Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 85682 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 343(@250wpm)___ 286(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85682 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 343(@250wpm)___ 286(@300wpm)
I sat in a chair on the back porch. “Nothing.” That wasn’t true, though. Sam would be here in a few hours. I hadn’t decided how I felt about it yet. I worried last weekend would confuse things between us, but not enough to call him and cancel. “I’m sure you won’t have any problems getting your dick sucked. Unless some things have changed since I saw you last?”
“No, I’m still irresistible,” he teased.
“You think you are.”
“I know I am.” We chuckled, which tapered off into quiet before he said, “You sound different today. Not as miserable…lighter, maybe.”
I frowned, wondering if he was correct. I certainly shouldn’t be. I had no reason to feel lighter. “I don’t know why that would be.”
“You seriously grumpified your voice because I said that.”
“What? You’re ridiculous. And that’s not a word.”
“It is a word because I just made it one. Seriously, Bent. How are you doing? Are you feeling better? You sound better.”
His questions mixed me up, made me want to find that miserable place inside me and wallow there. “I’m the same as always.”
He sighed. “I ruined it. I should have kept my big mouth shut. Listen, I have some free time. I was thinking about coming over to see you in a couple of weeks. It’ll only be a long weekend, but it’s something. I miss your grumpified face.”
“No,” rushed out of me, sharp and dangerous as a bolt of lightning in a North Carolina summer storm. I knew my mistake the second it happened. I’d been much too insistent with that reply. Charles would know something was up.
“Why?” he asked simply. Charles had been out to see me a few times, and while I never asked him to come and I always grumbled, I wasn’t as forceful as I’d been just now. “I know you. Something is going on that you’re not telling me.”
“Nothing is going on,” I lied.
“Great. I’ll take a red-eye out tonight.”
“Jesus.” I rubbed a hand over my face, knowing I was fucked. Charles didn’t make empty threats. He would one hundred percent be the guy who showed up on my porch first thing in the morning. “It’s not what you think.”
“But clearly, there’s an it to discuss. There’s been no it for you in a long time. There’s been no feeling either. None that’s good, at least.”
I couldn’t say he was wrong. Considering there was no real way out of this, I said, “I’m paying my mailman to spend his weekends at my house, fucking me.”
“Your mailman is an escort? I have so many questions, the first being: of course you would move to a tiny-ass town in North Carolina and your mailman is a queer rent boy; and the second, how did you find out? Though I guess the first one wasn’t a question and more of an observation.”
“He’s not an escort,” I bit out, unsure why there was so much heat behind my statement. I was paying Sam for sex, and there was no shame in that kind of work.
“I’m sorry, I thought you said you were paying him to fuck.”
“He’s not a real rent boy. He’s…hell, Charles, he’s a twenty-five-year-old closeted man trapped in his life. I told you before how he was always bringing my packages up and always knocked, even when I told him not to. I could tell he was queer and attracted to me. At first, I kept pretending I didn’t know. Then one day I found the guy on MensClub, and believe me, I know how impossible and unrealistic that sounds. All he did was jerk off and never showed his face, but I knew it was him. It was all I could see every time he came over, which was more often than you’d think, between mail delivery and his temporary position delivering food for the diner. Then one time on his video he asked for people to film with, and I just…” I’d just what? Offered to pay him for sex myself. “He’s a good man—kind, a little naive, the cup-is-always-half-full type, and the thought of him heading into Charlotte to have sex with random men on camera… I didn’t want anyone to take advantage of him.”
“So you offered to be his sugar daddy yourself? And Jesus, he’s young.”
“It’s not like that,” I snapped. But it was exactly like that. No matter how many ways I tried to tell myself it wasn’t, I paid him for free rein over his body. “I’m trying to help him out.”
“Trying to help him have orgasms?”
“He’s closeted here. He often works three jobs. He takes care of his mom, has a fake girlfriend who knows he’s queer and what he’s doing with me, so no lectures there. I just… He deserves to be himself. He deserves to explore sex. He deserves better, and I get that what I’m doing isn’t better. I’m selfishly taking advantage of a situation, but…” But I really did worry about him, really did want him…and I was tired of being alone.