Falling for My College Buddy

I picked my phone up from the nightstand and looked at it. Almost 3:00 a.m. Someone must really hate me. I'd rung in the new year watching the ball drop on TV, had a celebratory glass of champagne, and sang Auld Lang Syne...all by myself. I kept the TV on for a little while afterward to watch some more of the festivities, and shuffled off to bed around 1-ish, so it was a rude awakening almost two hours later to be snatched from my dreams by the sound of incessant banging on my condo door. Whoever this was at my door owed me big time! I had just gotten to the good part of a particularly sexy dream where I was having a three way with the DILFy head coaches of two NFL teams from cities in the northern portion of the U.S.

My eyes still bleary from being rousted from my slumber, I yanked the door open, prepared to fight whatever inconsiderate asshole was on the other side. However, all of my anger dissipated in an instant when I saw Brett standing there, looking like a sad little puppy who had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

"Brett...?" the minute his name escaped my lips, I heard how heavy with sleep my voice was. "What's...what's going on?"

"Hey... I'm really sorry to wake you up. Can I come in?"

If I'd been more alert in the moment, I might have asked a few other questions. Instead, I stood aside and motioned him in.

"Did you call or text me and I missed it?" I could still hear the sleep in my voice, but I felt like my head was starting to clear.

"No. I figured you'd be asleep already. I know your New Year's routine. I'm sorry to show up here unannounced but I didn't know where else to go."

Suddenly, my mind seemed sharp. Being told you're essentially an old maid who stays home alone all the time will do that do a guy. "Hey! I might've had plans. You don't know that!"

Brett cocked his eye at me and gave me a wry grin that wordlessly said, "We've been friends for over ten years. I know you almost better than you know yourself."

"Fine!" I admitted unprompted. "The only plans I had were to curl up on the couch and watch the ball drop. So, tell me... To what do I owe this late night wake up call?"

Brett's mood shifted back from teasing his good buddy to the way he'd appeared when I first opened the door. "It's bad, Ray. Real bad. I really screwed up this time." In that moment, I knew he was right. Brett never called me by my first name unless the world was coming to an end.

***

Brett and I first met Freshman year of college when we were assigned to share the same room in our dorm. We couldn't have been more different from each other...he a total jock wide receiver who was obviously destined to be on our college's nationally-ranked football team and I, an introverted bookworm more interested in his studies than being a BMOC. On paper, us rooming together should've been a complete train wreck meant to end in disaster. Instead, we forged a surprisingly fast friendship. He brought me out of my shell and introduced me to most of his friends around campus. I wasn't exactly part of the popular crowd, mind you. More like...oh, I don't know. Popular-adjacent? For my part, my dedication to schoolwork seemed to make Brett want to earn his grades himself instead of whatever deal the school's athletic director and football coach usually made with professors on the football team's behalf to give players good grades.

I wasn't out yet...not even to myself. At that time, I considered fooling around with guys to be just experimentation. But the reality was far from that. After all, to experiment, don't you have to try all the flavors of the rainbow and make a decision which color is your favorite? I wasn't screwing around with girls. Experimentation was just a line I was feeding myself as a protective shield. Looking back, Brett must have known, even though I was trying to hide it from everyone and present myself as asexual as possible...except for the occasional random hookups I'd have.

One night late Freshman year, he came back to our room drunk and horny with a terrible case of blue balls after his girlfriend had gotten him worked-up and then decided not to put out after all.

"Preston," he slurred as he lay on his bed, propped up on his elbows. He always called me by my last name. Normally I would've been irritated by it, but I always found Brett so damn endearing - like a baby kitten who couldn't find his way out of a paper bag - that I let him get away with doing it. "You like sucking dick. You mind helping me out?"

Of course, I'd obliged and helped him get his rocks off that night. We never talked about it afterward...was I okay?...was he okay?...how did he know about me when I had done my best to keep is secret?...those sorts of questions. Don't misunderstand. We certainly didn't pretend as if it had never happened. Whenever Brett needed to get off, he came to me. It was usually just a couple times a month. But then he started coming to me more frequently. I started to wonder what it all meant, but knew better that to broach the subject with him.

Come Junior year, Brett's star had really started to shine on the team. Usually, the quarterback is each team's star athlete. Not on our team. On our team, the star attraction was Brett Kemp. He was almost certainly headed for the pros. Junior year is also the time when students start moving out of dorms and into off-campus apartments. A lot of his buddies, who I had become friendly with because of Brett, were after him to go in and rent a really nice, upscale place in one of the nicer parts of the city about 10 minutes from campus. But Brett resisted, telling his incredulous friends that he was gonna rent a place with me and that's all there was to it!

What else could he say? He certainly couldn't tell them the truth...that he wanted to continue to be roommates with his fuck buddy. Yeah. We'd graduated from me giving him blow jobs to everything else that went along with man-to-man sex. Sometimes our time together was all about Brett getting his needs met. Sometimes he saw to it that I was taken care of too. But we still didn't talk about what it all meant. It was just a fact of our friendship. He still dated girls and I would've never pressed him on the issue.

Only... Things had changed for me. When we first started up, I did my best to compartmentalize. Brett was my friend and I was just helping him out in times of need. Nothing more than that. By the end of Junior year, I'd had an epiphany. If I'd been in a cartoon, there would've been a light bulb turning on above my head. I'd fallen for Brett. I wasn't just helping out a buddy anymore. I was fucking around with someone I had feelings for.

Once I'd had that realization, things got much worse for me, if you can imagine. Now, I had to watch with a lump in my throat as he brought a steady stream of ever-changing campus girls and other college football groupies back to our place and made out with him in front of me. When he and I would fuck, I'd have to use all of my will power to keep myself from inadvertently professing my feelings to him.

By the end of our Senior year, keeping the secret had become too much of an albatross around my neck and I knew I needed to finally unburden myself. The opportunity presented itself when, after a freak accident during the third-to-last game of the season, an injured ankle ended any hope Brett might have had of going to the NFL. It was a tragic turn of events for a guy who had spent the past four years of his life working toward that goal. But it wasn't just tragic from that perspective. Almost everyone who had hung around disappeared after the injury. No more girls from campus looking to crawl into his bed and onto his dick. Even most of the guys from the team abandoned him when it became obvious he wasn't the BMOC on campus anymore. So much for every movie with a sports theme where the rest of the guys on the team all rally around an injured teammate.

For a couple weeks, Brett had been caught in a shame spiral of self-pity until I took matters into my own hands and decided to give him a pep talk. "You can save your breath, Preston," he insisted. "I can see with my own eyes that I don't have anyone left. I'm not useful anymore now that I'm not a star football player."

"Hey, you're not completely alone!" I was actually a little offended. "I'm still here!"

"That's different," he scoffed. "You live here."

"I'm still your friend," I insisted. It was a shame. He was so emotionally wounded. All I wanted to do was pull him into a big hug and kiss him with as much passion as I felt inside about him.

"You don't have to pretend anymore, Preston. My days as a football player are over. I'm of no use to you anymore just like I'm of no use to anyone else."

"Brett, we aren't friends and roommates because you played football."

He looked at me, shocked at what I'd said. "We're not?"

"Of course not! We're roommates because a computer put us together before the start of our Freshman year and we're friends because you didn't give up on a shy kid from out of state and decided to drag him along with you to almost every party you went to."

In spite of himself, Brett burst out laughing and then reached over to pull me into a headlock, playfully grinding his knuckles into the top of my head before releasing me after a few seconds. "You're such a dork, Preston!"

"I prefer nerd," I shot back at him and he laughed again. "Listen, Brett. I want you to stop this pity party you've been throwing for yourself for the past couple weeks. I know it's been rough on you, but you're a lot better off than you know. You're not like a lot of the other guys on the team who had their grades handed to them. You earned every single good grade you got. You're not graduating with a 3.9 GPA because A.D. Wilkins or Coach Hobbs got it for you. That was all you. It's not going to be easy, but you're going to end up finding yourself a good job. And as for all those fairweather friends and football groupie whores who aren't coming around anymore...fuck 'em! You don't need people who are only going to abandon you when times get tough in your life. Better you find out now instead of later on. You're a good man with a lot to offer, Brett Kemp. Now start acting like it!"

"Damn, Preston," Brett actually looked touched by what I'd said. "You know how to play to a guy's ego, don't you?"

"It's all the truth." Without thinking I reached over and put my hand on his knee.

It was meant to be a supportive gesture. Instead, Brett looked down at my hand and then back up into my eyes. He reached out and pulled my hand into his straining and still growing crotch. Half an hour later, we lay in his bed catching our breath with a huge load of cum starting to trickle out of my ass. Having an injured ankle obviously hadn't hampered his ability to fuck like a pro.

He looked over at me with a big, goofy grin on his face. "Whew! Between that pep talk and what we just did, I feel like I'm on top of the world. You really are the best, Preston."

I don't know what came over me. I was caught up in the emotion of it all and my feelings for Brett weren't ever really too far from the surface anyway. "Brett, I need to tell you something."

"What's up?" he replied, wiping his face with his hand and taking a deep breath, still recovering from the grade-A fuck he'd just thrown me.

"When I said that we're friends, earlier. It wasn't entirely the truth."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, we ARE friends, but that's not we are...at least not to me."

"Oh? Tell me, then. What else are we?"

I think he assumed I was going to tell him that I think of him as a brother. Instead, I told him how I really felt. "I spent a long time lying to myself...first about my sexuality. But your silent acceptance and even inclusion in your life on campus helped me eventually come to terms with who I am and thrive in it."

He grinned at me and reached over to put his hand on my shoulder. "Everything you said to me out there earlier, it applies to you too, Preston. You're a good guy with a lot to offer. Someday, you're gonna make some guy one helluva boyfriend...or husband, if that's what you want."

"In that spirit," I continued before I lost my nerve. "I need to tell you that I also spent a long time denying how I've come to feel about you. We never talked about what the blow jobs and eventually fucking meant. I tried to tell myself it was just sex and I did a good job of convincing myself of that...until last year. I realized that I've fallen in love with you, Brett. I kept it secret for as long as I could, but I can't keep it in anymore...especially after the fuck we just had. You deserve to know how you make me feel...how I feel about you."

For nearly a minute, a deafening silence hung in the air. Brett leaned his head back against the headboard and looked up at the ceiling. "Don't leave me hanging, Brett," I implored him. "Say something...anything."

Finally, after a few more seconds of no response, he turned and looked at me. "I really wish you hadn't just said that."

Immediately, I felt my stomach drop. "Why?"

"C'mon," he cocked his head at me in a knowing look. "You know why."

"I''m afraid I don't." I started to feel defensive. "Why don't you enlighten me."

"I'm not gay, Preston."

"I never said you were."

"Well, I'm not into dudes, either."

"My ass begs to differ," I retorted dryly. When he just stared at me, obviously unsure of how to respond to what I'd said, I kept talking. "You mean to tell me that everything we've done together over the past four years has been just sex to you?"

"Yep. Nothing more than," he said, matter-of-facty.

Now it was my turn to take a knowing tone with him. "C'mon, Brett..."

"C'mon what?"

"You started this. Even if it was only one guy helping another out in the beginning, you're the one who kept it going. I never once came to you for sex. You came to me all the time. You moved me in here with you before Junior year. You're the one who wanted us to start fucking. Hell, you're the one who initiated sex just now. So don't try to make out like you don't have any skin in this game. No one fucks a guy the way you just fucked me if you don't feel the same way about me that I just told you I feel about you."

"You're disgusting!" he surprised me by proclaiming as he climbed out of bed and began getting dressed. "You're taking something innocent with absolutely no emotion behind it and trying to turn it into some sort of four year-long affair. You're trying to convince me that I feel some way about you that I don't!"

Things only got worse from there. We fought for the next hour and said a lot of terrible things to each other. The sort of terrible things you're not supposed to actually say...things you can't ever take back. For the rest of the semester until graduation, we continued to live together, but we each acted like other didn't exist. We did our best not to be around each other and those few times we were in each other's presence, an icy silence hung between us. I don't know what was on Brett's mind, but I was torn to pieces. I was pissed at how he'd acted and the things he'd said to me, but I still loved him, too. Those feelings didn't just go away.

Any hope that we'd have some sort of After School Special-style reconciliation after graduation where we came to terms, worked everything out, and continued our friendship was dashed right before the big day. I'd gone back home for a long weekend before the ceremony and drove my parents back to campus. When I arrived back at our apartment, Brett was gone. Not like "out on an errand," either. I mean...G-O-N-E, gone! While I was back home, he'd packed up all of his stuff and moved out...to where, I don't know. No note, no goodbye, nothing. Just his key laying on the kitchen counter along with his portion of that month's rent. It was pretty devastating.

The only time I saw him after that was at graduation as he walked across the stage to get his diploma. In the commotion after the ceremony, there was no way I could track him down to try and talk. I ended up keeping the apartment now that college was behind me as I attempted to make my way in the real world. I kept hoping he'd show up at the door one day or I'd get a phone call or text from him...but one never came. Eventually, I was able to move on with my life and even managed to have a couple of long-term relationships. But I don't think my feelings for Brett, or the way he'd hurt me, was ever too far below the surface, even if I was doing my best to convince myself I was over it.

***

Five years had gone by since graduation when I got a text out of the blue from Randy Hauser, inviting me to a gathering of some of the cool-kid crowd from school. I was surprised to receive an invitation. I hadn't really heard from any of that group since graduation and anyway, I knew I was only tolerated in that circle back in the day because I was Brett's roommate. Against my better judgement, I responded to the text and accepted the invitation.

When I showed up at the party room Randy and some of the others had rented out in his neighborhood to throw the party, I came face to face with none other than Brett Kemp. I shouldn't have been surprised he was there. After all, Randy was one of the few guys who hadn't dropped Brett like a hot potato after he'd injured his ankle.

In an instant, all of those feelings - the ones I'd stuffed down and pretended I'd dealt with - came rushing back. I wasn't over him. In fact, it turns out my feelings were as strong as ever. He was even more good-looking than he'd been when we were in college. He'd matured some and grown even more into his looks. The past five years had definitely been good to the guy.

I expected him to avert his eyes and run away just like he'd done right before graduation. Instead, he walked straight toward me and greeted me. The forced small talk was awkward...made even more awkward as I found myself drowning out his voice and paying more attention to his face and his body...and wondering if time had made his ability to fuck even better than it had been five years ago just like it had made the rest of him better.

Eventually, we made our way to a less populated corner of the party and addressed the elephant in the room between us. He apologized about the way he'd acted five years ago...the things he'd said to me and how he'd moved out without saying goodbye. To his credit, he stood there, took it like a man, and listened thoughtfully as I told him how hurt I'd been and how hurt I still was about the way things had played out.

Let me tell you. Anyone who says that stuffing your feelings down and not getting them out is the way to go doesn't know what they're talking about. Making peace with Brett and how our friendship had blown up immediately lifted a huge weight off of my shoulders. We didn't address everything. There was no talk about what had started that huge fight between us in the first place...my feelings for him and his seeming refusal to acknowledge that he might feel the same way. We'd gotten back to a good place and I wasn't ready to continue to rock the boat. I still had feelings for the guy, but right now it was enough to just be able to call him a friend again.

After getting that tough conversation out of the way, everything between us felt easier. I told him about my burgeoning career with a Fortune 500 company in the city and how I was working my way up the corporate ladder. He told me how he had gotten a job at our alma mater on the football team's coaching staff and was part of the radio broadcast team that called the team's games every week. I was impressed that he'd done so well for himself and was able to stay connected to football in some way, even thought he wasn't able to play anymore. For his part, he seemed happy for the strides I'd made in my own career.