Release(25)

“When did you give a handjob?”

He didn’t answer.

“You haven’t, have you?” Angela said, though it came out less a question than an assertion.

“You mean aside from to myself?”

“There’s also a word the entire world gives that.”

“Well, when would I have had the chance?”

And this was true. Compared to teens in movies and books and on TV, he and Angela weren’t especially oversexed throughout most of early high school. Which was probably just as well, as everyone around them – and them, too – was too busy actually growing into their bodies to want very much to show them naked to anyone else.

It was harder for Adam due to lack of availables. Still, Linus was somehow the fourth person he’d had sex with, Enzo the second. A fumble with a sweetly geeky and astonishingly pale guy named Larry in his teen group at the church had been between them. That was after a music rehearsal when Big Brian Thorn had invited the teen choir over to the house for fellowship. Adam found Larry crying in his bedroom. Seven minutes and an ejaculation later, Larry was crying again, but for different reasons: gratitude and guilt. Larry had studiously avoided him at church ever since, though to be honest, it had all been so unexpected, Adam occasionally forgot it had ever happened.

He never forgot his actual virginity loss, though.

Philip Matheson, a name almost as English as Angela Darlington. He was a junior when Adam was finishing his freshman year, though the age difference was only eighteen months, and he was a rare member of the Frome High School Cross-Country Team who was taller than Adam. Broader, too, but like a lot of fairly massive people, quite shy with it. They only started talking because Philip – never Phil, never – was glad to have someone he could hide behind during the team photo.

“We both should have really been swimmers,” Philip had said, that day outside the school, the short members of the team holding the school banner down front.

“I hate swimming,” Adam said. “Though my feet are flat enough.”

“It’d be nice if you could always get a pool to yourself. I only really like a sport you can do completely alone.”

At that, Adam had looked up at him, the first person in a long, long time he could actually look up at. Philip had darker hair than Adam, darker stubble – though Adam still barely had anything that could pass for stubble at all, to be fair – and he blushed when Adam caught his eye, actually blushed.

Three months later, at a party much like tonight’s at Philip’s own house, Philip had a beer, Adam had a beer, Philip had another, Adam had another, and out by the indoor pool Philip’s father had built, Philip had completely avoided looking Adam in the face when he said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if we, like, kissed?”

The next ninety-three minutes that Adam waited for the party to clear while calculating how worth it the damage would be from parents who had expressly forbidden he stay over with “this friend we haven’t met”, were the longest ninety-three minutes of his life.

“Is it okay if I haven’t kissed anyone before?” Adam had asked, finally up in Philip’s bedroom.

“Anyone at all?” Philip said. “Or just another guy?”

“Anyone at all. Sorry.”

“Whoa. Really, whoa.” And Philip had kissed him. He tasted of beer and tongue and beery tongue and smelled of sweat and of faint cologne and of boy. Just that, he smelled of another boy, so much that the ache in Adam’s body was almost palpable and he couldn’t keep from shaking. Then Philip had started unbuttoning Adam’s shirt and every die was cast. Adam was so stunned, he didn’t actually move until Philip had undressed him completely, with the strange intent of someone who was, by God, going to finish a job he had started, lest he notice what he was doing and stop. When Adam was finally completely naked – and Philip still completely not – Philip had run fingers down the flesh of Adam’s arms and said, “There.” Just, “There.”

This was the moment Adam always remembered, even more than that first incredible kiss: the first time being naked and, well, hard in front of someone else. There was no going back from this, no joke that would cover it, there was only this moment when someone was actually looking at it, at him, was actually reaching out to touch it, take it in their hand, and that … that was the impossible going right ahead and happening.

There was naked and then there was naked.

“There,” Philip said.

Everything was new. Everything was a first. He’d seen it all on porn, obviously, but Philip had been hairier than that in surprising places, everything less perfect, but that was so much more exciting than perfect could ever, ever be. And the skin. Angela was so right about the skin that Adam couldn’t stop looking, even when they were kissing, until Philip had put up a gentle hand and closed his eyes. “You’re staring,” he’d whispered.

“Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.”

“Sorry.”

“It really is your first time, isn’t it?” Philip had smiled back then leaned away into the light so that Adam could take a long, long look, just seeing everything. Philip wasn’t the most beautiful guy in the whole wide world, no, but right then, he was the most beautiful thing Adam had ever seen. Ever seen all of.

“I’m sorry I’m a little hefty,” Adam said.