Awesummer Pt. 01

"Nice."

"I mean, obviously it's not as big as yours."

"It's fine," Devin assured me. "It looks about average, right? That's gotta be fine."

"Uh huh."

"Don't be like that, man. You have a sweet dick, all right?"

Sweet meant cool, more or less--and I snorted, unconvinced.

"In fa-act," Devin said, "it's so sweet I dare you to go show it off in your living room window. For fifteen seconds."

"What? Fuck you, no!"

"It's daytime, it's not like people can even see in."

"Then why don't *you* go show off your dick in the window?"

"Because I dared you, man," he said, all smug.

"Oh yeah? Well, I dare you to jerk me off."

But Devin was fucking stubborn. "Dare's a dare, shitbird."

"Ugh, fine," I said. "But if I get arrested, I'm telling them you forced me."

"You are so overdramatic, dude," Devin said, grabbing the remote and turning off the TV. "Being naked in your own house isn't a crime."

I wasn't so sure, but it was too late. I was walking up to our big floor-to-ceiling windows (yeah, thanks a lot, midcentury modernism), hand over my crotch. I was even harder now, somehow. Fear boner, I guess.

Then I stood before the glass, fully exposed, while Devin counted off, "One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi..."

He got slower and slower toward the end until he was saying, "thiiiiiiirteen-Miiiiissssissssiiiippiiiiii..."

"Fuck off, that's fifteen seconds fair and square!"

And I bolted back to the couch, where I gave him a serious punch him in the arm--although I was laughing, by now. As the laughter died off, we sighed in tandem.

Then I smiled and said, "So? Jerk me off, now. A dare's a dare."

I was joking. But Devin hesitated. And then before I could stop him, he put his hand on my dick.

I almost said something.

But then I didn't. And neither did he.

Suddenly it was quiet as all hell, and not just because the air conditioner had shut off again.

Then I started to laugh uncontrollably, as Devin reached over and gave my dick three quick pumps. When he let go, he started to laugh too.

"What was that?" I said.

"This is your brain without cable," Devin said, and we dissolved into laughter again.

Then, more silence.

"Ah, what the hell," I said. "Dare me to do something else."

"Jerk me off," Devin said off-handedly, in a way that might be taken as a joke. But part of me had known when I said, "Dare me," that this was what he would say.

It had gone super quiet again. And in this quiet, I reached over, and wrapped my hand around my best friend's dick.

His shaft was hot to the touch, so hot--it was hotter, somehow, than my own dick had ever felt in my own hand. God, this was weird. And felt even weirder when he twitched within my grasp. I laughed, but it came out more like a cough. Then quickly I gave him three pumps, the same as he'd done for me.

We sat there on the couch, not looking at each other.

Then Devin said, "Damn, I'm so hard." And he started jerking himself slightly.

"Right here?"

"It's too hot to move," he said, still jerking. It was true that somehow it never took long for my house to get warm and stagnant again, after the air conditioner switched off.

But after a moment, when I failed to respond, he said, "Never mind. This is way too weird, I'll go into the bathroom."

"No, hang on." I put my hand on his bare leg to stop him from standing up, then withdrew it again, sheepish. "I mean, you can stay. It's not a big deal."

Did I sound cool? I hoped I sounded cool. Not sounding cool with this would make me way weirder than if I made a big deal out of it. Wouldn't it?

"We can do the whole, uh, pillow stack again," he said. "Between us?"

"Why? We've both seen each other, now," Then I swallowed hard, wondering if I was sounding too eager. Wait, was I eager? Was he?

Beside me, Devin just shrugged. We were sitting so close, I could feel the shrug, even though we weren't literally touching. And I could feel his radiant body heat, too, ever so slightly.

As he started jacking off again, properly this time, I spat in my hand, closed my eyes, and went for it. I was trying to think of anything else, of being anywhere else...and for about thirty seconds, my imagination was working at full steam. I could easily picture myself alone with Diana Boghossian...you know, one of many girls in our year who'd never even talked to me...but then her image stuttered.

Yeah, so, hearing masturbatory sounds literally right next to me? Turned out I couldn't imagine my way out of that. I stopped thinking about Diana's heavy tits. I opened my eyes.

I was curious to see what someone else looked like when he was jacking it. That, I could admit. This was the only sexual thing I'd done with anyone who was not myself, and it was titillating. I could admit that, too. I mean, anything would have titillated me, right? I'd never even come close to kissing a girl.

As for Devin, he was legitimately handsome, but had come down with a combined case of brace- and pizza-face in the trenches of puberty, and had yet to truly recover. He'd also always had delusions that he had a bad-boy persona, and that this was sexy. But as it turned out, girls did not consider him "bad" so much as, like, accident-prone. His footage of him getting fucked up by that trampoline was not exactly a panty-dropper, y'know.

In junior year, Venice Phillips agreed to go out with him. This was, in a shocking coincidence, right after he got his Corvette. But the first time they made out, Devin came in his pants, and left right away, he was so embarrassed. The second time, he asked to finger her like a minute in, I guess because he was just that determined to be able to say he'd gotten to third base. She got incredibly pissed off, and never spoke to him again.

At least I wasn't alone in my virginity, is what I'm saying. And at least my virginity was a good reason for me to be so curious....

Devin had his eyes closed, so I chanced a look to my right. Instantly, I was staring. His style was faster and sloppier and louder than mine, and fuck, it was hot to look at. I preferred to go slowly until the home stretch, playing games more with pressure than speed. I also rubbed my thumb around the head every time I reached the end of my shaft, and kept my left hand on my balls basically the whole time. Devin did neither of these things. And he--

He was looking right at me. Shit. Instantly, I turned my gaze to the black TV screen, sweating with shame.

But then I felt eyes on me, too. Or on my dick. I chanced the smallest of glances toward Devin, but somehow he felt my eyes move, and glanced back. Neither of us looked away, this time. We just gave each other a very cautious look, which then relaxed into something friendlier.

Then, without any negotiation, our eyes slid back down to each other's dicks, and what we were doing to them...

At which point I blurted, "Can I touch it?"

It came out of nowhere. I hadn't even known I was going to say it until it was already out.

Devin laughed. "You already have."

I thought he was saying no, and just sat there frozen, my hand no longer moving on my own cock. I was deeply ashamed. And still confused that I'd asked such a thing at all.

But then Devin gave me a friendly tsk when he took in my expression--and I probably had death written across my face. He reached for my hand, and placed it on his cock himself.

"Oh," I said. We just sat there, with my hand wrapped around him. Then I said lamely, searching for anything to make this less weird, "It's funny, you have such a different technique."

"Oh yeah?" Devin said, sounding preternaturally cool.

"Yeah." And added, even though I knew he'd been watching me, "I do it a lot tighter and slower. I use my thumb a lot more..."

After another beat, Devin said lightly, "You wanna show me?"

Trying to feel as cool as he sounded, I started to jerk him off the way I'd do it myself. Fuck, it felt so weird to be doing this to a dick that wasn't my own--and yet it also felt perfectly fine. Normal, almost. Maybe because it was Devin. I mean, if I was gonna jerk off anyone but myself, it would be him, right? I relaxed a little.

So did he. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back, and exhaled through his nose.

"Dude," he mumbled after a bit. "That does feel good."

"Right?"

"Mm."

Then shakily I reached out with my left hand, too, and wrapped it around his balls, the way I always did with mine.

"Mmm," he said, more emphatically this time.

I started to massage his sack now, and he said, "Oh!," his eyes popping open. He probably hadn't meant to say anything. Squeezing his eyes shut again, he muttered only, "Damn, that's nice."

I kept working him for a moment, alternating my gaze between his cock and his face. He was sucking his lip a little, breathing faster than normal. This was intensely intriguing to me, and I felt myself getting harder just because of the fact that I was bringing him pleasure. That I was the one making him feel like this...

Then he grabbed at the hand that was on his balls, and gently peeled it off. My heart stuttered; my stomach lurched. I was positive he was telling me to leave him be, now, so I dropped his dick, too.

"No, don't," he said quietly, his eyes still closed. "I just don't wanna come yet..."

Startled, I went back to jerking him off, even slower this time. And after a moment, he reached over, and put a fumbling hand on my cock, too.

My breath caught. But as he started to treat me to his own vigorous technique, I relaxed, and sighed, and shifted closer to him. And he shifted closer to me in turn. So I got even a little closer, and he got even a little closer, and soon our thighs were brushing. This minute contact was intensely erotic, somehow...and god, god, I was already so fucking close. God, this was good, I mean, hot DAMN it was good; I almost couldn't believe it, that something I did to myself every day could feel this blissfully good just because it was a foreign hand. But it did, it really did. I mean shit, I wasn't gonna last.

Devin was close, too. I could tell from the tight balls, but also from his quickening breath. As his eyes fluttered shut, I reached in to lightly grasp his sack again.

"Oh my god..." He grunted, and his ballsack rose slightly in my hand, and then he was sitting up straight and coming hard and generous, right on the hardwood floor. He was so lost in the moment, he almost whimpered, utterly unselfconscious. And there was something truly beautiful about that sound, and all its vulnerability. "Ah, ahh," he was sighing, as it trailed off. "Oh shit. Ahhh...."

When it was over, I withdrew my hand, which fortunately had not been hit by any fluids. And for a moment, I was proud of my, ah, handiwork--or of the effect it'd had.

I was brought back to reality when Devin sorta cleared his throat, shifted around, and then took his hand off my now throbbing, right-on-the-edge cock. Ugh, the sudden deprivation was torture. I'd been so close! But oh, shit--I did not like the expression on Devin's face, or the fact that he was resolutely not making eye contact.

"Uh," he said. "Yeah. I better go clean up and, uh, get dressed." He stood up. Then glanced at the floor. "Crap, uh--"

"I'll get it. It's O.K., you can go change."

He stepped carefully around the spunk he'd left on my living room carpet, grabbed the towel he'd dropped what seemed like a decade ago, and then speed-walked away down the hall.

Still nude, I wiped up the floor with my own towel. Then I pulled my swim trunks back on and sat down on the couch as the air conditioning kicked back in. My boner had completely died since Devin left the room, replaced by an utterly sick feeling, and a raft of sinister goosebumps.

He reemerged from the hallway in fresh clothes--he always kept some at my house--and slung his backpack over his shoulder.

"Uh," he said. "Can you give these to Berta?"

He was holding out his chloriney boxers, and his sweaty shorts from earlier.

"Toss them in my hamper, sure." As he vanished again, I heard Berta's engine approaching the house. And thank god for it, because I didn't think I could stand being alone with Devin for one more minute. He'd sidled back in, and now I trailed him to the entryway as he pulled his shoes back on. He was still not looking at me.

Stepping around him with a sort of exaggerated distance--like I wanted him to know I wasn't planning on molesting him or some shit--I went outside, still barefoot. Berta was unloading groceries from the back of her old Toyota. She was a grandmotherly woman, originally from Sonora, and she'd been my caretaker pretty much since I was born.

"Ay, Nathan, no camines on the hot ground," she said. It wasn't that her English was that bad--we just spoke a lot of Spanglish.

"I'm fine." I grabbed one of the shopping bags. She tried to grab it back, but I reached for the other one, too. "No, puedo llevarlas y put them away. Devin needs a ride, can you take him home?"

He emerged from the house, folding bicycle under his arm, and waved.

"Por supuesto." She kissed me on the cheek. I didn't even let my mom do that anymore. Berta was also the only person who was allowed to call me Nathan on a regular basis.

Devin hurried past me and hopped into the car with a quick, "Bye."

"See you," I said, but the door had already shut.

"Los congelados--put those away first!" Berta said as she got back into the car.

"Yep," I said, and then hauled the groceries inside. For a moment afterward, I stood before the freezer, letting it waft frosty air out onto my face, wishing to hell I could undo the past hour of my life. Then I went down to my room, and locked myself in.

I curled up on my bed, intensely regretting that I had no pot, because all I wanted was to get high and forget the world. But Devin was my connect, and at the moment? I wasn't sure he'd ever speak to me again. We'd fought plenty over the years, but I'd never once seen him like this. Icy. Silent. Walking out the door without even glancing at me, as I started to realize I'd fucked up, bad.

Or he had. Or maybe we both had.

Either way, I was left to wonder if my world had just ended with a whimper.

(End Part 1)