Simply Red

Max’s Perspective

It was Saturday morning, Brody and Zoey were outside taking care of Jimmy, and I just finished making coffee when Craig came down the stairs all smiles. “Hi Max” he chirped like a happy little bird.

“Good Mornin’” I said as I poured us each a cup of coffee. “You up for bacon and eggs?”

“Sounds good” he responded happily as he stood leaning against the granite countertop.

“So, you had fun last night?” I asked. He nodded with a brilliant smile. “Ricky and his friends are good guys” I added.

“Yeah, and he’s so funny…” he exclaimed then went on to talk about Ricky. Ricky, Ricky, Ricky! There was no doubt about it, he liked Ricky. You know… LIKED, liked him.

I butted in where I probably didn’t belong, but I smelled trouble brewing and wanted to head it off at the pass. “You know he’s straight, right?”

Craig blushed and smiled this dopey grin as he dumped a buttload of sugar into his coffee and stirred, clinking the spoon against the inside of the mug as he did. “We’re just friends” he swooned.

Bullshit! I knew a smitten kitten when I saw one. “You ‘re obviously into him, Craig. He’s straight.” My first boy-crush was straight and the only thing I learned from that is why they call them crushes. It was devastating and I wanted to save Craig from that pain.

“Well, he SAYS he straight, but…” Craig retorted with a hopeful smirk. Just as Brody walked in from the yard and walked over to the sink to wash his hands.

“WHO says he’s straight?” He asked.

“Ricky” I shot back rolling my eyes as I started frying the bacon.

Brody dried his hands with a paper towel, then walked towards the coffee pot and chimed in with, “That’s because he IS straight.”

“But he could be…” Brody cut him off.

“Craig, I love ya’ buddy, and Ricky is an awesome guy. But he. Is. STRAIGHT.” Brody said looking him in the eye. “If yer thinkin’ anything else y’all are just settin’ yourself up for a broken heart.” Brody really cared about Craig… we both did, and we both saw what was happening. Craig was falling for the unattainable and that was just a heartache waiting to happen. I knew from experience.

It was the summer after I graduated high school and I was still questioning my sexuality, at least that’s what I was telling myself at the time, but I knew I was gay. Logan Swenson was my best friend. We had grown up on the same block and went all through grade school and high school together; we were inseparable. We did everything together and could talk about anything! He was the first person I had ever discussed my sexuality with, he made it abundantly clear that he was straight, but also that he had no problem with the fact that I wasn’t and that he accepted me as I was. Everybody loved Logan, he was a blonde haired, green eyed nerd who rarely got a second look. He was completely understated and underrated. Everyone loved him, but he wasn’t in the popular crowd, and like me, he just kind of blended into the high school stratosphere. He was my best friend.

I was determined to spend as much with him as I could before I went off to school in Milwaukee and he went off to Rochester. It was a hot July day and we were hanging out by my parent’s pool when I had this… this moment. Logan took off his shirt and stripped down to his tight bathing suit and suddenly I saw him differently. It was like the moment in an 80’s teen movie where the nerdy girl takes off her glasses, lets her hair down, and BAM, she’s hot as hell and every guy wants her. I had had a crush on him for as long as I could remember, but suddenly it was so much more… I totally fell for the guy. His cute body was lithe and toned with just the perfect amount of blonde fuzz in all the right places. As much as I tried to convince myself I was just questioning my sexuality… at that moment I Knew for sure I was gay. Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay!

From that day on, I couldn’t stop thinking about Logan in ‘THAT way,’ and over the next couple of weeks I convinced myself that he thought the same way about me. I read stuff into everything he said and did, and in my head, he moved from friend to boyfriend… even if he had no clue about the upgrade. One night near the end of the summer, we were hanging out by the lake near our neighborhood where the kids all went to smoke, drink, and hang out. We were underage, but that never stopped us. Logan had snagged a six pack of Mike’s Hard Lemonade. It was about 11:00 and our other friends had left, it was just the two of us laying back on the hood of his old Honda Element. We were a little buzzed, staring up at the stars, reminiscing and laughing about all the good times we had in high school. Our feet were planted on the hood and our knees were in the air. I moved a little closer to him and pushed my knee against his… he didn’t pull away he just kept talking. My eighteen year old cock got instantly hard, I mean like from limp to cement in a second. This was it! I did my best to listen and respond as I continued to push my knee against his, I swear he pushed back. We both had our arms lying next to us, I moved mine until our hands touched, I wiggled my fingers against him and OH MY FUCKING GOD, he wiggled his back!!! He was totally into me. We stayed like that for about ten minutes, he talked and I pretended to listen as I touched him lightly here and there… he responded every damn time. ‘I FUCKING KNEW he was gay,’ I thought to myself.

I got as bold as I could get and turned my head to the side and kissed his cheek. He turned his head to look at me, then I kissed his lips. He just stared at me, I did it again. This time he apprehensively kissed me back… just a little. He was extremely hesitant but I was determined. This was it. The moment I had lived for. Logan Swenson was lying next to me and his lips were touching mine. I pushed my way in with my tongue and probed his mouth with it. He didn’t resist, and slowly but surely joined in… we were full on necking. I got bold as fuck and moved my hand to his thigh and started to caress it, slowly moving it up and down from his knee to his crotch. He didn’t return the gesture but he didn’t pull away either, so I did it. I inched my hand over to his crotch. Oh, my fucking god again! He had a hardon to end all hardons. I squeezed and he moaned into our pensive kiss. I kept pushing it further and further… I untied his board shorts and pulled at the Velcro until I heard that ‘rip’ sound. Our lips pushed tighter together and our kiss got harder and more out of control. I tugged at his shorts trying to pull them off. He was wearing a board shorts with a mesh lining, no underwear (typical summer wear for Logan). He wasn’t really helping, but he sure as fuck wasn’t resisting. I finally freed his boyhood from it’s mesh confines, I grabbed it with my hand and stroked it, again he moaned into our kiss. He felt so fucking huge in my young, inexperienced hand.

My mind was about to explode… ‘this was really happening’ I thought. Finally! I was making out with logan and stroking the cock I’d been dreaming of… ‘I knew it! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. Logan. Was. Gay!’ I got faster and bolder with my strokes and decided to go for it. I slid off the hood of the old Honda and stood in front of it. I tugged at Logan’s legs encouraging him to slide down a little until his legs were dangling off the front of the car. I stopped for a moment to take in the sight… his hard cock resting against his T-shirt, the stars and the moonlight flickering off him and making the blonde hairs on his body shine. I was pretty damn inexperienced at the time, but I had messed around with a couple of other guys before, and had seen enough porn to know the basics. I leaned in and for some reason I felt the need to smell it… I inhaled his innocent scent, a combination of hormonal teenager and Axe Body Spray. Before I retreated, I decided to go for it. Grabbing his cock with my right hand I leaned in and licked the head, Logan moaned. He was lying flat on his back looking up at the stars, not at me. I licked around the head of his perky, taught young penis. I engulfed the head and started to go down on him. He sat up on the hood so that he could put his hands on my head and push it down. His head was thrown back, I don’t know if his eyes were open, but if they were they weren’t focused on me.

It was my very first blowjob, and his cock felt amazing, the texture was weird and the scent was a little strong, but it was still amazing and I took to cock sucking like a fish to water. I moved my mouth up and down his steel shaft, following it with my hand. After several strokes, I learned to twist my hand and swirl my tongue around him for added pleasure… his whimpering moans told me I was doing it right. With his hands planted on my head, he started lifting his buttocks off the hood, I could hear them peel of the warm metal as I took my first face fucking. We were barely eighteen and horny as fuck, it wasn’t long before he lost his load in my mouth. I tried to pull off but there was no way in hell Logan was letting that happen. He grunted and moan as he smashed my face against his pelvis, choking me with his big cock and his huge load.

When he was done, he pushed me off him, my eyes watering, my throat sore, and my mouth dripping with his seed. He jumped off the car, pulled up his shorts and said, “let’s go.” A few minutes later he dropped me off at my house without a word. He mumbled a goodnight as I got out of the old rust colored Element, then he drove off. I went from elated euphoria to confused dread. What the fuck just happened? I had been dreaming of this moment, but I never thought about the aftermath. I texted Logan goodnight, but he didn’t respond. The next morning, I called and went right to voicemail, I texted and called several times over the next couple of weeks before I moved to Milwaukee. Nothing. I even went to his house a couple of times. His mom told me he wasn’t there, but his car was in the driveway both times. Logan wasn’t gay, he was just a horny teenager willing to try anything. That night at the lake was the last time I ever saw him. I went for the straight boy and lost my best friend. I didn’t want to watch Craig do suffer that heartache and humiliation.

I told Craig and Brody the G-rated version of my experience. Brody had empathy in his eyes, and Craig had bacon and eggs in his mouth… the boy was in love and didn’t listen to a damn word I said. I just let out a heavy sigh… hey, I tried. Right? But my tale of regret was no match for teenage hormones gone wild. He was thinking with his dick, and we all know how that goes. That was pretty much the end of that discussion for the day. After breakfast Brody went out to work in the yard and Craig helped me in the garden. He took off in old Blue before noon to go to the bank and open a savings account with his paycheck. While he was gone, I called Seth and told him about the potential heartache looming over BroMax Farm. He just laughed a little, Seth did virtual counseling with Craig a couple times a week, and although he couldn’t tell me much about what they discussed, he could respond. When I told him Craig was falling for Ricky, he just said “No duh!” Well at least I knew he was getting input from Seth on the situation.

Daddy, BA, Dylan, and the very pregnant Gina came by the house for a cookout that night. They had all taken to Craig. “Hey boy” Daddy said to Craig (he called anybody younger than him boy). “Y’all wanna earn a little extra cash?” Craig was all over that. “I gotta coupla’ old junkers behind the shop that I’m gonna start fixin’ up and I need someone to dig em’ out from under the tires and other crap, and clean the insides out.” Daddy was a mechanic and had a shop in the middle of nowhere. There were always old cars out back sitting under tires and other spare parts, and every now and then Daddy would pick one or two of them out and fix them up to sell for extra cash.

“I’ll do it” Craig said with a glow.

“I’ll give ya’ a hundred bucks for each, but I need it done tomorrow” Daddy responded as he bit into a hotlink.

“Done” Craig said. Daddy texted him the address of the shop and told he he’d be there at 8AM on Sunday and Craig could come by when he was ready to go to work. He spent a little more time with the family, then jumped into Old Blue and headed out to meet Ricky and his friends.

“One of them old junkers is for him” Daddy said nonchalantly as he continued to eat.

“Don’t call my baby Beetle no junker. She’s a good ole gal.” BA said with a chuckle, elbowing her husband. She had an old green, early 2000’s Beetle that she drove forever then parked behind the shop when she got her Chrysler.

“She needs some work and a paint job, but she’s got some life left in her” Daddy explained with his mouth full. “If that boy is goin’ to college, he’s gonna need a car when he leaves here, we’re gonna give it to him as a graduation present. I figured I’d pay him to help me fix ‘er up, then he’d have money for insurance for a few months.”

The more I had gotten to know Daddy, the more I understood where Brody got his big heart from. I was touched by the gesture and gave him a grateful smile. “That’s extremely generous of you guys” I said.

“He needs a car and we got one we aint usin’. It aint a big deal” His Daddy responded.

“Hey, if y’all don’t mind us muscling in on yer gift, we’ll chip in for the parts n’ the paint job” Brody said.

“We’ll pitch in too” Dylan offered. Daddy was more than willing to share the glory and the cost, and before the end of the conversation we had a plan to get Craig a car for graduation. ‘Man, if I could harness the giving spirit of my friend and family, we could make life better for so many,’ I thought to myself. This entire experience with Craig had really got my thinking about so much.

The rest of our evening with the family was fun as always, and after they left, we watched TV and waited up for Craig. He came home happy as hell with a smile on his face from another night out with Ricky and friends. The next day he went to help Daddy clean up the cars and sacked away the two hundred bucks in his new savings account. For the next couple of weeks, he worked his butt off! He spent his mornings in his online classes, his afternoons in the candle barn, or the garden, and his evenings studying up in his room with Witchy and Zoey. He spent Sundays helping Daddy, and pretty much every weekend night out with his friends. He was doing well in school, on track to graduate, and sacking the money away in the bank for college.

The only glitch along the way was a close call with Billy Ray. Timmy and Ricky had left Billy Ray behind after the “barn incident” and he didn’t seem to have anyone to hang out with anymore. He saw the guys hanging out with Craig and of course decided to harass the “new fag.” Ricky came to Craig’s rescue before it turned into much of anything, however, that just solidified things in Craig’s head. He was sure Ricky was in love with him too.

Craig’s Perspective

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, and while we’re on the subject… FUCK! Everything was going perfect and I fucked it up!

Long story short, I came out to my dad on my 18th birthday and it did NOT go well, he lost it and kicked me out of the house. I moved in with my friend Jake’s family And they encouraged me to get help from the LGBTQ Center. The people there were great and helped me out a lot. One of the volunteers, Seth, counseled me and helped me wrap my head around taking control of my life and adulting. They helped me talk to the school about finishing out the semester even though I technically wasn’t living in the district anymore, they also helped me get a job and find some other resources. I was doing okay on my own and my dad had stopped harassing me. At first, he was hell bent on dragging me to conversion therapy to “change me back to normal.” Then it was like he accepted it, but he didn’t all at the same time. He would say things like “I know you’re gay but I think you just haven’t met the right girl yet.” The whole thing was too much and I kept wishing my mom was still around… she would've been fine with it. She died when I was just eleven, but I think even then she knew. Anyway… thanks to Jake’s mom and dad and the people at the center, I was doing okay.

A few months after I came out to my dad I was riding on the LGBTQ Center’s float in the Mardi Gras parade shirtless, dancing, having a great time when BAM! I blacked out. My dad had jumped out of the crowd, onto the float, and threw me off. I landed on the ground, hit my head on the cement, and was knocked out. My life changed again after that. They arrested my dad, took me to the hospital, and everyone who had been helping me thought it was best if I left the state for a while. Seth (my counselor from the center) found me a place to stay with friends of his. It was a farm in the middle of nowhere and I was lonely as hell at first. But Max and Brody, the guys that owned the place, did their best to make me feel welcome. They gave me a nice place to stay (rent free), job, and even let me use their truck so I didn’t feel like a prisoner, stuck out in the country. I made friends at work, but was lonely during the day taking classes online so Max got me into school even though there were only a couple of months left in the school year. Honestly, they gave me a much better life than I had and I was happy. But there was this guy… this cute as hell guy (who was technically my boss). He was my age with longer, dirty blonde hair, green eyes, and always had a damn smile on his face. He would dance while we worked, shaking his cute little ass. It was so freaking cute! He was originally from Jersey, had lived in North Carolina for ten years and had just a light southern accent. He had this European look about him… he was like this hot Italian guy with his hair just flowing everywhere, charming as hell. He said he was straight, but all gay guys say that at first, right?

He would open doors for me when we were hanging out, if he got up to get himself a soda, he’d always bring one back for me, etc. All the signs were there… Brody warned me that he was just being a southern gentleman and there was a fine line between southern gentleman and gay. He was right, being in the south really threw my gaydar off, but I knew Ricky was on my team. Ricky and his buddies all hung out on this little private beach, we’d just talk and laugh, sometimes drink a little. One night we were there when this big guy, Billy Ray started giving me shit. I didn’t really know the guy, we went to school together and I knew who he was, but that was about it. He used to be friends with Ricky, but for some reason they stopped hanging out (I assumed it was just because he was a big asshole). Anyway, he called me “new fag” And Ricky jumped between us and stood him down. I knew he did it because he was into me… I just freaking knew it.

A couple of weeks later, Ricky and I were hanging out after work on a Friday. We rode together in his car and he dropped my off at the farm end of the night. It was just the two of us in his old Chevy, it was dark as hell, the radio was on and the car was stopped in the driveway. We said goodnight and I don’t know what the hell came over me, but I leaned in and kissed him on his soft, beautiful lips. He just stared for a minute in shock. “I um… I like you Ricky” I said, “a lot.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Um… yeah. I like you too Craig. But as a friend, I mean I’m flattered but I aint gay.” Some guys say that to hide the obvious, but there was a sincerity in his voice and his eyes and it clicked at that moment that I was barking up the wrong tree. He smiled his cute smile and said “Hell, if I was gay, I’d probably be all over you” he added genuinely with a little snicker trying to lighten the tense mood.

I was embarrassed as fuck and just stammered out a “goodnight” and got the hell outta that car. Max and Brody were sitting on the couch watching TV, I barely said a word to them and went right up to my room. Zoey (their dog) followed me up the old steps. I got into the bed fully dressed and quietly cried myself to sleep with Zoey’s head on my chest. I was heartbroken and humiliated. The next couple of days were awkward as fuck.

I had completely misread the situation and ruined our friendship. I tried to avoid him at work which was virtually impossible since there were only five of us working in the barn and he was my boss. He didn’t seem to be bothered at all, he tried to talk to me a couple of times but I didn’t respond and found excuses to walk away from him when it was just the two of us. I had successfully avoided him for a couple of days. Wednesday night after we finished up our work Ricky was still in the barn talking to Max. I snuck out and went up to my room to study with Zoey and Witchy following behind. I was sitting on my bed with my computer on my lap and the door shut. When someone knocked on my door.

“Hey, Craig, It’s Ricky. Max said it was okay to come up, can I come in.” a voice said from the other side. I didn’t answer. “C’mon Craig, I know you’re in there… you can’t avoid me forever. Let me in.” He said.

“fine, come in” I said quietly. The knob turned and the door opened slowly.

Ricky stuck his cute as hell face in the door, “hey.”

“Hey” I said back quietly with a painful smile.

He timidly entered the room, shut the door behind him and sat on the edge of the bed.  “Why are you avoiding me?” he asked as he looked back at me.

I looked at him and rolled my eyes “you know why” I said back. Damn, it was embarrassing.

“Yeah” he said looking down. “I’m sorry for my stupid response.” Stupid response? His response was perfect. It was kind and understanding, and frankly, I believed it… he convinced me that the only reason he wasn’t interested was because he liked girls. I was a boy… and frankly, I had no real control over that.

“That’s not why I’m avoiding you” I said back unable to look him in the eye. “I’m embarrassed as fuck that I tried to kiss you.”

Ricky smiled and chuckled. “Why the hell are you embarrassed about that?” he said as he rubbed the back of his head. “You liked me and you took a shot. Aint nothin’ wrong with that.” He melted my fucking heart. “I’ve only known what… like a month? And I consider you my best friend. Hell, if you were a girl, I woulda tried to kiss YOU” he chuckled again. “But here’s the thing” he said making my heart sink. “I want you to keep being my best friend, and I gotta know you can do that. Can we get past this?”

“Yeah” I said reluctantly giving into his charming perfection. Then he hugged me… with one arm, and patted me on the back. Like the straight guy he was. My best friend was straight, I just had to accept the facts.

 

To be continued…

 

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Author's Note: I know some will be disappointed with Ricky's response, but the moral of this story is: some people are just straight.