How I Got Carter - 12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

I look up from my book for the four hundredth time in the last five minutes and check the clock on the cable box again. It’s 5:51. Same as the last time I checked.

I recommit myself to reading and stick my nose back into my book. It’s one of those times where all the words make sense but my brain doesn’t create any useful information from them. Even as I’m reading I can tell it’s just my eyes scanning across the words with not a whole lot happening behind them. I manage to plod through three entire sentences before glancing up at the clock again. Still 5:51.

Really this is all my mom’s fault. I came home the day after the party at the Rothson’s and mentioned casually that I had stayed the night at Carter’s place. My original plan was to stay at Ko’s house anyway, so I knew it wouldn’t be a big deal, plus I had my phone with me so she could have gotten in touch if she had wanted to. As I’ve said, Mom gives me quite a bit of freedom as long as I make good choices.

I digress. The point is, this is all her fault.

A few days after the party, she came home from work and seemed excited to tell me something. Usually that would be a good thing, but sometimes moms can have a strange idea of what the word ‘exciting’ means.

“You’ll never guess who I saw at work today,” she said cheerfully during dinner. It was just the two of us that night, as the twins were at a skating party put on by their school.

“Who?” I asked casually, not realizing what sort of bombshell she was about to drop on me. My mom works at a hospital as a nurse practitioner, so she sees a lot of people all the time when they come through the office. It could be anybody. A teacher, my soccer coach, a cousin, or even the mayor.

“Jim Mulkins.”

Jim Mulkins? Oh no, that must be…

“We talked about how you are Carter were in the chemistry class together, and that you…”

She continued on like this, oblivious to how uncomfortable it was making me. For one, I don’t particularly like chatting with my mom about the boys that I have crushes on, regardless of whether she knows about it or not. For two, I haven’t even met Carter’s dad, and he probably doesn’t even know that I was over at his house last weekend. For three, I absolutely guarantee he doesn’t know that I jerked his son off last weekend.

“...and I told him that we’d love to have Carter over some time to repay the favor of you being over there…”

I tried my best to hide all of my emotions and pretend that our conversation wasn’t the most mortifying thing I’d ever heard, but I could feel the heat spreading through my face and the sweat starting to bead on my forehead.

“...and we thought it would be nice to have Carter over here on Saturday for the....”

“What?!”

I was jerked out of my embarrassment trance without warning. What did she just say?

“Carter’s father is having some business associates over for dinner on Friday, and he was telling me how bored Carter always seems at their get togethers, so I offered that he could come over here on Friday.” Seeing my mouth agape, she quickly added, “If that’s ok with you.”

That’s why I’m staring at the clock waiting for 6pm, when Carter is supposed to get dropped off at my house, and that’s why I’m fidgety, nervous, and still seething at my mother. Why in the world would she do this?

In her defense, she thinks we’re just friends. Whenever I talk about Carter with my mom, I make sure to check myself. There’s a big difference between telling her about today’s chemistry lab and swooning over it because I got to spend ninety whole minutes with the Adonis known as Carter Mulkins. In her mind, she just happened to see my buddy’s dad, chit chatted for a while, one thing led to another, and she locked up my dinner plans for Friday night. No big deal.

But she doesn’t know what this means! I can hardly keep myself together when I’m interacting with Carter without an audience, much less when my mother and little siblings are watching. What are we going to talk about? What if he doesn’t like the food? What if he thinks my house is stupid? What are we going to do after dinner?

I feel like I’m having a boy over. Gross.

To be fair, I am having a boy over, but I don’t want to feel sweaty and clammy and anxious like this. Especially in front of my mom and the twins!

Ding Dong!

The doorbell rings with finality, as though erasing any last possibility that tonight wouldn’t happen. At this point, it’s a sure thing. Carter is quite literally standing twelve feet away from me, with only a door separating him from what is almost certain to be one of the most awkward evenings of my life. An inch and a half of wood is the only thing between me and the terrible uncertainty of having Carter Mulkins over for dinner.

“Well?”

Mom is standing in the doorway of the living room looking down on me in my supine position on the couch. Some small part of me may still have been hoping that I could just never open the front door, but with the additional pressure of my mother, I suppose I don’t have any choice. I get up from the couch, walk over to the door, swallow hard, grit my teeth, and pull the door open.

“Hey, Jackson!”

Carter is beaming like always, and it only takes about one second for me to melt into a puddle of awe and awkwardness in front of him. He’s wearing dark jeans, right on the verge of being skinny jeans - fashionable but not too tight, but still tight enough to cling to some of the muscles and curves of his legs. His grey v-neck is in the same ballpark of fit, not obnoxiously tight, but enough so that I get a clear look at the faint outlines of his nipples against the chest of his shirt. It’s perfectly understated, and I’m hit like a freight train with how incredibly erotic and sexy he can look without looking like he’s trying one bit.

“Uh… hi, Carter.” I stand awkwardly in the doorway for a few seconds before realizing that I’m preventing him from entering my house. “Sorry,” I say, stepping out of the way. “Come in, welcome…”

Carter steps through the front door, smiley as ever, and comes into our living room. Mom immediately swoops over from the doorway and introduces herself.

“You must be Carter,” she says. “I’m Jackson’s mother. Jackson had told me so much about you. I’m so glad you could come by for dinner.” She’s being nice. Too nice if you ask me. It’s almost as if she knows something.

“Nice to meet you, Ms. Willard,” Carter says politely.

I feel like my mom’s friendliness is cloying in situations like this, the way being set on fire would be too much if you were feeling a little chilly, but Carter doesn’t seem bothered by it.

“Did Jim drop you off? I was hoping he might stop in to say hello.”

“Uh…” Carter looks down at the ground somewhat embarrassed. “No, he was busy getting ready for the party, so his uh… his driver dropped me off.”

Carter’s family has a driver? I’ve heard of kids at school who have them, but he doesn’t seem the type.

“Well, that’s no problem,” Mom says without missing a beat. “Make yourself at home. Dinner’s almost ready, so you can just hang out for a few minutes while I grab the last few things.”

Carter nods in affirmation, and with that, Mom swoops back to the kitchen to finish her cooking. I didn’t ask, but it smells to me like we might be having baked pork chops tonight.

Now that Mom is gone, I can finally get it off my chest.

“Your driver?” I ask incredulously as Carter takes off his shoes.

“Shut up,” he says. I can see his cheeks turning a little red, and it’s good in a way to see that he thinks it’s almost as crazy as I do. “My dad has him through his company for driving between meetings. He’s working tonight and my dad can’t get away, so he brought me here.”

I make the snootiest face I can in response, and Carter cracks up. I know that he’s wealthy, but it’s good that we can joke about it. As I look around our living room though, I suddenly see it in a new light. I tend not to think much about our living room, and I mean that in the best way. It’s well furnished and comfortable, with a decent sized TV and a good stereo. But after being in Carter’s house and hearing about his driver, I’m suddenly reassessing all of our possessions as being old, out of fashion, and shabby.

“This is nice,” he says looking around the room, almost as if he was reading my mind and wants to put it at ease.

“We only have one living room,” I tease, “and we had to lay off our driver ages ago.”

Carter chuckles a little, but my comment obviously wasn’t quite as funny as I thought it was. Shit. I flop back down on the couch in defeat.

Instead of sitting down, Carter does what anyone would do when they enter someone’s house for the first time. He starts looking at everything. The pictures on the wall, the books on the bookcase, and the magazines on the coffee table. It’s the sort of stuff that goes unnoticed by me on a day to day basis, but now that Carter’s here I’m suddenly forced to see everything with fresh eyes.

He finally stops when he sees my copy of Lonesome Dove sitting on the end table where I threw it when the doorbell rang. Picking up the book, he smirks and looks back over to me.

“How’s this going?” he asks sarcastically.

I roll my eyes and shake my head. “I think I only fell asleep three times reading it today, so I’d say it’s going pretty well.”

Carter laughs, a nice genuine laugh with that million dollar smile attached. That’s more like it. I don’t consider myself a funny person, at least not the way someone like Robert is on the swim team. But anytime I make Carter laugh, it makes my day.

“That about sums it up,” he agrees.

Before I can embarrass myself any further, Mom calls us for dinner. Carter and I head in and take a seat at the table, where we are loudly and discourteously joined by the twins a moment later. We go through introductions, at least as much as you can with the two strangest twelve year olds you’ve ever met, and then Mom lays out our dinner and joins us at the table.

I was right about the pork chops, and buttered noodles, sweet corn, applesauce, and salad are joining us at the table as well. This menu is straight out of my grandma’s cookbook, and for the first ten minutes of dinner, nobody says a word. These pork chops are good. Keeping the twins quiet for ten whole minutes is no small feat.

Finally, Mom starts up the conversation with the usual.

“What did the two of you learn at school today?” she asks. I look over to her and I can see that she’s already bracing herself for what is almost sure to come next.

“Nothing!” the twins chorus joyously.

We go through this every night, almost like some sort of family tradition. I feel a little self conscious that Carter is here to witness it, but there’s no avoiding it.

Mom is unfazed. “Nothing…” she starts.

“Doesn’t count as an answer!” they finish together.

I catch Carter’s eye and he looks like he’s balancing somewhere between baffled and amused, a normal place to be when dealing with Randy and Sarah. He loosens up when he sees my grin. This is how Mom and I entertain ourselves at dinner.

“We learned that people in Japan eat squid ink!” says Randy.

“And then we saw a picture of a cuttlefish!” Sarah adds.

“See,” Mom says, “that’s hardly nothing at all. What did you think of the cuttlefish?”

Randy makes a face that indicates exactly what he thought of it. He wasn’t a fan.

“I want one,” Sarah counters.

As usual, I’m not sure whether they’re joking or not, but I suppose it doesn’t much matter. I don’t see Mom letting them get a pet cuttlefish anytime soon.

I look to Carter again, and I can tell he’s relaxing a little more. Once you realize that it’s all a dog and pony show with the twins, you can sit back and enjoy it. I probably should have briefed Carter a little more before he came over, but unless you see them in action, I’m not sure I could explain what it’s like to have dinner with those two.

“So, Carter,” Mom says changing the subject, “when does your father leave for his big trip?”

It turns out that Jim Mulkins was visiting my mom’s clinic to get a few vaccinations for a trip he’s taking to a law conference in Thailand. Jim is a trial lawyer, and from what Mom has told me, he’s managed to sign up for all sorts of conferences that take place in exotic locations around the globe.

“He heads out on Monday,” Carter answers. “With all the flying, I think he’ll be gone almost the whole week.”

“So it’ll just be you and your mom, huh?”

“Yep.”

That’s an unusually short reply from Carter, and something about the way he says it makes me think that the conversation is over. Mom unfortunately doesn’t know him quite as well as I do, and she keeps right on going.

“What does you mother do? Does she work?”

I can instantly see that my hunch was right. Carter fidgets in his chair like he just sat on something uncomfortable. For whatever reason, this isn’t something he wants to talk about.

“She doesn’t,” he finally says, looking directly in the space between me and Mom, avoiding any eye contact around the table. “My dad works,” he concludes, hoping to put an end to the conversation.

Luckily, Mom picks up on it, and I can tell from a quick look at her face that she isn’t going to hound Carter any further on the subject. Unluckily, however, neither of us are able to speak quickly enough to stop the twins.

“But what does she do?” asks Sarah.

“And nothing doesn’t count as an answer!” Randy chimes in helpfully.

I turn to look at Carter and am suddenly torn between two possible routes of action. In the first, I leap to Carter’s defense and help him out. I could lightly scold the twins for being nosy. I could change the subject and pretend they never asked their prying question. Or I could bring up the possibility of dessert, a surefire way to distract any ten year old.

That would be the nice thing to do, and you might even go so far as to say that it would be the right thing to do. But something makes me hesitate, and I realize I don’t want to stop the conversation. I have my own curiosity about Carter’s parents, ever since I went over there and didn’t meet them. I can assume that his dad was busy with work and can’t be bothered sometimes. But Carter’s mom? She’s still a wild card. And so, with Carter on the hot seat, I decide to sit back and watch what happens.

After only a few seconds, the look of apprehension and anxiety on Carter’s face is replaced by the hint of a smirk, and he smugly fires back at the twins.

“She does a lot of grown up things, so I don’t think you guys would understand.”

It was an expert deflection. I couldn’t have done it better myself.

While most kids might react with an uproar, ours react with a sort of admiration.” I see a look of defeat in their eyes, but also one of respect. They have been mastered at their own game, and Carter will be held in high esteem with the utmost respect, at least until the next opportunity arises to unseat him, likely within a few minutes.

The rest of dinner goes smoothly, and by the time we finish our pineapple cake - one of my mom’s greatest and most reliable concoctions - I’m feeling a hundred times more relaxed about having Carter over for dinner. We’re all talking a lot and Carter is clearly enjoying the company of Mom, and even the twins, who can be an intense litmus test for anyone who comes over to visit.

I try to clear the plates off the table, but Mom waves me away. She inclines her head towards Carter, silently instructing me to go play with my friend instead of helping with the cleanup. I can live with that.

Carter and I head back to the living room, where we link our Nintendo DS’s together and play a few rounds of Mario Kart while the twins do their homework. It’s the sort of thing I do on an average night. Between the video games and listening to Randy and Sarah’s conversation, it almost always makes for an entertaining evening. It makes me happy every time I look up and see a smile on Carter’s face. He’s liking it here.

After about an hour, Mom comes in to shoo the twins off to bed, and our electronic battles intensify as the room is now clear of distraction. The cup tournament we’re playing goes back and forth, all the way up to the final race, which ends in a flurry of lightning bolts, banana peels, and turtle shells. By the narrowest margin of victory, I come out ahead.

I close my DS and set it on the coffee table. As the winner, I feel this might be a good time to stop for the night. With me coming out ahead, that is. My victorious musings, however, are interrupted by the sound of Carter’s phone.

“Hey,” he says politely. If I had to guess I’d say it was a parent on the other end. “Just finished dinner. Uh huh. Yeah. Uh huh.”

At his second ‘uh huh,’ his face screws up. “I’m not sure, I’d have to ask. Are you sure that… Well, I can ask, hang on.”

Carter puts his hand over the mouthpiece and bites his lip. He’s about to ask me for a favor. That’s definitely his favor-asking face, and I make a mental note that I’d love to see more of it.

“So,” he begins, “our driver probably isn’t able to make it back out tonight. I guess he was invited to dinner and he probably shouldn’t drive anymore tonight.” He hesitates and looks down, embarrassed. “If it isn’t a big deal, is there any way I could maybe stay over here tonight?”

Considering that this is exactly how over ninety percent of my fantasies start, I think I’m ok with him staying the night.

“Yeah,” I say, “that’s no problem.” I pause as a new thought enters my brain. “I mean, I have to ask…”

“It’s no problem,” Mom says as she comes down the stairs. “Make yourself at home.”

Carter and I both turn to look at her, and she suddenly looks embarrassed that she was eavesdropping.

“Sorry,” she says guiltily. “I was in the hallway for a second listening if the twins were in bed yet and I heard you talking.”

Carter and I both laugh and he gets back on the phone to tell his dad he’ll be staying the night with us. With the new plan in place, we decide to go and get situated for the night. After a quick goodnight to my mom, who sits down to watch one of her shows, we head upstairs for the night.

“Well,” I say, “here it is.” I sweep my hands forward, presenting my room to Carter.

Earlier today I cleaned up my room since I knew Carter was coming over, but I didn’t actually expect for him to spend any amount of time up here. With the sudden change of plans, however, it’s almost like I’m noticing my own room for the first time, and I wonder what Carter is thinking about it. You can tell a lot about a person from the way they live.

When you go in Ko’s room, for example, you get a good idea of what he’s like. The anime posters on the walls, the models and toys everywhere - you immediately can guess that he’s a nerd, and that his brain runs at about a million miles per hour. But nothing is cluttered or out of place, so you can also see that he’s diligent and serious in a way. I’d say that’s Ko in a nutshell.

If you look at my room, you’d probably think that I was boring and normal. It’s usually pretty clean - my mom wouldn’t have it any other way - but there’s always a few things lying around. Today, obviously, I picked up my clothes and tidied up my desk a little more than normal.

I don’t have a ton of stuff in my room, and it’s not especially decorated. I have a poster of the US Men’s National Team, so you’d guess that I like soccer. Then there’s a few pictures of my family, a smaller soccer poster, a few postcards from friends, and a cool painting that Ko made last year. Overall, nothing too exciting. At least not compared to the massive entertainment center in Carter’s room.

I look over at him and see if I can glean what his impression is. I expect him to be looking at something in my room, like maybe my family photos or Ko’s painting, but instead he’s made his way over to the window and is looking out at our small but tidy backyard, barely illuminated by the light above our back door.

“It’s nice to have a room with windows,” he says, turning back to me and smiling.

“I guess,” I reply.

It’s true that Carter’s room doesn’t have any, but he has all that other awesome stuff. I can’t imagine being especially bummed about my lack of windows when I have all the newest gaming consoles right at my fingertips.

“No,” he says sincerely, “this is nice. It’s really…” he pauses, searching for the word. “Normal.”

Normal? I don’t want to be normal. I want to be awesome and cool. I want to be dark and mysterious. I want to be sexy and outrageous. I don’t expect to actually live up to any of those descriptions, but anything is better than ‘normal.’

Carter must have noticed my reaction, because he jumps in to explain himself.

“Normal’s not a bad thing,” he assures me. “It’s good.”

Despite my best attempts to play it cool, I still must not look convinced.

“I get it,” he continues, “I have all that stuff in my room, and my house is big, and whatever. But this is so much better.”

“How so?” I ask, raising my brows at him.

“Having dinner with your family tonight was normal too, and that’s really cool. It’s not something that would ever happen at my house. So that and this,” he says gesturing to the rest of my room, “is what I always expect everyone else is like at their house. It’s normal, and that’s awesome.”

“I’m sure you could get a room with a window at your house if you really wanted,” I say teasingly. Seriously, there must be at least five bedrooms in that place, and Carter’s an only child.

He laughs in response. “I’ll keep my basement room.”

“So,” I venture to ask, “what is normal like at your house?”

“It isn’t,” he answers without hesitation. “Everything is just… what is is.”

Now it’s my turn to laugh. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Look at all this,” he says gesturing around my room.

Look at all what? I’m looking at the same thing he is, and I’m not seeing anything special. A bed, a dresser, a nightstand. That hardly stacks up next to a 55” TV and a PS4. I’m unable to hide my bewilderment, and Carter shakes his head at me as though I’m missing something completely obvious.

“This is how it’s supposed to be. Like, I bet your mom found this house and thought, ‘This will be a great bedroom for my kids,’ and ‘This kitchen will be great for cooking meals for my family.’ The whole point of your house is what’s happening in it.

“Nothing at my house is like that. It’s just a huge building with a lot of stuff in it. I took over the basement because no one used it for anything. I asked for a TV and some video games, and then I stuck those in the basement too. Now it’s sort of my space. But it’s the only room in our whole house that means anything to anyone.”

I’m not sure what to say to that. I don’t think he’s wrong about my house, but I never thought about it in that way. I guess he has a point when he says that it’s all so ‘normal.’ It really is. It’s so normal that it never occurs to me that other kids I know who seem so similar on the outside might have something totally different.

“I’m sure something happens in your house that has a purpose,” I shoot back at him. “Tonight your dad is having people over. That’s something.”

“Is it?” he asks.

Is it? That’s a good question. I honestly don’t know the answer. There’s a lot Carter and I have never talked about. Even though I feel the way I do about him, there’s a lot in his life I don’t know anything about.. I couldn’t tell you the first thing about his family, and while it’s easy to write it off as ‘it never came up,’ I’ve never asked.

“What’s it like?” I finally ask.

Carter shakes his head. “Not like this.”

He doesn’t offer anything else, but I vow to remain silent as long as it takes to get him to continue. It takes a full ten seconds before Carter laughs and starts talking again.

“You could probably tell at dinner that I didn’t want to talk about it, huh?”

“A little bit,” I say. Carter cocks his head to the side incredulously. “Ok, yeah a lot bit,” I admit.

“Do you really want to know?” he asks. Any trace of a smile has gone. He looks serious. Like he did at the party when we were talking in the spare bedroom. This is a big deal for him.

I nod and sit next to him on the bed. He doesn’t recoil or move away at all, but he doesn’t look anywhere near comfortable. It’s not our closeness that bothers him though, it’s just talking about his family.

“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” I say. “But it seems like it matters to you, and you uh… you matter to me. As a friend,” I quickly add.

That gets a little smile from him.

“Ok.” He sighs deeply and then continues. “My dad works and my mom drinks. That’s about it.” He sees the look on my face and decides to go on. “They’re not bad or anything like that, but... we’re not a family. Not like yours. We’re just three people who live in a big house full of stuff. And that’s not the same thing.”

Nodding in understanding, I smile reassuringly at Carter.

Carter suddenly looks up at me with a strange twinkle in his eye, and I can tell we’re done talking about his family.

“Since we talked about something I didn’t want to, now you have to talk about something that you don’t want to.”

The melancholy, introspective Carter is gone, and the sassy, perky Carter has taken his place in the course of an instant.

“Uh, ok?” I sputter weakly. He’s caught me off guard with this one.

“Who are you into?” He nudges me in the ribs with his elbow as he asks, and it makes me feel weirdly like his kid brother all of a sudden. I can’t let him push me around like this.

“What do you mean?” I ask, playing dumb.

He laughs. He knows that I know exactly what he means. “Are you into anybody at school?”

I shrug as innocently as possible. “No, not really.”

He looks skeptical, and I hope it didn’t come off as even half as big of a lie as it was. I only have the biggest crush in the world on the boy sitting right next to me. No big deal.

“What?” I continue playing dumb, hoping he won’t make a big deal about this. Even more, I hope this conversation doesn’t end with me tearfully confessing my true feelings to Carter. I need to stay strong.

“You seriously aren’t into anybody?”

Why’s he pressing the issue so hard?

“No, I swear,” I respond. “Not right now.”

“Ok,” he says, throwing up his hands. “I just thought that maybe you and Katy had something going on.”

I try not to burst out laughing. Even if I wasn’t gay, that would be ridiculous. We’ve been such good friends for so long, there’s no way it could ever happen.

“What’s so funny about that?” Carter asks. “You guys hang out all the time, and she’s definitely cute enough.”

He has a point there, Katy is very cute. If only I liked girls.

“No,” I say, “we’ve been friends for ages, but we’re not… dating or anything like that.” I think for a minute of how to explain it to someone who doesn’t know, and finally settle on “It would be like trying to date my sister.”

Carter laughs and seems to get it, but it seems to have only whet his appetite for more questions..

“But you’re not into anybody? No one at all?”

“No.”

“Hey,” he says holding up his hands in defense, “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. I mean, look at me and Beth. That’s not something that…” He trails off and shrugs. “Whatever, we’ve already talked about that.”

He has a point. At least I’m not dating Beth. I don’t think it’s exactly what Carter was trying to get across, but that’s my takeaway.

“Don’t worry about it,” I reassure him. “It’d be one thing if I was crushing on someone and all that, but I’m not interested in anybody right now, so I’m not too worried about it.”

“With as much action as I get, I might as well be single,” he jokes, playfully grabbing at his crotch. Even an innocuous joke like that sends an extra burst of blood down into mine, and I can feel it start to swell. Thankfully I’m wearing jeans, so it won’t be too noticeable even if I do get hard.

When Carter pulls his hand away, it goes straight up to his mouth, where it covers up a big yawn. Naturally, I see it and yawn straight back at him.

“Good,” he says, “I’m glad it’s not just me. It’s not even that late, but I’m getting tired.”

“We can get ready for bed and then chill for a while,” I suggest. “Let me grab you a toothbrush and stuff from downstairs. Do you need anything else?”

Carter shakes his head. “A toothbrush would be great, thanks.”

“I’ll be back in second.”

I grab my pajamas and run downstairs to our main bathroom where we keep all the stuff like that. I go through most of the drawers before I find what I’m looking for - a nice, new toothbrush. I make a mental note to buy a new one to replace it next time I’m at the store.

I slip off my jeans and underwear and am starting to pull up my plaid pajama pants when a thought makes me stop. I’m going to be sleeping right next to Carter. Who knows what might happen to me during the night. One errant thought is all it might take to tent these pants up, and I don’t want to make things weird. Plus there’s the almost unavoidable possibility of morning wood when we get up tomorrow.

No, on second thought I need to do better than this. I put my boxer briefs back on and then put on the pajama pants. With 2 layers on, I should be protected from any boner-related mishaps. Feeling more comfortable now, I grab my jeans and the toothbrush and head back up to the second floor.

When I get back to my room, Carter’s nowhere to be seen, but the bathroom door is closed. He’s probably in there getting ready for bed. I suddenly realize he wasn’t planning on staying over tonight and that he won’t have anything to sleep in. I remember the pajama pants he let me wear last time I was at his house and smile at the thought. They were more than just comfortable.

I open up my dresser and rummage through, looking for a good pair of sweatpants or maybe some shorts that I can offer Carter. I only have one other pair of actual PJ pants, and I’ve worn them a few times already. Something about Carter wearing something I’ve already had on turns me on a little bit, but I’m not sure it would be cool to offer him some dirty pants. I hear the bathroom door open, and I’m just about to settle on a pair of red basketball shorts when I’m suddenly interrupted by what might be the greatest sentence I’ve ever heard in my life.

“Is it cool if I just sleep in my boxers?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say, “no prob…” I try not to let my eyes bulge out of my head too far as I turn around to see Carter wearing absolutely nothing but a pair of short, blue boxers. They cover just the right amount of his smooth muscular thighs. Plenty to see, but they still leave a little bit to the imagination. And my imagination is already running wild.

And that’s not even talking about the rest of his body. I’ve seen it plenty of times at swim practice when he’s wearing even less than this, but it’s still an incredible sight to see. His abs, his pecs, his arms - he’s like a Greek statue, the epitome of male beauty. And now here he is, standing just five feet away from me, alone together in my bedroom.

“What?” he asks me, grinning like the damn Cheshire Cat. He has to know the effect he’s having right now.

“Nothing,” I sputter, “You just surprised me.” There’s no way he’s going to buy it.

“You sure about that?”

I look up at Carter and meet his gaze with a quizzical look on my face. He responds by nodding his head downwards and shifting his gaze to my waist, a slight smile starting to play at the edges of his lips. I glance down with horror to see that my plan of boxer briefs and pajama pants hasn’t done much to hide the growing bulge within. It would be worse without them, but it’s still not exactly discreet.

I reach down to cover up and start to apologize for making it awkward, but Cater stops me.

“What’s the issue?” he asks. “You don’t have to cover it up.”

He’s smiling like it’s not a big deal, but I still feel weird about it. I slowly pull my hand away, and look up to see that Carter’s still looking down at the bulge in my pants, and he still has that same half-smile on his face. The fact that Carter’s looking down at my package makes it even harder. If something doesn’t give, I’m going to have a serious problem on my hands. Or in my pants, at least.

“I owe you one.”

Carter steps towards me, and before I can even connect the dots and realize what he just said, his hand slips down into my waistband and grabs onto my now raging erection. As soon as he makes contact, I can feel the last bit of the blood in my head race down my veins and pump straight into my cock. I feel faint. Carter is grabbing my dick.

Unwieldy as it is in this state, Carter has to reach his other hand down to maneuver it around to pull free of both of my waistbands. He lets go as it’s released, and my penis stands straight up, hard as a rock, pointing directly at the ceiling. I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever been this hard before.

“Holy shit…” Carter murmurs, reaching his hand back down to grasp the iron rod he just pulled out of my pants. The way he says it turns me on even more, as though he’s impressed by what he sees. I usually measure in right around six inches, but right now I’m easily pushing six and a half, and my dick looks full to the point of bursting.

He starts lightly stroking his hand up and down my hard tool, running it across the head as he reaches the top, then back down to base. Every time he goes over the sensitive head, I shudder involuntarily. This feels amazing. I love doing it to myself - I mean, who doesn’t - but having someone else beat your meat feels ridiculously good. What have I been missing all these years?

Best of all, though? It’s Carter who’s doing it. And not just doing it, but doing it well. Sam’s blowjob was amazing, I’m not going to lie. As far as I can tell, he was an expert, and everything he did felt great. But even though Carter doesn’t have those skills, there’s something so incredibly raw and electrifying about him giving me my first blowjob.

He strokes gently for a minute or two, then suddenly tightens his grip and pulls down, revealing the sensitive head of my uncut penis. I gasp out loud when he does it, and I hear him chuckle a little bit. I remember how it felt when I did it to him. It was cool having power over someone like that, and I know he must be thinking the same thing. At this point, I am putty in his hands.

He softly runs his hand up and down a few more times before lightly pushing me back towards the bed. I catch his drift and first sit, then ultimately lie back on my bed. The whole time his hand never leaves my cock, as though he’s gently steering me down into position with a joystick controller. Now he leans over me, jerking my raging erection up and down. I’m in heaven.

Awkwardly leaning over me, Carter gives a few more strokes before kneeling down at the edge of the bed where he can get a more comfortable angle from which to work his magic. I’m propped up on my elbows watching him work, and he looks entranced by what he’s doing. His face is only a foot away from my rock hard dick, and the view from where he is must be pretty good. I make a mental note to try this on him next time I get a chance.

Carter starts to increase his speed, and I feel a tingling start to rise in my groin. I want this to last as long as possible, so I lay back on the bed and try to prolong the experience as best I can. Not looking at it seems to help, but I’m still not sure how successful I’ll be, because Carter is speeding up his pace, and I can tell I’m only getting closer and closer to blowing my load.

Suddenly, he reaches up with his other hand and grabs my balls. As he does it, one of his fingers slips lightly past them, brushing ever so slightly up along my taint. Whether it’s on purpose or an accident, it’s way more than I can handle, and I moan loudly as I feel the building pressure reach a critical point.

The combination of his rhythmic stroking, a nice cup around my balls, and the lightest little pressure on that sensitive spot beyond sends me flying over the edge with one of the hottest, most intense orgasms I’ve ever felt. I feel the first blast of cum shoot up to my chin, and then pump after pump fly onto my chest and stomach. It feels like a lot, and as I come down from the high of my orgasm, Carter confirms it.

“Damn, dude!” he says in response to the deluge covering my torso. It makes me nervous but at the same time excited that he’s looking down at me all covered in cum, almost like he’s impressed or even proud of his handiwork.

“What?” I say coyly. Something in me wants to hear him say it. I want to hear him talk about what just happened, to talk about jerking me off and how he just made me shoot my load all over everything. I want to hear him say how hot and huge my load was. I could probably get hard again in a second if I heard him say something like that.

“You uhhhh… you just made a huge mess.”

“No,” I shoot back playfully, “you made a huge mess. I didn’t do anything.”

I can’t help but smile as I see his cheeks turn red. He didn’t say anything sexy like I was hoping, but nothing makes me happier than seeing Carter get flustered or embarrassed.

As I get up from the bed and search for something with which to clean up, Carter sits on the bed and watches me. Again, I’m stunned to see that he’s just openly looking at me with no clothes on. I mean, this the third time we’ve jerked off together, but it’s never been so open like this. We’ve just done it and moved on without saying anything. Now we’re talking about it, and he’s making no pretense about looking at my cock.

“When’s the last time you jerked off?” he asks.

“I dunno,” I answer, finding a shirt in my hamper to suit my purpose, “actually…”

“What?” he asks.

“It was at your house,” I say, finishing with on last wipe and then tucking my now deflated member back into my pajama pants.

I think for a second, but am pretty sure I haven’t jerked off at all this week. That’s rare for me to go that long, but I had a busy week and didn’t have a lot of time just chilling around my room, which is usually how it happens. As they say, “Idle hands spend time at the genitals.” Maybe no one says that, but it’s still true.

Carter looks shocked. “Are you serious?” he asks incredulously.

“Yeah,” I respond, shrugging. “I mean, I usually do it every couple of days, but we had all those papers and stuff this week, plus soccer and meetings for drama. I just didn’t get around to it, I guess.” I ask Carter the obvious next question. “How often do you?”

“I do it every day. I can’t imagine going a whole week without it.”

“From talking to other guys at school, I think I’m probably the weird one,” I say. “And it’s rare to go a whole week. I just get so…”

“Pent up?” he finishes, glancing over at the shirt I used to wipe up the mess we just made.

“Yeah,” I admit, “I probably should take care of that a little more often.” Carter is so comfortable talking about it, I get a little bolder. “It feels really good having someone else do it, though,” I say.

Carter blushes a little bit at that, but he doesn’t recoil. “I can’t argue with that. Last week was…” He had a word on the tip of his tongue, but it seems like he was reluctant to say it. After a few seconds he breaks down. “It was awesome,” he says, smiling guiltily at the idea of liking it.

“Yeah?” I say with a little bit of pride.

I’m not sure how it’s possible since I just came about five minutes ago, but I’m starting to get horny again.

“Well, if you’re down to keep doing this kind of stuff,” I say, “I don’t see anything wrong with it. I mean, we all get pent up, and it feels good.” I bite my lip nervously in anticipation of Carter’s reaction. I hope I didn’t go too far.

More than anything, I want to ask him about Beth. He must have some thoughts on how us fooling around with each other affects his relationship with his girlfriend. For him, I’m sure it’s just about “getting off together,” or whatever you might call it, but I’m even more sure that Beth wouldn’t see it that way. Bringing it up at a time like this, however, when he just made me cum five minutes ago, seems like a surefire way to ruin a good evening.

Carter sighs thoughtfully and hesitates for a suspenseful second before replying. “Like I said last time, I trust you, Jackson. I can’t really see doing this with anybody else, but with you it doesn’t seem like a big deal.”

I shrug as nonchalantly as possible. “Totally. It’s just, whatever.”

“Yeah,” he says, “it’s whatever. And I trust you.”

It’s bittersweet to hear all that. Carter trusts me. I’m different than everybody else. He likes what we’re doing.

But it can’t mean anything, or it has to stop.

The ultimate blessing, and the ultimate curse.

Unfortunate as that may be, there’s no reason to sit here moping. Curse aside, there’s a big old blessing poking its way out of the front of Carter’s pants right now, and he more or less just gave me permission to do what needs to be done.

“So,” I say as suggestively as I’ll allow myself, “there’s no reason for me not to do this?” I reach my right hand across to Carter and squeeze his half hard dick through the thin fabric of his boxers. It starts plumping up even more rapidly in response to my fingers, and I could almost swear that I can feel the heat radiating from it.

Carter responds with nothing but a slight gasp, and I take it as a complete acceptance of what’s to come. I keep kneading his growing erection through his underwear until I feel that it’s about as hard as it’s going to get. I pull my hand away and admire my handiwork. Carters’ blue boxers are tented up about as far as they can go, with the head poking at the the fly, practically threatening to pop the button off of them.

As straight as I think Carter is, there must be something I do to him that makes him like this. He’s been semi hard for the last ten minutes, and it only took a few squeezes to get him to this point. Whether it’s conditioning, anticipation, or just the plain and simple horniness of a teenage boy, it’s satisfying to know that he’s hard for me right now. Not porn this time, but me.

I reach back down to Carter’s bursting underwear and slowly push the button of his fly back into its buttonhole. The second it pops through, the gates open and Carter’s bulging, magnificent cock springs forward through the fly. In this light I finally have a good view of it, and I take a second to soak it in, all seven inches of perfect, cut man meat. I could look at it all day.

My eyes have hardly had their fill, but I don’t want to keep Carter waiting, so I lightly wrap my fingers around the base and start slowly tugging back and forth. I sneak a glance up at Carter’s face and he looks mesmerized, watching my hand go to work on his dick. It was cool watching Carter while he jerked me off, so I know exactly how he must be feeling right now.

On my next stroke I decide to mix things up, so I extend the motion all the way to the head of Carter’s cock and drag my fingers lightly across his engorged head. It’s beautiful and so swollen with blood, so firm under my fingertips. I know mine gets like this too, but it’s awesome to see the whole thing without any foreskin. The head is so prominent and erotic. I keep working my fingers across the ridge at the base of the head and then across his sensitive glans, and I can tell Carter’s loving it. He bucks his hips ever so slightly and then lays back on the bed, unable to keep sitting.

Anxious to see even more, I stop what I’m doing for just a second to hook my thumbs in the waistband of Carter’s boxers and tug them down. He lifts his butt off the bed and I slide them off, revealing Carter’s flawless body in all its glory. Even in porn I’ve never seen anyone this perfect. From his chest, across his abs, V-lines and into his shaved crotch, this boy is nothing short of a god. And for the next few minutes, he’s all mine.

Sitting next to the naked boy of my dreams as he lays on my bed, I resume stroking. Being completely shaved, I have a great view of everything. There’s nothing in the way at all! I’d say Carter clocks in just a little bit longer than me at right around seven inches. I might be a little bit thicker than he is, but I can’t complain. Truthfully, his cock seems to be exactly the right size for my hand. And maybe other things as well...

His hairless balls hang down past that and are the perfect complements to his perfect cock. They’re about the size of walnuts, and I can’t help myself - I reach out with my other hand and give them a feel as I continue to jerk up and down. They’re silky soft and wonderful, and Carter moans lightly as I expand my territory to another sensitive area.

Based on the noises he’s making, Carter is having a great time, but it’s hard to imagine he’s enjoying this nearly as much as I am. Leaning over a little bit, I have my face even closer to Carter’s body, and I’m loving what I’m seeing. Full access and a clear view of the most beautiful sets of tackle I’ve ever seen in my life, attached to the most beautiful boy I can imagine. What could be better than this?

Ok, well, I can think of one thing, but there’s no way.

Right?

There’s no way in hell I can do what I want to do right now.

I mean, I’m only about a foot away at this point. Looking over at Carter’s face, his eyes are closed. He won’t even know until it’s too late.

No, there’s no way! That takes things to a whole new level, and I’m not sure it’s a place that either of us are ready to go. Once again, if I was Sam, I wouldn’t even think twice about it, but I’m not. I don’t have that sort of courage, or whatever you want to call it. I can’t do something like that.

But then again, Sam did it to me. He somehow made it seem cool and casual, like it wasn’t even a big deal. He made sure I knew that I was in control, and that he would stop at any time, no hard feelings. It wasn’t just the words he said, it was the whole vibe. I never felt uncomfortable, even though we were crossing a threshold that I would never have dared to cross on my own.

And now here I am. Even farther along the path than Sam and I were when he made his move. So what’s stopping me? I already have Carter hard, and I’m already jerking him off. Is Ko right about it after all? Just get a boy hard and he’s all yours?

He trusts me. He said it before. It’s not a big deal. I can do this.

Bold action.

Bold action.

Bold action!

“Tell me if you want me to stop.”

Sam’s words coming out of my mouth. They sound natural and calming, just like they’re supposed to. Here goes nothing.

“Why would I want you to… aghhhhh!”

Carter’s question ends with a sudden moan, because I lean forward, open as wide as I can, and wrap my lips around Carter’s rock hard dick.