Reckless Chapter Fourteen: Bonus Scene
Jamie Goldwyn
“You know, you’re not nearly as much of a moron as I had originally anticipated you being.”
This is the closest thing to a compliment I have ever received from Ben McCutcheon. It is probably the closest thing to a compliment I will ever receive from Ben McCutcheon. I smile, even though what I really want is to knot my fingers around that slouchy black hat and bash his head into the coffee table. I say, “It’s the accent. Makes me sound like a simple country boy instead of an Ivy League university student who lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.”
I’m bragging, name-dropping a little, but I suppose he just brings that out in me.
He is unimpressed. “No, I’m pretty sure it’s the fact that every word that’s come out of your mouth since we met has been an insult, a request for alcohol, or an attempt to get one of my friends to fuck you. So, forgive me for thinking you’re probably intellectually on par with the average frat boy.”
“What happened to your arm?” I ask, even though I suspect I already know. He doesn’t wear his sadness on his sleeve, like Garen does; he wraps himself up in it like it’s battle armor, like his self-loathing is a shell that will keep him safe. A way of saying, how could you ever hurt me more than I have already hurt myself? How could you ever hate me as much as I hate myself? I want to crack into that shell and see what’s inside of him, all the parts that are shiny and secret and raw. He says nothing. I gesture at the sling, as though he’d forgotten its presence. “Did you break it?”
“No,” he says finally.
“Did you sprain it?”
“No.”
“Did you cut it?”
He doesn’t reply at first. I smile, just so that he knows I already understand, even if he won’t admit it. He doesn’t look nearly as disconcerted as I’d like. I open my mouth to speak, but he interrupts me with, “Take a writer away from his typewriter and all you have left is the sickness which started him typing in the beginning.”
I cock my head to the side and identify, “Charles Bukowski.” He ducks his head and gives a short nod, which is pointless, because I already know I’m right. “You’re the only person I know who makes a habit of quoting writers in everyday conversation.”
“You don’t know me,” is his immediate reply. There’s a beat, and then he grudgingly admits, “You’re the only person who recognizes the quotes. I didn’t expect that, not from someone like you.”
“It’s the accent,” I repeat, because I’m too drunk to come up with something better. His upper lip curls, as though he’s noticing my conversational weakness, and before he can point it out, I ask, “So, you a writer, then?”
He’s thrown by that. Good. “I, um—yeah. I am.”
“Let me read something you’ve written.”
Good Lord, you’d think I’d asked him to give me a rimjob on the beer pong table. “No,” he says, the word tumbling so violently from his mouth that it’s like he’s choking it up. “No way in hell.”
“Why not?” I ask, shrugging.
“Because I hate you?” he suggests.
“And I you, which means I’m the only person you know who has no reason to lie and tell you that your writing is good if it’s actually shit,” I say. I take a sip of my beer so that comment has time to sink in, then I stand. “Where do you keep ’em?”
“Where do I keep—”
“The poems,” I say impatiently. “The stories, whatever they are. Are they in your room?” He hesitates, then gives a short nod. I gesture onward. “Shall we?”
It’s nearly thirty seconds before he finally rises uncertainly from the couch and takes a step towards me. I move down the hallway on autopilot, pushing through the crowds of people until I reach the same door I’m so used to heading towards, not realizing that I’ve instinctively made my way to Alexander’s room until I push open the door and find myself blinking down at him sprawled out on his bed, his cock in the mouth of some girl with short, almost-black hair and bright blue eyes.
And really, I can understand the desire to sleep with someone who looks like your best friend. After all, how many times have I taken a man to bed just because he had spiked brown hair, or dark green eyes, or guitar-calloused fingertips? The real difference, of course, is that I get fucked by men who remind me of Garen because it’s comfortable, and familiar, and makes me happy. It’s the reason I like to wear the same worn-in Oxfords I’ve been wearing since my freshman year at Patton; it’s the same reason I sometimes fill my apartment with those candles that smell like the peach and blackberry cobbler my momma only bothers to make once or twice a year, right at the height of summer. I like Savannah sun-warmed peaches, and the over-laundered fabric of my old boarding school uniform, and the feel of Garen’s smiling mouth on my skin because these things are home to me. Right now, Alexander isn’t trying to come home; he’s living in a fantasy world, fucking this girl’s mouth just because she looks like a boy he wants in a way I don’t think he’ll ever really want me.
“I realize your experience in this apartment is pretty much limited to crawling into Al’s bed and taking it, but you do know that my room is actually the other one, right?” that midget says, appearing at my side, then doing a double-take when he realizes what I’m staring at.
The sound of that horrible, bored voice is enough to finally get Alexander’s attention. His dark eyes dart from the head in his lap to my face, and then, even more quickly, past me to where Ben is standing. I do not miss the fact that his hips give a sharp twitch upwards the moment they light on his best friend’s face. Because my manners have been ingrained in me since birth, I find myself flashing a polite smile to the boy on the bed and sinking into a short bow. “Excuse me. Didn’t realize this room was occupied.”
The last thing I see before elbowing Ben back into the hallway and shutting the door again is Alexander’s brief nod of thanks. It’s a casual, too-friendly gesture, and I wonder how many more times I’ll have to ask him to be my boyfriend before he realizes that I don’t just want to be his friend. When I look around again, my eyes fall on the midget, sneaking off into his own room and crooking a finger after me, not a care in the world, except for showing me his stupid poems.
I hope they’re terrible. I’ll tell him they’re terrible no matter what, but I hope I’m not lying when I say it. I storm into the bedroom after him and slam the door shut. He shoots me a reproachful look and says, “Don’t slam my door like a five-year-old just because you and Alex can’t figure out whether or not you’re even dating.”
Several things happen at once, almost none of which I have planned for. Something snaps inside of me, and I stride across the room to grab two fistfuls of Ben’s hair and yank his head back enough to have his face tilted up towards mine, even though the ten inch height difference has never been so noticeable. A sharp, involuntary groan tears out of his throat, an unexpected sound that goes right to my groin. I can see that he is attempting to steel himself to push me off, or at least ask what the hell I’m doing, but the question disappears from his now-parted lips and his eyes roll back a little when I give his hair another rough tug. I am seconds away from shoving him up against the nearest wall, but I can’t tell if I plan to punch him in that perpetually kissed-looking mouth, or rut up against him until we both come in our pants. Or both.
“They all want you, and I don’t understand it for a second,” I hiss. “Show me why. Show me what is so fucking fantastic about you, McCutcheon.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” he grits out.
I crowd him back against his nightstand—the water glass tumbles over onto the bed, soaking one of the pillows—and pin him in place with my hips, which are nearly level with the bottom of his ribcage. “You cannot possibly be blind to the effect you have on all of them. Garen, Travis, Alexander. They all worship you, and you pretend not to notice, and it makes me sick. It’s pathetic. You’re pathetic.”
“I’m pathetic?” he sneers. I’m surprised and disgusted, but still the tiniest bit impressed at his brashness when he wedges his uninjured hand between us to cup my half-hard cock through my costume. “Tell that to your dick, Goldwyn, because apparently he thinks I’m as fucking fantastic as you say my friends do.”
I can’t remember the last time I wanted to wreck someone’s body in whatever way possible as much as I want to do that to this fucking midget right now. His palm is still working against my crotch, and I can feel his erection digging into my thigh. Usually, I don’t enjoy topping the gentlemen I sleep with, but Ben McCutcheon is not a gentleman, and all I want to do is bend him over this nightstand and listen to him tell me how much he hates me while I drill into him and give him the greatest orgasm of his meaningless life. I want what I know Alexander wants.
He is reaching for the drawstring of my swim trunks and I am leaning down to bring our mouths together when the door opens. He shoves me off so quickly that I almost tumble out of my sandals. The noise means nothing to me—I’ll kick the person out, lock the door, fuck this waste of humanity right here on the floor until his back is scarlet with rug burn and he can’t stop himself from screaming my name loudly enough for Alexander to hear it through the walls. But when I turn around, I find myself facing a wary, moderately baffled Garen.
“Can I seriously not leave you two alone for ten minutes without you starting to push each other around?” he asks.
In that instant, I am too frustrated to speak. All I want is a moment of touch to relieve my tension, or at least the chance to show the munchkin that he’s not the only one who can make these boys weak in the knees. I fling an arm around my best friend’s neck and haul him into a brutal kiss. He melts into it as readily as he has since we were fourteen years old, and when I press him against the doorframe, I chance a glance over my shoulder. Ben’s lip is curled in revulsion, but his eyes are dark with poorly disguised want, and he’s still rock hard. It’s a beautiful and disturbing balance. I release Garen, who lets out a faint whine and attempts to follow my mouth with his own. I grip the front of his sweatshirt and say, “I fucking. Hate. Your friends.”
My next glance finds Ben looking so undone at the venom in my words that, for one glorious second, I think I have managed to make him come in his pants like a needy virgin. But then he sneers at me again, and I know that if I don’t get out of this room immediately, I’ll barely have the patience to get us both out of our clothes before I hatefuck him so harshly he’ll never be able to come again without imagining my hands on him. I stumble past Garen out into the hallway.
I need a drink and an orgasm, and not necessarily in that order.
This is the closest thing to a compliment I have ever received from Ben McCutcheon. It is probably the closest thing to a compliment I will ever receive from Ben McCutcheon. I smile, even though what I really want is to knot my fingers around that slouchy black hat and bash his head into the coffee table. I say, “It’s the accent. Makes me sound like a simple country boy instead of an Ivy League university student who lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.”
I’m bragging, name-dropping a little, but I suppose he just brings that out in me.
He is unimpressed. “No, I’m pretty sure it’s the fact that every word that’s come out of your mouth since we met has been an insult, a request for alcohol, or an attempt to get one of my friends to fuck you. So, forgive me for thinking you’re probably intellectually on par with the average frat boy.”
“What happened to your arm?” I ask, even though I suspect I already know. He doesn’t wear his sadness on his sleeve, like Garen does; he wraps himself up in it like it’s battle armor, like his self-loathing is a shell that will keep him safe. A way of saying, how could you ever hurt me more than I have already hurt myself? How could you ever hate me as much as I hate myself? I want to crack into that shell and see what’s inside of him, all the parts that are shiny and secret and raw. He says nothing. I gesture at the sling, as though he’d forgotten its presence. “Did you break it?”
“No,” he says finally.
“Did you sprain it?”
“No.”
“Did you cut it?”
He doesn’t reply at first. I smile, just so that he knows I already understand, even if he won’t admit it. He doesn’t look nearly as disconcerted as I’d like. I open my mouth to speak, but he interrupts me with, “Take a writer away from his typewriter and all you have left is the sickness which started him typing in the beginning.”
I cock my head to the side and identify, “Charles Bukowski.” He ducks his head and gives a short nod, which is pointless, because I already know I’m right. “You’re the only person I know who makes a habit of quoting writers in everyday conversation.”
“You don’t know me,” is his immediate reply. There’s a beat, and then he grudgingly admits, “You’re the only person who recognizes the quotes. I didn’t expect that, not from someone like you.”
“It’s the accent,” I repeat, because I’m too drunk to come up with something better. His upper lip curls, as though he’s noticing my conversational weakness, and before he can point it out, I ask, “So, you a writer, then?”
He’s thrown by that. Good. “I, um—yeah. I am.”
“Let me read something you’ve written.”
Good Lord, you’d think I’d asked him to give me a rimjob on the beer pong table. “No,” he says, the word tumbling so violently from his mouth that it’s like he’s choking it up. “No way in hell.”
“Why not?” I ask, shrugging.
“Because I hate you?” he suggests.
“And I you, which means I’m the only person you know who has no reason to lie and tell you that your writing is good if it’s actually shit,” I say. I take a sip of my beer so that comment has time to sink in, then I stand. “Where do you keep ’em?”
“Where do I keep—”
“The poems,” I say impatiently. “The stories, whatever they are. Are they in your room?” He hesitates, then gives a short nod. I gesture onward. “Shall we?”
It’s nearly thirty seconds before he finally rises uncertainly from the couch and takes a step towards me. I move down the hallway on autopilot, pushing through the crowds of people until I reach the same door I’m so used to heading towards, not realizing that I’ve instinctively made my way to Alexander’s room until I push open the door and find myself blinking down at him sprawled out on his bed, his cock in the mouth of some girl with short, almost-black hair and bright blue eyes.
And really, I can understand the desire to sleep with someone who looks like your best friend. After all, how many times have I taken a man to bed just because he had spiked brown hair, or dark green eyes, or guitar-calloused fingertips? The real difference, of course, is that I get fucked by men who remind me of Garen because it’s comfortable, and familiar, and makes me happy. It’s the reason I like to wear the same worn-in Oxfords I’ve been wearing since my freshman year at Patton; it’s the same reason I sometimes fill my apartment with those candles that smell like the peach and blackberry cobbler my momma only bothers to make once or twice a year, right at the height of summer. I like Savannah sun-warmed peaches, and the over-laundered fabric of my old boarding school uniform, and the feel of Garen’s smiling mouth on my skin because these things are home to me. Right now, Alexander isn’t trying to come home; he’s living in a fantasy world, fucking this girl’s mouth just because she looks like a boy he wants in a way I don’t think he’ll ever really want me.
“I realize your experience in this apartment is pretty much limited to crawling into Al’s bed and taking it, but you do know that my room is actually the other one, right?” that midget says, appearing at my side, then doing a double-take when he realizes what I’m staring at.
The sound of that horrible, bored voice is enough to finally get Alexander’s attention. His dark eyes dart from the head in his lap to my face, and then, even more quickly, past me to where Ben is standing. I do not miss the fact that his hips give a sharp twitch upwards the moment they light on his best friend’s face. Because my manners have been ingrained in me since birth, I find myself flashing a polite smile to the boy on the bed and sinking into a short bow. “Excuse me. Didn’t realize this room was occupied.”
The last thing I see before elbowing Ben back into the hallway and shutting the door again is Alexander’s brief nod of thanks. It’s a casual, too-friendly gesture, and I wonder how many more times I’ll have to ask him to be my boyfriend before he realizes that I don’t just want to be his friend. When I look around again, my eyes fall on the midget, sneaking off into his own room and crooking a finger after me, not a care in the world, except for showing me his stupid poems.
I hope they’re terrible. I’ll tell him they’re terrible no matter what, but I hope I’m not lying when I say it. I storm into the bedroom after him and slam the door shut. He shoots me a reproachful look and says, “Don’t slam my door like a five-year-old just because you and Alex can’t figure out whether or not you’re even dating.”
Several things happen at once, almost none of which I have planned for. Something snaps inside of me, and I stride across the room to grab two fistfuls of Ben’s hair and yank his head back enough to have his face tilted up towards mine, even though the ten inch height difference has never been so noticeable. A sharp, involuntary groan tears out of his throat, an unexpected sound that goes right to my groin. I can see that he is attempting to steel himself to push me off, or at least ask what the hell I’m doing, but the question disappears from his now-parted lips and his eyes roll back a little when I give his hair another rough tug. I am seconds away from shoving him up against the nearest wall, but I can’t tell if I plan to punch him in that perpetually kissed-looking mouth, or rut up against him until we both come in our pants. Or both.
“They all want you, and I don’t understand it for a second,” I hiss. “Show me why. Show me what is so fucking fantastic about you, McCutcheon.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” he grits out.
I crowd him back against his nightstand—the water glass tumbles over onto the bed, soaking one of the pillows—and pin him in place with my hips, which are nearly level with the bottom of his ribcage. “You cannot possibly be blind to the effect you have on all of them. Garen, Travis, Alexander. They all worship you, and you pretend not to notice, and it makes me sick. It’s pathetic. You’re pathetic.”
“I’m pathetic?” he sneers. I’m surprised and disgusted, but still the tiniest bit impressed at his brashness when he wedges his uninjured hand between us to cup my half-hard cock through my costume. “Tell that to your dick, Goldwyn, because apparently he thinks I’m as fucking fantastic as you say my friends do.”
I can’t remember the last time I wanted to wreck someone’s body in whatever way possible as much as I want to do that to this fucking midget right now. His palm is still working against my crotch, and I can feel his erection digging into my thigh. Usually, I don’t enjoy topping the gentlemen I sleep with, but Ben McCutcheon is not a gentleman, and all I want to do is bend him over this nightstand and listen to him tell me how much he hates me while I drill into him and give him the greatest orgasm of his meaningless life. I want what I know Alexander wants.
He is reaching for the drawstring of my swim trunks and I am leaning down to bring our mouths together when the door opens. He shoves me off so quickly that I almost tumble out of my sandals. The noise means nothing to me—I’ll kick the person out, lock the door, fuck this waste of humanity right here on the floor until his back is scarlet with rug burn and he can’t stop himself from screaming my name loudly enough for Alexander to hear it through the walls. But when I turn around, I find myself facing a wary, moderately baffled Garen.
“Can I seriously not leave you two alone for ten minutes without you starting to push each other around?” he asks.
In that instant, I am too frustrated to speak. All I want is a moment of touch to relieve my tension, or at least the chance to show the munchkin that he’s not the only one who can make these boys weak in the knees. I fling an arm around my best friend’s neck and haul him into a brutal kiss. He melts into it as readily as he has since we were fourteen years old, and when I press him against the doorframe, I chance a glance over my shoulder. Ben’s lip is curled in revulsion, but his eyes are dark with poorly disguised want, and he’s still rock hard. It’s a beautiful and disturbing balance. I release Garen, who lets out a faint whine and attempts to follow my mouth with his own. I grip the front of his sweatshirt and say, “I fucking. Hate. Your friends.”
My next glance finds Ben looking so undone at the venom in my words that, for one glorious second, I think I have managed to make him come in his pants like a needy virgin. But then he sneers at me again, and I know that if I don’t get out of this room immediately, I’ll barely have the patience to get us both out of our clothes before I hatefuck him so harshly he’ll never be able to come again without imagining my hands on him. I stumble past Garen out into the hallway.
I need a drink and an orgasm, and not necessarily in that order.