Marie Sexton - Promises

“What’s this about?” I asked as I tried to pry one of the girls off of me.

“We just heard you’re going to be our teacher next semester!” Ringo said, and then they all started talking at once.

“It will be so great—”

“You’re the best—”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Wait!” Of course, Matt’s odd behavior made sense now. Talk about throwing me to the wolves. I had to wait a second for all the commotion to die down before saying, “I haven’t actually accepted the offer yet.”

“But you will, right?”

“We’ll see.” They all started to talk again at once. “Stop! Whether I take the job or not, you guys still have finals to study for, so get back to work.”

I found Matt in the kitchen. He was staring at the floor, cheeks red, looking incredibly guilty. He kept his head down but glanced up at me.

“Are you mad?”

“I should be.”

“But are you?”

I thought about it and realized that I wasn’t at all. What I felt was actually more like relief. At some point over the last week, I had made the decision to trust his judgment, and I felt good about it. The nagging anxiety which had been eating away at me ever since that fateful meeting earlier in the month had faded to nothing more than a few frantic butterflies in my stomach. Mom’s advice about deciding how to live seemed to magically make a little more sense. And the reaction of the students—my students—had decided it for me.

“I’ll call tomorrow and accept the job.” That made him smile. “You really are a manipulative bastard. I’ve told you that before, right?”

He grabbed my shirt and pulled me over to him. “Just say it one more time.”

“You’re a manipulative bastard.”

“Not that. You know what you’re supposed to say.”

“You were right.”

He laughed. “I’ll never get tired of hearing that.”

A FEW days later, Cole called.

“Hey, Sweets!” he said in his lilting, flirtatious voice. “I’m back in Vail. Want some company tonight?”

“Sorry, Cole. I can’t.” Matt was on the couch reading, and his head jerked up when I said that name.

“You can’t tonight, or you can’t because of a certain tall, dark, very angry-looking police officer?”

“The latter.”

“Closet door wasn’t locked after all?”

“I guess I found the key.” Matt looked confused when I said that, and I smiled at him.

Cole was quiet for just a second, and then he said. “I’m glad, Jared.” It wasn’t his usual flamboyant voice. It was his real voice, soft and quiet. “I’m really happy for you.”

“I GOT the beer!” Matt called as he came in the door.

“It’s about time! You missed kick-off.” It was Sunday, eight days before Christmas. We had been looking forward to this day for weeks, when our two favorite teams would be playing each other again.

“Anybody score yet?”

“No, but it’s only a matter of time before the Broncos pound your pansyass Chiefs into the ground.”

He laughed. “We’ll see, Jarhead! Loser buys dinner.”

It was a close game. We had a blast, harassing each other as first one team took the lead and then the other. With two seconds left, the Broncos were up by one point. The Chiefs were lining up for a field goal. If they missed it, I won. If they made it, he did. It’s the folly of sports fans everywhere that we think we can affect the game from our living room. I was yelling, “Miss it! Miss it!” Matt had a white knuckle grip on the coffee table in front of him.

The kick was good. I groaned. Matt let out a victorious whoop and turned and pounced on me from the other end of the couch. It was embarrassing how quickly he could pin me. He grabbed my face and kissed me. Not a romantic kiss, but a big, loud, triumphant smack on my lips, and then pulled back to look at me with a huge smile on his face.

“So what are you buying me for dinner?”

“A Lean Cuisine! You’re heavy!”

The phone rang, and I reached over my head to grab it off the side table behind me.

“Hello?” He hadn’t moved off of me but had moved down. He had my shirt pulled up and was trying to distract me by kissing his way down my stomach.

“Matt?” a woman’s voice asked.

“No, this is Jared.”

“Jared? Do I have the wrong number? I’m trying to reach Matt Richards. He told me this was his new number.”

He was pushing my sweats lower, and his lips were at the top of my patch of hair. The attempt to distract me was proven successful when I said, “He’s on, hang here.” He started laughing against my stomach as I handed him the phone.

But the happy look left his face pretty fast once he started talking. I figured out right away that it was his mother and was surprised that he had given them my number. Then I realized he didn’t really live at the apartment anymore, so maybe it made sense.

He was sitting up now. “No, Mom, I wish you wouldn’t. We’re really busy right now. It’s just not a good time.” Oh shit. I knew by the look he was giving me that his feelings were the same. “Are you renting a car, or do you need me to pick you up?” He put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. The remainder of the conversation was nothing but one word answers on his end. “Yes. Yes. Right. Okay. Bye.” He dropped the phone, and his head fell almost to the level of his knees.

“Fuck, Jared. This is bad.”

Despite his obvious distress, I found that I wasn’t too worried about any of it. It would only be for a few days, and then we would be back to normal. And lately, “normal” for us was unbelievably good. Now that we weren’t fighting anymore, everything felt perfect. Nothing could darken my mood much. So my voice was light as I asked, “They’re coming to visit?”

“Yes.”

“For Christmas?”

“Yes.”

“When do they get here?”

“The day after tomorrow.”

“How long will they be here?”

“A week.”

Neither of us spoke for a minute, but finally I said, as gently as I could, “You don’t want them to know, do you?”

“I’m sorry.” It came out a whisper.

“After all that shit you gave me about being willing to face people?” But I said it teasingly. I knew what his father was like. I knew how hard it would be for him. I couldn’t be mad at him for wanting to avoid it.

“I know,” he said quietly.

“Your Dad’s gonna totally ruin Christmas.” I was still teasing, trying to cheer him up.

“I know.” I was happy to hear that it seemed to be working.

“And Lizzy is going to blow a fucking gasket.”

“I KNOW!” There was at least a hint of laughter in his voice now.

But he still hadn’t looked at me. I got down on my knees in front of him and put my hands on his shoulders. I waited for him to look up at me and smiled at him.

“It’s okay,” I told him.

He shook his head. “It’s not okay. I’m being a hypocrite. Why aren’t you pissed at me?”

“Because your Dad’s an angry, belligerent, antagonistic asshole.”

He laughed just a little. “First time I’ve ever had reason to be happy about that.”

I rubbed the top of his head playfully. “Cheer up. It’s not so bad. It sucks that we can’t spend Christmas together. And I’ll hate not seeing you for a week. But we’ll get through this. It’ll be fine.”

Finally, he relaxed and even smiled a little. “You’re really okay with this?”

“I promise.”

He pulled me against him tight enough to take my breath away.

“Thank you.”

I turned and kissed his cheek and then pulled back so I could look at him.

“I assume you’re going to stay at the apartment while they’re here?” His lease wasn’t up yet, and although it sucked that he still had to pay the rent, it was definitely going to make things easier.

“I’ll have to. The motel they use is right across the street. I don’t know what to do about the phone, though. I gave them this number. But if they try to call me from the motel….”

“I’ll forward the phone to your old number.” It wasn’t like anybody ever called for me anyway.

I was thinking about the fact that we only had two nights together before we would be sleeping alone again for a week. “You wait here,” I told him. I went back to the bedroom and got the lube and then came back and knelt again in front of him, between his knees. He was looking at me with one eyebrow up and half a grin on his face.

“What are you up to?”

I pushed him back on the couch and started to undo his pants. “I thought I’d give you a reason to hurry home.”

“You think I don’t already have a reason?” he asked with some amusement. But he lifted his hips and let me slide his pants off.

I just smiled at him. “Now you’ll have two.” I pulled him toward me, so that his ass was almost starting to hang off of the couch. Always, I had to start at the amazing, alluring trail of hair leading down from his navel, kissing it and tasting it. His hands were immediately tangled in my curls. “Have you always had a hair fetish?” I asked him without looking up.

“No.” He pulled on it a little, playfully. “Only with you.”

That made me smile, and I ran my tongue again up that trail and then started to work my way back down.

“I should ask you the same question,” he said teasingly.

Only half of my brain was thinking about his words. I was thinking about the close-cropped hair on his head. “What are you talking about? You don’t have any hair.”

He laughed, sort of a low rumble that caused his stomach to tremble beneath me. Then one hand tugged on my hair, pulling my face away from him, and his other hand moved to cover his stomach from his navel to his crotch. Covering that beautiful trail of hair.

“Hey!”

I looked up to see him grinning wolfishly down at me. “Now do you know what I’m talking about?”

That made me laugh, and I pushed his hand away and kissed him there again. “Ever since our first camping trip. Do you remember me talking in my sleep?”

“About mountain biking.”

“Right,” I said sarcastically.

“You said something about ‘follow the trail’.”

“Right,” I said again and traced my finger down it.

He laughed again. “I thought you were acting funny that morning.”

“I woke up with such a hard on for you, I had to jack off in the tent before I could face you.”

He moaned when I said that, and his erection, which had been lying against my cheek as I kissed him, jumped against me. When I looked up, he was giving me a wicked, sexy grin. “That is hot,” he said huskily. “I have a sudden urge to pitch a tent in the back yard tonight.”

I laughed and then put my tongue on the base of his cock and ran it all the way up his shaft. His eyes drifted closed, and I felt a shudder go through him. I did it again, and his hips lifted toward me as I pulled away. His eyes opened again, and he watched me as I teased my tongue over his slit and then took him in my mouth. He groaned. His fingers clenched in my hair, but he didn’t push. He never pushed—until he came. Then he would lose his iron control a little bit, and I loved that I could do that to him.

I grabbed the base of his cock and started rubbing my thumb down his perineum. I had been slowly working my way toward his hole over the last few weeks, and he had finally stopped tensing up every time and had even started to enjoy it the last couple of times. This time, he did tense up again, but only for a second, before he relaxed again. I increased the pressure, heard him groan, and felt him pushing against me.

I quickly uncapped the lube and spread a little on my fingers.

“You can tell me to stop at any time,” I told him, and I started to suck him again before he could respond. Then, very gently, I started to rub one finger up and down the crack of his ass. Light pressure, no penetration, just slowly rubbing from his balls down past his hole and then back again. At first, he started to tense up again. I kept moving up and down, up and down, still sucking at the same time, just letting repetition soften him up. After a few passes, he relaxed again. A couple more passes, and I heard his breathing start to change, and soon after that, the rhythm of my finger rubbing him had him moaning and moving his hips a little to prolong the contact to the best spots. “Doing okay?” I asked quietly.

“Yeeeesssss.” It came out a long moan.

I started circling my finger around his rim and then applied the slightest bit of pressure against his hole. He responded beautifully, moaning and pushing down against my hand. I slipped one finger inside of him and heard his breath hiss out between his teeth. Very slowly, I moved in and out, in and out. He was making soft whimpering sounds now, pushing toward me, his fingers tight in my hair. I reached just a bit and brushed my finger on the bunch of nerves I had been carefully avoiding so far.