoning some chipmunk.”

“Hell.” He makes a face. “What do you wanna do then, Einstein?”

“Maybe I’m more an Aristotle.”

As soon as I say it, my legs turn to Jello. Mills can tell. His eyes widen and he reaches for me as I grip the counter. I put my palms against the cool, damp countertop, hanging my head down as I pull deep, slow breaths into my lungs. Everything feels like it’s moving too fast.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “I’ve got you.”

He hugs me from behind.

“Who said that?” I groan. “Which one of us?”

“I did,” he whispers. “We were on the roof.”

I feel sick. Like I might get sick.

“Miller?” I rasp.

“Yeah, angel?”

“Let’s lie down. I’m tired. ”

“Okay. Let’s go to sleep, Ez. It’s been a long—wonderful—night.”

As my head hits his pillow, I feel like I’m falling through a vortex. Miller’s arm comes over me. “Just relax,” he murmurs. “Rest.”

And so I do.