Nowhere Man - 8. Chapter 8: Coloring Books

The words rang in my head over and over. I tried desperately to understand what he meant by We’re not going home.

“Where the fuck are we going?” I blurted, my voice cracking.

“Trav, I don’t—“

“It’s Travis,” I corrected, for the first time. “And just tell me where the fuck we’re going.”

“I don’t know,” Tyler said softly.

I leaped off the bed and crossed the room to the door. I had no clue where I was going, but I needed to be out of there. The afternoon sun was hiding under a thin layer of clouds and I started hyperventilating as soon as the door closed behind me.

A million and one thoughts were swirled through my mind and trying to sort them out was useless. Especially when I was trying to breathe. I didn’t care that I was standing outside a seedy motel in just my underwear. I crouched along the brick wall of our building next to the window.

I was officially kidnapped.

Tyler had lured me out to this beautiful weekend and now he was taking me God knows where. I desperately wanted to be home. In my bedroom. In my trailer. In Easton Park.

I would never see Easton Park again.

We weren’t going home.

The door opened and closed next to me and I flinched. Tyler sat down against the door.

“Listen,” he began softly. “Will you hear me out, please?” The way he said please angered me. Did I have a choice? Why the pleasantries?

“I’m not trying to hurt you here, it’s just. I’ve got to keep moving, and I want you to come with me.”

“So, what is this?” I asked softly. I didn’t trust my voice. “You spend a couple of days in one location and then move on? How long have you been on the run like this?”

“A year,” he replied with no hesitation. “I’m usually further, much further than this. But I needed to see her again. It’s been a year.”

I rolled his words around in my head. A year. So close. He needed to see her again. Where was she? I thought she was dead. And then I realized.

As soon as my brain made the connection, the bile rose up. Boiling hot. Unstoppable. I turned away from him and threw up on the sidewalk. I leaped up so that the vomit wouldn’t roll down onto me, but I couldn’t escape it. The contents of my stomach heaved and erupted violently, covering the left side of my leg.

Tyler patted me on the back. His touch was gentle for a killer. When my heaves slowed and stopped, I felt him open the door and pull me inside. He led me to the bathroom where he threw open the shower curtain and pushed me under a warm spray of water.

I sat down, shorts still on, and the shower washed over me. This was too much. I hadn’t signed up for all of this. I wasn’t a fugitive. I wasn’t built to be on the run. I was built for routine. I was built to install cabinets and maintain the status quo. Even as a kid, I never colored outside the lines. This wasn’t just outside the line. It was in a completely different coloring book.

“Listen, please,” Tyler said, snapping me out of my trance. I opened my eyes. He sat on the toilet watching me. I gasped for breath and listened.

“It isn’t that big of a deal, really,” he said. He actually had the audacity to say that to me. No big deal. “Once we get out of Texas, we can slow down. Find a place to stay for a couple of months. You’ll get used to it.”

“What if I say no?” I’d been afraid to ask the question earlier because I knew the answer. As the words escaped my mouth, a tear dripped down my face. “What if I don’t want to go and I say no?”

“Trav,” Tyler said softly. I could tell by the look in his eyes what we were both thinking. He’d have to kill me. He couldn’t trust dropping me off at Easton Park knowing what I know. Knowing where she was buried. He couldn’t risk me running to the authorities. He knew I would lead them to her body, somewhere by a lake, three beers down a trail from the clearing in the trees.

I just needed to see her body.

“What will I tell my brother?” I asked. He didn’t have an answer for that besides a shrug and a head tilt. “I have a job.”

“Come on, Cale’s,” he said sarcastically. Good point.

“You could have told me this before,” I said, gaining the power in my voice back.

“And then what?” he asked. “Are you telling me you’d have come out here with me anyway? Stayed with me? Come on, Trav.”

“What do you need me here for!?” I shouted. I was upset. Scared.

His voice remained low, almost a whisper. It was as though he was afraid the tenants in the neighboring room could hear us. “I don’t know. I just… I do, okay?”

He stood up and walked out of the bathroom, leaving the door open. I heard him flop down on the creaky bed and click the TV on. A news announcer boldly proclaim to have the story of the week following the break. I disagreed.

I sat up and turned the water off. The water had run clear of vomit a while back. I stood with my boxers dripping wet and my hair hanging in my face. I faced my new reality. I had no choice but to.

In a way, this realization freed me. Although I was held captive, accepting my fate allowed me to see the silver lining, as thin as it was. I’d never been anywhere in my life. My life, up until then had been a relay race to the bottom, and it had landed me at a dead end job in a dead end town. At least with Tyler, I was somewhere.

I stepped out of the bathroom, still dripping. Tyler’s eyes traced down my body. Knowing what I knew about him, I could read the lust in his eyes. His attraction to me, even if he couldn’t articulate it, was clearly evident.

“I want to stop by Easton and get something,” I said somberly.

“I can’t let you go back there, Trav,” he replied casually. He was stretched out on the bed, legs crossed. He put his hands behind his head as he spoke and I watched his ribcage work beautifully.

“I won’t be there long,” I reasoned. “I just need to pick something up and leave a note for my brother.”

“Your brother will stop thinking about you at some point,” he said with no hint of sympathy. My eye twitched at that realization. I didn’t know what to say. He was right. They’d worry for a while, maybe put out a search, maybe not. But eventually, they’d stop thinking about me. But what I had to do back in Easton had nothing to do with my brother. I needed to retrieve something I kept hidden under my bed. Something I wouldn’t be able to survive without. He had to let me go.

“Tyler, you have to—“ I began to say.

“Come here,” Tyler commanded softly. He uncrossed his legs slowly and turned his body to face me. He was boring a hole through me that made me sufficiently uncomfortable. I walked towards him.

He sat up and put his hands on my chest, not once breaking eye contact with me.

“This is going to be okay, alright?” he said, convincingly. “We are going to fine. You’re going to be just fine, alright?”

I breathed deeply. I believed him. He moved his hands downward slowly and as his finger raked across my nipple, I took a deep breath. He moved slowly and deliberately, as if he was forcing himself to touch me. The move was unnatural and not altogether pleasant, but it was contact. Warm, wet contact. Contact with Tyler.

He shook a little as his hands raked across my upper abdomen but his eyes were firmly peeled to mine. I watched him feel me. It was like he was gathering data to file away— how hard I felt; my body temperature; my smoothness. He made a real effort to make me feel good. He was coloring outside of the lines.

“You have a hard stomach,” he whispered when he got to my belly button, breaking our eye contact for the first time. I took in a deep, low breath that expanded my stomach. A second later I felt his tongue lick the skin just below my stomach, where my pubic hair started. His tongue was warm and wet. Surprising.

His hands traveled back up as he continued to kiss me just above my most sensitive region. I was captive to this man, and this was the reason. He didn’t feel like a dangerous man. He didn’t touch me like a dangerous man. Although every fiber in my being knew I was playing with fire, I had yet to get burned. And so I stood there and let him lick me.

His hands roved downward again, continuing below his face. My shorts were still dripping wet and cold and when his warm hand touched them, the sensation thrilled me.

The first time Tyler touched my dick, he’d run away, unable to face his own desires. The second time, it was by his own accord and his shaky hand radiated a heat between us that would be impossible to describe.

He lowered my shorts, leaving me hanging out and cold. As though he was about to touch a hot stove his mother had told him not to, he looked at my dick for a second, his hand raised and poised. As quickly as a pouncing cat, he moved his hand to my cock so that he had a firm grip around it. I took in a deep breath, closed my eyes and enjoyed the heat.

And there was an unmistakable heat. Would I have still been there had that heat not existed? Was this his method of capture? Lure me in with his touch? Keep me here by forcing me to want him? To need him? Standing there, I wondered who needed who more. I could have run, but how far would I have gotten before I felt compelled to return?

He stroked me slowly, pulling the skin of my hot rod towards him and then back towards me. He watched it intently. It pulsed in his grasp. He turned it and examined every angle. I watched him watch it.

Without warning, he opened his mouth and extended his tongue. A snake about to examine his pray before devouring. It must have taken him half a second to muster the strength to do it. The split second seemed to last an eternity.

He licked it, tasting the smallest drop of precum on the end of his tongue. He made a face, looked up at me and dropped my dick.

“Come on,” I escaped involuntarily. I thought he’d made real progress there, only to be let down by his fear of giving in to what he wanted. What was he afraid of? That he’d enjoy it too much? Maybe not all guys were built like me, with that craving or oral fixation. Still, I was giving up a lot to be with him, the least he could do was taste it.

“I can’t,” he said, lowering his head. He stood up and kissed me violently, almost pushing me back a step as he did so. He didn’t mind kissing me, touching my body and receiving blow jobs. But our new “do not cross line” was drawn firmly at him sucking me off.

I had to be content to have our lips braided together. His hands continued to rove my body, closer and closer to my treasure chest with every fruit loop around my abs.

“I can’t,” he whispered again, followed by an even more passionate kiss. A warm sticky liquid hit my cheek. Was Tyler crying a little?

“I can’t,” he said louder into my mouth. His hands settled between our abdomens, slowly working their way down.

When he grasped my dick again, he thrust his tongue so far into my mouth I thought I was going to fall backwards. He grabbed the back of my head with his free hand and began stroking me off with the other. Whatever he was feeling was his business. What I was feeling was someone who was letting himself do something he’d thought about over and over.

He stroked me back and forth. It didn’t feel particularly good, but it wasn’t bad either. His rough hand on my cock created a friction that men crave, and I was no different. The firmer and faster his grip, the harder and stronger his kiss. I let him have his way completely.

This new form of dominance over me didn’t last long. Two minutes and 160 strokes later, I felt my body pulse in his grasp. Just like he’d spewed all over my arm by the lake, a rip of cum shot out of my cock with more velocity than ever before.

When he finally released my lips, I gasped for breath. He walked straight to the bathroom, locked the door and ran the water. He was in there for a few minutes and when he came out, his face was wet and his hair was slicked back. I was lying in the bed, under the top sheet.

“How was that for you?” I asked as he scooted in next to me.

“I’m alive,” he responded coldly.

“You don’t have to do that again, you know.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I resolved, saying it almost as much to myself as to him. He turned and glared at me, the same vulnerability in his eyes that had once surprised me but was now nearly commonplace.

I waited for Tyler to doze off, watching him breathe once his eyes were closed. I really was attracted to him in the most fundamental way possible. When he wasn’t freaking me out, he made me feel really good. I honestly wasn’t opposed to staying with him, even knowing what I knew.

As soon as I knew he was fast asleep, his breathing intense and shallow, I slid out from under the cover. I slipped on the nearest shirt and my pair of pants, determined not to make the belt clang against anything. The sound of denim had never seemed so loud.

I peeked through the curtain. The sun had gone down and darkness slowly crept into the parking lot. I spotted the truck.

I had one shot out and this was it. I needed to get to Easton Park to retrieve something that I couldn’t live without and if I didn’t go now, I would lose the chance forever.

I pulled Tyler’s key out of his pants quietly and inched towards the door. I looked back at him one more time. He was fast asleep, rib cage moving beautifully up and down. This was it.

I unclicked the door key. It was loud. I stepped outside. My foot heavy and loud. I closed the door behind me and I was convinced everyone in the hotel could hear it click shut.

As soon as I was outside, I ran in a straight line as fast as I could to the truck. I hopped in, turned the engine and sighed relief when it roared to life.

Drive, I told myself.

I clicked the headlights on with my left hand and saw a figure standing in front of me. At first it was just a silhouette.

Drive.

And then a Bic lighter clicked on casting a low glow next to a face I knew well.

Drive, I thought. Part of me wanted to floor the gas and leave Tyler standing there clicking his lighter on and off like a homicidal lunatic.

Another part of me wanted to stay and color outside the lines.