Summer of '07

True Desires

Chapter 25

April 2019

~TRAVIS~

We sit in my living room and silently watch TV for about an hour. Neither of us really say anything to each other and it's actually a bit awkward.

"I'm hungry," Elijah mutters as he sits in the couch right beside me as I sit on the recliner.

"And?" I roll my head back to look in his direction.

"Got any food?"

"Yeah, I got some food."

"You don't have to cook anything... I just mean like, crackers or... something?"

I scoff. Perhaps, he's starting to feel a little too at home. Nonetheless, I get up from the recliner and dig through one of my food cabinets to find a box of wheat-thins, which I suddenly recall used to be his favorite snack back in the day. I open it up, pull the bag out and throw it on the couch next to Elijah as I make my way around to sit beside him. "There ya go!"

He smiles at me. "I fuckin' love these crackers, man!"

"Me too," I say, as the two of us simultaneously grab a handful of crackers and our hands ever so slightly brush up against each other. Fucking hell, I can already feel the sexual tension, even though I probably shouldn't. He just got cheated on by his wife... he's in no shape to be pressured into something else.

"Do you remember when we first kissed?" Elijah suddenly asks me, and my heart drops. I've been trying to get that out of him since we reunited and he's been so damn reluctant to talk about it and yet here he is, just randomly spitting it out like it's nothing.

"What?" I say, still stunned over the fact that he brought that up.

He smiles. "Of course you do. How could you ever forget? How could either of us ever forget?"

"You're right, I could never forget it. Though this whole time, I was under the impression that you had forgotten about it." I actually wasn't, but he was certainly acting like he had forgotten it.

"Nope. You were the only guy I ever kissed, how could I forget that?" Pretty sure most straight guys would probably want to forget their only gay kiss. But then again...

"I don't know."

"How many other guys have you kissed, if any?" Is he seriously asking me that? Oh fuck.

"Five," I answer quietly, as if ashamed to be telling him that. "Six, including you."

"At least I was your first, right? First guy, anyways." I could sense a bit of disappointment in his voice for some reason. I wonder why. He's the only one I still have feelings for. He was also the only one of which I kissed that I never got to be with.

"You were my first kiss that meant anything to me. You were my first real kiss, I guess." It's true. My kiss with Heather didn't mean anything, because she didn't mean anything to me. She just used me anyways.

He sighs and mutters to himself, "That's pretty gay."

I snicker. "Of course, it is," I mumble. "So why do you suddenly want to talk about it?"

"I don't know. I guess I just don't care anymore." Interesting, I didn't expect that. So is he willing to talk about...

"So you don't regret it anymore?" I ask, even though he never once suggested that he regretted it at all. At least not explicitly.

"No... I'd do it again." Um, what?

"Really?" I say, my eyebrows raised.

"Yeah," he answers with a straight face. Fucker's gotta be joking. He then starts chuckling. I knew he was. Asshole always does this!

"Stop fucking with me, man!" I say, with agitation. I fucking hate when he plays games with me like that.

"Who said I'm fucking with you?" He asks me, suddenly reverting to his serious face. He then grabs the bag of crackers and tosses it onto the coffee table so that he can move closer to me.

"What are you doing?" I ask him, suddenly uncomfortable with the situation.

"I'm proving to you that I'm not fucking with you," he replies, moving in even closer and I'm suddenly only within an inch away from his face. I'm staring into his emerald green eyes as I ponder what the fuck I should do. He's married. How the fuck am I to kiss him while he's currently married to a woman?

"You don't... you don't have to do that," I say, losing every bit of comfort I previously had.

"I want to."

I feel my cock getting increasingly hard as I glance across his face, noticing his lips in particular. I want to kiss him. I really do... but I don't feel right about it. I feel like something's not right about this. He's just throwing himself at me, knowing damn well that he's married.

He leans in even closer and had I stayed any longer, we definitely would have kissed, but I quickly get up from the couch. "Dude, you're married," I remind him to justify to him why I did what I did, considering the fact that I think the both of us know how much I really wanted that kiss.

"So what? She cheated on me. I wish I'd never married that cheating whore. She doesn't deserve me."

"She cheated on you, so now you're cheating on her? Nice. I'm just a fucking rebound, aren't I?" Fucking hell, he had to bring up the cheating shit, and now I see what he's really doing.

"No. Of course, not."

"Elijah, I can't. I wanted to kiss you, but I can't knowing that you're just using me to get back at her. I've been used before... I'm not—"

"It's not like that, man. I—" He gets cut off by the sound of a loud thunder clap. A storm was coming.

"I should get to bed. You can sleep on the couch," I tell him, as I head towards the linen cabinet to grab a blanket for him.

"'Get to bed?' It's eight o'clock?"

"So what? I like to go to bed early."

"Then I'd like to join you."

"Stop it. I know what you're doing. It's not gonna work. Man, that's fucked up! You know I have feelings for you and yet you play with my emotions like this just because your wife cheated on you? What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"I know you have feelings for me. And I have feelings for you too." What?! Are you fucking kidding me?! "Why do you think I've been trying so hard to get close to you again these past couple of months? Why do you think I messaged you first? Because I saw it as an opportunity to reconnect with you. And I'm glad that I did... because it just brought all of the feelings I had for you back to the surface. I didn't realize it at first... but even when I did, I couldn't tell you because of how complicated everything was. Now, since she's cheating on me it feels like our relationship is over. She doesn't care about my feelings so why should I care about hers? And besides... I like you a fuck-ton more anyways. I always have."

I don't really know how to respond to all of that. It's tempting to just go for it and jump right in. I mean, he's right about Michelle... if she didn't care about his feelings, why should he care about hers. Though of course, it's not right to get involved with a married man either way, regardless of the circumstances. Until they're legally divorced, I'll probably still feel guilty about...

The lights suddenly go out and the two of us are left in pitch darkness. Oh shit.