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“Caden, really? Are you serious? I really get to do this? I can’t believe…you didn’t have to…” I knew he was fretting about the cost a little, because it sounded like he may have looked into it in the past, but it didn’t matter. I felt like splurging a little on our first date. I was riding on a full scholarship, and I was doing some sponsorships that were making me ok money. My parents sent me money sometimes, too, just because they wanted to. I wasn’t sure what they’d think if they knew I was taking a boy on a date with it, though, so I was just going to say that particular money was not their money.
“Yes, really,” I said, beaming as we walked toward the entrance to the bioluminescent kayak tour. I showed them the tickets on my phone, and we headed to get our clear kayak. Jamie wasn’t complaining, and he didn’t question it again. In fact, he was practically bouncing up and down as we pulled the kayak into the water and climbed in. Our tour group was small, only four kayaks besides the guide, and the others were tourists who paid little attention to us. We were going on the sunset tour but would see the bioluminescent sea life on the return trip as long as all went according to the tour company’s plans.
We paddled our way out as the sun made its descent. I had to give myself some credit. Sitting in that kayak with him, even just at sunset, was more romantic than I’d even expected.
Jamie was in absolute heaven. That was the first time I saw how much he loved the ocean and all the life in it. I knew that being a third-year student he’d seen and studied all the animals we would see, even if he’d never gone to a zoo or aquarium as a kid. But you would have thought it was his first time encountering the ocean. He almost tipped our kayak when he saw the first pod of dolphins. Luckily I was able to balance it out. I cracked up as he apologized. He got just as excited but with less tipping when he spotted a shark. The guides calmly led us away from it since some of our fellow tour members weren’t as excited as Jamie was. He watched in awe as a pelican dove into the water for its dinner. I didn’t even mind that he kept getting distracted and I was doing most of the paddling. Seeing him so excited made me smile.
The bioluminescent life giving off a soft blue glow under our kayak was amazing, and like nothing I’d ever seen before. I think I was just as excited as Jamie by that point. We watched as sting rays stirred it up beneath us, and some more dolphins passed through right under us. Jamie hadn’t stopped smiling the entire time. The guides slowed us to a float to enjoy the surrounding glow in the darkness, the moon above us giving off its own soft light. I felt pretty good at picking out date spots right about then.
We were behind the other kayaks as we floated there, mostly because Jamie kept getting distracted, but I wasn’t complaining. It was beautiful, and in the back of the group it almost felt like we were alone. Jamie looked back at me from his spot in the front of the kayak, then tentatively scooted toward me. I moved my paddle, and he leaned back with his back resting on my chest as we floated there, enjoying the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen besides him. I wrapped my free arm around him, and he put his empty hand on mine. It was honestly the happiest I’d been for as long as I could remember.
After we turned our paddles in and headed back to his bike, he looked over at me. “Caden, thank you. This was literally the best night of my life.”
I was beaming. “Well, it’s not over. Do you think I’d bring you all the way out here without feeding you?” I guided him to a restaurant I’d found on the beach. We sat outside, in the corner and away from the crowd of people who were on vacation.
After we ordered our food, he turned from the beach view to me. “So, where are you from?” he asked me.
“North Carolina. Near Asheville.” We talked about my family and childhood, which wasn’t bad minus the part where I always had to hide who I really was. We talked about his mom and sister, his true family even though he hadn’t met them until he was sixteen. I could tell he loved them as much as he would have if he’d been raised there. Maybe even more. I was glad he’d found a family after his early life.
I complemented his tattoo and found out it had been done by a damn good apprentice who had dated Jamie’s sister when Jamie was eighteen. The guy was an artist who wanted more practice with the tattoo gun, and Jamie wanted a tattoo. He wanted one in a spot that he could hide if needed, but one that meant something to him. Finally given the opportunity, he struggled to figure out what to get. It had been his sister who’d mentioned a phoenix. “You rose from the ashes,” she said, “More than once. You’ve come through everything life threw at you, Jamie, and you deserve to show that off.”
Jamie really liked the idea, and the apprentice had drawn one up and had come up with the words. He’d gotten to know Jamie in the time he’d been dating Jamie’s sister, and told him, “You’ll keep rising, little bro. The world isn’t ever going to hold you down. I can tell.” The idea for his tattoo had been born, and Jamie was still friends with him, even though he no longer dated Jamie’s sister.
We talked about my Political Science major, and I found out he volunteered at a LGBTQ youth center. He wanted to be there for the kids who weren’t accepted as themselves, just like he hadn’t been. Just like I hadn’t been. He wanted them to know that they were amazing the way they were, and that there were people who cared about them and accepted them.
The more I learned about him, the more I realized that everything he’d been through made him appreciate what he had even more, instead of making him bitter. It made him care more about people, instead of making him more distrusting. It made him see things in a different way. He found beauty in the things other people ignored. It was amazing to me, he was amazing to me, because I wasn’t sure I would have had the same reaction in his shoes. His zest for life was contagious. He was almost as excited about the food placed in front of him as he had been about the sea life we’d just seen. I was in awe that he’d come out of a childhood like his as the man he’d become. He was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen, inside and out. Acknowledging that thought didn’t scare me as badly as I’d thought it would.
I wasn’t ready for the night to end, so after we ate, I asked him to walk on the beach with me. We walked side-by-side, gazing out at the reflection of the moonlight on the water. We hadn’t gotten all that far when he reached over and took my hand almost shyly. I looked over and he looked slightly up at me with a hopeful smile. My fingers closed around his and I stopped walking, tugging him toward me. He followed the pull and leaned in cautiously, but that time I closed the distance.
There were just as many sparks with the kiss as there had been the first time our lips had connected. He teased my lips with his tongue, and I parted them for him, our tongues tangling together as one of his hands found my hair and the other landed on the small of my back. I wrapped my arms around his lower back and pulled him closer until the entire length of his body was pressed into mine. He whined into my mouth, trying to get even closer. My hands slid lower until I was gripping his ass, and as the kiss grew even more heated and desperate, I pulled his hips into my own. I was pleased to find I could make his body react as much as he’d made mine react when he was dancing the previous weekend. My own body was already reacting, too, and he pressed his erection against mine with a little moan. At that moment, voices sounded behind us, and we were reminded just how un-private the beach was. Startled, I turned and saw a family walking by, barely but still visible in the moonlight.
Jamie whined again as we were forced to part. “Caden…” he whispered, sounding breathless and desperate. I was just as gone as he was, if not more so, and I’d never wanted another person so badly in my entire life. Right then, despite how much fun we’d both had, I really hated the fact that I’d chosen a date spot forty-five minutes from my bed.
“My dorm,” I practically panted, “Jesse is at a party. He said he’d be out late, all night if he’s lucky. Let’s go. Now. Please.” I didn’t want it to come out demanding, but I was desperate by then. I was so far past caring if anyone saw us that I was pretty sure Caden-in-the-box had full control. Jamie didn’t argue.
We stumbled hand in hand through the sand and back to the parking lot. In our haste I ended up with the pink helmet, but I couldn’t find it in myself to care. He made it back to campus faster than he’d made it to our scheduled date, and I was too horny to be nervous about how fast he was taking the curves.
My lust haze had cleared slightly in the night air and thirty-minute ride, but it was definitely still there. He slowed near the bus stop, hesitating. I knew it was reckless, but I said, “Just park in your normal spot.” It was dark out and I hoped everyone was too busy with their parties or studying or whatever they did on Friday nights to pay attention to us. It wasn’t the time to try to be sneaky, and I didn’t want to give him an open opportunity to rethink the whole thing and decide to head back to his own dorm because he thought I’d freak out later. To be honest, I didn’t want a chance to do much thinking, either, because I was afraid Fake Caden would try to talk me out of it because he was scared.
He pulled through the campus gates, but after parking he took off his helmet and looked at me like he thought I might have changed my mind. I yanked the pink helmet off my head and sat it on his bike. I held my hand out to him. “Come on.”
He looked relieved as he took my hand and let me lead him through the shadows to my building. We were able to make it inside and upstairs undetected, and I shut and locked my door behind us. I was a little relieved to find that he wasn’t having anything resembling second thoughts. Once he was sure he had a green light, he practically attacked. He rushed forward and had his mouth on mine even as I fell back and into my door under his tackle. I managed to stand back upright without separating us, and slowly walked him backward toward my bed, kissing him the whole way.
The only light on in my room was the little Turkish lantern Jesse had on his side of the shared nightstand, casting us in a reddish-orange glow. As I gazed at him for a second before kissing down his neck, I was acutely aware that Jamie was beautiful in any light. He gave a little moan as I bit lightly at his neck, and I moved back to his mouth as we reached the bed. I pulled him down onto my bed with me, and though our mouths parted in the fall, his lips found mine again as soon as we landed, and he eagerly wrapped a leg around mine. “Caden…” He was killing me.
I suddenly realized there were way too many clothes in my way. I pulled on the bottom of his shirt, and he paused the kiss to sit up, whipping it over his head and tossing it to the floor. He landed beside me again and our mouths found each other once more as his hand trailed up my back under my shirt.
My arms were around him, my hands travelling up and down his now bare back, and they finally slid all the way down, grabbing his ass through his jeans and squeezing. He moaned into my mouth, and it encouraged me. I brought my hands back up to the waistband of his jeans, my right hand hovering there, itching to move further. I wanted to touch his skin. Everywhere. His jeans were loose enough that my hand would fit, and I cautiously slipped it inside of his boxers.
There wasn’t a lot of room at the waist, but there was enough for me to move my hand, and I gripped his ass again with nothing in my way. I slowly worked my hand inward and down as we continued to make out. I wasn’t sure how far he wanted me to go or if he was even ok with that kind of touch, but curious didn’t begin to describe how I was feeling. I continued moving slowly, allowing him plenty of time to tell me to stop.
He did not tell me to stop. Instead, he pulled himself even closer to me with the leg that was still wrapped around mine, grinding on my hip and whispering my name like it was a prayer. His hand moved from my back and gently pushed my wrist even farther into his pants until I was teasing his crack. He sighed, his lips parting from mine and his eyelashes tickling my cheek as he moved and his tongue found my jawline. My finger slipped into his crack and teased his hole, just for a second, but then I kind of panicked. I wasn’t really sure how any of it worked. I mean, I knew the logistics, but everything else was foreign. Jamie seemed into it, but Gavin and I had never reached the point where we had to figure out who was a top and who was a bottom. Not to mention the fact that I wasn’t sure what exactly Jamie had been through in his life and if it was truly ok with him.
I pulled my hand back up, nearly drowning in uncertainty. I really liked him, and I didn’t want to mess everything up. I caught his lips again and continued kissing him, while I rubbed his hip bone with my fingers. I could feel my own hesitancy in the touch, and I was sure he could, too.
Jamie grabbed my wrist and pulled away from my lips. He brought my hand up to his mouth, kissing my fingers as he looked me in the eye. He then proceeded to suck my index and middle finger into his mouth, licking and sucking on them like he was giving me a blow job while also getting them nice and wet. His pupils were blown wide, and my heart nearly came to a stop as the implications almost made me come in my pants. Hold it together, Caden. He pulled his lips off my fingers with a pop, then guided my hand back to his waistline as his mouth found mine once more.
