New York After College 02 (Patreon)

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Chapter 2: Avocado Toast 

Saturday I kept myself busy. I went to the gym once I was fully animated, came home, showered, made food. Normal stuff. I was fine.

I texted Natalie around noon. Kept it casual, something like hey, last night was fun. I sent it and put my phone down, and checked it twenty minutes later: Delivered. 

I checked it an hour after that, still just delivered. After several hours of binging YouTube videos, it was evening time, and I accepted she wasn't going to respond. I don't know exactly what I wanted from her. Maybe I wanted her to be the explanation. Like if she texted back it would mean Friday night was about her, and everything that happened after she left was just a spillover from that. But she didn't text back, and for some reason it meant that I couldn't use her as an excuse.

I ran into my neighbor Marcus in the hallway when I was taking out the trash. He was mid thirties, fit, and gay. He had lived in the building longer than I had, and he seemed like an institution to me. He was coming back from the farmers market with a canvas bag full of weird vegetables, and he took one look at me and said "What happened to you?"

I ended up in his apartment for two hours.

I told him roughly what happened. Every detail spilled out of me as I sat on his couch eating the fancy avocado toast he made for me. Once I started it kind of came out in one long blurting output. He listened the whole time without interrupting, drinking tea, completely unbothered. When I finished he was quiet for a second.

"So that… actually happens all the time," he said.

"No way it does," I said, scoffing.

"It really does." He got up and refilled his mug. "You're not as special as you think."

"That's not comforting."

"It's not supposed to be comforting." He sat back down. "How long have you two been friends?"

"Since we were fourteen."

He nodded slowly. "And in all that time, did it ever feel weird? The competing, the comparing, all of that?"

I thought about it. "Not weird. Just annoying."

"But you never stopped being friends."

"No."

"And you never told him to back off. Stop comparing himself to you, any of that."

"No, I just…" I paused. "It was just how we were."

Marcus looked at me over his mug. "You kept score too. You just told yourself you didn't."

I didn't have an answer for that.

"You're not upset about what happened," he said, same flat tone. "You're upset that you liked it."

I looked at the wall.

"That's what I thought." He handed me a container of soup on my way out like that was a perfectly normal way to end a conversation. "Eat some more. You look like you're thinking too hard."

I went home and ate the soup and watched something I don't remember. Around eleven I turned the TV off and lay in bed in the dark and did what any normal guy does when he's wound up and can't sleep, reaching my hand down into my underwear, closing my eyes and trying to let my imagination build a fantasy.

I started thinking about Natalie, which made sense. She was doing all the crazy stuff in my mind that she never did in person. I was just getting somewhere when my brain wandered somewhere else. Ryner was taking her place in my fantasy, against my will. I couldn’t control what was happening, even in my own imagination. Part of me wanted to stop, but my hand kept going until I reached the edge, feeling the warmth dripping down my abs, the emotions flowing out of me and the clear logic returning to my brain. It was over, and I was staring at the ceiling in the dark feeling like I needed to have a certain kind of conversation with myself.

I cleaned up and went to sleep, telling myself I was fine. Everything was fine. It was just a one time thing. Marcus doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

—[]—

Ryner was already at our seats when I got to the stadium Sunday. He had two drinks and a hot dog and was looking at his phone. He handed me one of the cups without looking up.

"You're late, bro," he said. “It’s bad luck. We’re already down by one.”

"There was a line."

"There's always a line."

We watched the game. First inning, second inning. We talked about the market for a while, something he'd read about tech valuations. His buddy from work was looking at a new place in Hoboken. I told him about something at work that had been annoying me all week. Normal stuff. The crowd noise filled everything in around us and made it easy to just exist without having to address anything directly.

I was fine with that arrangement. I'd been telling myself for the prior twenty-four hours that maybe we'd just never bring it up. Ryner had basically proposed that option himself with the “Sunday” text and I'd accepted it and we were going to be adults about it and move on.

Then the fourth inning happened. Mets were losing by three runs and playing like shit. The mood was off and the game was boring. Things got quiet between us in a way that wasn't the regular quiet.

"You've driven me crazy my whole life," I blurted out. I wasn't looking at him. "You know that. You do it on purpose."

He didn't look away from the field. "Yeah."

"I used to think it was just how you were wired. That you picked me as the benchmark to live up to, and I just had to live with it."

"That's pretty much what happened."

"It's exhausting."

"I know." He took a sip from his cup. "Can I tell you something?"

"You're going to anyway."

He almost smiled. "I knew I was curious about dick the first time I saw yours. Middle school. Changing after gym." He said it the same way he'd talk about a stock tip, completely even. "I didn't know what the feeling was at the time. I just knew I couldn't stop thinking about it. I thought I was just jealous, but over time I knew it was more."

"Jesus Christ,” I said. I looked at him. “Middle school?"

"Yeah."

"That's a long time to carry that around."

"It was as heavy as your fat cock, bro."

We laughed. It felt good to lighten it up, but I sat with that for a second. Twelve years of the measuring tape and the weight room and the sorority girls and the pseudo-threesome that ended the second she pulled me out. All of it suddenly reordered itself in my brain, changing the entire narrative, everything pointing the same direction it had always been pointing and I just hadn't looked at it straight.

"Every single thing," I said. "The arms, the legs, the girls. All of it was about that?"

He thought about it. "A lot of it."

"So you were just perving on me the whole time."

"Honestly, yeah," he said, still smirking. “You loved it though.”

"Why are you smiling about it? It drove me nuts."

"'Cause you liked it."

"It was gay as hell, dude."

"So...?"

"So what?"

He paused, licking his lips. "So what do you wanna do now?"

A prickling feeling ran from the top of my head all the way down. "You're freaking me out. I convinced myself it was just a one time crazy thing."

"I don't think it was."

He reached over and grabbed my thigh. I didn't move. I could feel myself already responding in my pants, which was its own answer to every question I'd been sitting with since Saturday morning, not that I was going to say that out loud.

I thought about what Marcus said. That I kept score too, I just told myself I didn't. I thought about every time I'd clocked Ryner's reaction when I came out ahead, the small satisfaction of it, the way I never told him to stop. I didn't want him to stop. I just didn't know what I actually wanted him to do instead until Friday night handed me the answer.

It was naughty in a way that was hard to explain. It was the guy who had been living in my head since we were teenagers, this whole thing between us that never had a clean name, and now he was sitting next to me at a baseball game with his hand on my leg and I understood all of it for the first time.

We left before the sixth inning.

—[]—

Back at my place we sat on the couch and for a minute it was almost normal. He had his phone out, I had the TV on low. If you didn't know anything you'd think we were just two guys hanging out on a Sunday.

"You still in your head about it?" he said, not looking up.

"I'm fine," I said, but really I just didn’t want to talk about it, whatever was going to happen.

"At least you’re here." He put his phone down. "With me"

“Story of my life,” I said with an exhale.

Ryner nodded. "Good choice."

Something settled in his face. Not quite a smile. He reached over and put his hand on my leg again, same as the stadium, but higher up, and I felt the same drop in my stomach that wasn't quite fear.

He reached for my waistband. I lifted my hips off the couch and let him pull my pants down. I was already hard, and he wrapped his hand around the base and just looked for a second.

"I finally win at something," he said.

He dropped his mouth onto me before I could respond, hot and certain, gripping the base and pulling down at the same time, and the shock of it cleared my head completely. He knew exactly what he was doing. I gripped the couch cushion and tried to hold it together, which lasted about as long as you'd expect.

"Fuck," I said, and my voice came out smaller than I meant it to. "You're better than girls."

He groaned around me and picked up the pace, his fist working in tight rhythm with his mouth, the pressure building until I couldn’t hold back anymore. I grabbed his head between my hands and pushed it down harder on me. I thought he was going to pull back, but he grabbed my hands and moved them to the back of his head, encouraging me. 

I pulled on his wavy hair as I bounced his head on my crotch, pushing into his throat, a rare experience in my life of having a big dick. He pushed through the gags and slobber and I held him in place as I humped into his mouth and throat. He became a passive sex toy for me to get my pleasure from.

I stood up and humped his face more quickly, his slurping and throat sounds growing louder as I got kind of wild with it. My animal instincts set in, more than they ever had before, and I pushed until I reached my nirvana in his throat.

I went rigid and he took everything,  he took over the bobbing of his head and jerking me, and kept going until I was completely done, then slowly pulled off and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, as goo dripped off of my dick.

He looked up at me, that easy, red, teary-eyed face, completely unbothered.

I sat back down and stared at the ceiling.

"Okay," I said.

There was a pause.

“You win,” I sighed.

"I know.”

We sat there for a minute. The TV was still on low. Outside it was a regular Sunday in New York.

"You want to order food?" I said.

"Yeah." He picked his phone back up. "Thai or that burger place."

"Thai."

He nodded and started scrolling. I pulled my pants back up and leaned into the couch and thought about how strange it was that this felt so normal. Not simple, but normal. Like something had been slightly off for a long time and someone had finally adjusted it, and now it sounded different and I didn't know yet what to do with that, but I wasn't going to turn it off either.

"Extra dumplings," I said.

"I know," he said, without looking up.