Adam? Yes, Matty.

After a couple of rough days Matty and David seemed to get past the crisis stage and enter an uneasy truce. I don't know how they interacted when they were alone because Matty wasn't talking, but I did notice David going well out of his way to be even nicer than usual to Matty and throwing him a lot of apologetic looks, trying hard to get out of the doghouse. Then on my car pool day after Jason and Mike had been dropped off David asked me to pull over a block short of his house so he and Matty could have a moment. I didn't want to eavesdrop...

Oh who am I kidding? I strained to hear every word.

"Matty," David began in his most serious tone, "I know I messed up at your house the other day. I really hope I never make you cry like that ever again in our whole lives. It really killed me to see you that way, especially since I'm the one that hurt your feelings so bad."

Matty smiled weakly. "It's OK," he said. "I never should have sprung that whole thing on you. Adam and I had a talk, and I know I can't be mad at you for feeling the way you feel. I don't think I could ever be mad at you for anything."

David smiled broadly. "Me neither," he said, and unexpectedly grabbed Matty to him in a tight hug. Matty returned the hug and made eye contact with me in the mirror. I was suddenly self-conscious about being caught listening, but Matty's fond expression told me it was OK.

David released Matty and got that serious look again. "Did you really mean it? What you said?" he asked cautiously. "Do you really love me, like for real?"

I could see Matty weighing his response before speaking. This hadn't gone well the first time around, and I knew if I was in his shoes I might downplay it this time.

"Yes," Matty said firmly. "It's OK if you don't love me back the same way, but I know what I feel in my heart."

David didn't speak for many seconds, and when he did it was very gently. "I had a talk about it too, with my brothers. Danny started all the fooling around when he was twelve and I was six. He saw some movie he wasn't supposed to see where this man and woman were naked and the guy kissed her and humped her and told her he loved her. And so Danny would lay on top of me and rub his boner on my belly and kiss me real hard and tell me that he loved me. I really liked it when my big brother said he loved me."

"But the thing is," David continued, "Danny likes girls now. He has a girlfriend that he has sex with, and the only boys he does it with are me and Donny. And now Donny says he likes a girl at his school, and he doesn't think he wants to do it with boys anymore either, maybe not even us brothers. Danny said it was natural, that boys fool around together when they're young but then when they get older they like girls instead."

My two cents were just aching to escape my mouth, but Matty beat me to it.

"But you know there are gay people," he said. "Isn't it natural for them to like what they like?"

David grimmaced in exasperation. "I don't know," he said. "It's real confusing. I couldn't stop thinking about you that night, and I couldn't figure out how I really felt about what you said. I cried myself to sleep over how I hurt your feelings and how you might not want to be my friend anymore. I've gotten in bad fights with kids before and we stopped being friends over it, but it never felt as bad as this."

David took one of Matty's hands into both of his and looked into his eyes. "I don't know if I'm gay or not," he said. "I only ever think about boys when I jerk off, never girls, so maybe I am gay, but maybe I'm just not old enough to know yet. But I know I really like being your friend, and I really like fooling around with you, and yeah, I really liked it when you said you loved me. It made my heart feel good. I just don't know if I love you back the same way."

Matty smiled fondly at his friend, and I knew he was letting him off the hook. "I don't know if I'm gay or not either," he said. "I think I probably am, but I don't know for sure. Adam always says not to worry about it, that one day I'll just know, and in the meantime I should just like what I like. If that changes someday, then OK, I'll deal with it then."

"Yeah, that sounds right," David said. "Right now what I like is you."

"Me too," Matty said, and the boys beamed at each other almost as brightly as they had on day one.

David started to say something, stopped abruptly, then sheepishly started again. "You can say you love me all you want," he said. "Seriously, I like it. And we can act like boyfriends and go out on dates and hold hands in the movies and all that stuff. I just maybe can't say it back. Would that be too weird for you?"

I honestly didn't know how I might react to such a suggestion, but Matty smiled and said, "I want you to say it back, but only if you mean it. Maybe someday you'll fall in love with me for real and then you could say it, but don't do it until then."

"It's a deal," David said leaning in for a kiss, and man, it sure looked like a good one.

Matty and David were so close the next few months that you couldn't slip a piece of paper between them. They went on dates as David promised: movies, mini-golf, pizza parlors and the like, although the times I drove them I didn't see them acting especially date-like. From my vantage point it just looked like boyhood pals having a blast, which to be clear was exactly the stuff to make my heart sing for both of them. An outside observer wouldn't think my dates with Matty were all that date-like either; we probably looked like a father and son having a blast, which was also OK with me. There was no denying, though, that both boys simply glowed when they were together.

Far from diminishing, my own relationship with Matty only seemed to thrive, replete with love and sex and genuine intimacy. My boy apparently had an endless reserve of those things. David came over often for play dates and sleepovers, as did the other boys in various combinations, and I was always included in the fun and games. The cherry on top was that Matty was as happy as I'd ever seen him, an absolute joy to be around, and Susan and I were both thrilled with how wonderfully things were going.

How thrilled?

I married Susan on the 16th of June in a small ceremony in the Park District's botanical garden. It was exactly two weeks after Matty's twelfth birthday and I had him stand up as my Best Man despite quizzical looks and sarcastic comments from a few of the guests. I didn't care. He was my favorite human being on the planet, and besides, he looked incredibly cute in his little rented tuxedo, which I wouldn't have missed for anything.

I had assumed for twenty years that if I ever got married Cousin Chris would naturally be my Best Man, and I felt a bit badly about displacing him, but the way he smiled all through the ceremony I knew he truly understood. It was also great to see Alan sitting next to him, the two of them fawning on each other and looking happily domestic. We didn't have a chance to talk about how they'd worked things out, wedding receptions being such a blur for the bride and groom, but at one point I noticed them chatting up a young male nurse who worked with Susan, so I suspect Alan finally grew bored with monogamy.

David was invited along with his family but sat with us at the head table as Matty's "plus one." They barely concealed their infatuation and even danced together, but nobody looked askance, a few of the older ladies even saying things like, "Look at the little ones. How adorable." Once again being small and cute worked in Matty's favor. Late in the evening I spied them sneaking into an unused anteroom and was momentarily alarmed, but they came out again only a minute later and Matty said they'd merely slipped away for a kiss.

Even before the wedding we had started the ball rolling on my legally adopting Matty: researching, getting the forms together, etc. Susan took my last name but after long discussions Matty opted to keep Watkins as a tribute to his departed father. I couldn't decide whether to be hurt or touched, but my reaction fell firmly on the side of "touched" when he further explained his decision. He would keep the legal surname of his father, but he would start calling me Dad.

I tear up with joy every time I think of it.

We got a great deal on a honeymoon cruise and hotel package to Bermuda, which turned out to be a wonderful destination in June; warm enough for the beaches and well before hurricane season. I finally got to visit a nude beach with Susan, but I could still only imagine Matty's sweet little butt with a golden tan. He was staying -- where else? -- with David and family for the ten days we were gone. He sounded like he genuinely missed us when we phoned every few days but I could also tell he was having his own fun vacation.

We had scheduled the trip to end on a Friday afternoon, giving us the weekend to wind down, do laundry and generally get ready to resume the workaday routine on Monday. About an hour after the cab dropped us home from the airport Arlene phoned to say she was heading over with Matty and David. Susan and I made sure we were waiting out front when they pulled up.

"Mom!" Matty yelled out the window before the car stopped rolling. "Dad! I missed you so much!" He threw open the door and ran straight into Susan's arms. Susan tried to pick him up for a giant kiss but he had lately gotten too heavy for her, so she just gathered him in and planted it on him from above. I beamed at them, glad that he had run to her first and cemented the blood bond they would always share, and knowing how much it pleased Susan. I shared my grin with Arlene and David as well.

After a moment Matty turned to me and his tears began to flow. "Dad," he said with deep feeling, and he raised his arms to be picked up. He was a growing boy for sure, but I hefted him into our usual embrace and kissed him with perhaps a bit too much passion considering the audience. He melted against me and softly said, "I love you, Dad."

"I love you too... son."

An hour later Susan and I had exhausted ourselves gushing about how magnificent Bermuda was with its pink sand beaches and emerald waters, and the fun we had buzzing around the islands on mopeds, tourists being barred by law from operating cars. Arlene nodded to the stack of luggage, Matty's now included, that waited patiently near the stairs to be dealt with.

"OK, let's leave these three love birds alone, kiddo," Arlene said, patting her son on the knee. "They're tired and they have a lot to do."

David and Matty hugged an affectionate goodbye while Susan hugged Arlene and I stood by smiling.

"Thanks again for looking after Matty," Susan said.

"Don't give it a thought," Arlene said. "He was such fun to have around I don't know what David's going to do without him."

"It was like having brothers of my own," Matty said, and the boys shared a look that I recognized as something more than friendship.

They had barely pulled out of our driveway when Matty looked up at me excitedly, careful to ensure that his Mom wasn't watching. I chose to interpret it as horniness, because of course that flattered me, but I also knew it would be a couple of days before we had the privacy to properly welcome each other home.

Susan placed a suitcase onto the dining room table and zipped it open. "Separate your dirty clothes right here," she instructed. "No point hauling it all upstairs and then back down to the laundry room."

Matty and I followed suit, but I kept noticing him fidgeting and glancing over at me with that same look of excitement. I knew he couldn't be that horny, having just come from ten nights sleeping in the same bed with David, who I'm sure kept him quite busy. I waited until a moment when Susan was distracted in another room and whispered to Matty with a smile, "What is up with you, kid? You're so antsy it looks like you're doing the pee-pee dance."

Matty came close and said as quietly as his excitement would allow, "He said it, Adam! David said he loved me back!"

My heart rose, but I made sure Susan was out of earshot before I whispered, "Great news, Matty! I'm very happy for you."

"It's so cool," Matty said softly. "Now he's really my boyfriend... and you're really my Dad!" I don't know whether I gave some kind of worried look but he added quickly, "And my boyfriend, too. I get to love you two ways now."

It was the perfect thing to say and my heart instantly turned to molten goo.

It took just shy of forever, but finally Monday evening came. Susan was at work, of course, and I hurried home from the office to anxiously await my boy's arrival. It was Mary Edwards' car pool day -- we kept it going through the summer so that we all didn't have to pick up our kid at the Park District every single day. I was elated when her car finally pulled into our driveway, but my heart jumped into my throat when she shut off the engine and three doors came open! Mary, Mike and Matty were climbing our front steps! The bitch was coming into the house!

She was not a bitch, of course, but a perfectly lovely friend who wanted to congratulate me one more time and hear about the honeymoon, but her timing was terrible. Worse, I realized in horror, Mary was the chattiest human being in the northern hemisphere and would stay until Susan got home if given her way.

Mary was there almost an hour, the bitch. Not only was I straining at the bit to get my Matty into bed, but it was decidedly no fun going through the same Bermuda stories we had already told Arlene, but without Susan to pipe in with help. Matty took Mike up to his room and it was torture concentrating on Mary and Bermuda while I imagined the two beautiful boys quietly sucking each other's cocks one floor above.

Finally Mary looked at her watch and announced that she had to get dinner on the table. She called up the stairs for Mike, who came down so quickly they must not have been in flagrente dilecto after all, at least not at that moment.

Matty and I stood on the porch, arms around each other's backs, smiling and waving goodbye until the second Mary's car was out of sight, then dashed inside and up the stairs. We tore at our clothes, Matty naked sooner than me and urging, "Hurry, Adam! I can't wait one more minute!"

After one of the quickest sixty-nines on record and an orgasm apiece we were lying nude and entwined, ready for pillow talk.

"So come on," I said. "Let's have the details. Did you ask him, or did he just come out and say it?"

"It was, like, the third night I was staying there," he said. "There's only one bed in his room, but it was plenty big enough. We fooled around every night at least a little bit."

"No surprise there," I offered.

"So then that night me and David were really going good, you know? It's always great but you know how sometimes it's really, really extra great?"

"Yeah," I said with a smile, remembering many such encounters. "Did you have to wait until really late when everybody was asleep?"

"No," Matty said. "His Dad gets home at, like, one am just like Mom, and once his Mom goes into her room with a big glass of wine she never comes out again until morning. As long as we're quiet it's fine."

"What was the really really great thing you did that made him say it?"

"I fucked him really really slow," Matty said with tremendous relish, and I knew he was reliving it in his mind. He pressed his bone-hard little cock against my leg for emphasis. "It was exactly like the night I first said I loved him, only it was me fucking him this time. We started out on our sides, then I rolled him onto his belly and I was on his back, and then finally he wanted to be on his back with his butt on the pillow so we could kiss, and that's when it happened.

"I could tell he was gonna cum, and it was like my body wanted to speed up and pound him silly, but we said we wanted to go really slow and so I just kept up the nice slow pumps and really pushed it in deep every time, and kissed him and kissed him, and when he came the only reason he didn't yell out loud was because my mouth was over his mouth. And he came and came, Dad, like for a long time, and he was still, like, shaking and squeezing me with his butt and that made me cum, and we just hugged and squeezed and kissed for a long time until we could breathe again."

"Wow!" I muttered, slowly jacking myself and knowing without doubt that we'd be up past Matty's bedtime.

"We never even pulled apart yet. My dick was still in him and still hard as a rock, and I could see the look in his eyes and I just knew he loved me whether he ever said it out loud or not, and I felt really happy, but then he put his mouth next to my ear and he whispered really soft, `I do love you, Matty, like crazy! Please let's be real boyfriends,' and that made me so happy I almost yelled out loud and woke everybody up!"

I hugged him tightly and kissed his cheek. "I'm so happy for you, Matty," I said. "Isn't it just wonderful to fall in love?"

"It was so amazing, Dad," Matty said. "I still remember when I fell in love with you," he added a bit shyly. "I thought it was the best anybody could ever feel, and I figured that would be the only time I would ever feel that way in my whole life, `cause I was just a kid and I didn't know you could fall in love more than once. I can't believe how lucky I am that I get to feel this way about two people at the same time. I just love both of you so much my heart wants to explode!"

I kissed him again, this time on the mouth, and in a moment he rolled himself on top of me and crushed his stiffness against my belly. One thing led to another and soon he was greasing up my towering cock with the lube hidden inside the box a novelty harmonica had come in, far in the back of his nightstand drawer. Matty settled his beautiful, welcoming butt onto me and comfortably took my whole length, and we rocked slowly as he leaned down to kiss me with great passion. When I erupted inside him it was much better than the furtive, missed-you-so-bad orgasm I'd had earlier.

Back in the afterglow, Matty grew animated telling about his wonderful ten days with the Walkers.

"Danny and Donny are really cool guys, and they treated me just like I was their little brother. Oh! This is funny. Their Dad calls them Danny, Donny and Davey, like Huey, Dewey and Louie on Duck Tales. David hates being called Davey, though, so I don't."

I immediately thought of Mike not liking to be called Mikey unless it was coming from me, and I wondered if David would like it if I called him Davey. Then I realized exactly how egotistical that sounded and kept it to myself.

"Danny didn't fool around with me, because he only does it with his brothers now," Matty went on, fully revved up. "But David and Donny and I had a lot of fun."

"I thought Donny was into girls now, too," I said.

"Well, it turns out the girl he likes is a sophomore on the Pom Pom squad, and she's going out with a senior who has his own car," Matty said. "Pom Pom girls are almost cheerleaders, and she can have pretty much any guy she wants."

"And that isn't going to be Donny, is it?" I said.

"Nope," Matty agreed. "And all it took was one nice hard boner for Donny to figure out he might as well have fun with us instead of no fun with a girl who doesn't even know he exists."

"Smart boy," I said.

"And horny boy," Matty said with a grin. "Donny has just a little bit of hair above his dick, and none at all on his balls, but they're pretty big and loose. It was fun playing with them, and he liked it a lot. Donny likes his balls kind of like the way I like my nipples, you know? If I tickle them just right he gets super hard and he begs me to make him cum."

"What does Danny's junk look like?" I asked. I'd seen the oldest brother in swimwear and really liked what I saw, but I'd never seen the goodies.

Matty seemed pretty offhand about Danny, like there was no excitement because he knew the boy was off limits. "He looks like a man, you know, with hair and muscles and stuff, so he's pretty fun to look at. His dick is just as long as yours is, but yours is a lot fatter. His balls are pretty small, even smaller than Donny's, but he shoots a ton of cum. It was pretty hot watching Danny fuck David. They were both really into it. The brothers all really love each other, so that was cool."

Matty went on to describe the fun his new extended family had outside the bedroom as well, and how welcome they all made him feel. He seemed a bit wistful about not having any siblings of his own, and it made me get ideas about Susan and me. We weren't all that young anymore, and we both had careers to consider, but a baby would not be out of the question, at least not for me. Of course, I wouldn't be the one getting pregnant.

We had been home a few weeks and completely settled back into normal life when Matty approached me one evening at home after a phone call from Mike Edwards.

"Dad?" he said, and when I didn't look up immediately he tentatively tried, "Adam?"

"Oh!" I exclaimed in mild embarrassment. "Dad. That's me. What's up, son?" It still felt a bit awkward to call him son, but we both very much liked it.

"Mike just invited me for a sleepover Friday night," he said. "He wants us both to come over, and you can stay overnight too if you want."

A weekend night. I thought for a moment about how that would go down with Susan, and with Mike's parents for that matter. Then I tumbled to a realization.

"Will Uncle Jackie be there?" I asked, my pulse vaulting higher in alarm.

"Yes," Matty said. "Mike's folks are going to some weekend thing called a retreat or something, and Uncle Jackie is watching him."

"Boy," I said, trying to calm down. "That's a name from the past. I thought you were over him now that you and David are together."

"We're allowed to have fun," Matty said. "David fools around without me, too."

"That's not really my point," I said. "You haven't seen or even mentioned Jackie since last summer." I paused, and then blurted, "You haven't seen him, have you?"

Matty rolled his eyes, a habit he had acquired during a year's immersion in Middle School snark. "No, Dad," he said. "I thought you knew. Uncle Jackie moved to Cincinnati last fall for his job. He only came back to stay with Mike for the weekend."

"Yeah, I guess I did hear that," I said. "But would you have kept seeing him if he hadn't moved away?"

"What?" Matty asked, confused. "Yeah, I guess so." Then the light went on in his eyes and he said defensively, "You've been fooling around with Mike this whole time!"

I got even more defensive in a heartbeat. "Not behind your back," I said. "You were there every time."

"And I didn't do anything behind your back either!" Matty said forcefully. "I haven't seen Uncle Jackie since last summer!"

Embarrassment rose in my face. "Oh, yeah," I said sheepishly, quite aware that I was acting like a jerk. "Of course you haven't."

"And now the first time I'm seeing him again I'm inviting you to be there too," Matty said.

"OK, OK," I said. "Point taken."

Where the hell was this coming from? Jackie's name comes up from out of the blue and suddenly I want the man dead, when only last summer I'd shared boys with him! Maybe it was the out-of-the-blue part. Matty had been so laser-focused on David for the entire year of sixth grade that I had been able to completely forget his attraction to other men, but suddenly it was back in my face.

"I'm sorry. I really do trust you, Matty. You're just so important to me that I can't stand the thought of losing you."

"To Uncle Jackie?" he said incredulously. "Oh, please, Adam."

He pointedly called me Adam instead of Dad whenever he thought I needed an attitude correction.

"I thought we were past the whole jealousy thing, anyway," he said.

You'd think so, wouldn't you? I had no trouble with Matty being with other boys, in fact I loved it. That was what I wanted for him, the same kind of joyous childhood sex play that I still treasured in my own memories. I wasn't even jealous of David, who had Matty's heart in just as tight a grip as Matty had mine. Still, the image of Matty panting and sweaty with another man made me nuts. It was irrational and unfair and I knew it had to stop, but I didn't know how.

"I guess I just don't understand your interest in Jackie," I said. "He doesn't do a thing for me, and he wouldn't have when I was twelve, either."

"He definitely knows some fun things," Matty said, "but you're way better."

I smiled, catching the reassurance like a dog with a Frisbee. He let me savor it for a moment.

"So," he continued, "can we go?"

I didn't ponder very long. The only question was whether I would jump through the necessary wife-related hoops to spend the night. I knew I could come up with a plausible lie; some reason the four of us had to be up and gone super-early Saturday morning for something Susan wouldn't have the slightest interest in attending, like hunting or fishing or some such guys-only bullshit. I really didn't like outright lying to her, though. It was bad enough that Matty and I were living a giant lie right under her nose.

It was tempting, for sure. There was plenty of merriment to be had in insatiable little Mikey's bedroom while Matty scorched the guest room sheets with Uncle Jackie, and it would be a really interesting new twist to wake up spooning that tiny bundle of pure sexuality. Matty would get what he wanted, and what was good for the goose was fucking fantastic for the gander, so I decided not to question the arrangement.

"Of course we can go," I said, "but I don't think I'll spend the whole night. We'll do it like last time. I'll come for dinner and some fun, but be back here before your Mom gets home."

Matty smiled and came to me for a hug. "Thanks, Dad. I love you," he said, and I savored that, too. As he turned to go he tossed offhandedly, "I always told you I like grownup men. Someday there will be more of them."

So I had that to look forward to.

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