Coda 01 - Promises

lost my virginity fifteen years earlier. Fifteen years and a half-dozen different relationships in that time to explore the dynamics of top or bottom. In most cases, it hadn’t mattered, but in some, it definitely had. I knew that it could become a power issue, and I tried to be grateful that he was being cautious of it. Still….
    “Jared?” He was on his side now, facing me, his head propped up on his hand. “Are you mad?”

    “I’m not sure yet,” I answered honestly.
    He pulled me back into his arms. “Please don’t be. It’s not even so much that I think of you that way, as that I worry that you’ll think that I think of you that way and you’ll resent me for it. Does that make sense?” I was trying to unravel that, but he didn’t give me time to answer. “Anyway, I feel better about it now.” And it was true that he didn’t look troubled anymore at all and his voice sounded determined. “I feel better about what just happened than about the other way.”
    I still wasn’t sure it made much sense to me, but so what? We had been together just over a month. Not long at all for a guy to go from insisting he was straight to where we were now. We had all the time in the world to make him more comfortable. And in the meantime, he preferred bottom? I’d have to be an idiot to object to that.
    “Jared, are you okay?” he asked.

    I smiled up at him and repeated his own words back to him. “Matt, I am somewhere way beyond ‘okay’.”
    “Good.” He kissed me then, and it was slow and deep and passionate, and his hands were wandering down my body in a very familiar way, and I was surprised to feel that he was growing hard again already against my leg.
    I laughed. “Already? I’m not sure I’m capable.”

    “Sometimes,” he whispered jokingly into my ear, “you just don’t know when to shut up.”
    He rolled back on top of me, lining us up the way he liked to do, and reached down to wrap his hands around both of us. He was fully erect again, and I was getting there. He was kissing me again, and his strokes were slow and deliberate. I wrapped one arm around him, put my other hand on top of his as it moved on us, closed my eyes, and gave up to the sensation of what he was doing. Fucking him had been incredible, but this was something else entirely. Sexually, maybe it was less, but emotionally, I knew it was more. I knew he was telling me something. It was in the slowness of his movements, the way he gripped me tight against him, the gentleness of his tongue running over my lips, the way he whispered my name.
    I was still amazed that I could make him this way.
    Nothing else mattered. Not his parents. Not having to spend a week apart. Not even Barbie and Ken.

    T WO days before Christmas, Lizzy and I were working in the shop. Brian was working on selling it, but until then, it was still ours. I hadn’t seen Matt for four days. My house felt terribly empty, but knowing it was temporary made it bearable. I had been spending a lot of time at Brian and Lizzy’s and had even done one night of babysitting with little James.
    Lizzy was counting out change and talking about her favorite topic, my hair.
    “Jarhead, you can’t teach like that. What will the kids think?” “That I’m hip.”
“You are not hip. You’re scruffy. Not the same thing.” “I thought girls liked scruffy guys.”
    “Oh?” She grinned at me playfully. “Are you trying to attract girls now? Is there something you’re not telling me?” I tried to throw a pencil at her but missed by a mile.
    Matt walked in at that moment, looking exhausted. “Hey, Matt, I’m trying to convince Jared to cut his hair.”
    He didn’t even acknowledge her but walked up to me and said quietly, “Can we go in back for a minute?”

    I was surprised but said, “Sure.”
    We went in the back room. He sat down on the edge of Lizzy’s desk, looking down at the floor, and didn’t say anything. Sitting on the desk, he was shorter than me, and all I could see was the top of his head. I could tell by looking at him that he was wound up tight. I waited for him to say something and finally realized he wasn’t going to.
    “How’s it going with your parents?”
    “Fabulous.” His voice was low and tight, full of sarcasm and anger. He didn’t look up and didn’t seem inclined to say anything else. The silence stretched on. It felt like he was getting ready to share bad news with me, and I tried to keep my pulse from racing.
    “What’s