Page 26 of The Last Guy On Earth
His heart swells, and he looks away so that Jethro can’t see how happy this makes him. “Want to watch something?”
“Sure. Whatever.”
This is part of their routine, of course. It doesn’t matter whether they’re at home or on the road. After a game, they eat a meal together, and they put on some TV to relax.
Clay chooses a red Netflix disc and slides it into his laptop, ignoring the TV on the hotel’s credenza. The laptop screen is small, but that’s totally the point. Jethro will have to sit right next to him on the bed after they eat the pizza.
That’s how it always goes. They sit side by side—usually on the sofa at home but sometimes in a hotel room on the road. They watch a little TV. And after they’re all good and relaxed, Jethro puts his hand down his sweats and takes out his cock. Or sometimes he casually slides a hand past Clay’s hip and reaches right into his boxers without so much as a glance at him first.
Clay is always ready but never initiates. He waits for Jethro to make a move. Clay knows he’s not fooling anyone—he always responds with the enthusiasm of a lotto jackpot winner, because that’s how he feels every time they hook up.
Their repertoire is strictly hand jobs and blowjobs. But these days Jethro reciprocates both. The first time he went down on him, Clay almost fainted from joy. The sight of that sandy head bobbing up and down on his cock was more than he could stand. He had to close his eyes and recite hockey stats to avoid humiliating himself too quickly.
There are unspoken rules, though, and a long list of things they never do. Like kissing. That’s off the table. And so is discussinganyof this. The sex between them is strictly something that happens after dark.
Luckily, the winters are long in the Northeast, so it’s dark a lot.
Only once did Clay manage to ask Jethro a question. It was last month, when they were lying panting on their backs, head-to-toe on Jethro’s bed after a frantic sixty-nine.
“Did you ever do this before?” Clay had croaked. “Like, fool around with guys?”
“Well, yeah,” his roommate had admitted quietly. “Couple times. You?”
“Yup. Once,” Clay had said, feeling both relieved and jealous at the same time. Then he’d gotten up and moved to his own bed, like always.
After that single conversation, Clay has been careful not to push more boundaries. He craves more, though. He wants to kiss Jethro so badly that he dreams about it. Given the chance, he’d go in for long make-out sessions, until their skin is abraded, and their lips are bruised. And he wants to fall asleep pressed up against Jethro, kissing the back of his neck where his hair needs a trim.
His heart bleeds a little every time he climbs into his own bed alone.
Tonight, they eat their pizza and watch an episode ofLost. Clay can’t concentrate. Especially when Jethro gets up and starts rooting around in his suitcase.
“Hey, have you seen my flask?” he asks.
Clay’s heart dips. Because this is part of the routine, too—Jethro always does some drinking before the fun part starts. “I think you left it on the kitchen table. At home.”
“What?” Jethro gives him an incredulous look. “And you didn’t wanna mention that?”
Clay shrugs guiltily. “Why do you need it?”
Unfortunately, Jethro’s reaction to this simple question is stronger than Clay anticipated. His face goes red, and his eyes narrow. “Are you trying to send me some kind ofmessage?”
Clay feels all the joy leak out of him. He pauses the show on the laptop. “No. It was just a question.”
Jethro is not going to let it go. He sits down on the other bed and glares at him. “Do you think I’m a drunk?”
“No,” Clay insists. The truth is, he’s rarely seen his roommate drunk. “Swear to God, I didn’t plan some kind of TV-movie intervention. I just wondered…” He’s afraid to finish the question.
“You wondered what?”
Good going, Powers. Way to ruin everything. “I just wondered why you always drink before we…” He clears histhroat. “Because it doesn’t, uh, feel great to be a thing you can only do after three beers or some Jack Daniel’s.”
Jethro’s eyes widen and then immediately turn guilty. He doesn’t say a word. He gets up quickly and ferries the empty pizza box into the hall. He makes a stop in the bathroom to brush his teeth.
Clay just sits there, panicking. He forced this conversation. Too bad he forgot to consider how awkward this might be, after he makes a mess of things. They’re stuck in this hotel room together.
He’ssuchan idiot. He could have just brought the flask along. He could be having a blowjob right now.
Jethro returns from the bathroom. He sits down on the edge of the bed again, facing Clay. “My father is a drunk,” he says stiffly. “And my mother was, too, before she got wasted and drove her car into a telephone pole.”
