I heard the quiet yet distinct sound of him sniffling. “I don’t care about him anymore. I don’t care what he’s doing with his life, seriously. But we were together for almost four years, and then he got this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take an assignment in South Africa for six months. I told him that I couldn’t go with him, not unless I postponed opening my own catering business, which had been my dream for forever. But he somehow convinced me that his dream was more important than mine, so I ended up turning in the withdrawal paperwork for everything I’d ever wanted…”
Morgan let out a shaky breath. “But when I came back to our apartment that day, ready to go on this adventure with a man I thought was the love of my life, all he’d left me was a note, letting me know that he’d already left for the assignment, which meant that, in the end, he really didn’t care if I went with him or not. He was going to South Africa, anyway. I was just an afterthought. I’d been willing to give up my dream, give up on myself, just to be someone else’s afterthought.”
“It’s not your fault,” I whispered. “Fuck. What a fucking asshole.”
“It gets worse.” Morgan laughed, but there wasn’t any warmth behind it. “When he came back from his assignment, he stopped by the apartment. I was there, just cooking dinner for myself. So, he comes into the kitchen, and kisses me, acting like he’d done nothing wrong, like he hadn’t abandoned me for six months. I push him away from me and then I notice he’s wearing a ring on his finger. He tells me he made a mistake. He got married, but it doesn’t mean anything, not if I don’t want it to.”
“What the fuck?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Please tell me that you put that piece of shit out on his fucking ass.”
“I did, but it didn’t matter. The damage was done.” Morgan shrugged. “It was hard for me to not feel… replaceable after that. I mean, fuck. The love of my life left me for six months and got married to some other guy like I’d never even mattered. It was really hard to come back from that. It was hard for me to feel like… I had value. It was hard for me to feel like love had value, too.”
“And now?”
“I know I have value,” Morgan confidently answered.
“But what about love?”
“I think love is like money,” Morgan went on. “We all act like it’s real, we respect it, we acknowledge it. But if you really stop and think about it, it’s just paper. It’s just real because we want it to be real, because we need it to be real to get on with our lives.”
“You can’t really believe that,” I said as a twinge ached in my chest.
Please don’t tell me you believe that.
Morgan smiled. “It doesn’t matter what I believe. You shouldn’t be taking advice from me, anyway. I’m way too bitter.”
“Morgan…” I moved closer to him, until I was leaning over his body with my own. I opened the top drawer of his bedside dresser, expertly pulling out the lube and grabbing a condom, too.
I wanted to be close to him.
I wanted to change his mind.
I wanted to take all his pain away.
It didn’t take me long to slip the condom over my cock, and it took me even less time to drip the lube over my fingertips, which I soon pressed against Morgan’s entrance. When I felt like he was ready for me, I moved my hand away from him and brought my cock down toward his hole.
And then, I slowly pushed my shaft into him as I gently held onto his wrists above his head. Morgan moaned beneath me, closing his eyes, his mouth falling open in pure ecstasy.
But I didn’t want him to close his eyes, not when I needed to feel so close to him. “Open your eyes.”
“What?”
“Open your eyes,” I repeated. “I want to look at you while I’m inside you.”
“Okay.” Morgan seemed skeptical, but he did as he was told.
And as our eyes met, I started to thrust into him even harder. Morgan gasped, but he kept his gaze on mine, even when I steadily increased my pace.
“Everything about you…” I said, my hips still moving against Morgan’s. “I’ve never met anyone like you before…”
Morgan didn’t verbally reply, but I did see him twist his fingers into the bedsheet as if he was trying to channel the pleasure in his body into something else. He also bit his lip and groaned as I started to slide my cock almost all the way out of him before slamming it all the way back inside.
“Mine…” The words fell out of my mouth before I had the chance to stop them. “Morgan… you… are mine…”
“Yours…” Morgan nodded as he moaned. “I’m yours… Harrison… I’m all yours…”
Hearing Morgan say those words sent me right over the edge and I felt myself coming inside of him, my body releasing the most pleasurable spasms. When I was finished, I rolled onto the bed alongside Morgan, completely unable to have a clear thought in my head.
Everything just seemed so muddled.
I was leaving in a week or so, but I suddenly wanted to stay another month or two or three or four. I wanted Morgan to be mine and only mine, but I didn’t even know if I was ready to come out of the closet as a gay man just yet, and I had a feeling that Morgan wouldn’t be interested in dating a closet case.
Nothing I wanted made sense. Nothing I felt made sense.
The only thing that made sense was Morgan, being with him, being inside him. Looking at him always felt like I was looking at a clear sky, with no rain, no clouds, no thunderstorms.
I thought about telling Morgan that, word for word. I thought about letting him know that there was something growing inside of me, something that had never been nurtured until I met him, until I had the privilege to be around him.
But when I looked over at him, ready to tell him everything that I was thinking, Morgan was already fast asleep.
I closed my eyes as I turned away from Morgan in bed and wondered if maybe it was for the best.
13
Morgan
My weekend with Harrison had been exhausting.
And different. And confusing.
Harrison and I had had sex before, sure, but never like that. Each time our bodies connected, it felt like there was something deeper underneath the surface, something that wasn’t being addressed in the room.
Honestly, it felt like Harrison was looking for something. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, no matter how hard I’d tried.
But whenever we made love—
Whenever we hooked up—
It just felt like Harrison needed something more from me. At first, I thought that he was just exploring his kinks, with the way he suddenly decided to say that I was his, and that I belonged solely to him. But when I started to echo his sentiments back to him, he never corrected me on them or told me what I could or couldn’t say while he was inside of me.
And so, every time we made love—
Every time we hooked up, we’d whispered those words to each other, words of ownership, words that seemed like they would’ve made more sense coming out of our mouths if we were actually going to be together, if we were actually going to be something more than a hook up until it was time for the wedding.