Go Your Own Way (9 page)

“Can we keep him?” Will let the puppy sniff his hand and then picked him up. He was a little bigger than the fat cat they’d had when he was younger. The pup had pointy ears, a curly tail and thick, soaked fur.

Ben kneeled down beside him and looked the puppy over. “Looks like a husky. Bud, we don’t—”

“You almost hit him! We can’t leave him in the road.” He gave Ben a stern look and tilted his chin toward the rain still splattering down on them. “He’s my new puppy. I’m gonna name him Oyster ‘cause we’re going to get oysters and we found him instead.”

“William, do you remember your goldfish? The one you never took care of?”

“The one you knocked off the table?” Will stuck out his tongue at Ben and headed back to the truck. He’d spent the rest of the ride drying Oyster off with the emergency towels Ben kept under the seat. By the time they were back home that night, Ben had bought food, a collar and a bed and had stopped talking about finding a home for him.

That truck was his now, a gift last year after he’d gotten his license. “Hey boy, wanna come downstairs?” Oyster dropped his stick and leaped up at Will. “Yeah? Come on. I need a good snuggle partner after today.”

Will headed to his basement bedroom with Oyster beside him. The basement had been unfinished storage space, but by the time he was in middle school, the little closet that passed as a second bedroom upstairs had been too small for Will. His dad, his dad’s older brother John and his dad’s friend Jim had moved the stored stuff to the garage and to a new shed in the backyard, then put up dry wall, built a bathroom and painted the bedroom Will’s favorite shade of red. Will had moved into it a few weeks into seventh grade.

It was still a rather small room compared to Natasha’s bed­room. She lived across town in a two-story house with a balcony and a fancy deck in Leon’s only real neighborhood. Most people lived off long country roads, with a hefty distance between houses. Will’s closest neighbor was almost half a mile away, down the long, sloping hill their house sat on. When he was younger it would have been nice to have more kids around to play with, but now that he was older he was glad for the privacy the space allowed. Fewer people meant less trouble.

Will put his backpack on his beanbag chair so that Oyster wouldn’t curl up in it. Will kicked his shoes off into the closet and face-planted into his bed. Another long, awful day. He rolled onto his back as Oyster leaped up and laid his head on Will’s chest.

When he’d first moved to the basement, he’d hung strands of lights from the beams, draping them all around the room and pretending they were the city lights glowing through a skylight like the one Karen talked about from her New York City days. Almost everything else down here had changed in the six years since that day: a new, full-sized bed to replace his day bed; a desk Karen had bought him for his laptop and studying; a bookcase filled with books and another filled with movies and CDs. He had a little space in the corner for his baseball equipment bag; the walls were decorated with posters, flags and a map of the United States. The map was a gift from Karen for his birthday at the end of August. It wasn’t an ordinary map, but one that allowed him to scratch off the surface of the places he’d been. So far, he’d revealed only a little wedge of the mid-Atlantic.

After he’d scratched off the entire thing, he planned to buy a world map version.

“Will? You home, bud?”

“Doing homework,” Will hollered upstairs to his dad. Oyster’s head shot up and he darted upstairs with a pathetic howl. “Traitor!”

“Wanna order pizza?”

“Sure. Five dollars says the delivery guy gets lost again,” Will said. Ben’s laughter trickled down the stairs.

“Make it ten.”

It was fun to watch Will bristle. Lennox kept a sharp eye on him through their Friday classes together and made a point to be over-the-top while he flirted with other people. Dur­ing English, he made small talk with a straight boy on his right, who seemed a little nervous about it. On his other side, Will kept huffing and intentionally dropping his pencil between their desks.

In government, two girls who usually sat in front of Lennox grabbed seats next to him and played with his hair. Will took a seat behind him and gnawed on his pencil. By the time they’d gotten to astronomy class, when the two girls took turns sitting in his lap and asking a lot of stupid questions about his hair, Will clutched his pencil so hard it snapped in half. Lennox and the girls got in trouble for being inappropriate, but the extra detention was worthwhile because of the jealousy he saw in Will’s gaze.

None of them seemed to realize what a joke it was to Lennox. The girls were too busy trying to act cute to see where his eyes were, and Will was too furious to do more than glare. Watching Will get angrier as the day went on amused him. It also told Lennox that Will was definitely still interested. Good. The more aware Will was of how much he wanted Lennox, the better. It would be easier to get another kiss from him if he was strung out from jealousy.

By the time Lennox got to the band room for detention, he expected Will to be so angry that one look from him would incin­erate the whole place.

Mr. Robinette met him at the door. “You’re late,” he said by way of greeting. “Come on. Today’s important.”

Lennox shook his curls out of his eyes and adjusted his grip on the leather jacket slung over his shoulders. A free shower was worth being late. If he showered in the locker room it wouldn’t run up his water bill. The one thing the motel owner didn’t control was the water bill sent to the renters, and the less Lennox used, the less he paid.

He put down his backpack and followed Mr. Robinette.

Will was already in the back room with a long line of black cases: five large round ones, half a dozen square ones and three shaped like trapezoids.

“Marching band drums,” Mr. Robinette said. “I need you guys to polish them up for the game tonight. I’m hoping one of you can tune them as well. Now Will, no offense, but—”

Will shrugged. “I know I’m hopeless. Seven years at it and I still can’t master sixteenth note notation. I’ll polish.”

“Right.” Mr. Robinette turned to Lennox and frowned. “I remem­ber your introductory note mentioned you had played before.”

Lennox shrugged and looked away from him. “I can tune them. Do you have a drum key?”

His last words made Mr. Robinette relax. Clearly, he assumed that if Lennox knew what a drum key was, he must know what he was doing. Mr. Robinette pulled a drum key from his pocket and handed it to him.

“If you break one head… ”

As Mr. Robinette left, Lennox scoffed. “Like I’d break a head. I mean, really? Why would I break your head if I want to suck it off?”

Will glared at him, but the pink tinge that spread over his cheeks told Lennox he was embarrassed. With any luck, he was pleased by the attention, too. He set to work with the snare drums first. Will watched as he tuned each of them, first the bottom heads until they all sounded the same, and then the top until they sounded like gunshots.

After he finished each of them, Lennox passed it off to Will for polishing.

“Osborne, here! Earth to attractive virgin: Polish these so we have time to bump dicks afterward.”

Will jumped as Lennox pushed a drum into his foot. He blushed again and his eyes lingered on Lennox’s face.

“Taking care of the foreplay in your head today, are you?”

“Not even in your dreams.” Will picked up his rag and polished the snare drum with long, forceful swipes.

“Mmm. You stroke a dick like that and it’s going to be a fantastic time,” Lennox said.

“Would you quit it? I’m not interested in you.”

“Pretty sure nobody in this school would believe that anymore.” Lennox unbuckled each bass drum case and lined up the five from smallest to biggest. Tuning the bass drums would be the most difficult part of today’s task. Each drum had to be tuned to a different tone, the smallest tuned highest with each successively larger drum tuned proportionately lower. “The faster you polish, the faster you get your first blow job. Or give. I’m not too picky.”

“You’re foul.” Will finished the first snare and put it back in its case.

For the next hour, Will refused to talk to him. Lennox kept up a running commentary of jokes, remarks about Will’s hand movements and the things he wished they were doing instead. When Will was silent, he moved on to tell him all about his shower after weight training.

“I had a great time jerking off and thinking about your mouth sucking me. I bet you aren’t timid like most first-timers. You’ll dive right in, all eager and ready to gag on a nice cock.”

Will snorted. “Like you have enough to choke on.”

“So you have imagined sucking me off.” Lennox grinned at him, and Will’s smirk wilted into a frown. “I’m more than willing to make that a reality for you, baby. Right here, right now.”

Lennox set aside the last set of quint drums and moved toward Will’s legs. With a huge leap, Will scrambled out of reach.

“Well, if you’d rather join me in the shower next time, I won’t say no to that either,” Lennox said. “That could be fun, watching you drop to your knees as the water soaks through your shirt… ”

Will had backed himself up to the chalkboard again, and this time Lennox didn’t hesitate as he stepped toward him. He grabbed Will by the hips and pressed him against it.

“You’re going to ruin my shirt,” Will said.

Lennox chuckled and kissed Will’s neck. “Am I? You’re the one who keeps picking this chalkboard.”

Lennox sucked one of the hickeys on Will’s neck. It was a deep purple, masking his freckles and the pale hairs that traced up to his ear. Will wanted him: It was more than obvious, but he fought it, even now. He was a force all his own, another stubborn tectonic plate shattering beside him as they met at a nameless boundary. They could linger side by side for centuries, silent and calm, or press in, rushing and rough, splintering where they met and shaking the world until it crumbled around them.

“I don’t—
oh
, that’s—” Will tried to clear his throat as Lennox sucked a path over it, then along his jaw and up to one earlobe. His right leg danced against Lennox’s, kicking and squirming until Lennox pressed his lower body in to meet the thrust Will tried to control. Will clutched his shirt, his fists curled and tugging. He hauled Lennox in by his curls for a rough kiss. Their foreheads bumped, one resting against the other, as their hands fumbled for skin and shirt hems.

Lennox gasped against Will’s lips at one rough grab, and Will pressed forward, pushing off the chalkboard and stumbling with Lennox until their positions were reversed. Their tongues met as Lennox’s back hit the board. They moaned and grappled at each other’s shirts. Will’s hands settled on Lennox’s hips, and for a moment, Lennox gave in, was letting Will decide the pace and be the one coating
his
neck with hickeys.

But with a rough jerk, Lennox flipped their positions again, pressing Will into the chalkboard with an echoing thud.

“I
hate
you.” Will’s voice was raspy, deeper than Lennox had ever heard it. The sound of it made Lennox’s cock ache. He groaned and sucked Will’s lower lip between his teeth as his hands worked Will’s shirt loose.

“Boys, what was that—”

They broke apart. Lennox stumbled backward over the still-open quints case. Will gazed in horror at Mr. Robinette. For once, Will was at a loss for words. The color of Mr. Robinette’s face passed tomato-red and headed straight for cherry. It didn’t stop there, though. In a few seconds, his face was the same shade as a manila folder.

“Boys, this is just—you’re both—I—” He gulped and swept a hand through his hair. “Just… go. Go home now.”

He didn’t need to tell Lennox twice. Lennox followed Will out, almost at a run, stopping only to grab his backpack at the door. He zipped to his locker on the other side of the cafeteria to grab a few books and his skateboard, and then hurried back to the exit Will had used.

Outside, the parking lot was almost empty—only a few stu­dents milled around by the football field. Will stood from his seat on the bottom step. A Jeep pulled up alongside the curb. The woman in the passenger seat—Will’s mother, most likely—waved at him.

“We’re going to town,” she called to Will as he headed toward her window. “Dinner and a movie, okay? We’ll pick your truck up from the shop on the way home.”

Lennox popped his skateboard down and rolled after him. Will was a few feet from the passenger side door when Lennox caught up to him and pinched his ass. The Jeep’s engine stopped and the driver got out. He was built of hulking muscles and had a sharp crew cut. The edge of a tattoo poked out of his shirt collar. Will’s mother got out, too, eyeing Lennox warily.

“Will, is this a friend?”

It was clear from her tone that she’d already heard about him. Lennox scooped up his skateboard and gave the pair a nasty grin. “Friendship’s the last thing on our minds.”

“You wanna say that again, son?”

Will’s dad circled the Jeep in seconds. Clearly, only the woman’s hand on his forearm stopped him from going further.

“Dad, it’s nothing,” Will said, looking half-annoyed, half-terrified. “
He’s
nothing. Let’s just go.”

“Nothing, huh? Do most people around here get fucked up against a chalkboard by ‘nothing’ twice? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, that’s not how it goes where I’m from.”

Will’s dad lunged. Lennox ducked, sidestepped the curb and rolled onto his skateboard at a jog.

“You stay the hell away from my boy, do ya hear me?”

“Bit late for that,” Lennox called over his shoulder. “Keep pursing those lips, baby. They’re going to need all the suction practice they can get for Monday!”

Will’s dad continued to bellow after him. At the corner, Lennox turned right and pushed off for home. He half expected the Jeep to catch up to him before he reached the motel. Part of him actually hoped it would. If those drunk men were hanging around, Will and his parents would keep them away from him until he could get inside. However, the lot was empty, no Jeeps followed him and Lennox, for the first time since school started, slept in his own bed all night.