Page 59 of Waiting on Life
Kyle
Even Toby’s sweat smelled amazing. Who the fuck had a sweat fetish? Apparently me, because I wanted to bury my face in his chest, his armpits, his crotch. Right now, though, I was feeling sated and lazy, so I lay enfolded in his arms, his head resting against mine.
I never believed life could be like this. I always thought I’d be bending over just to get a guy to notice me until I was old and gray, and then gumming cock in the old-age home. What I had now? I never wanted to lose it, and I would do whatever I could to hold on to it. The problem? What I had in mind would probably cause Toby to be pissed off, and even if I had the best of intentions in mind, was it worth it to make him angry?
“Toby?”
“Hm?” He sounded sleepy, but he still held me. “What’s up?”
I took a deep breath before I went for it. “I’m not the type to ask this, so please don’t think I’m weird or needy.”
He chuckled softly. “Trust me, I already knew you were weird.”
“Fuck you.”
“You kiss your mama with that mouth?”
I grinned, because I couldn’t help it. “You didn’t seem to have any problems with what I was doing with my mouth a while ago.”
“Oh, believe me, sweetheart, you’re going to be doing a lot of that in our future.”
Our future.He’d said the words. “Our future?”
He tensed, then sat up to give me such a sad look. “You don’t… I mean…. Did I fuck this up?”
The fear in his expression could have melted the hardest of hearts. I stroked a hand over his chest. “No, not at all. A future with you is exactly what I want.”
“Are you sure? Because if I’m pressuring you or coming on too strong, tell me and I’ll back off.”
I hated seeing that uncertainty. It was far too foreign on someone like Toby. I had to wonder how much he’d been hurt in the past. It seemed both of us had scars of one form or another, but being with Toby soothed mine.
“Sounds to me like we’ve both gotten the raw end of the deal when it comes to finding someone to be with.”
“You don’t know the half of it. It takes me a long time to fall for someone. I need a person who I can mesh with before I let myself feel anything. The problem? Once I do, I stupidly believe it’s a mutual thing. I normally end up scaring them off because I get too intense too fast. I don’t blame them at all. I mean, looking at it from their standpoint, I get it. No one wants someone who comes across too intense.”
“I do,” I assured him. “I’ve never had it before, and I want it more than I can say.”
“Yeah, but the future….”
“What about it?”
He sighed, a deep inhalation, followed by a slow exhale. “What if you decide it’s something you don’t want?”
Now it was my turn to tell him my other secrets. “When I was growing up, my mom always told me I shouldn’t settle. If she said it once, she said it a thousand times: ‘Kyle, you’ve got so much to offer the right man. Don’t settle for anything that’s beneath you.’” I turned my head and nuzzled his chest again. “But I never listened. I thought Ihadto have a man who would validate me, because whenever I gazed in the mirror, all I saw was this little fag who was looked down on, teased, and told he was nothing but shit. I got it into my head that they were right, and that in order to prove I was worthwhile, I would need to find a boyfriend who would tell me not to listen to anyone but them, because they thought I was fabulous.”
“You are fabulous.”
I shook my head. “That was the problem. In my heart, I never believed it, even when I said it so many times. It’s why I dress the way I do, or cut my hair, or paint my nails. I so desperately wanted to be fabulous that I would have done anything.”
“You wanna know what you really needed to do?”
More than anything.“Please tell me.”
“Be who you are. Kyle,my Kyle, is the most swan-like person I’ve ever met. His beauty and grace inspired me to look beyond what I’d always believed about myself. His brains and charm tore down the walls I’d erected. And, most of all, his fabulousness helped me to understand that love isn’t about gender—it’s about hearts and minds coming together to make something beautiful out of the chaos around us.”
Toby hugged me then, but it was more than a simple embrace. It was the two of us, sharing what we’d discovered about ourselves with each other’s help. It was touching on a level I’d never experienced before, and I knew if I ever lost it, it would break me.
I was hopelessly in love with Toby Tomlinson, and that made what I was about to do all the harder. I only hoped he would forgive me.
