“Mm… this is a good plan too,” Kelly mumbled, and Seth fumbled for the cocoa butter, which was never very far away. He played with Kelly’s cockhead for a few moments, teasing, letting his breath, his lips, the gentle edge of his teeth do things for Kelly that plain suction couldn’t, and just when Kelly started getting squirmy, he took him in completely, sucking hard and thoroughly, from root to tip.

  When he got to the end, he let Kelly flop out, hitting his abdomen with a solid thwack, and fumbled with Kelly’s fingers, opening the cocoa butter and scooping a generous portion onto them.

  Then he spread Kelly’s legs and guided his hand to his own hole, pushing slightly, making Kelly thrust, rubbing the cocoa butter into his own tight orifice, letting him set his own speed.

  Kelly grunted, shifting his hips for better access. “This is… this isn’t bad, mijo. This… this is sort of good…. Ooh… that stretches. That… I keep thinking it’s gonna hurt, but it’s my own fingers, right? No pain. Just… mmm…. That’s nice. I like that. I’ll do that again.”

  Seth smiled, then shifted to Kelly’s other side and resumed his blowjob, making sure that Kelly’s penetration with his own fingers took the center stage.

  His cock stayed hard—got harder, in fact—and Seth kept playing, kept teasing, kept stroking. Kelly’s movements got stronger, more assured, and then, as things got awkward, more frantic.

  “I… I can’t…. Seth, I want more. I want more and harder. I can’t go fast enough…. Seth, please!”

  There was enough cocoa butter for Seth to pull Kelly’s hand away and slide two fingers in easily, and Kelly moaned in welcome as he thrust them in to the hilt and sucked him down until his cock bottomed out in Seth’s throat.

  “More,” Kelly gasped, and Seth added another finger, stretching and pumping, sucking and stroking, keeping things firm and hard—but not rough.

  “Ah!” Kelly bucked against his throat. “Please… please give me one more chance,” he begged. “C’mon, Seth. I need to be fucked so bad!”

  They’d never gotten this far before.

  Seth took a leap of faith and moved between Kelly’s knees, pulling his thighs up so they were on his shoulders, finding his asshole with the head of his cock and pausing, poised at the entrance. “Sure you’re ready?”

  “Fuck me!”

  Seth thrust in.

  “Yes!” Kelly’s back arched off the bed as he sought to drive himself farther down on Seth’s cock. There was no hesitation. No pain. No fear.

  Seth pulled out so he could fuck forward again. Oh God. Kelly was so tight. So willing. Abandoned, sprawled out on the bed, all of the fears and worries he harbored—every fucking day—scattered as he lost himself to Seth’s invasion.

  His face had fallen slack, ecstatic and dreamy, even as Seth picked up the pace.

  “Mm…. Seth, this is so good. Man, if I’d known it was this good, you would have been fucking me for years!”

  Seth just kept thrusting, not stating the obvious—Kelly had needed to relax enough for this to feel good, and he hadn’t been ready until just this minute.

  But they would have time to talk about that later.

  Right now, Seth was losing himself in the warmth and safety of his lover’s body, and his skin started to prickle as he approached a mighty crest.

  “Kelly!” he cried out, not wanting it to end so soon. “Let me see you stroke—”

  Kelly grabbed his own prick, hand squeezing tightly, like he loved it most, and with that, just that, a convulsion rippled through his body as he came.

  Seth exploded into his ass.

  Together they shuddered, coming without stop, as though they hadn’t been banging each other silly for the last seven days.

  It was Seth’s turn to fall forward over Kelly’s body. Seth’s turn to feel the richness of the heat where his cock remained, sliding in come. Seth’s job to kiss Kelly’s temples, nuzzling his cheeks and peppering his shoulders and collarbone with tiny kisses of praise.

  “So good,” he whispered. “God, you feel so good. You were so tight. I hope that felt as good to you as it did to me—”

  “Amazing,” Kelly mumbled. “Amazing. But God, I think I’m useless for the whole rest of the day. I’m all high now, floaty from that. How do you even function after sex like that?”

  Seth took his mouth and didn’t bother to answer.

  He was thinking that music put him under, just like submission did. He was thinking that sex always felt like the next step on the staircase to heaven.

  If that was true, then they must have gotten to heaven while they were in Mendocino that year. So many things they had planned—more driving up the coast, hiking through the redwoods, trips to lighthouses.

  They spent most of their time in that tiny hotel room, naked and wanting, panting and lunging, sated and wearing each other’s come on their skin.

  They would return and spend the rest of the summer getting together every weekend, sometimes with the family, sometimes not. But always, always, they spent Saturday night at the very least in Seth’s apartment, getting so good at sex it was like they were training for a medal.

  But they both knew what they were really training for.

  Seth came home the three days before he left for Italy. He spent the time in the apartments, playing with Chloe mostly, but also keeping company with his dad, Kelly’s mom, Kelly’s sisters.

  His family.

  He must have said, “I’ll Skype every Saturday, I promise!” about fifteen hundred times.

  The night before he left, he and Kelly spent all night in his room, talking about everything and nothing at all. Kelly and his father were taking him to the airport the next morning—he was flying out of Sacramento to LAX at 6:00 a.m.

  At 3:00 a.m., Seth’s alarm went off, and he pulled Kelly closer, smelling his hair, his neck, the sweat that the warm August night had left on his body.

  And Seth said the one fear he’d kept back since the trip to Italy had come up two years before. “You won’t forget about me, will you? Even if you… if you walk away, you won’t forget?”

  Kelly shook his head. “You’re so dumb, sometimes. No. No, Seth. I will never forget you. And I will never walk away.”

  Seth should have told him it was okay. Seth was going to be all the way across the world—Kelly had a right to live his life.

  But he didn’t.

  He couldn’t.

  “Neither will I,” he whispered.

  They dropped him off in the still darkness, with a child’s checklist for getting on the plane—including keeping track of the passport that Kelly had needed to help him acquire. He’d never been on a plane before.

  As he stepped through the doors to the terminal, he looked back and saw his father holding on to Kelly like he was still a kid, both of them waving even though Seth should have been inside long before. Seth waved back madly and then turned away, wiping his face on his shoulder.

  A year, right?

  What was a year after two weeks of Mendocino and a lifetime of being in love?

  Dancing Alone

  “NO, YOU can’t come in.” Kelly folded his arms in front of him and glared at his brother.

  “Where’s Mom?” Matty looked like shit. His hair, always cut close in high school, had grown out, but it didn’t fall straight like Kelly’s and then curl—instead it stood up in a thousand cowlicks. His face was lined already, at twenty-three, and his beard was past the stubble stage and into full grown Astroturf. He was wearing cargo shorts in late November and a dress shirt with a thousand stains on it, including one that looked like vomit.

  And he smelled like a brewery.

  And vomit.

  “Mom is at the movies,” Kelly said, proud of this, because he’d managed to shove Linda out and into Craig’s car again this month.

  Apparently this habit had started during the summer. The girls were all old enough to babysit, and God, if anybody deserved a break it was Mom. And she seemed to enjoy Craig Arnold’s undemanding company, which Kelly didn’t mind at all.

  More than once in the past months, she’d gone downstairs carrying his dinner and had ended up staying and watching TV.

  Kelly had thought he should go down and see if the drapes were drawn or if there was a two-inch gap in the front that showed him enough to be scarred for life.

  At first the thought had made him chuckle, but then he’d think about his father and about those moments with Seth and about how badly his mother deserved something, anything at all that made her happy, and he decided he wouldn’t go look after all.

  “She left the kids home alone?” Matty asked, frowning, and Kelly rolled his eyes.

  “I’m about to turn twenty-one, dickhead. The twins are fifteen. Hell, Agnes is twelve and can stay here by herself if she wanted to. You got four people here who can watch your daughter for you—don’t fuckin’ worry.”

  Behind him, he heard Chloe getting excited. “Set? Set? Set, where are ’oo?”

  Seth talked to her at least once a week over Skype, and Kelly was pretty sure his sisters called him up when Kelly was at night school too. Not that Kelly didn’t have his own ways and times to talk to Seth, but he had to admit, he always felt a little jealous when he got home and his niece was asleep in her crib, hugging the latest stuffed animal Seth had sent her, humming to herself.

  It wasn’t a warm pair of arms—no. But Seth’s face, his voice, his smile, on that little screen, had started to take on an enormous role in Kelly’s dreams. Sometimes after Seth signed off, he’d stroke the screen with his fingertips and remember the summer when even for a short time, they’d been able to sate themselves on skin.

  But Matty heard his daughter’s voice, and his face closed down like a thundercloud. “Is he here?” he asked, trying to shoulder his way into the apartment. Kelly stood his ground, blocking with his shoulders. Sure, back in high school Matty had the advantage—he had been muscular and quick. But Kelly was horny and lonely, and he had access to the gym and a sand bag, and he could beat Matty on his worst day in his sleep right now.

  “No, he’s not here!” Kelly had to laugh at that one. “Oh my God, if only he was here.”

  “My own daughter barely even talks to me, and you let her be in the company of that psychopath? And you think that’s funny?”

  “He’s in Italy right now,” Lulu said, coming up over Kelly’s shoulder. “I dare you to find him. And she doesn’t talk to you because you show up once a week and try to get in her face. She’s got to know you before she likes you.” Lulu wrinkled her nose. “But not now. God, Matty, take a shower.”

  Lulu disappeared, and Matty was left, bewildered.

  “Isela wouldn’t let me hold her. She said she was the mom, it was her job. I don’t know how… I don’t know how to hold her. Italy? Did you say Italy?”

  “You can’t hold her when you’re like this.” Against his better judgment, Kelly felt his sympathies stirring. God, Matty. They’d grown up loved. They’d grown up loved. He wasn’t sure what had made Isela, her circle of friends, her church, so attractive, but the puzzlement in Matty’s eyes right now was killing him. “Think about Dad, Matty. He left for a month to go to rehab because he didn’t want to be around us drunk. Remember that? That was his own free will, you know? He only wanted to be his best self for us.” Kelly used his shoulder to gesture. “Is this really how you want your kid to see you?”

  “I… I don’t know what to do,” he rasped, scrubbing his mouth with a hand that looked like he’d been chain smoking his whole life. “Isela… just disappeared. I hear about her, this guy, that guy, and I’m all alone in the apartment. I got nobody. Nobody, Kelly. Remember us, growing up? All the noise, Mom and Dad talking, us kids raising hell, and I thought, ‘God, I just want some quiet in my own fucking head.’ But it got quiet, and it’s awful. It’s fuckin’ awful. And I’m all… I’m all alone.”

  Fuck. Oh fuck. Kelly took a deep breath and held up his hand. “Wait there.”

  He closed the door behind him and saw his sisters looking at him with varying degrees of skepticism.

  “Thoughts?” Like they wouldn’t tell him what they were thinking.

  “Hell no.” That was his Lulu, but Lily grimaced.

  “He’s all alone, Lu. I mean… he used to be a real person and everything.”

  “Yes,” Agnes said, but then her shoulders slumped. “I just don’t want to be here when he’s here. And he’s so weird with Chloe. And now he’s just gonna be weirder. Never mind. No. Yes. Darn.”

  Kelly half laughed and reached into his pocket to pull out the key to downstairs. He’d never given it back—still, in fact, used it two or three times a week. If things got too loud, if his sisters were making him crazy, if he needed a quiet place to study, there was always Seth’s apartment, where Seth’s room held more of Kelly’s clothes and books than Seth’s things, and where Seth’s dad was always happy to see his son’s boyfriend, and not just because of the connection to his son.

  “I want this back,” he said soberly, and the girls nodded back. Even Chloe, who had ceased to wiggle in Agnes’s arms. “Pack a bag for Chloe. Lulu, bring the porta crib—set it up in Seth’s room. Craig’s got groceries and cable. I’ll get him showered, get him sober, kick him out in the morning. Deal?”

  The girls all nodded, and Kelly turned back and opened the door, prepared to give Matty sanctuary and a little bit of home.

  But Matty was gone. Kelly could hear his feet clattering on the bottom stair even as he called out his brother’s name.

  “Never mind,” he said softly, closing the door. He expected his sisters to all look relieved, but they didn’t. Lily wiped her eyes on the inside of her flowered shirt, and Agnes’s lower lip wobbled.

  And to Kelly’s horror, his own eyes burned.

  With a terrible little sound in his throat that was not a whimper, he opened his arms and they all rushed in, hugging hard and deep, not one of them talking about the cut in their hearts that kept bleeding, the death that recurred daily, the loss they couldn’t lose.

  THREE DAYS later, Kelly’s phone buzzed as he walked down L Street on Saturday night. He checked it, thinking Vashti and Edgar weren’t usually so impatient, and saw Seth’s name instead.

  Are you having a good birthday?

  Seth had sent him flowers.

  Fucking flowers. Kelly had opened the box in shock. The card read, I always wanted to do this at school, and Kelly had looked at the arrangement—red roses and white carnations, classic!—and smiled, hoping he could manage not to sob like a big sap, because he’d expected his twenty-first birthday to be crap from beginning to end.

  He had texted Seth a picture, then one of each of the girls tucking a rose or carnation into her ponytail so they could look pretty at school and then one of himself with the rest of the arrangement behind him.

  He’d put on a smile—he hoped—because the gesture was lovely, but inside….

  He couldn’t shake the sadness, the need.

  He hadn’t told Seth about his encounter with Matty on the landing three nights ago. Hadn’t told him that Vashti had broken up with his last boyfriend and was going with Edgar, who was a douchewaffle. Had stopped telling him about how Chloe had days when she ran around the apartment chanting, “Set? Set where a’ oo?” and then crying when it turned out that he really wasn’t there, and she had to listen to the recording of For Kelly #6, his latest, that Seth had recorded with an entire orchestra behind him—and apparently, had sold and was touring to promote, for money, because Seth kept sending that too.

  Just voicing these things hurt him.

  Kelly wasn’t sure he could say them to Seth without losing his shit.

  But God, he had to lose something. Anything. So when Vashti had asked him to go out dancing at Gatsby’s Nick with him and Edgar the Douchewaffle, Kelly had said yes.

  It didn’t matter that Edgar was one of those flirty assholes who tried to touch him too much, or that sometimes the club scene freaked him out.

  What mattered was that, as of that morning, drinking was legal, Vashti had promised to have his back, and he’d taken a Lyft to the club.

  God, something needed to give.

  Yeah! He lied to Seth. Going dancing!

  Have fun. Call me when you’re done. I need to tell you something.

  Kelly frowned at the phone. Something bad?

  No. Something great! But later. Have fun. I love you!

  And Kelly wanted to call him right then, but the music from the club was already clouding the air, and Vashti was probably already inside, but Edgar was standing in front, waving him in, his blond hair spectacularly coiffed and that weird dorky predatory grin on his pale face.

  It didn’t matter. Edgar was incidental.

  I love you back, he texted, and he shoved his phone into his jeans with his wallet. A part of him gave a huge sigh of relief. No talking. No baring his soul. He gave his coat to the coat-check girl, made sure everything was secure in his back pocket, and hit the dance floor like a demon screaming from God.

  Two hours later—and three vodka shots down—he was still dancing, but not even the sweat and the movement and the screaming calf muscles could drive the devil out of him.

  Suddenly he was just really lonely, even in the middle of all those people.

  Suddenly he needed to talk to Seth more than he needed to breathe.

  He turned to leave, making his way to Vashti to bail, when he felt an unmistakable hand on his ass.

  He whirled, unleashing a quick punch, before he even knew who it was. “Back off!”

  Edgar was clutching his chest and looking indignant. “Dude, I was just wondering where you were going!”

  “Taking off!” Kelly yelled over the crowd. Hell, he didn’t want to get into this. All the rubbing, the grinding—yeah, it had made him horny, and the only place he had to go was to his room, which he shared with the world’s loneliest four-year-old. God, even if he took the easy way out and slept at Seth’s apartment, he couldn’t fap off in Seth’s bed with his father in the next room. But that’s what his body was screaming for, dying for Seth’s voice, at the very least, and a dark room, and his own hands on his skin if he couldn’t have Seth’s.