The English Year - 23. Sex and Laundry

“Mike,” I sighed as I opened the door on Friday evening and let him into my bedroom. I had been anticipating that moment since he’d called me on Thursday, in the middle of my biggest Halloween Hangover to date, and told me he was off duty from Friday until Sunday.

Most cadets used what they called Shore Leave to go home and rest up before the hell that was their last six weeks of school. But Mike had other plans, he told me, and with his most wicked voice to date, asked me to get ready, do my stretches, and prepare mentally for whatever it was that he had in store.

And prepare was exactly what I did. I spent Thursday studying, and successfully keeping my mind off the Brit. On Friday, I woke up, took a jog, got some work done, showered as thoroughly as possible, and waited, making some key decisions before Mike to arrived that evening.

One key decision was that I was done with Pete. Finished. He was gone from my heart, but most importantly I wasn’t going to let him into my head. He’d shown who he was really was, and that person wasn’t who I wanted.

And so I let him go. But it wasn’t that easy. I knew that since I couldn’t have him, if I was going to get over him, I’d need to hate him. It wouldn’t be as easy as deciding to ice him like the last times; that never worked out. When you love someone, when you’ve loved someone, the fall is much harder than that. And so while I knew I had to let him go, I knew that it wouldn’t be pretty, and I needed to be honest with myself and with Mike about that.

Speaking of Mike, I decided that day that I wasn’t going to use him in order to get back at Pete. He would be a factor, sure, but only because I liked him and wanted him in my life. I was going to spend time with Mike because I genuinely enjoyed spending time with him, and it didn’t hurt, ever, to be near someone who loved you. How Pete reacted, how he felt about Mike and me was his business, but it had nothing to do with the Cadet and my relationship.

That was made clear in my mind as I went through the motions of actually reading over Reading Days.

Lastly, in order to prepare for Mike’s weekend visit, I laid the groundwork for as little interruption as possible. I’d been invited to the Homestead with some of my KD and Kappa friends, along with their Beta and Sigma Chi boyfriends, but I laid on thick how behind I was in school as an excuse not to go. In truth, I was glad to not have to go: the Homestead was an expensive ski lodge in West Virginia, and the first snow hadn’t even hit yet. My parents would have killed me had I charged the trip on my emergency credit card, and I could think of a ton of other things I would have wanted to get away with instead.

I told my frat brothers that I was going into hibernation mode that weekend and only to knock on my door in case of emergency. Hutch and Brian knew exactly what that meant, that if the room was rocking, not to come a-knocking, and I’m sure they shared the same advice with Austin and ‘Berto.

And so after almost two full days of anticipation, Mike finally walked through my door, a smile on his face, and two bottles of champagne in his hands.

“Corbs,” he whispered, stepping through the door and immediately leaning in for a kiss. I pulled him in quickly before anyone had a chance to see him, slammed my door, and allowed Mike to slam me against the wall.

“Oh fuck,” I sighed, pulling Mike’s neck towards me. He set the bottles down, along with his backpack, and physically lifted me off the ground against the wall. His mouth buried into my neck, and I held on to him for support, using my tongue to play with his ears.

“God, I thought I’d never get to leave campus,” he panted, his entire body ground into me as my back arched against the wall.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I smiled. He smiled as his lips found mine, and his tongue slowly, passionately, explored the inside of my mouth.

Mike had come a long way since I’d met him, and I almost couldn’t believe how far. When I first met Mike, I’m sure I was simply a source of curiosity for him. A gay guy that he found cool, intriguing. I must have piqued his interest, but at the start, I’m sure that was all that it was. Interesting.

And now, almost two years later, he was pushing me into the wall, giving me one of the most passionate kisses I’d ever felt, my cock growing impossibly hard between my stomach and his abs, and he couldn’t have been more hungry to see me.

We kissed like that for a while, Mike physically taking all of his anticipation out on me, as he pinned me to my wall. I grabbed the back of his head, insatiably pulling him towards me, one leg wrapped around his waist and the other just inches off the ground. Mike was supporting my entire body weight, and because he was pressed up against me, I could feel every measure of his dick growing harder and harder against my thigh.

“Let’s go to the bed,” I panted, pushing him and hitting the floor. Mike pulled me by the shirt. I lifted my arms and let him take off my loose fitting t. A second later, I did the same with his, revealing the body that had its own special way of driving me crazy. I gave Mike a grin as I pushed him back towards my bed. I rubbed his stomach with the back of my hand, bit down on my bottom lip, and shoved him backwards. He flopped onto my mattress, his dick straining through the fabric of his jeans.

“Come here,” he moaned, his voice low and guttural. I crawled slowly on top of him, one knee between his legs, the other on the outside of his thigh. I hunched my back and dove straight for his lips. Mike moaned into me. It was like our lips were two puzzle pieces that fit perfectly together.

This was effortless.

I briefly remembered the last time I had been with Mike. Just a week before, and it seemed like it was literally a lifetime ago. My mind had been elsewhere, my body had been aching for something different. And yet right there, in that moment, my mind was focused and my body was completely satisfied.

I rubbed my crotch into Mike’s, and I felt him buck upwards into me. I could feel the length of both of our dicks pulling against the fabric that separated them. I could feel Mike pulse against my cock, and I knew that his cock needed to be released as quickly as mine did.

I sat up, pulled his belt, undid his button, and reached in, feeling the warmth of his dick. It was several degrees hotter than any other part of his body, and at that moment, it was the only thing I wanted to touch.

“Ohh,” Mike moaned, closing his eyes slowly as I pulled his pants down with one hand, and squeezed hard against his cock with the other, scalding my hand with the warmth of his hard cock.

“Ohh, god,” he said, opening his eyes, rolling them back, and looking at me. “If you’re not careful, I’m going to embarrass myself.”

I smiled at him.

“We have two days, and I’m sure you have plenty of cum,” I said. I slowly bent down, and without any hesitation, I kissed the head of Mike’s dick. This sent his body jolting in a way that I had never felt in all the time I had been blowing the cadet.

For a time, all Mike would let me do was rub him out. We’d lay in bed and he’d wait for me to initiate contact, as if he was doing me a favor of some sort letting me touch his dick. After that got to be too boring for me, I felt him out to see if he’d ever let me suck him off. At first he said it would feel too weird, too gay. I laid my case on thick; however, convincing him that he could imagine it was a girl if he wanted. If it was too weird, I’d stop. What was the difference between a hand job and a blow job, really?

And eventually he gave in. It was with the promise that guys gave infinitely better head than girls. And one night, Mike came over drunk and left hanging by a girl he was hitting on, and he asked me to do it.

“Suck my dick,” he had said quietly, a hint of shame layered behind the drunken slur of his voice. I didn’t ask questions that night, I just got on my knees and did it. And on that night, the reaction had been great. I knew I had delivered on my promise of giving him the best blow job he’d ever felt.

And even then, this reaction was ten times greater. I felt Mike’s dick buck to the back of my throat. With my hand still on his abs, I felt his entire body arch as my tongue worked the length of him, from tip to base.

“Oh, fucking god,” Mike moaned. I’m sure the vibration of his baritone voice shook the walls, and I wondered if Hutch could hear us just on the other side.

“Oh god, oh god, Corbin,” he shook as I did a move that I had become famous for. I took his dick deep into my throat, and with a deep breath through the nose, I let my tongue out of my mouth and slowly caressed the bottom of his balls. This drove Mike crazy as I felt his body pulse, his back arch, and his toes curl around my back.

“Corbin, stop, stop please.” I let up and looked at him as if I’d done something wrong.

“I don’t want to yet,” he said, giving me an intense look, and breathing heavily. “I don’t want to cum yet.”

I smiled down at him, and as sexily as possible, slid into the nook on his side. His masculine hand found the back of my neck, and his tongue found my mouth. I kissed him as if we’d been kissing like that for years. He slowly rubbed his hand through my hair as I gently fingered his chest. I didn’t intend on waiting long, but I did want to give Mike a chance to catch his breath and relax before I kept going.

“You’re so fucking sexy,” I whispered right into his ear. I licked the small of his neck and watched him squirm next to me.

“You are too, babe,” he moaned. I kissed his chest slowly, pulling myself up. He kept his hand on the back of my head as I did tongue service to his nipple, completely leaving his dick alone.

“That feels amazing, babe,” he whispered. “Girls never do this.”

I smiled up at him and kissed the little ridge where his pecs came together.

“Do they do this?” I asked, sucking the skin between his pecs and gently biting down on him.

“Oh, fuck,” he moaned. I could tell he was going again, not that he’d ever really stopped going. I wanted Mike inside of me, and I wanted to get to him to a place where he needed to be inside of me. I knew it wouldn’t be long.

“They don’t,” he said after he came back down, pulling my head up to his, and kissing me on the forehead, then the nose, and then on the lips. “I never thought I’d do anything like this.”

“Well you’re doing an amazing job,” I smiled. He looked up at me.

“Am I?” I decided to take him a step further. I looked down at my crotch, where my cock was still straining against my pants. I knew I had a visible wet spot where precum had steadily been leaking from my dick.

“Feel this,” I said, gently taking Mike’s hand and putting it over my dick. He gave it a light squeeze. It was only the second time he’d purposefully touched my dick, and I wasn’t sure what his reaction would be.

Instead of recoiling, I guess Mike felt the sheer intimacy of the moment. He pushed me over onto my back, rolled onto me, and with a wicked grin, kissed me and ground his cock right over mine. That was the unlock that Mike needed. For the first time in all the times we’d been together, I felt as if Mike wanted it as much as I did, and that thrilled me.

Putting foreplay aside, Mike yanked on my pants and pulled them down, undressing me completely in one fell motion. I looked up at him and smiled.

“I want to fuck you, babe,” he whispered.

“Good.”

I gently pulled my legs up as he gently slid between them. I lifted my ass into the air just a little so that whenever Mike was ready, he could slide right in. We kissed just like that for a minute as I felt every inch of him grind against me, our cocks rubbing sexily against each other. I couldn’t have felt more pleasure if I’d tried.

I couldn’t have felt safer, closer to someone. Complete.

“Please, Mike,” I begged as I held his head next to mine and breathed into his ear. I bit down on his neck, and that drove him absolutely insane. A second later, Mike was up, reaching into the drawer on my desk, and lathering up his dick with lube. I didn’t even notice that he hadn’t grabbed a condom from the drawer, and at the time, in that moment, I hardly cared.

“Can I?” he asked. “Just like this?”

“I’ve never done it without a condom,” I whispered, looking at him, not wanting to ruin the moment, but wanting to be as safe as possible.

“I can put one on if you want,” he panted. “But I don’t have anything. Do you?”

“Of course not.”

“Let’s just try it like this, babe,” he kissed me quickly. I knew it was more of a suggestion than a question, and in that state of mind, with my ass yearning for his impossibly hard dick, I was in no position to argue.

Mike stood up and started to turn me around. I couldn’t tell if he wanted to do it doggy style because that’s how we’d done it the time before, but I did realize in that moment that I’d never looked into Mike’s eyes while we were having sex. The first time it had been too dark, and last time, I’d set it up so that I could think about Pete.

But Pete was nowhere near my head that night, and so I resisted turning when Mike tried to flip me over.

“I want to see you,” I said softly, laying back down on my back, and physically begging him to fuck me with my eyes. Mike smiled, slid between my legs, and with one push and a single jolty thrust, entered me.

I felt, for the first time, like I was actually feeling Mike Loggerman. I think knowing what I meant to him, what this all meant to him, made this entire thing that much more special. There was no rush in Mike’s push, and it took him a solid minute or so to go all the way in.

“God,” I moaned, pulling his neck and using his back for leverage. By the time he was all the way in, I could feel every inch of his cock, every ridge, every vain, pulsing violently inside of me. He let out a deep moan from the bottom of his stomach, and it almost sounded like he was going to belch.

But he didn’t. He simply pulled back about seven inches, and then faster than before, slid right back in.

His slow burning love was driving me insane. Instead of simply grazing my prostate, Mike’s dick was massaging it, never once letting up, and never once giving me any form of relief. It was like every nerve in my body had stood at attention and was being lit on fire, one by one, at the same exact time.

I’d been fucked before. Not many times, but enough times to know how good it felt. But this was on a different level, even from the times that Mike and I had done it. It was more than just dick to ass penetration. It was like our spirits had penetrated each other. It was like the two of us were intertwined, and I couldn’t get enough of the feeling.

As my mind wrapped itself around the sensation, Mike gradually began to quicken his pace. I had no illusions of him lasting a very long time, and quite frankly, I wouldn’t have wanted him to. The sensory stimulation itself was too much for my body to sustain long term, and when I felt Mike go from making love, to hair pulling fucking, I was almost relieved.

Something demonic came over Mike with each thrust. All of a sudden, our bodies weren’t wrapped around each other anymore. Instead, he was pulling in and out of me like his dick was a spear and my ass was fucking target practice. Every time his cock pulled back, leaving nothing but the head in, I felt a void inside of me. Luckily, Mike was fucking so fast that the void only lasted for a second.

I could hear nothing but the sound of his skin pounding against mine, and his breath near my ear. I could feel nothing but the girth of his cock in my ass and his sweat rubbing our chests together.

“Aaaah, fuck,” Mike let out a yell. I felt his body shake, and a second later, arching my back and pushing further into him than I’d ever been, I felt my own body tense up. It was almost like my back was spasming out of control. I lifted my legs around Mike’s back and pulled him violently into me. I didn’t want him to pull out again. This was the end for me.

I wrapped both arms around his neck and felt every vibration of his orgasm. At first, it felt like he was still fucking me, but I knew he wasn’t pulling out because my legs had him locked into me. Then, as the warm wetness of his cum coated my insides, I realized his cock was pulsing so hard inside of my ass that I was expanding and contracting like I was still being fucked.

And then my body let go.

Right then, in that second, I couldn’t keep my composure any longer.

“Oh fuck! Oh fuck! Oh god, Mike… oh fuck!” I screamed. I let go of his neck and pushed my hands back against the wall. Mike, in his post orgasmic haze, lifted my back as I spasmed out of control. Without even touching my dick, I felt cum shoot out and onto my face as Mike held on to me. I closed my eyes to avoid making some ridiculous face, but in truth, I didn’t care what I looked like. I could feel Mike’s cock still hard inside of me, but it wasn’t pulsing any more. He’d had his turn. Those few seconds, with Mike holding me up and pushing into me as far as possible, were all about me.

“Goooood,” I screamed, as my body felt like it was combusting from the inside out. “Oh, God!”

Another shot of cum hit my chest, and a third, the most violent yet, hit the back wall behind my head.

“Holy shit,” Mike whispered, watching me cum like someone who’d never been fucked before in his life.

The truth was, I had never cum with a guy’s dick in my ass, and I certainly had never cum without jacking myself off. Mike had literally found a way to fuck the cum out of me, and the feeling was unparalleled.

It took all of five minutes for me to come crashing back down to earth. Still, every movement, every touch, set my senses on fire. Mike rubbed his fingers through the cum on my chest, and I swear I almost lost my seed all over again.

“It’s getting cold,” Mike smiled. I laughed. I couldn’t tell if he was talking about the evening air in my room, or the cum on my chest. “What does it taste like?”

He must have meant the cum, I decided.

“Try some,” I exhaled.

“Hell no,” he made a face. “That’d be too much.”

“I’ve tasted yours,” I raised an eyebrow.

“And I bet mine tastes fantastic.”

“Trust me, killer, mine could win awards,” I joked.

“How do you know? Have you tried yours?”

“Here,” I said. I took my arm out from under Mike, where he’d decided to perch on my side, and brought a finger to my chest. I rubbed just a finger of semen off my chest and brought it to my lips. I didn’t have a habit of licking my own cum, but every once in a while, when I was going through a marathon jack off session, I would lick my precum off my palm.

My cum was sweet, and I worked hard to keep it that way. Pineapples, apple juice, and plenty of water. I avoided asparagus and green beans like the plague, especially if I knew I’d be getting any kind of blow job. Smoking was strictly off limits.

Mike watched as I licked my finger, brought my cum into my mouth and swirled it around.

“Come here,” I said, pulling Mike’s head closer to mine.

“Uh, uh…” he hesitated. I didn’t want to force him, but I did want to share that moment with him.

“Come on,” I whispered, lifting my head up. I put a kiss right onto Mike’s closed lips. A second later, almost like he couldn’t help himself, Mike opened his mouth and tasted my tongue. I could tell that he was thinking about the sensation that he’d just felt. I could tell from the way his body relaxed that he was wondering what he thought about it, and then deciding that it wasn’t that bad.

The next thing Mike did truly surprised me. He pulled off my face, licked more cum off my chest, and then came back up for another kiss.

“Mmmmh,” I moaned as I tasted myself on Mike’s tongue. It was the sexiest afterglow moment I’d ever felt in my entire life. And then, when the moment passed, I realized that I was cold, sticky, and wet, and that my bed was covered in cum for two.

I didn’t want to ruin the moment, but I needed to clean up, if just for a second. I sat up, grabbed a towel, and told Mike that I would be right back.

I crossed from my room into the bathroom, where I ran straight into Brian, also wrapped in a towel. It was the Friday night of Reading Days, and with nothing going on at OD besides studying, I guessed Brian and Catherine had had the same idea as Mike and me.

“What’s going on?” Brian asked me. I knew there were traces of cum still on my chest, face, and probably in my hair. I immediately made for shower.

“Nothing,” I sighed. “Just taking a study break, is all.”

“Oh yeah? I thought I heard the cadet come in next door.”

“Umm… possibly,” I answered as I turned the water on.

“Possibly? Is that all I get, as your former roommate?”

After the water had rinsed off any traces of cum from my face, I stuck my head out of the curtain.

“Fine, he’s here. And guess what? He’s not leaving until Sunday, so…”

“So much for reading during Reading Days.”

“Oh whatever,” I scoffed. “Is Catherine in your room?”

“Possibly.” I laughed. I rinsed off, dried off, and less than five minutes later, rejoined Mike in my room. He had pulled a pair of my shorts on, folded all of his clothes into a corner, and pulled all of the sheets off my bed.

“There was a big wet spot, and I wasn’t sure who was going to sleep on it, so I figured we should start over.”

“Those are my only sheets,” I replied.

“Oh…”

“Let’s just wash them,” I said, picking them up and bundling them. I traded in my towel for a pair of heather gray shorts, and with Mike behind me, walked to the laundry room.

“So is this what living with Corbin Crowley would be like?” Mike asked, kissing my neck as I selected the delicate cycle.

“What?”

“Sex and laundry?”

I laughed. “I think we’d eat, occasionally.”

“Over rated. You can survive off a diet of my cum, and…”

“And you?”

“And I’m trained to go days and days without eating.”

“Oh,” I said, raising an eyebrow and turning to face him. I wondered for a fleeting second if Mike would ever bring himself to suck my dick. I figured that, and bottoming, were the two acts that were out of the realm of possibility. But then again, I’d never thought Mike would fuck me, so there was that.

Mike continued to play with me from behind as I loaded the wash. As I poured detergent over the sheets, I felt him stiffen up behind me and let my waist go.

I turned to see Austin and Roberto walk by holding their backpacks. They had clearly looked into the laundry room and seen Mike and me standing there doing laundry. I turned to him and started laughing.

“They looked at me,” Mike said with wide eyes. I couldn’t tell if he was actually paranoid or simply playing it up. “The tall one stopped and almost bumped into the short one.”

“They don’t give a shit,” I assured. “And they don’t know you.”

“I guess you’re right,” Mike said. I finished up and led him back into my bedroom. Before long, Mike and I were making out on my couch, not wanting to sit down on my bare mattress. And not long after that, I was kneeling down between Mike’s spread legs and licking his shaft, sucking him deep, and swallowing his second load in under an hour.

I kept a little in my mouth, sat up, and went in for a kiss. Mike pulled back, hesitating at first. I could tell he didn’t want to kiss me that soon after I’d taken his spunk, but I wanted him to taste himself and compare. Something about that thought turned me on more than I already was, if that was at all possible.

I leaned in again, this time with determination. Mike resisted for a second time, sighed, and then kissed me. I kept my eyes open and watched as he initially tasted the cum on my tongue. His face was tight at first. I watched him digest what was going on. His tongue darted across mine and then back into his mouth. I followed it with my tongue, and a second later, the cum I’d saved in my mouth made the transfer.

Mike tensed up for a second, and then relaxed. I sighed, causing vibrations to travel between us. He pulled my head in, sucked the remainder of himself off my tongue, and then pulled back with a grin.

“Happy?” he asked, satisfied with himself.

“Now you know how we both taste.”

“I think I’d be okay never doing that again,” he said. I laid down with my head on his bare lap and my feet dangling off the couch. He pulled my overgrown hair back to expose my forehead.

“Whatever, killer,” I sighed, content for the first time in a long time. I looked into Mike’s eyes, not wanting to ruin the moment. But there was a question that had popped into my head while we were doing laundry, and it was back with a vengeance.

“So,” I started softly, looking straight into Mike’s eyes, studying his face.

“Sew a button,” he grinned before I had a chance to continue on. I shook my head.

“You’re an idiot,” I joked.

“So what, killer?”

“I could do this forever,” I started, taking a deep breath and burying my head into his lap.

“What? Fucking and laundry?”

“Fucking and laundry,” I smiled weakly.

“I think we’d both fail out of school if that’s all that we did,” he joked. He sensed that I was ready to say something a little more serious, and so I went for it.

“What happens after this?”

I ripped of the band aid. The last time I’d asked him that, Mike had chastised me for assuming that things were going to change when they clearly weren’t. But this time, things were different. It wasn’t an assumption. He’d been the catalyst with his four letter word, and there was no denying that things had changed.

“If we’re going to talk about feelings and the future, you’d better grow some tits,” Mike snarked. I cut my eyes at him. That was the exact response that had me worried.

“I’m kidding,” he said. “I just… I assumed that sleeping with a guy meant pillow talk could be kept to a minimum.”

“It can,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “After we discuss where we go from here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, are we not going to discuss what you said to me the other day?” I asked, widening my eyes.

“You said the same thing to me,” he countered.

“I know. And I want to talk about it.”

“I was hoping that we didn’t have to. It was fairly self explanatory,” Mike countered.

“You’re right, it was. But what does it mean?”

“What do you mean?” he asked. I could tell he was growing slightly agitated as he shifted his leg under my head.

“So last time you were here, you felt like I was distracted. Does that mean that we aren’t seeing other… distractions anymore?” I asked. I watched his face shift, and then soften. He pushed my hair back again, tempering whatever his initial response was going to be.

“Do you want to go around fucking other guys?” he asked pointedly. It wasn’t an accusation, and it wasn’t malicious. It was honest.

“Not any guys in particular.”

“But if one comes along? Or if you get drunk and someone hits on you?”

“Think of it this way, killer. One of these days, you’ll be at a party in Lexington with your dyke, and with Bryant, and whoever else. And Becks will have her friends there, and before you know it there’ll be a girl sitting on your lap in a hot tub, waiting to fish you out.”

“Oh come on. What kind of parties do you think we have?” he dodged.

“I’m just saying. Let’s be realistic. At least for now,” I pressed on. I wasn’t sure why it meant so much to me to define what we were, but it did. I needed to know the rules, mostly because I didn’t want to break them.

“Realistically, I don’t see myself just fucking anyone all willy-nilly,” he replied. “I think I can control myself until I can come over here, or pick you up and take you back to Lex with me… and do this.”

He leaned down and he kissed me. For a second, all of my anxiety was gone. He sucked it out of me right through my lips. I sat up and followed his lips in a deeper, more intimate kiss.

“Okay,” I said when he finally let me go. I crossed my legs and faced him.

“Listen, Corbin, I don’t want to change what you’re doing with your life. I just don’t want you obsessing over someone else whenever you and I do get to spend time together. I want whatever it is you’re going through to be the last thing on your mind when I’m around. And when you realize that this isn’t enough for you-”

“-Mike.”

“-What? You’ll realize it at some point, and when you do, all I ask is that you let me down easy.”

I looked into his face. He was being completely honest with me, and I appreciated it. I adored it. I couldn’t have asked for more. He was convinced that his limitations would one day drive me away, and I wasn’t sure he was completely wrong. But in that moment, on that day, he had no limitations, and I felt completely and totally satisfied by him.

“You’re gonna break my heart one day,” Mike said. I swallowed a lump the size of Texas.

“Mike.”

“Shhhh…” he said, silencing me with his lips. That time, however, his kiss wasn’t enough to push the words out of my mind. If he felt that way, if he really thought I was capable of that, why was he sticking around?

And it was right then that my guilt got the better of me. This whole thing had started out as a phone call to get back at someone who I’d kissed once. Someone I’d fallen for without any sort of contingency plan. Mike was right, I would break his heart someday if I let myself do that. I had that power.

And while we sat there and kissed, I decided that I didn’t want to use that power. I didn’t want to hurt him. Our end would have to come some other way, I decided. And as much as I told myself that, I also knew that as much power as I had to hurt Mike, Mike wasn’t the one who could break my heart. The one who could break my heart had already broken it.

“Come here,” Mike said, changing his tone. He stood up and lithely put his shorts back on. I reached for mine and drew them on as I stood to face Mike. He tossed a t-shirt out of my drawer at me and told me to put on my shoes.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“It’s a surprise,” he said with wide eyes. I pulled my shoes on, watching him gather some of the loose things that were in my room. He put the champagne in my fridge and pulled his bag into the corner with his pile of folded clothes. He was so used to living in the barracks, where everything had to be put in its exact spot, I thought. And as I watched him, I felt myself let go. I felt myself let him. And I felt myself allow him to love me.

I wondered what Mike’s surprise was the entire time I followed him down into his Jeep, and as he drove into town towards the Wal-Mart on the other side of Clifton Hill proper.

“What are we doing here?” I asked him.

“It’s still a surprise,” he smiled. He pulled me in close to him the dark parking lot and gave me a side hug. I was surprised at how intimate he was being in public, but I didn’t do a damn thing to stop him. This was what I’d wanted. This was what I had told my pledge brothers about. This was a relationship. Two guys, together, and acting like they were together. His world was only seven miles away, but to him, on that night, it may as well have been a million.

I followed Mike, completely baffled by what we had gone into town on a Friday night to buy. It was after midnight, so beer was off limits. I didn’t need anything, or particularly want anything. I had resolved myself to not eating solid foods until Mike left on Sunday, and therefore, I had no clue what he was dragging me through the aisles of Wal-Mart for.

And then, as we rounded the main aisle into Housewares did it start to click. Mike made a hard stop in the bed sheets aisle.

“Pick one out,” he smiled down at me. I shook my head with a smile.

“Are you serious?”

“I’m serious. I want to fuck you again, right now, and I don’t want to wait until your sheets get out of the dryer. So pick out a new set. We’re going to demolish them this weekend, and then after that, you can throw them away or keep them and smell them when I’m gone.”

“You know, you start to say something so sweet,” I replied. He didn’t let me finish. Instead, he bent down and kissed me. It was brief, and it was guarded, but it was fine. It was perfect.

“Pick a set,” he instructed. And so I did. With careful consideration, I picked a black and red striped print. They were god-awful paper thin sheets, but for what we need, for our lusty purposes, they would work just fine. One checkout counter, two red lights, and a flight of stairs later, Mike and I were back in my room, making my bed, and getting ready for round two.

We spent the next thirty-six hours in my room, locked away exploring each other as if we’d just met. I found out new and interesting things that Mike loved, new spots that gave him pleasure, and knew moves that made him squirm.

He pushed himself as far as I thought he would ever go. The next afternoon, after coercing him for almost an hour, I finally convinced Mike to just lick the tip of my dick.

“What is it going to taste like?” he asked like a little kid about to sample some exotic food.

“I mean, really nothing,” was the best response I could give. “Just… flesh I guess.”

“Okay,” he nodded. “I can do this.”

“Mike, you climbed a maypole covered in Crisco. You can lick the head of my dick.”

“Please don’t make it sound so fucking gay,” he warned. He looked at me for my reaction to his outburst. “I’m sorry, I just… this is weird.”

“Just do it, and I’ll let it alone,” I smiled. He gave me one final look, bent down to my lap and opened his mouth.

“What am I supposed to do when I get it in my mouth?” he asked. I chuckled. He was being a real baby about it, and I had no basis to blame him.

“Just lick it, and then go from there. You’ll know what to do.”

“Okay.” He took a deep breath. He bent over again, opened his mouth, and this time he licked the bottom of the head of my dick. I tried not to react in any way, not wanting to scare him. It was almost like trying to catch a bird, any sudden movements and I knew he’d go fleeting away.

He licked the bottom first, and then around to the top, and then to the very tip. And then, surprising us both, I’m sure, Mike kissed the tip, taking the length of my head into his mouth.

“It’s a weird consistency,” he said when he sat up and scooted in close to me.

“Did you hate it?”

He didn’t respond. He just gave me a look, raised an eyebrow and leaned in to kiss me. I had hope for him. Kissing had been off limits once, and look where we were now.

That afternoon, we watched the Ravens game downstairs with a couple of the seniors who weren’t into studying much. No one asked who Mike was or what he was doing in the TV room, they just accepted him as my Baltimore loving friend and moved on.

That night, we ate pizza, drank champagne, and messed around some more. As we fell asleep with Mike’s leg haphazardly draped over my torso, I wished that our weekend together could last forever.

And then Sunday came. I watched as Mike packed up his things. In realizing that our sexcapade was over, I opened a window to let my room air out.

“When do I see you next?” I asked, not sure what his schedule for the rest of the term was.

“I can try to get out next weekend, I guess. Or the weekend after. Or you could come to Maryland for Thanksgiving?”

“Oh really? And meet Papa Loggerman?”

“Hey, if you keep talking about Flacco like you did yesterday, he’ll have no choice but to fall for you.”

“Is that how I won you over? By being a Ravens fan?”

“It didn’t hurt, killer,” he said, hoisting his bag over his shoulder and turning to kiss me. As I prepared to walk him down to his car, I wanted to reassure him. The things he’d said on Friday night, the words he’d used, they still nagged at me. I wanted him to know that I was in it as long as he was.

“Hey,” I said once we were down at his Jeep. “I had fun this weekend.”

“So did I,” he replied, throwing his bag into the back. He circled back to where I stood on the sidewalk. “If I could, I’d shrink you, keep you in my pocket, and pull you out whenever I need a good blowjob.”

“If I was shrunken, I wouldn’t be able to give you a good blowjob,” I countered. He laughed.

“True.”

“Mike, I love you,” I said, trying to sound breezy. “I know you think that I’m going to get tired of this arrangement, but… I don’t know. I just… I do love you. I want you to know that.”

“I know that,” he replied. “I wouldn’t keep coming back if I didn’t know that.”

He smiled with his tongue on the roof of his mouth, giving me a wicked gaze. I pulled him in and kissed him, as if he was being deployed or something. I’d said goodbye to Mike a million times, mostly at one in the morning so that he could make it back to barracks, but it never felt like this. Something inside of me had changed that weekend, and I didn’t want him to go.

Mike pulled away and whispered by in my ear.

“You’ve got an audience,” he said, pointing up at our porch. I turned to see Brian, Austin, and Hutch all standing there looking at us, fake clapping. Mike gave them a bow, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Can we get some Corbin time, finally?” Hutch asked when I made it back up to the porch. “You’ve been hibernating all weekend.”

“I’ve been studying,” I said sharply.

“Bud, about the only class you can pass right now is male anatomy and physiology,” Austin replied.

“Is that a class?” I asked. I followed the guys into the library where the sophomores had set up studying camp all weekend. It was only then that I realized I’d pissed away my reading days in the most worthwhile way possible.

“What are you folks doing tonight?” I asked, feeling about being back in society. I could miss Mike and mope, or I could occupy myself until I got to see him again.

“Studying here until the girls’ party at Amanda and Steph Doleman’s,” Newby said, looking up from whatever accounting book he was reading.

“Amanda and Steph are throwing a party?” I asked, my eyebrow raised. How could I have not known about that? Sure, I’d been in hiding, but I still had my cell phone on me, and I had been responding to text messages all weekend.

“How do you not know about that? Even I know about that,” Austin said, plopping down next to me on the leather couch.

I knew exactly why I didn’t know about it. Because of the Brit.

If this was Amanda’s way of picking a side, she’d done so unmistakably. She was my friend, and for the life of me, I couldn’t understand how in the fuck she could pick Pete’s side over mine.

Every ounce of goodwill I’d felt that weekend came crashing down in that moment. The reality was there was still a war of independence going on in Clifton, and as much as I’d tried to forget it when Mike was there, my reality was all suddenly roaring back.

As the wheels turned in my head, and as the guys discussed plans for going to the girls’ house party later on, I decided that I wasn’t going to be left out. The line was drawn in the sand, and I was going to make Amanda regret ever crossing it.

“Don’t leave for that party without me,” I commanded, standing, and marching back up to my room.

I spent the rest of the afternoon forcing myself to focus on schoolwork. I had to cram three days worth of studying into just over six hours if I had any plans of going to Amanda’s without completely fucking up my GPA.

And so when the guys came to knock on my door at eight to see if I was ready to start pregaming, I had accomplished the bare minimum of my studying, but was in no way ahead like I wanted to be.

I could have made the right choice that night. I could have stayed in and kept working. I could have let Amanda and Pete have that victory, and just sat the party out. I could have let it all go, and basked in the memory of the great weekend I had just had. I could have, but I couldn’t.

I couldn’t help but feel betrayed by one of my best friends, who had been an ice queen towards me since I lied to Pete the week before. I couldn’t help but feel angry at Pete for having the audacity to turn my best friend against me.

I felt like I had buried my head in Mike’s sand for two days and I was lost when I came back up. I had to do something. I needed to go to that party and show those two that I wasn’t backing down. Pete had to pay for his text message, and Amanda needed to know that she’d picked the wrong side in this fight.

And so I told the guys I’d be ready in ten minutes. I took a quick shower, washing all of Mike that had built up on me all weekend off of my body, and got dressed. I took two shots before I joined the guys in Austin’s room, and had a drink there with everyone else. My body felt warm and toasty as we walked through the cold November air, down two blocks to Amanda’s.

The party was raging by the time we got there at a little after ten. People generally didn’t party on Sunday nights, but after being cooped up in their library carrels for the weekend, I wasn’t surprised that the girls had managed to get a good turnout of people to come over.

I didn’t see Pete or Amanda right away. I went straight for the punch, assuming that they were probably part of the game of chandeliers that was raging on the back porch. I didn’t bother to look for either of them, but instead struck up a conversation with Kelly and Sacha about how their reading days had gone. Everyone would need more to drink eventually, so I perched in the kitchen by the punch and waited.

I was at Amanda’s for about three minutes before I spotted Pete. He turned into the kitchen, where I was standing, and stopped right in his tracks.

“Ladies,” I said to Kelly as she finished up her story about some English essay she was writing that she was convinced was so good, it could’ve been published. “Can I have the room?”

Sacha looked at me, puzzled. The girls refilled their drinks and slowly left the kitchen, all while Pete and I locked eyes and literally stared each other down.

“Do you need a drink?” I asked, my voice layered with contempt.

“If you don’t mind,” he replied, his voice as icy as mine. I stepped to the side and let him get passed me to the pitcher of punch. As he poured, I pulled out my cell phone and sent a quick message without even looking at the screen.

To Mike: Call Me.

In that moment, every ounce of betrayal I’d felt from opening Pete’s text message came rushing back to me. It wasn’t so much him sending it that had pissed me off. It was the fact that he had done it to deliberately hurt me that wounded me the most. I could take him with her, that didn’t bother me nearly as much as his need to rub it in my face.

And for that, he’d pay.

“How was your break?” I asked, my voice chilly and flat.

“You saw the pictures,” he replied. “I had a ton of fun.”

I could tell that he was trying his best to be snarky. He was trying to out bitch the campus’ biggest bitch, and I couldn’t help but laugh. I let out a strained chuckled, lifted my hand, and put it on his chest.

“Listen to me,” I said, my voice going from frosty to downright threatening. “If you need to hate me in order to get over whatever it is that you’re going through, you go right ahead and you hate me. But don’t be surprised when I make that very easy for you.”

Pete sniffed in a quick, shallow breath.

“I’m not afraid of you, Corbin,” he said, his eyes wide, his guard up, and his voice strong. I gave him kudos for that. “Unlike everyone else on this campus, you don’t have me wrapped around your little finger.”

I smiled, trying not to be taken by how he said the words ‘little finger’. I sharpened my smile, patted him on the chest, and maintained my steely gaze right into his eyes.

“Killer,” I said, my voice razor sharp through my threatening smile. “That’s a mistake.”

And then, as if I’d planned it out perfectly, I felt my phone vibrate and the ringer go off. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, knowing exactly who it was.

“I should get this,” I said to Pete, tilting my head, and showing him the screen of my phone. I read his face as he watched me answer, his eyes growing narrow, and ever so slightly watery. Check, I thought.

“Hey babe,” I answered the call, lifting my voice and doing my best to sound breezy. “Oh, nothing. I’m just at a small get-together.”

As I spoke to Mike, I shifted my body, not taking my gaze of off Pete and pointed, with nothing but my body language and my face, towards the front door.

“No, not one single guy that I’m interested in here, you don’t even have to worry,” I said after Mike asked if there was anyone noteworthy at the party. I couldn’t have planned it better, as Pete retreated, hopefully with the knowledge that whatever attack he thought would get me, I was capable of doing so much worse.

I’d meant my advice to Pete because I had required the same thing. I felt like we had broken up, even if we only had a flirtatious relationship to start, and that meant that traditional means of getting over him simply wouldn’t work. He’d need to hate me if he was really done, and I was prepared to do the same thing.

I got off the phone with Mike, telling him that I missed him a little bit and stroking his ego until my second target eventually found her way into the kitchen.

“Mike, I gotta go. I’ll call you sometime this week, okay?”

He said he loved me in a whisper that made me think he was hiding out in his suite bathroom, and then I hung up.

“Corbin, I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said.

“Because you didn’t invite me?” I asked, throwing a dagger straight to her.

“Listen, I just… I knew Pete was coming over, and I didn’t want there to be any trouble,” she explained. What she didn’t explain was that she had chosen to have him over instead of me.

“What did he say that I did to him, exactly?”

“Corbin-”

“No, I’m serious, Amanda. What did I do to him that has you turned against me? You are my friend,” I said through gritted teeth, trying my best not to raise my voice. As much as I wanted to take her down, I didn’t want to cause a scene at a party. My mother had taught me better than that.

“And I’ve told you before that he has no one else here. He’s lost the one person he considered to be his friend on this campus.”

“Good thing you’re around to pick up all of Humpty Dumpty’s little pieces.”

“You’re being an asshole.”

“And you’ve made perfectly clear where our friendship goes from here,” I threatened, turning my head and drilling straight into her. I knew that what I was about to do was crossing the line, and that I was on the verge of saying something that couldn’t be unsaid.

But I didn’t care. My blood was boiling, and my hand was shaking so hard that I had clutched my empty Solo cup to keep it from moving noticeably. If I had seen Amanda before Pete, I might not have been that angry, and I might have been able to temper myself. But I didn’t, and so she got enough anger for both of them.

“You listen to me very carefully, Amanda. When Pete fucks you to get to me, don’t come crying to me. Because he will fuck you to get to me, and when he does, all I’ll want to know is how he tastes.”

I took her drink out of her hands and chugged it before putting it down on the table and walking out of the kitchen. I walked through the party, told my boys that I was leaving, and strutted back to my house, where I went straight to the bathroom and threw up.