Jon From High School Read online

  “God…” he said in a hushed voice, entranced.

  I gathered more of the bitter taste in my mouth and spat that onto the floor, too, adding to the puddle of sin.

  Then I looked up at him.

  His eyes had gone hard. Not with lust this time.

  But with… with…

  Disappointment.

  I started to wonder what that look meant, and meant to ask him about it, but—

  He whipped his head to the right, highlighting his strong jaw.

  I heard it, too.

  The rhythmic sound of footsteps marched down the hallway drawing closer.

  “Shit,” he mumbled.

  Disappointment crashed through my chest, but I didn’t know why.

  As we fumbled and hurried to get our clothes back on, I realized why. It was the same reason we were silents as we hustled:

  It was because I was just a thing to him. A toy. A forbidden bit of gay fun that no one could find out about.

  He didn’t care about me.

  The footsteps were closer; louder.

  I saw the panic in his eyes—the fear of being caught with me.

  Not just because everyone would know he’d been gay for a minute.

  But because he’d been with me for a minute.

  “Shit…” he repeated, looking toward the entrance to the band room.

  I watched his face.

  He turned his gaze back to mine.

  Understanding passed between us:

  This was a one-time thing only. Tell no one. Reputations had to be upheld.

  Tomorrow, we were going to act like we didn’t know each other.

  My power trip was over.

  I’d tripped and fallen on my face.

  “…sorry,” he said, then turned and fled the room.

  I lingered there, puzzled, trying to piece together the meaning of what just happened. I’d gained something from it, right? If so, then why did I feel so bad?

  Then I slumped against the wall, my bare skin laying against the cold bricks.

  “Shit. Shit!” I hissed.

  My shirt. My shirt was still in the hallway.

  I couldn’t hear the footsteps anymore—it must have been safe to go out into the hallway again.

  But when I hurried out there and returned to the place Jon had pinned me against that locker, it was gone.

  2

  Jon

  The lunchroom was packed, as always. But I found my seat open at the table next to my friends—Kyle, Terry, and Phil. Each of us had reign over all the significant social spheres of Shady Grove High. Kyle was king of the soccer field and the notorious douchebag of the school. Still didn’t stop every girl in this place bending the knee to him. Even though he had ass lined up for him at every party, it was nothing compared to Terry, dreamy quarterback of our football team. He had college hotties texting him, begging to hook up. But the rumor was, he was giving it to one of the teachers here. I didn’t know if it was true, and honestly, I didn’t want to know. Then there was Phil, the black sheep of the bunch. He was a talented artist, borderline famous, and every weird-ass art girl in SGHS was trying to plot and scheme their way into his bed. They never guessed that he was always two—no—about eight steps ahead. He ruled the creative arm of the school.

  And me? My reign trickled down to encompass everything involving basketball.

  I had girls trying to get my attention at all time, but they didn’t know my secret.

  No one knew.

  “Where were you last night?” Kyle asked from my right.

  Getting the best goddamn blowjob of my life from Victor Petoskey. “Went home,” I said nonchalantly.

  Kyle raised an eyebrow.

  Oh, shit. Could my friends see the truth written on my face?

  Could they sense what I’d done?

  Kyle peered at me suspiciously.

  Terry peered down at his phone, no doubt texting some girls, like always.

  Phil’s gaze was wandering over the lunchroom like a lion watching the watering hole, but I knew he had an ear to our conversation.

  “You went home,” Kyle echoed, his eyebrow raised. “After practice?”

  I nodded, then took a vicious bite of green beans.

  “Did you totally forget we were all meeting up at the Place?”

  Right. The Place. Shit. “Didn’t feel like it,” I said with a shrug.

  “You could’ve texted or something.”

  “I didn’t?” I said, trying to feign ignorance. “Well, sorry. I was tired after practice.”

  Under the table, I picked my thumb cuticle.

  Phil turned a lazy, cold eye to our conversation. “This is the first time you’ve been tired enough after practice to start forgetting things. Sure you aren’t losing it, Preston?”

  I felt a sharp bite of pain from my thumb. “What is this shit, an interrogation? Fuck off.”

  A smirk curled on Phil’s face.

  Kyle said, “Whatever dude. Just text us next time you decide to blow us off.”

  “I don’t see why you’re so needy,” I complained. “You sound like one of Terry’s girls.”

  Terry’s eyes flicked up from his phone. “Leave me out of this.”

  Kyle crossed his arms. “I’m just saying. It’s kinda hard to keep up a tradition when one of us decides to flake out.”

  My frown deepened and I took a massive bite of pizza, stalling for time.

  Worst of all, I could feel eyes lick the back of my neck.

  His eyes.

  Victor Petoskey.

  I hadn’t so much as glanced his way today, but he was all I thought about.

  Last night… how we suddenly found each other alone in that hallway.

  My hatred for him shifted into something else…

  Kissing. Touching. His mouth on my cock.

  It was only temporary—a moment in time when we converged.

  And he’d been the one sucking my dick. That meant he was submitting to me, right?

  But the way he looked at me with his cock in my mouth…

  I would have done anything.

  Anything for him.

  And that scared the shit out of me.

  I was a jock. The manliest jock there ever was, at least according to the population of SGHS. I couldn’t be gay, let alone be gay with someone like Victor.

  Kyle had lost interest in our conversation and took a greedy bite of his pepperoni pizza.

  Now was my chance.

  With a casual glance, I pretended to let my eyes survey the lunchroom, flowing over the sea of students.

  But I knew where to look.

  It’s where I always looked.

  At a table near the corner sat the emo kids.

  A little array of misfits: some theater kids, some art kids, some nerdy kid in robotics or something, and—

  One band kid.

  My eyes locked onto Victor’s, then he quickly looked away.

  Rage seethed through me.

  “Still pissed off at that guy?” Phil asked in his low voice.

  Fuck. Fuck! “Yeah,” I said simply.

  Phil’s lower eyelids tightened just a little, and I knew I was fucked.

  I’d captured the interest of the most observant goddamn person in this school—probably the most observant person in the state of California.

  I’d made him curious. And when Phil got curious about something, he bit down like a Rottweiler and didn’t let go until he found out everything.

  To his credit, he never shared secrets. He was a vault.

  But this secret? My secret… whatever with Victor Petoskey?

  That could never get out. Not even by accident.

  Everything I’d worked so hard to build for the past few years—my reputation, my relationship with my ultra-conservative parents, and now, my budding basketball career—hinged on the world thinking I was straight.

  In that way, I envied Victor. He had anonymity. If the world found out he was gay, he’d have nothing to lose. Not
many people would be surprised.

  But if I was forced out of the closet? I’d lose all these friends around me, for one. My father would never forgive me. He made sideways comments about “fags” all the time—if he knew how to check my browser history, he’d have a heart attack. My mother would never look me in the eye again.

  And all those college basketball scouts and gestating scholarships? I could kiss those goodbye.

  Sure, universities are liberal as fuck and promote gay rights and all that.

  But sports culture was still firmly in the red.

  No matter how many times Victor looked at me, I couldn’t look back and really see him. Not in the same way we’d really seen each other last night.

  A fling with someone like Victor Petoskey was something I couldn’t afford.

  For the rest of the day, I couldn’t help but feel there was a loose end wandering around the school.

  My thoughts danced around my head, bleeding worry into my life.

  What if Victor came out? What if he told someone?

  Everything in my life would go up in flames.

  But still, I donned my mask. My very well-known, aloof frown did its job and hid everything I wanted to keep private. It was my shield; my armor.

  I could feel every second tick by viscerally; like the grains of sand from the hourglass of time ran over my skin, cutting me on their way down.

  Hell, by fourth period—chemistry class, my thumb was starting to bleed.

  I was sitting at one of those black tables in the science room, knowing full well that he was going to come in with the rest of the students, slowly shuffling into the last period of the day.

  My worry coagulated all day. I’d gone back and forth with myself, trying to think of ways to stop it. If Victor told anyone…

  He entered the room, and I pointed my eyes out the window.

  It was easier to look at the bright green plants out there in the spring sunshine than it was to glance at Victor.

  If I didn’t look at him, I didn’t have to think about his tight little lips wrapped around my cock last night. I didn’t have to see the way his nasty hair fell over his eyes like that.

  Shit, when I’d tried to touch it last night, it got all tangled. Gross.

  Unconsciously, I brought my hand to my own hair and touched the stiff gel.

  I dropped my hand to the table and drummed my fingers on the cold surface.

  Come on, Preston, keep it together for one more hour… I urged myself.

  But I could feel him come into the room.

  His eyes… those dark eyes glinting with wicked delight in the band room last night... were on me.

  Even if they weren’t on me, they were.

  …

  …maybe it would be best if I did talk to him after class.

  Just to get things straight.

  The chime of the bell reverberated through the air, signifying the beginning of class.

  Then and only then did I tear my eyes from the window and point them forward.

  FUCK!

  He was sitting right in front of me.

  Victor must have done that on purpose; putting himself right in my line of sight so I couldn’t look away. It was terrible. Awful. I didn’t want to see some teen twink asshole blocking my view.

  …even if that was exactly the term I typed into Gay Pornhub last night.

  No. No.

  On the inside, my thoughts were a whirlwind. But on the outside, I made sure to look calm; composed; aloof.

  I needed everyone to think I had my shit together.

  Shit, then maybe I’d convince myself that I had my shit together.

  Victor shifted a little in his seat.

  My eyes locked onto the way his ass moved in the chair.

  What was wrong with me last night? Why was I so drawn to this weird emo kid?

  I was straight. I’d been with girls before.

  But something about last night…

  Something about Victor…

  Something was different. And that something was burrowing deep into my head.

  I didn’t like it. But at the same time, I felt like my eyes were opened.

  I peeled my eyes from Victor’s slim back and looked down at my boring-ass notebook, then opened it to the page we were supposed to be on.

  My notes from last time didn’t make any fucking sense—I was such an idiot. I always knew I’d have a hard time with grades since I struggled with dyslexia. Hell, even looking at it now, I saw that some of the letters in my words were written backward. It was a miracle I might go to college at all. Thank God I was good at basketball. But if anyone found out…

  Again, I went to run my fingers through my hair, but stopped when I touched the hard gel.

  Keep it together! My internal voice yelled at me. Why was it so hard for me to keep it together?!?

  Why did I have to hook up with a guy?! I could have fucked a girl across the table in the lunchroom with the entire school around—teachers and all—and it wouldn’t have meant a thing. It wouldn’t have changed the social structure of the school, and no one would have been surprised. But Victor?

  Victor was a vulnerability.

  Therefore, Victor was a threat.

  I had to do my best to neutralize that threat. Get some of my power back.

  Again, my eyes traced the shape of his back. He was wearing a black shirt again, of course.

  Victor Petoskey always wore black shirts with old band logos on them.

  Now, I had one of them in my possession. Last night when I left the band room, I spotted it on the floor of the hallway. I needed to clean up the evidence; hide it from prying eyes.

  So I tucked it into my basketball bag on my way out.

  Victor would just use that extra sweatshirt he kept in his locker—the Fall Out Boy one.

  Not that I gave a fuck.

  Anyway, his Metallica shirt would be the ace up my sleeve. That’s how I’d get him to agree to anything I wanted. I wasn’t sure how I’d do it, but I knew there was something heavier than cotton in the thin fabric:

  Leverage.

  I just needed to think of how I could use it to my advantage.

  He stretched in front of me, splaying his long, spindly fingers.

  Black nail polish.

  God. How… how girly.

  But I couldn’t deny there was something stirring in my lower belly.

  What was happening to me? Why was I so interested in him? He was a nobody. A burnout.

  With vice grip lips.

  I let out a slow breath through my nose and kicked back in the chair. Forcefully, I pointed my eyes at the board, where the teacher was scrawling some chemistry diagram with spindly little hexagon shapes. As much as I tried to pay attention, my eyes kept drifting to the back of Victor’s sinewy neck.

  I’d been almost inside that neck. I remembered how he gagged on my cock.

  And I couldn’t help but wonder… what his looked like.

  I mentally scrambled to strangle the thought.

  My frown deepened and pain lanced through my thumb again.

  I raised it to my eyes. Blood again.

  Damn, I had to stop doing that.

  Cra-crack.

  My gaze shot to Victor again, who’d just cracked his neck.

  I narrowed my eyes at the back of his head, hating him more with each passing second.

  I wished I could crawl into his ear and erase the memory of what happened last night. I wished I could take it all back—

  No you don’t, a nasty little voice whispered in the back of my mind. You enjoyed it more than you’ll ever admit. More than you’ll ever enjoy anything with a girl—

  I stood abruptly.

  The teacher paused and gave me a questioning glance. “Mister Preston? Is something the matter?”

  “Bathroom,” I said, tearing out of the classroom.

  I could feel Victor’s eyes follow my varsity jacket all the way out of the room.

  Thank God the men’s r
oom was empty. No one could intrude on this private moment.

  I stood at the sink and turned on the hot water, then dipped my hands under it.

  I drew a sharp, hissing breath through my teeth.

  My fresh wound stung.

  “Are you okay?”

  I whipped around to see Victor standing in the entryway, looking tired under the fluorescent light.

  “The fuck you doing here?” I grumbled.

  “Seeing if you’re okay, asshole,” he said, crossing his arms.

  I liked that little pout on his face. Made me want to stick my dick in there again.

  “‘Course I’m okay,” I spat. “Did you come in here asking for an ass-kicking?”

  He faltered a little, and I saw all of the questions cross through his eyes:

  Were we really going to go back to what we had before? Playing the roles of the bully jock and the bullied burnout? I looked down at the water running over my thumb, mentally willing him to go away.

  But he stayed rooted to the spot.

  “Did I stutter?” I said in what I hoped was a low, warning tone.

  “You don’t look okay,” he said, concern flashing through his eyes.

  I hated that.

  I hated pity.

  And pity and concern were cousins.

  “LEAVE!” I roared.

  Startled, he took a step back.

  But he stayed where he was.

  “Look. Can we… can we talk?” Victor asked, tucking his huge flap of emo kid hair away from his face.

  I glared at him. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  I had to fight the urge to check under all the stalls. If anyone was in here, listening in—

  “There’s no one in here. I checked,” Victor assured me.

  Something eased up in my chest, but only slightly. “Doesn’t matter. We still don’t have anything to talk about.”

  I could feel how my words stung him, and I relished in it. In a way, it felt like I was attacking the memory of what happened between us. Maybe if I was mean enough, he would go away.

  Maybe if I was mean enough, he’d forget.

  “Don’t be an asshole,” he said in I’m sure, what he hoped, was a tough guy tone.

  I turned off the faucet with a high-pitched screech and turned to him. Then I advanced on him.

  He backed up until he collided with the wall.