BBHR: 05 - Not A Study Session
Beyond Back Harlow Road: 05 - Not A Study Session
Rating: 15 (UK), R (US)
Summary: Three years after the events in 'Stand By Me', Chris Chambers and Gordie Lachance are still standing by each other. What will face them as they journey even further beyond childhood?
Gordie's POV. Chris/Gordie Slash.
Warning: Contains strong language, male-male relationships, mature content
¤
I didn’t let myself cry for too long. Crying was a girl’s thing, or at least that was what I believed back then at the age of fifteen. Plus, the warmth of Chris’s embrace was beginning to get to me.
‘I’m okay now,’ I muttered, pushing myself away from Chris’s hold. After a second he gave, letting his arms fall to his side.
‘Our dads suck, right?’ he said. Although I wasn’t looking at him, I could tell from the strain in his voice that he was attempting a smile. I flicked my eyes upwards and saw that I was right, though that came as no surprise. I knew Chris, knew him as well as I knew myself-sometimes even better than I knew myself.
‘Big time,’ I replied, sniffing. I looked at Chris’s shirt and could easily see where I had been crying. The thin white fabric just below Chris’s left shoulder had gotten darker with my tears and, undoubtedly, my snot as well. The least I could do for him was let him borrow one of my shirts, seeing that I had ruined his. I stood up and I could feel his eyes follow me.
‘Here,’ I murmured, opening the chest of drawers by my bed and pulling out a badly folded shirt. I handed it to Chris, who looked at it as if it was about to eat him.
‘I can’t wear your shirt,’ he said, unfolding it and holding it up in front of him. I wondered whether he still felt self-conscious about his bruises. The ones on his chest couldn’t be much worse than the one that decorated his face.
‘Of course you can,’ I told him with a roll of my eyes. ‘I ruined your shirt with my snot.’ I made sure to leave out ‘and tears’.
‘Yeah but…’ Chris began, and I saw him begin to smirk, ‘this shirt’s tiny. There’s no way it’ll fit over my big, manly muscles.’
I picked up the pillow from the head of my bed and threw it at Chris with an annoyed grunt. However he had pre-empted me, like he always did, and dodged to the side, laughing.
It was then that I heard a call from downstairs and the slam of the front door. Chris stopped laughing immediately and his body seemed to shrink into the shadows, something he managed to do even in the brightness of my room.
‘Gordon!’ My father’s voice rose up the stairs. Turning to Chris, I gave him a look to tell him not to make a sound. He nodded and I opened my bedroom door, closing it behind me and taking a step onto the upper floor landing.
‘Yeah,’ I replied. I took a step forward and looked down, seeing the face of father staring up at me. His brows were crossed into a frown that further wrinkled his face.
‘What’s this?’ he asked gruffly, pointing down at the floor.
Leaning over the banister, I peered down to where he was pointing. There, on the floor, were the remains of my father’s note. The note I had ripped up in my anger.
My father didn’t bother waiting for an answer. ‘For God’s sake, Gordon!’ he yelled. ‘Your mother has broken her leg. You don’t expect her to come and clean up your stupid mess, do you?’
‘I’ll clean it up now Dad,’ I said, rushing down the stairs. Even through my father’s dagger gazes, I couldn’t help but feel relieved. A broken leg was bad but not as bad as it could’ve been. If she died too… I couldn’t bear thinking about it. It would just be me and my father left. I would be left with a father who despised me, and he would be left with a son who knew it.
I picked up each piece of ripped up paper one at a time. I did it so slowly that my father gave up on watching over me. He walked with slow precision to the kitchen, his figure disappearing from my peripheral view when he banged the kitchen door shut.
I wanted to ask him why my mother, if she only had broken leg, wasn’t home yet. However I was in no mood to face him, no mood to have him stare at me as if I were some unwelcome guest.
Sighing, I plucked up the last remaining piece of paper from the floor and carried them with me upstairs to my room, like I was carrying with me the dead body of a pet hamster-or something equally as ridiculous.
Chris had moved from my bed to sit on the windowsill, leaning against the window frame, eyes half closed, as if he had been there all his life.
‘Mom only has a broken leg,’ I told him, the pieces of paper still in my hands. I made my way over to the window, feeling Chris’s eyes on me as I did so, and threw the pieces of paper out of it. There was probably some symbolic reason as to why I did that; however, even if there was, I was fifteen at the time and I didn’t really give much of a shit about symbolism.
‘Yeah,’ Chris said, ‘I heard.’
I didn’t live in a very fancy house. My house had two stories, which was pretty good, and I didn’t have to go to some rickety outhouse in the back garden to do a number two, we had a toilet built inside the house. But our walls and floors were pretty thin. The thinness of them was obvious now. I could hear the sound my father slamming cupboard doors through the floorboards. That was the way he let out his anger, by slamming doors and shouting at me. I suppose it was better than having it the other way round.
‘So when’s your mom coming back?’ Chris asked when I didn’t say anything further.
I shrugged, lifting myself on the windowsill too. Chris shifted so I could sit opposite him, bringing my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. ‘I didn’t ask.’
Chris cleared his throat. ‘Look…’ he began, and I did look. I lifted my head to look up at him, just as he had said. But apparently that was not what he had meant by the word because he hastily turned his head to the side so that he was staring out to the horizon beyond my bedroom window. ‘…About before, when you were cr-when we were sat on your bed.’
I nodded, pretending not the notice the slip of his tongue.
‘I--,’ Chris seemed to be having difficulty getting his words out. ‘I’m not… I’m not a faggot either, Gordie’ he finished, rushed.
‘I never sai-’
‘Gordon!’ My father’s shouting voice stunted my reply. For once I was glad of my old man’s interruption.
Jumping off the windowsill, I ran to my bedroom door and opened it a crack. ‘Yeah?’ I called.
‘I’m going to go back to the hospital to visit your mother,’ he called back. ‘Food is still in the oven.’ I heard the front door slam closed and I knew my father was gone.
I felt a worming feeling inside of me. A little voice in my head once again reminding me that my father hadn’t even offered to invite me along with him to visit my own mother. Another little voice told me that, perhaps, if I run, I could reach him before he drove away, and I could ask to see my mother. A third little voice asked me whether I really wanted to do that. Finally, my own voice, replied to all the other ones with a very simple, mental Fuck you all!
I turned around and almost sprang out of my own skin to find that Chris had been standing behind me.
‘You know what, Gordie?’ he said, running a hand through his dirty blond hair. He took a step forward and I took a step back. There was a muffled bang as my heel touched the wood of the door. Chris half chuckled and half sighed. ‘I think I’m gonna go.’
‘What? Why?’ I didn’t see why he had to go. It was far too early for him to leave.
‘Fine then,’ Chris muttered. He lifted his hand and pressed it against the part of the door just above my right shoulder, putting some weight on it as he leant forward. ‘Tell me why I should stay.’ He was so close now that I could feel his warm breath on my cheek and see my own reflection in his green and blue kaleidoscope eyes.
‘I, uh…’ Now it was my turn to have difficulty getting my words out. I swallowed the ridiculous amount of saliva that had built up in my mouth and tried again. ‘We, I mean, we need to study.’
As soon as I said that, Chris pushed himself away from me and wandered to the aimlessly to the middle of my bedroom, both his hands clutching loosely at strands of his hair. I let out a breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding, and relaxed the muscles of my shoulder, muscles I hadn’t realised had been tensed.
‘Fuckin’ hell Gordie,’ he said in one long breath, his arms swinging like a pendulum back down to his sides. ‘Alright.’ He moved to kick at my bedpost but then thought better of it. ‘Alright, let’s fuckin’ study.’
I watched in a dazed state as Chris went to sit at the desk. He didn’t do anything else, didn’t bother getting out any books or pens or paper, he just sat there, as if admiring the shoddy woodwork.
‘Chris?’ I asked. I walked over to him and carefully rested my hand on his shoulder. I felt his muscles tighten up. ‘Um, what do you want to study?’
‘Math,’ he said in a tone of voice that suggested he had just plucked the subject word out of the air.
‘Oh, okay.’ I lifted my hand from his shoulder and picked up my school bag from the foot of my bed. I took out my math textbook from it and dropped it on the desk in front of Chris. ‘What topic?’
In one fluid motion, Chris flipped the book open to what seemed like a random page. ‘This topic.’
I took a seat in the stool beside him and switched on the desk lamp.
I looked at the page he had chosen. ‘Trigonometry?’
‘Yeah.’
‘But Chris… you’re okay at Trigonometry.’ It was true. Although Chris had been slow on the uptake during the school lessons but as soon as I had retold him the basics later that same day he caught on almost immediately.
‘I’m okay?’ Chris laughed. It was a laugh that seemed entirely hollow in my ears. ‘Christ Gordie, sometimes I’d like to be just a little bit better than okay. Okay?’
He turned to look at me and I felt as if his eyes were piercing right through me. I was taken aback back the anger I saw in his irises. I was even more taken aback by the anger I suddenly felt inside of me, or at least something very similar to anger.
‘Bullshit,’ I said, seething. I stood up and knocked the stool I had been sitting on to the floor in the process. ‘You’re better than okay in lots of stuff. You’re faster than me, stronger than me-’
‘As if all that piss shit matters,’ he interrupting, standing up too. ‘I’m not as clever as you, Gordie. I can’t make stories up like you can.’
‘Stories are for pussies and faggots,’ I retorted.
Suddenly Chris grabbed at the collar of my shirt and shoved me roughly against the wall. ‘Stop saying fuckin’ shit like that!’ he said through gritted teeth. His hand that wasn’t holding onto my shirt collar was pressing against my hip, pressing against the small slither of bare flesh just below the hem of my shirt and just above the top of my denim jeans.
‘Why the hell not?’ I yelled, trying to ignore the placement of his hand.
‘Because, you fuckwit,’ he said, a finger slowly lifting my shirt fabric to allow the other fingers to roam underneath it, ‘because you’re better than name calling.’
The hand grasping my collar loosened its grip, but it wasn’t that hand I was thinking about. ‘Y-you just called me a fuckwit.’
‘I never said I was better than name calling.’ Chris’s voice was getting softer, his hand now fully submerged under the folds of my shirt. I gasped and began to involuntarily close my eyes. Then I realised I had no idea what the fuck was happening.
‘Chris!’ I had intended to shout but his name came out of my mouth in a whisper. Fuck, what the hell was his hand doing? ‘Wh-what-’
‘Be quiet, Gordie.’
The thing was, however, that Chris didn’t give me any choice on the matter. As soon as those words left his lips, his lips met mine. Well not really met, more like crashed against.
Chris pushed me harder against the wall and pushed his lips harder against mine. Pushing so hard I could feel the warm trickle of blood. If my mind had been capable of rational thought at the time I would have known that the blood had come from the partially healed cut on Chris’s lips cracking open. But my mind was not capable of any thought except to open my mouth when I felt Chris’s slick, wet tongue touch my lips.
Chris’s tongue roamed into my mouth. The hand underneath my shirt clenched into a fist that pressed against my chest. The hand at my collar slid behind my neck, sending a shiver like electricity down my spine.
I had never kissed a girl before, let alone another boy. I couldn’t tell whether what I was doing was right, or whether what Chris was doing was right. Then I remembered that of course it wasn’t fucking right.
I lifted my hands-which had previously been lying dormant at my side-and placed them on Chris’s chest. Then, with more effort than I had ever thought it would require, I pushed him away with as much strength as I could muster. I felt drained, exhausted, like I had been running a marathon, but I pushed, wrenching my head to the side in the process, thus turning my lips away from Chris’s.
I was breathing heavily, inhaling ice and exhaling flames-or at least that was what it felt like.
‘Fuck,’ Chris whispered. ‘Fuck,’ he said again, this time louder. ‘FuckfuckfuckfuckFUCK!’ He removed his hands from around my neck and under my shirt and then-tied in with another ‘FUCK!’-I heard a slam as he punched his fist against the wall.
I finally opened my eyes too see that Chris had moved away from me. He was clasping a hand that had knuckles grazed a raw red.
Normally I would have rushed over to him to see if he was okay. But normality had shifted somewhat now that my best friend had kissed me-my best male friend.
I brought a hand to my mouth tentatively. Licking my lips, I tasted the sweetly metallic mixture of Chris’s saliva and blood.
‘You should have let me go.’ Chris was looking at the floor, or perhaps at his scraped knuckles. I couldn’t tell which, a curtain of his hair hid his eyes from view. I could, however, see his mouth. His lips were red from the kiss, and they were made even redder by the blood that had been smeared from his cut. He was licking his lips too, like I had been doing before.
Then, before I could stop him, he darted to my bedroom window and, with a masculine grace that only Chris Chambers could obtain; he leaped onto the tree branch. He didn’t say goodbye, he didn’t say another word; and neither did I.
¤
My parents came back home a few minutes later. I ran down the stairs when I heard the door open, anxious to see my mother. Or maybe I was just anxious to push Chris’s kiss out of my mind. It was most likely a mixture of both.
My mother had a cast on her leg when she entered; she was being supported by both a pair of crutches and by my father.
As soon as she saw me, she gasped. ‘Is that blood on your lips?’
My eyes widened and I touched my lips, bringing my hand to my eyes to see red upon my fingertips. ‘It’s strawberry syrup,’ I said hurriedly, rubbing my mouth with the back of my hand.
‘Where did you get strawberry syrup?’ my father questioned gruffly with raised eyebrows.
‘It was a friend at school’s birthday today,’ I lied. ‘He was giving out candy filled with strawberry syrup.’ Quickly, to switch the attention away from myself, I asked my mother if she was okay.
‘I’m fine, dear,’ she said. ‘It was your friend’s birthday? Why didn’t you get him a present?’
My mother seemed excited by the fact that I had a friend who wasn’t Chris.
‘He’s not that close a friend,’ I told her, shrugging in as noncommittal way as possible.
‘Oh.’ My mother frowned. ‘You know, you should at least try to make friends, dear.’ This time her ‘dear’ sounded harsher than before.
Like always my mother disregarded Chris as a friend of mine. After what had happened only minutes before, I wasn’t even sure I could regard Chris as a friend anymore. I dreaded school the next day.
‘Move out of the way Gordon and let your mother rest.’ I did as my father said.
Rating: 15 (UK), R (US)
Summary: Three years after the events in 'Stand By Me', Chris Chambers and Gordie Lachance are still standing by each other. What will face them as they journey even further beyond childhood?
Gordie's POV. Chris/Gordie Slash.
Warning: Contains strong language, male-male relationships, mature content
¤
I didn’t let myself cry for too long. Crying was a girl’s thing, or at least that was what I believed back then at the age of fifteen. Plus, the warmth of Chris’s embrace was beginning to get to me.
‘I’m okay now,’ I muttered, pushing myself away from Chris’s hold. After a second he gave, letting his arms fall to his side.
‘Our dads suck, right?’ he said. Although I wasn’t looking at him, I could tell from the strain in his voice that he was attempting a smile. I flicked my eyes upwards and saw that I was right, though that came as no surprise. I knew Chris, knew him as well as I knew myself-sometimes even better than I knew myself.
‘Big time,’ I replied, sniffing. I looked at Chris’s shirt and could easily see where I had been crying. The thin white fabric just below Chris’s left shoulder had gotten darker with my tears and, undoubtedly, my snot as well. The least I could do for him was let him borrow one of my shirts, seeing that I had ruined his. I stood up and I could feel his eyes follow me.
‘Here,’ I murmured, opening the chest of drawers by my bed and pulling out a badly folded shirt. I handed it to Chris, who looked at it as if it was about to eat him.
‘I can’t wear your shirt,’ he said, unfolding it and holding it up in front of him. I wondered whether he still felt self-conscious about his bruises. The ones on his chest couldn’t be much worse than the one that decorated his face.
‘Of course you can,’ I told him with a roll of my eyes. ‘I ruined your shirt with my snot.’ I made sure to leave out ‘and tears’.
‘Yeah but…’ Chris began, and I saw him begin to smirk, ‘this shirt’s tiny. There’s no way it’ll fit over my big, manly muscles.’
I picked up the pillow from the head of my bed and threw it at Chris with an annoyed grunt. However he had pre-empted me, like he always did, and dodged to the side, laughing.
It was then that I heard a call from downstairs and the slam of the front door. Chris stopped laughing immediately and his body seemed to shrink into the shadows, something he managed to do even in the brightness of my room.
‘Gordon!’ My father’s voice rose up the stairs. Turning to Chris, I gave him a look to tell him not to make a sound. He nodded and I opened my bedroom door, closing it behind me and taking a step onto the upper floor landing.
‘Yeah,’ I replied. I took a step forward and looked down, seeing the face of father staring up at me. His brows were crossed into a frown that further wrinkled his face.
‘What’s this?’ he asked gruffly, pointing down at the floor.
Leaning over the banister, I peered down to where he was pointing. There, on the floor, were the remains of my father’s note. The note I had ripped up in my anger.
My father didn’t bother waiting for an answer. ‘For God’s sake, Gordon!’ he yelled. ‘Your mother has broken her leg. You don’t expect her to come and clean up your stupid mess, do you?’
‘I’ll clean it up now Dad,’ I said, rushing down the stairs. Even through my father’s dagger gazes, I couldn’t help but feel relieved. A broken leg was bad but not as bad as it could’ve been. If she died too… I couldn’t bear thinking about it. It would just be me and my father left. I would be left with a father who despised me, and he would be left with a son who knew it.
I picked up each piece of ripped up paper one at a time. I did it so slowly that my father gave up on watching over me. He walked with slow precision to the kitchen, his figure disappearing from my peripheral view when he banged the kitchen door shut.
I wanted to ask him why my mother, if she only had broken leg, wasn’t home yet. However I was in no mood to face him, no mood to have him stare at me as if I were some unwelcome guest.
Sighing, I plucked up the last remaining piece of paper from the floor and carried them with me upstairs to my room, like I was carrying with me the dead body of a pet hamster-or something equally as ridiculous.
Chris had moved from my bed to sit on the windowsill, leaning against the window frame, eyes half closed, as if he had been there all his life.
‘Mom only has a broken leg,’ I told him, the pieces of paper still in my hands. I made my way over to the window, feeling Chris’s eyes on me as I did so, and threw the pieces of paper out of it. There was probably some symbolic reason as to why I did that; however, even if there was, I was fifteen at the time and I didn’t really give much of a shit about symbolism.
‘Yeah,’ Chris said, ‘I heard.’
I didn’t live in a very fancy house. My house had two stories, which was pretty good, and I didn’t have to go to some rickety outhouse in the back garden to do a number two, we had a toilet built inside the house. But our walls and floors were pretty thin. The thinness of them was obvious now. I could hear the sound my father slamming cupboard doors through the floorboards. That was the way he let out his anger, by slamming doors and shouting at me. I suppose it was better than having it the other way round.
‘So when’s your mom coming back?’ Chris asked when I didn’t say anything further.
I shrugged, lifting myself on the windowsill too. Chris shifted so I could sit opposite him, bringing my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. ‘I didn’t ask.’
Chris cleared his throat. ‘Look…’ he began, and I did look. I lifted my head to look up at him, just as he had said. But apparently that was not what he had meant by the word because he hastily turned his head to the side so that he was staring out to the horizon beyond my bedroom window. ‘…About before, when you were cr-when we were sat on your bed.’
I nodded, pretending not the notice the slip of his tongue.
‘I--,’ Chris seemed to be having difficulty getting his words out. ‘I’m not… I’m not a faggot either, Gordie’ he finished, rushed.
‘I never sai-’
‘Gordon!’ My father’s shouting voice stunted my reply. For once I was glad of my old man’s interruption.
Jumping off the windowsill, I ran to my bedroom door and opened it a crack. ‘Yeah?’ I called.
‘I’m going to go back to the hospital to visit your mother,’ he called back. ‘Food is still in the oven.’ I heard the front door slam closed and I knew my father was gone.
I felt a worming feeling inside of me. A little voice in my head once again reminding me that my father hadn’t even offered to invite me along with him to visit my own mother. Another little voice told me that, perhaps, if I run, I could reach him before he drove away, and I could ask to see my mother. A third little voice asked me whether I really wanted to do that. Finally, my own voice, replied to all the other ones with a very simple, mental Fuck you all!
I turned around and almost sprang out of my own skin to find that Chris had been standing behind me.
‘You know what, Gordie?’ he said, running a hand through his dirty blond hair. He took a step forward and I took a step back. There was a muffled bang as my heel touched the wood of the door. Chris half chuckled and half sighed. ‘I think I’m gonna go.’
‘What? Why?’ I didn’t see why he had to go. It was far too early for him to leave.
‘Fine then,’ Chris muttered. He lifted his hand and pressed it against the part of the door just above my right shoulder, putting some weight on it as he leant forward. ‘Tell me why I should stay.’ He was so close now that I could feel his warm breath on my cheek and see my own reflection in his green and blue kaleidoscope eyes.
‘I, uh…’ Now it was my turn to have difficulty getting my words out. I swallowed the ridiculous amount of saliva that had built up in my mouth and tried again. ‘We, I mean, we need to study.’
As soon as I said that, Chris pushed himself away from me and wandered to the aimlessly to the middle of my bedroom, both his hands clutching loosely at strands of his hair. I let out a breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding, and relaxed the muscles of my shoulder, muscles I hadn’t realised had been tensed.
‘Fuckin’ hell Gordie,’ he said in one long breath, his arms swinging like a pendulum back down to his sides. ‘Alright.’ He moved to kick at my bedpost but then thought better of it. ‘Alright, let’s fuckin’ study.’
I watched in a dazed state as Chris went to sit at the desk. He didn’t do anything else, didn’t bother getting out any books or pens or paper, he just sat there, as if admiring the shoddy woodwork.
‘Chris?’ I asked. I walked over to him and carefully rested my hand on his shoulder. I felt his muscles tighten up. ‘Um, what do you want to study?’
‘Math,’ he said in a tone of voice that suggested he had just plucked the subject word out of the air.
‘Oh, okay.’ I lifted my hand from his shoulder and picked up my school bag from the foot of my bed. I took out my math textbook from it and dropped it on the desk in front of Chris. ‘What topic?’
In one fluid motion, Chris flipped the book open to what seemed like a random page. ‘This topic.’
I took a seat in the stool beside him and switched on the desk lamp.
I looked at the page he had chosen. ‘Trigonometry?’
‘Yeah.’
‘But Chris… you’re okay at Trigonometry.’ It was true. Although Chris had been slow on the uptake during the school lessons but as soon as I had retold him the basics later that same day he caught on almost immediately.
‘I’m okay?’ Chris laughed. It was a laugh that seemed entirely hollow in my ears. ‘Christ Gordie, sometimes I’d like to be just a little bit better than okay. Okay?’
He turned to look at me and I felt as if his eyes were piercing right through me. I was taken aback back the anger I saw in his irises. I was even more taken aback by the anger I suddenly felt inside of me, or at least something very similar to anger.
‘Bullshit,’ I said, seething. I stood up and knocked the stool I had been sitting on to the floor in the process. ‘You’re better than okay in lots of stuff. You’re faster than me, stronger than me-’
‘As if all that piss shit matters,’ he interrupting, standing up too. ‘I’m not as clever as you, Gordie. I can’t make stories up like you can.’
‘Stories are for pussies and faggots,’ I retorted.
Suddenly Chris grabbed at the collar of my shirt and shoved me roughly against the wall. ‘Stop saying fuckin’ shit like that!’ he said through gritted teeth. His hand that wasn’t holding onto my shirt collar was pressing against my hip, pressing against the small slither of bare flesh just below the hem of my shirt and just above the top of my denim jeans.
‘Why the hell not?’ I yelled, trying to ignore the placement of his hand.
‘Because, you fuckwit,’ he said, a finger slowly lifting my shirt fabric to allow the other fingers to roam underneath it, ‘because you’re better than name calling.’
The hand grasping my collar loosened its grip, but it wasn’t that hand I was thinking about. ‘Y-you just called me a fuckwit.’
‘I never said I was better than name calling.’ Chris’s voice was getting softer, his hand now fully submerged under the folds of my shirt. I gasped and began to involuntarily close my eyes. Then I realised I had no idea what the fuck was happening.
‘Chris!’ I had intended to shout but his name came out of my mouth in a whisper. Fuck, what the hell was his hand doing? ‘Wh-what-’
‘Be quiet, Gordie.’
The thing was, however, that Chris didn’t give me any choice on the matter. As soon as those words left his lips, his lips met mine. Well not really met, more like crashed against.
Chris pushed me harder against the wall and pushed his lips harder against mine. Pushing so hard I could feel the warm trickle of blood. If my mind had been capable of rational thought at the time I would have known that the blood had come from the partially healed cut on Chris’s lips cracking open. But my mind was not capable of any thought except to open my mouth when I felt Chris’s slick, wet tongue touch my lips.
Chris’s tongue roamed into my mouth. The hand underneath my shirt clenched into a fist that pressed against my chest. The hand at my collar slid behind my neck, sending a shiver like electricity down my spine.
I had never kissed a girl before, let alone another boy. I couldn’t tell whether what I was doing was right, or whether what Chris was doing was right. Then I remembered that of course it wasn’t fucking right.
I lifted my hands-which had previously been lying dormant at my side-and placed them on Chris’s chest. Then, with more effort than I had ever thought it would require, I pushed him away with as much strength as I could muster. I felt drained, exhausted, like I had been running a marathon, but I pushed, wrenching my head to the side in the process, thus turning my lips away from Chris’s.
I was breathing heavily, inhaling ice and exhaling flames-or at least that was what it felt like.
‘Fuck,’ Chris whispered. ‘Fuck,’ he said again, this time louder. ‘FuckfuckfuckfuckFUCK!’ He removed his hands from around my neck and under my shirt and then-tied in with another ‘FUCK!’-I heard a slam as he punched his fist against the wall.
I finally opened my eyes too see that Chris had moved away from me. He was clasping a hand that had knuckles grazed a raw red.
Normally I would have rushed over to him to see if he was okay. But normality had shifted somewhat now that my best friend had kissed me-my best male friend.
I brought a hand to my mouth tentatively. Licking my lips, I tasted the sweetly metallic mixture of Chris’s saliva and blood.
‘You should have let me go.’ Chris was looking at the floor, or perhaps at his scraped knuckles. I couldn’t tell which, a curtain of his hair hid his eyes from view. I could, however, see his mouth. His lips were red from the kiss, and they were made even redder by the blood that had been smeared from his cut. He was licking his lips too, like I had been doing before.
Then, before I could stop him, he darted to my bedroom window and, with a masculine grace that only Chris Chambers could obtain; he leaped onto the tree branch. He didn’t say goodbye, he didn’t say another word; and neither did I.
¤
My parents came back home a few minutes later. I ran down the stairs when I heard the door open, anxious to see my mother. Or maybe I was just anxious to push Chris’s kiss out of my mind. It was most likely a mixture of both.
My mother had a cast on her leg when she entered; she was being supported by both a pair of crutches and by my father.
As soon as she saw me, she gasped. ‘Is that blood on your lips?’
My eyes widened and I touched my lips, bringing my hand to my eyes to see red upon my fingertips. ‘It’s strawberry syrup,’ I said hurriedly, rubbing my mouth with the back of my hand.
‘Where did you get strawberry syrup?’ my father questioned gruffly with raised eyebrows.
‘It was a friend at school’s birthday today,’ I lied. ‘He was giving out candy filled with strawberry syrup.’ Quickly, to switch the attention away from myself, I asked my mother if she was okay.
‘I’m fine, dear,’ she said. ‘It was your friend’s birthday? Why didn’t you get him a present?’
My mother seemed excited by the fact that I had a friend who wasn’t Chris.
‘He’s not that close a friend,’ I told her, shrugging in as noncommittal way as possible.
‘Oh.’ My mother frowned. ‘You know, you should at least try to make friends, dear.’ This time her ‘dear’ sounded harsher than before.
Like always my mother disregarded Chris as a friend of mine. After what had happened only minutes before, I wasn’t even sure I could regard Chris as a friend anymore. I dreaded school the next day.
‘Move out of the way Gordon and let your mother rest.’ I did as my father said.