Riding With Brighton(27)
He kisses, bites, and licks his way up my neck and when he gets to my ear he whispers, “No.” He bites my earlobe and licks and kisses it and, seriously, there are weird white lights flashing in front of my eyes, and I hear myself groan. “I’m not teasing you. I’m gonna let myself kiss you. Just once.”
“Now, Brighton,” I demand ’cause I legitimately feel like I might pass out.
“Yeah, Jay, now.”
And then his lips are on mine. And my lips are so fucking on his. Immediately, I feel crazed, like I’m on drugs or some crazy alien has taken up residence in my body. My mouth is attacking his, and all I want to do is scream because finally… finally… he’s kissing me. So grunts and moans and whimpers are coming out of my mouth, and thank God, they’re coming out of Brighton’s mouth too. Our tongues are moving in some frantic motion that could be war or some kind of perverse sexual dance.
With my hands still held firmly in his behind his back, he takes a step forward and backs me up to Maggie’s sculpture, and when he does this, it’s like my entire body just got invited to the face-sucking party. My head starts moving with the rhythm of my tongue, I rip my hands away from his so I can grab on to his ass, and my hips press into his like they’re Sandy and he’s the Haitian coast. Hell, even my legs are doing some weird long-limbed form of groping. I lose myself in it all. If I could, I would be howling. (Metaphor—wild fucking animal, feral beast.)
Way too soon, Brighton pulls away and takes a step back, running a sleeve over his wet, swollen lips. “Holy shit,” we mutter at the same time. He laughs, and it takes a minute for me to come back to reality and catch my breath, but eventually I laugh too.
“So are you still thinking you might be gay?” he asks with a cocky expression on his face.
He knows damn well I’ve never been kissed, or have kissed, anyone like that, but in my current state I can’t come up with any witty, or even smartass, comments. So I just tell him, “Yeah. I’m pretty damn sure.”
He grabs ahold of my waist. “Good, because I’d be pretty damn disappointed if I never got to kiss you again.”
“It was a onetime deal, though, yeah? Until I get my shit figured out?”
“Until you know what you want for sure. I’ll help you, Jay, if you want it.”
“I want you, Brighton. I know that. There’s no gray areas.”
“I didn’t say who you want, I said what you want. If you really knew what you wanted, if you wanted all of this and not just a physical situation with me, you wouldn’t have said what you did. I know you didn’t mean it, but that’s all your fear coming out. It’s the straight you hating on the gay you. I don’t expect you to figure it out in one day. But now, at least you’ll have some real-life material to work with instead of just the Internet.” He smirks at me, and for some reason I want to slap him.
“I don’t know how to speed this process up. I mean, shit, right now I’m ready to tell anyone who wants to listen that I’m gay just so I can kiss you again but obviously, when reality starts setting in and I wake up tomorrow without you, I know I’m gonna be scared shitless.”
“Don’t sweat it. It’s a process. It takes time. Like I said, if you want my help, I’ll be here. But you have to do all of this on your own terms when you’re ready.”
“Can we come up with some kind of reward system?” I ask him, partially in an attempt to lighten the mood and partially out of desperation. “Like if I buy a rainbow bumper sticker for my truck I get to lie with you in your bed. Or if I tell Maggie and Samuel and your family I’m gay, you have to play all your favorite music for me. Or if I school myself on gay slang and figure out what lies beyond the bears, I get to dance with you again.”
He gives me the cutest goddamn smile just before growling at me and grabbing ahold of the sides of my face. “Jesus, how the hell am I gonna be strong enough to stay away from you?” Before I have a chance to answer, he releases me and turns around. “Come on, let me show you my second favorite piece, and then we should get going.”
As I watch his jean-clad ass walk away from me, I’m trying to come up with a legitimate answer to his rhetorical question. How the hell am I gonna make sure he’s not strong enough to stay away from me?
We walk across the field, and he points out some of the sculptures, telling me how they were made or what the artist was trying to accomplish. Slowly, my one-track mind starts opening up, and I can feel the magic of the place I’m at. It’s inspiring. “It’s crazy that this whole other world exists in the same town I live in and I wasn’t even aware of it. It’s like I just discovered a door in my backyard that leads to some awesome fantasy land.”
“Add it to your list.”
“What else are you gonna show me today?”
“This beautiful thing, for one,” he says, grabbing on to my hand—which, yes, excites the hell out of me—and leading me around a large piece of plywood. On the other side is a huge photograph of a naked lady lying in the sun. In front of it are tiers of flowers flowing down and around it, like they’re actually moving, like they’re falling out of the picture. “You like it?”
“Yeah, I like it. It feels like more than the other pieces, you know?”
“Yeah, I do.”