Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 17:48:55 -0800 (PST)
From: Robin Eagleson <robineagleson@yahoo.com>
Subject: Luckiest Summer Part 13

The Luckiest Summer
Robin Eagleson
robineagleson@yahoo.com

Part Thirteen

The next day was surprisingly cool and cloudy.  I knew summer wasn't quite
over yet, but fall was certainly in the air nonetheless.  I left my house
in the early evening and told Mom I was going to Tyler's, and that I might
spend the night.  She had started a new book now, and she barely heard me.

I stepped outside and lingered on the porch, letting the pleasant, cool air
blow across my face.  It was a nice evening.  I was dressed in a t-shirt
and a new pair of jeans Mom had just bought for me last weekend.  They were
a perfect fit, snug around the waist and gradually wider as they reached
the ground.  I stepped off the porch and listened as my bare feet padded
through the grass.  My heart thudded in my chest, bouncing up and down
under my t-shirt.

There was something special about the path to Brad's house, the grass under
my feet, long and spindly until I got to his yard, where they actually kept
it freshly cut.  I could close my eyes and know when I had crossed the
boundary.  Even the air smelled different.  I'd walked this path dozens of
times before, and each trip had its own set of memories that played
fleetingly through my head as I walked.  I could see myself at the
beginning of summer, a frightened boy terrified of what would become of my
parents and their separation.  I could see myself later in the summer,
shirtless, a box of tator tots in my hand, fueled by a love for tennis (and
Brad).  Every version of me that walked this path shared only one thing,
and that was hope that once I set foot inside that house that everything
would be perfect, at least for a little while.

I was at the door.  There was no sound coming from the living room, no
baseball game on the TV.  I knocked gently, jammed my hands in my pockets
and waited, and then knocked harder.  I panicked, then, started to have
second thoughts, and began to turn away when the door opened and Tyler
appeared.

"Hey, Zach," he said quietly to my backside.  I turned around bravely and
managed a smile.  "Did you want to come in?" he offered, holding the door
open for me.  I accepted, my pulse skyrocketing even as I calmly strolled
inside.

"Your dad's gone?" I asked nervously, wanting to hit myself in the forehead
for opening the conversation with that question.  Tyler only grinned and
nodded.

"Come on," he said gently, taking my hand firmly but not too suggestively,
and pulling me to his bedroom.  "I got a new game this weekend.  I think my
dad wanted to make sure I didn't get bored by myself today.  It worked," he
giggled after pausing briefly.

"What do you have?" I asked politely as he dropped to his bottom and
rummaged through a stack of games.

"I got Rainbow Six: Lockdown, Outlaw Tennis, NHL `05," he started, looking
up at me.  "I hate hockey," he interrupted his stream of game titles to
inform me.  "I also got a new NASCAR game, but you don't like those games,
do you?"

"Your dad bought you all these games this weekend?" I asked in disbelief,
settling in on the floor next to him.

"No!" Tyler laughed, reaching over and clutching my hand again, lightly.
"Those are just the ones I've gotten since the last time we played.  He
only bought me Lockdown this weekend."

"Is it good?" I asked, a lump forming in my throat because he was stroking
my hand now.

"It's okay," he said quietly.  "I think the creators might have strayed
from the game's roots too much."  I gave him a funny look, and he giggled.
"I only saw that on a review I read online.  I didn't come up with that
myself."  He yanked his hand away and jumped to his feet.  "I want to show
you something," he said.  He reached for his backpack, unzipped the top
compartment, and pulled out a set of keys.

"Um, you found them?" I asked, wondering why he was showing me his keys.

"No, silly," he said in patronizing tone.  "They were there all along.  I
never lost them."

"Oh," I said, not really surprised.  I still wasn't sure why he had wanted
to tell me that, but before I could wonder much longer he had flopped down
next to me on the floor again, nearly in my lap.

"I'm devious, huh?"  I wondered if he had gotten that word from Brad.  It
was cute how he took after him in some ways, like having a wide vocabulary.

"Sure," I shrugged.  "I would have let you come in without you pretending
you lost your keys."

"I wasn't taking any chances," he purred.  "Do you want a Madden rematch?"
he offered seductively, snaking his hands over my legs, coming up with a
controller and presenting it to me.

"Not really," I breathed into his face, which he had now moved right in
front of mine.  It took all my strength to keep from looking away, to hold
his meaningful gaze.

"That was my secret," he said softly.  "The key.  I didn't get to tell you
because your mom came home and made me spill Cream Soda all over myself."
His expression remained so neutral, his tone so matter-of-fact, that I had
to laugh.  He took the opportunity to nudge me on my back and lower his
face on top of mine, touching his nose against mine.  I instinctively
wrapped my arms around his back and pulled him closer to me, breathing in
his smell.  He had clearly prepared for this evening; I could smell soap
from a very recent shower on his skin.

One second my mind was racing, and the question of whether or not I should
kiss him was knocking around in my head at a dizzying rate, and the next
second, our lips were pressed together and my hands were cupping the sides
of his face; the transition was so flawless it was as if I'd been preparing
for the moment all my life.  Tyler's lips were sweeter than anything, even
Cream Soda, and he seemed surprisingly adept.  I'd watched a lot of gay
porn; what was his excuse?

Our kiss, though exciting, was short, and when he pulled away from me I
didn't have any questions rattling around my head anymore.  Instead I felt
absolutely nothing but an overwhelming desire to keep this going, and I
found myself pulling his shirt over his head and rubbing his tiny pink
nipples with my thumbs.  He groaned at this while he straddled my chest and
grinded into me, already rock hard.

He lowered himself over me and tugged at my t-shirt, and I lifted my back
off the ground and raised my arms obediently so he could remove it all the
way.  He tossed it hastily in the corner where his shirt had landed, and
then attacked my jeans, working a finger inside the clasp and unfastening
the lone button at the top.  He worked the zipper down and grabbed a
handful of corduroy on each pant leg and shook them off me.  He looked me
over for a second, studying me as I laid there on the floor in just a pair
of boxers.  I'd never felt so exposed in my life, but I didn't care just
now.

His head lowered, his graceful neck bent like a descending crane, like he
was getting a drink from a water fountain, and he extended his tongue
towards my belly button, lapping at the tiny hole repeatedly, succeeding
only in tickling me slightly.  Without meaning to, I reached up and pressed
his head harder into my flesh, needing to feel his mouth on me.  He obliged
my silent request and sank his lips into the soft skin at my naval region,
burying his nose into it and dragging his face up and down and sideways all
over the area, stopping occasionally to breathe in deeply.

He started kissing down past my belly button, his hands tightening around
my waist and beginning to work my boxers down my hips.  I wiggled from side
to side trying to help him get them off faster, but he was in his own
world, moving at his own pace.  When they finally got to me knees, my dick
sprang up, freed from captivity, and flicked Tyler's tiny nose.  He giggled
softly, pulled back and studied the object that only I'd gotten to see for
the past several years, playing with it curiously by holding it against my
stomach and letting it go, just as I had done so many times to myself.

He pressed his nose against it, breathed in the musky scent deeply, and
then his mouth got to work, starting by kissing the tip daintily.  I
clenched my entire body up and started whining without even realizing it.
When I felt the first swipe of his tongue on the head, I just about
exploded on contact.  My sudden movement pressed it forcefully into his
lips, and he opened his mouth and let it disappear partially inside.

Now this was a whole new sensation altogether, and I had to open my eyes to
make sure it was really happening.  It was slippery, moist, and hot, and as
he started to carefully guide it in and out of his lips, I tensed up and
closed my eyes again, quickly deciding this was by far the most pleasurable
thing I'd ever experienced.  I gently placed both hands on the back of his
head, running my fingers through his unruly hair and trying to help him
establish a pace that I could enjoy.  He adjusted to my rhythm soon and
intensified his efforts, occasionally turning his head sideways so the tip
would slide against the corners of his mouth.  Every time he would change
the angle I would groan and try to keep from shooting, and every time I
felt that much closer to failing.

Then he picked up the pace, and I was all but done for.  His hands explored
my stomach, my chest, and he pushed a finger delicately into my belly
button and began to massage it with tiny circles.  The subtle sensation
coupled with his increased tempo brought me over the edge I'd been
teetering at forever, and a few quick spurts of my cum hit him in the face.
He pulled back just in time to take a third blast, which hit him in his
closed eyelid.

"Fuck," he said, hovering over my dick and looking impressed.  "I never
would have believed you could cum so much."  He pressed his face into my
softening cock, and I tensed up yet again.  Now he was running his tongue
in crooked circles around the slimy head, tasting the excretions that had
shot out so violently only moments before.  He lapped at it thoroughly,
apparently feeling a need to clean it all off me.  Then his face was back
in front of mine.

"I'm good, aren't I?" he teased.  He kissed me for the second time, a
little harder, and I wrapped my arms around his head and made sure that I
didn't waste the opportunity to kiss back.  My lips were unsure, and it
took several tries to get it right, but soon I had rolled on top of him and
was planting kisses all over his face, letting my instincts take over.  It
was really a lot of fun to kiss once you got into it.  He closed his eyes,
giggled, and tried to match all my kisses, but I was sloppy and
disorganized, and his mouth was always behind where my mouth was going.

Finally he got impatient and grabbed my head firmly and stabbed my lips
with his tongue.  I pulled back in surprise, and on impulse extended my
tongue and started licking back.  We stayed that way for a bit, just
licking each other without using our lips at all, until he fed his tongue
into my mouth and ran it side to side from one set of teeth to the next.
Our mouths were covered with each other's spit before we took a break to
breathe; it looked like, despite whatever these camp adventures of his
entailed, Tyler wasn't any better at kissing than I was after all.

Then we were at it again, a little more in control this time.  I forced my
tongue in his mouth as far as I could get it, and then pulled it back and
enclosed my lips around his waiting tongue, playing around with it lovingly
in my mouth, alternating sucking on it and pulling back to lick his lips.
It drove him crazy when I licked him; he would keep trying to kiss my
tongue and get it back in his mouth, and I would make it dance just out of
his reach, trying hard not to smile.  It was weird tasting my own cum on
his tongue at first, but I got used to it shortly, and then began to enjoy
it, sucking on his tongue even harder whenever it found its way into my
mouth.

I started tugging at his shorts while we kissed, and he rolled back on top
of me so he could slide them off easier.  I reached back and felt his ass
through his boxers, running my hand up and down the delicate curves while
he smiled at my explorations.  Whenever I would squeeze one of the cheeks
he would kiss me harder, sometimes so hard I thought I was going to pass
out from the pressure his body was putting on me.

We finally took the time to get up and fall into his bed, and he slid out
of his boxers on the way.  I settled on top of his naked body and explored
it with my hands, rubbing up and down his chest and stomach, ignoring the
throbbing erection that stood out between his legs.  He may have been as
big as me everywhere else, but his dick was clearly younger than mine.  I
thought it looked to be about the perfect size to learn on, but I didn't
tell him that.  Instead I left an excited wet trail down his entire body
and then inhaled the smallish bulge when I got to it.  It fit in my mouth
perfectly, and I proved the suspicions that I'd seen enough blowjobs on my
computer to know what to do correct by going up and down on him like it was
a long-time hobby of mine.  He groaned and cooed, letting me know I was on
the right track, and I sucked harder, repeatedly flicking my tongue into
the ultra sensitive spot at the tip, right behind the slit.  He thrust his
hips up into my face impatiently, grunting with an intensity that told me
he didn't like the idea of having this drag on.  I increased my pace as
much as I dared, not wanting to slip up and scrape him, and after just a
few more seconds of him humping my face full force, he let out a giant moan
and started twitching in my mouth.  Automatically I pulled away, but
nothing spurted out of his cock like it had mine.  Admittedly, I was
relieved.  His dick continued to spasm, but nothing oozed out of it.  He
appeared to be in a great deal of pleasure even without the kind of orgasm
I'd grown so accustomed to over the last year or so.

I waited for him to recover and then pushed my face into his abdomen, my
nose bumping into his flesh, my lips smacking against his skin.  I kissed
all around his stomach, up his chest, and then into his armpits, another
trick I'd noticed from my days of research.  I wasn't sure what it'd be
like, but I was willing to try anything at this point, and it turned out to
be nothing short of intoxicating.  He didn't wear deodorant, so there was
nothing but a faint smell of soap and whatever natural smell his hormones
had created.  He giggled helplessly at first, and then started groaning
again when my tongue dug deeper into the flesh, and the first time I tried
to pull away he reached for my head and forced me back in for another few
licks.

My head rested on his chest, rising and fall alongside it, rapidly at
first, and then gradually the pace slowed.  His hands ran up and down the
length of my back.  My attention wandered back to the center of attention,
the spot I had realized a while back mattered more than anything else.  I
caressed his slender cock, petting the shaft gently and running my fingers
along the marble-sized bumps in his sac.

"Remind me," he said quietly, much of his previous energy used up for our
frenzied battle, "to tell you about what I did at summer camp sometime."

"I could probably guess," I snickered, spontaneously feeling the urge to
lick the center of his chest, my tongue slowly dragging itself across his
soft skin.

"You couldn't," he disagreed, reaching down and taking my hand from his
balls and guiding them just slightly lower, where he pressed a finger
against his crack.  "I have a lot to show you," he said.  "Are you going to
stay here tonight?"  He squeezed me tightly after asking the question,
afraid my answer would be no and he would have to physically stop me from
leaving.

"I might stay here all weekend if everything feels this good," I mused
softly, lifting up his arm to kiss his armpit again.

"Good," Tyler sighed.  "Then we've got all night.  Let's play Lockdown."
He pulled himself out from under me and jumped back in front of his TV,
seating himself naked on the floor and switching on the console.  I watched
him from the bed, admiring him from behind, wondering how I ever could have
looked at him and felt such intense loathing.  He was every bit as
beautiful as Brad, only in a younger form.  Brad was long and built, his
bright platinum blond hair and hazel eyes such a perfect contrast to each
other.  I loved it when Brad would squeeze me or pick me up, because he was
strong and safe.  But Tyler had his perks, too.  His hair, for instance,
was soft and plentiful, his eyes the color of bright neon light, a light
sprinkling of freckles on his tiny nose.  The boys were different, sure,
but I had been wrong to judge Tyler so harshly at the beginning.

"Are you looking at my butt?" Tyler asked me without turning to see.

"Yes," I admitted, and then I jumped off of the bed and joined him on the
floor.

"Watch how good I am at this game already," he bragged, and a few months
ago it might have irked me that he was so proud about being good at a video
game.  Now it was just a funny little quirk.  "I'm like a machine, I'm so
good.  Watch me," he repeated, turning back to find out where I was sitting
and then relocating himself to my lap.  I closed my arms together around
his stomach and rested my chin on his shoulder, already feeling as though
another romp in the bed wouldn't be a bad idea.  My dick was certainly
throbbing, and he wasn't helping any by squirming around on it.  I knew he
was doing it on purpose, which made it worse.

I waited patiently for a few minutes while he played, but before long I had
dropped a hand into his lap and started fondling his dick.  His play
suffered dramatically at that point, but he did his best to carry on
regardless.  As soon as I started licking his ears, he gave up.  Without
even taking time to pause his game, he turned and forced me into the ground
and started in on my mouth, kissing me with a hunger that exceeded even
last time.

"Fine," he mumbled while trying to swallow my tongue.  "I guess we won't
play Lockdown."

We were up until after four in the morning that night, and in all that
time, not a single minute of it involved a video game.  In fact we were too
busy to even turn off the game he'd left on.  It stayed on the TV screen
all night, illuminating our actions and providing soft background noise.
When I finally did fall asleep that night, aching between my legs like
never before, I looked over at his face and saw it clearly, bathed in the
glow from the TV, and I found myself thinking, not for the first time, that
Brad was right.  Brad was always right.


And so I had found someone.  It wasn't who I was expecting to find, but I
guess that's the way it works most of the time.  You spend all your time
fantasizing over the person you can't have, and sometimes you don't realize
you're overlooking a person you can have.  Shortly after that September
night that I spent with Tyler, The Luckiest became my favorite song on the
Ben Folds album again, and it still is.

It was Christmas now.  Mom still hadn't sold the house, and she had
confided to me that she was going to give up soon and take it off the
market.  I didn't ask if that meant she was considering letting Dad come
back home; I didn't ask many questions like that anymore.

Everyone kept me telling me how old I was getting.  All my family,
including my cousins and grandparents and everyone else mentioned it.  I
had finally started to grow a little, too, and if I could just get another
six inches I'd reach six feet.  Mom was still not used to having to look up
to me when we talked, and was often fussing about how quickly her little
boy was growing up.

She was letting me grow my hair now.  I hadn't gotten it cut since that
time she'd dragged me out of bed in the summer, and once she started
bugging me about it again I told her I wanted to keep it that way, and I
guess I'd been convincing, because she'd given in.  Not that long ago I had
never talked Mom out of anything in my whole life.

When we got back from visiting my grandparents on Christmas Eve, I was kind
of sad, because this was the first Christmas without Dad.  I had done my
best to move on and accept the situation, and by now it wasn't as hard, but
the holiday season proved to be trying.

I woke up on Christmas morning and, for the first time, didn't run out of
bed and storm into Mom's room and demand we start opening presents.  It was
the first time I'd ever opened my eyes on Christmas and not felt a sense of
elation.  It was also the first time I realized that I wasn't really a kid
anymore.

So instead of running to Mom's room and shaking her out of her sleep, I
trudged to the living room and threw myself onto the couch, taking in the
Christmas tree and all the ornaments, all the presents under the tree, and
honestly wishing I could trade them all to get my family back.

Then, despite myself, I got down on my hands and knees and crawled around
the tree, gathering up all my presents and carefully estimating the weight
of each box, and a small glimmer of excitement finally hit.  But it was
still early, so I just turned on the TV and hugged my bare legs to my
chest, wondering if even Jesse was going to come over so she could open her
presents.

I found myself watching A Christmas Story for the zillionth time, even
though they showed it every year and I had seen it so many times I could
almost remember all of the dialogue by heart.  Mom finally came in at about
half past eight in her white robe.  She gave me her customary
lean-in-over-the-couch-and-kiss-on-the-back-of-the-head routine, and then
filled a cup with coffee in the kitchen.

"You didn't wake me up," she smiled.  "How long have you been in here?"

"An hour," I shrugged.  "I would have felt bad waking you up since we
stayed up so late last night."  We'd rented a bunch of movies and watched
them all night, almost until two in the morning.

"It's Christmas," she said.  "I wouldn't have minded."

"Can we start then?" I asked shyly, gesturing towards the presents I had
rounded up and put together under a section of the tree.  Mom glanced up at
the clock hanging above the mantel.

"Just about," she said with a smile, and on cue a car pulled into the
driveway and two doors opened and closed.  I couldn't help it.  I ran to
the window and looked outside eagerly, spotting Dad and Jesse outside in
the driveway.  My heart soared.

"Dad!" I yelled, racing to the entryway and flinging the door open.

"Close the door, genius," Jesse scoffed at me as she brushed past me, but I
could tell she wasn't really trying to pick a fight.  Why would she?  It
was Christmas.  She had a smile on her face.  I turned and smiled back.

"I am a genius," I told her.  "And I have a report card hanging up on the
refrigerator to back that claim up."  And then Dad appeared in the doorway,
an arm full of presents in tow.  When you're a little kid, it can sometimes
be a huge disappointment to learn that Santa doesn't bring your presents;
your parents do.  Now, seeing Dad in the doorway, I realized he was a far
better sight than Santa could have ever managed to be, and not just because
he came with presents.  I threw myself into him so hard he dropped a few of
the presents on the carpet.  It had been forever since I'd hugged him, and
I realized that I missed it when I wrapped my arms around him and pressed
my face into his chest, breathing in his familiar smell.  He was restricted
by the presents, but he did his best to return my hug, running a hand
through the back of my hair.

"Why don't you help your Dad with the presents instead of knocking them all
over the place?" Mom laughed.  I bent over and scooped up the few that had
hit the ground, and took a few small ones from the top of his pile.  Jesse
had already emptied the contents of her stocking on the floor, where she
was greeted with the usual assortment of candy and a gift card to Best Buy.

"Well?" Dad asked me expectantly, noticing I was just standing there beside
him instead of settling in by my presents.  "Are we going to proceed with
the ceremony or not?"  I hugged him again, quickly around his waist this
time, and scampered to my pile.  I watched him carefully to see how he
acted around Mom.  He smiled at her and sat down right beside her on the
couch, but I couldn't really pick up any clues.

Some families have carefully crafted traditions with opening presents.  We
don't.  We always just round up our stuff and rip them open with reckless
abandon, although generally speaking Jesse and I always open the gifts from
extended relatives first, saving the stuff from Mom and Dad for last, and
of course, working slowly towards the biggest box of them all.

I didn't have any especially big boxes this year, but that was okay.
Mostly all I got was a wide variety of Xbox games, anyway.  I had already
played most of the games I had asked for this year at Tyler's, so I had
known ahead of time which games were good enough to get for Christmas.

The paper was flying, then, and I acquainted myself with all the new Xbox
games I had been dreaming of last night, in addition to the obligatory
abundance of clothes and small items from aunts and uncles.  My aunt Megan
had a thing for sending me snow globes, while my uncle Chad seemed to think
I enjoyed joke books.  I did get a fifty dollar gift card to the mall from
my cousin Aaron, who made a lot of money, so it wasn't all bad.

Surprisingly, the presents weren't the best part of the day for a change.
On every other year the lunch we always had afterwards was mundane and
ordinary.  Normally I would shove it all down as fast as I could, having
been stuck with family so much the past several days all I could even think
about was disappearing into my room and getting to know my new
acquisitions, but today was different.  Today was the first time my family
had felt whole in months, and I was in no hurry to leave that comfortable
setting.

I found myself zoning out of the conversation and thinking about Tyler.  I
knew he spent every Christmas holiday with his mom.  He had been gone the
past week, and he wasn't supposed to come back until New Year's Eve.  We
had a big night planned for then, one that involved being too busy to
notice when the year came to an official close.  I wondered if he ever
thought about his family situation, and if he was wishing right now that
his family was all together.  He was different than me; going back and
forth between his mom and dad was all he'd ever known, and it didn't seem
to faze him.  Not that long ago I'd thought I could learn to deal with it
over the years, but now, sitting in the dining room and eating lunch with
everyone under the same roof again, I remembered how nice it was to be
secure.  I didn't want to share time with Mom and Dad the rest of my life;
I wanted them to get back together.

I kept glancing back and forth between them as we talked, but I failed to
notice anything out of the ordinary.  It seemed they were speaking to each
other as they always had, but there was nothing to indicate anything was
changing.  Maybe if Mom took the house off the market, she would
reconsider.  And as I looked back and forth between everyone from my seat
at the end of the table facing away from the bay windows, I got a funny
feeling that started to rise slowly in my chest.  I started thinking that
they would get back together, that I would get a second chance to enjoy the
comforts and perks of a whole family.  I started to think that I never
would have to move away from my friends, and away from Tyler.  I thought
that maybe everyone would find that person they were meant to be with, if
not now, than sooner or later, if they didn't try and look too hard, if
only they could wait for that person to find them.  And really, I might
have known all of these things before.  I might have known everything was
going to end up okay a few months back.

After all, the Astros had once again squeaked into the playoffs with a
magical finish, winding up in the World Series for the first time in
franchise history, where they had a chance of winning it all.  Fucking
White Sox.


So what about Brad?  I'm happy with Tyler; I really am.  But sometimes I do
wonder how things might have turned out if Brad hadn't rejected my advances
in the hotel room that night in Houston.  I miss him every day, even though
the summer carries an ancient, mystical feeling to it now.  I can remember
the moments and events clearly in my head, but when I picture it I feel
like the memories belong to someone else, and that I'm merely being allowed
to witness another person's life through a filmy haze, an indisputable line
drawn to remind me I can't go back and live those moments.  I just catch a
glimpse of these memories, and then they pass.  Most days I really do feel
like a different person now and I think the change is for the better.  But
sometimes, when I'm deep in thought on the couch, left alone to reflect,
I'll hear a car turn sharply onto the corner of the street, and my heart
leaps into my chest, the familiar tingle running through my stomach, a
quick jolt of electricity dancing inside of me.  And every time, even
though I know it can't be Brad, I race to the bay windows and peer out at
the street just to make sure.  So far it's never been him, but I'll never
stop looking.

<>