All That Is Solid Melts Into Air Read online

  But the tugs were nowhere in sight as I wandered down to the dock to watch the boats come in. The junior varsity boats appeared to be in front, and I’m sure Michael would have something to say about that. It was late September, and the Head of the Charles was in a month. CalPac’s practices were intense. In fact we had three more weeks of that ball-busting intensity before we started our own pre-Charles taper. While Cap City’s junior crews wouldn’t be heading east, there were other races, including Cap City’s own Head of the Port next weekend. That the JV were in front doubtlessly meant they had won a scrimmage, and if there was one thing varsity hated, it was losing to junior varsity. I’d have to gauge Michael’s mood before I said anything snarky.

  In the meantime Coach Lodestone drove his launch toward its berth at the dock. A huge grin split his face as he called out, “Remy!”

  “Coach Lodestone!”

  I waved as I loped over to his boat. This man had been responsible for some of the greatest triumphs of my young life, as well as helping me through some of my most challenging times. He was a mentor, a father figure, a friend. So it wasn’t like he was important to me or anything. I rowed varsity under him for three years—okay, maybe not under him in the way some of my more overheated fantasies might have had it—so in many ways he helped to shape the man I was becoming.

  I helped pull Lodestone’s launch the rest of the way in. Cap City forbade coaches driving their launches all the way into their berths. Apparently the club’s board frowned on ripping the bottom out of the boat by forcing it up onto the dock with the engines.

  As important as Lodestone had been to me, and as much as I was doing a member of his gentlemen’s crew—being done by?—I’d been somewhat shy about showing my face around here, at least since I stopped helping with the learn-to-row camps at the end of summer. I lived inside my head, but sometimes I didn’t like to examine my motives too closely. I didn’t want to think about making a break from the most important four years of my life to date. My father’s a therapist. I learned a snoutful growing up about the stages of childhood development, and when Goff and I were in high school, we couldn’t turn around without hearing about how it was another step in the separation process. If therapists’ kids were nuts, it’s because their parents made them that way. I didn’t want to think about separating from a place in which I had learned so many lessons about life. I didn’t want to think about making a break from a place where I had grown up.

  Then something else occurred to me. What if I had avoided the Cap City boathouse up until now because I was pulling away from Michael? It had occurred to me before, and I had discussed the matter with my own therapist, but I sure as hell wasn’t going there right then.

  I faked a smile as Lodestone jumped out of his launch. He grabbed my hand to pull me into a bear hug. Guess I wasn’t the only one with familial feelings. “Remy, it’s great to see you! Where’ve you been?”

  “Oof. You might consider leaving a rib or two intact, Coach Lodestone.” Seriously, dude, ease up.

  Lodestone shook his head. “You could call me by my name. You know, since you don’t row for me.”

  “I thought I did.” I pretended to be puzzled. “Your name’s Coach, right?”

  I blinked at him in innocence, an innocence no one on that dock believed for a shred of a second.

  Lodestone stared at me. “Angels and ministers of grace, was that a joke?”

  “No.” I held my face expressionless, even though it about killed me.

  “How I’ve missed you.” Lodestone laughed hard. “Do you know none of these boys have the stones to bust my chops?”

  “Shocking. I see Michael’s rowing varsity.”

  We both lost it at that point. Lodestone, seeing some potential in me, had encouraged me to ride along in his launch so he could show me rowing from another perspective. I learned an incredible amount from those ride alongs, including that a certain now-varsity rower wouldn’t be stuck in JV for long. When I pointed this out to Lodestone at the San Diego Crew Classic one year, he grew rather testy. I stood my ground, and I think he respected that. It helped that I’d been right, because Michael now rowed at seven seat in the gentlemen’s varsity A boat, a boat that was most definitely not going to be first back to the dock.

  I could’ve watched Michael row all day, although he was obviously tired. Every so often I noticed a slight hitch in his stroke, nothing unusual at the end of a long practice… for a rower of lesser skill. I noticed Lodestone noticing it, too. I thought about needling Lodestone, but I also thought better of it. That was none of my business. What was my business were those muscles glistening with sweat in the golden light of a September afternoon, those and the way his deep breaths highlighted the planes of his face. We might’ve met when we were both in high school, but we had both grown. My own maturation barely registered when I looked in the mirror. I mean, who observed himself on a daily basis, right? But Michael—Mikey—I paid attention to. Two years of puberty had been very good to him. He was now taller than I was and far heavier of build, and I fucking loved it. Let’s be honest, I’m subby, and our physical differences worked very well together.

  By the time Michael’s boat landed, I stared openly. He looked up and smiled, so yeah, I’d been caught. Neither of us cared. I guess a few of the other guys noticed. I had only graduated the year before, and some of them recognized me, acknowledging my existence with a nod or a wave, but they had other things to do, like carry the oars to the oar racks and otherwise prepare to get the boat back into the boathouse and wipe the water off it. I didn’t recognize one or two faces. They ignored me, and I returned the favor.

  “I said,” Lodestone repeated, snapping his fingers in front of my eyes, “are you going to Boston?”

  I blinked. “I’m sorry, I heard some annoying, buzzing sound. Did you ask a serious question?”

  “And the ego has landed.” Lodestone shook his head.

  I blushed. “It’s not ego if it’s true.” I looked at my former coach. “You didn’t train me to row a novice boat. Junior varsity, freshman walk-in.”

  “Damn straight,” Lodestone said.

  “As it were.”

  Lodestone gave me a shove toward the boathouse. “Go help your boyfriend wipe his boat down, and you’ll be out of here faster. And out of my hair sooner.”

  WE HEADED back to the CalPac campus to clean up. The time of day was a busy one on campus, so we couldn’t fool around in the showers, and I never could figure out Brady’s afternoon schedule. Maybe he didn’t have one. But that made it even hotter when we got back to my room after Michael’s shower and he spun me around, pushing me up against the door.

  “Grab the shelf,” Michael growled in my ear as he dropped his duffel bag.

  There was a shelf above the door, and—gaaah, he licked my ear as I reached up—I loved being tall. I strained to reach it, standing on my toes, leaving me under a bit of tension and vulnerable to whatever it pleased Michael to do to me.

  “I love it when you’re like this,” Michael whispered, his lips pressed against one ear.

  “And how is that?” I rasped.

  He pinched my nipples. Hard. “Vulnerable.”

  Michael knew how to rob me of thought and in the shortest time possible. We didn’t always have the leisure to take hours to explore our limits. Sometimes fast, hard, and hot was better, and this looked like one of those moments.

  Michael’s fingers danced over my chest and back, strumming me like a guitar, playing the songs we both craved, the brighter melodies of pleasure and the darker bass of pain. I never asked him where he stashed those toys or bought them in the first place. That was his secret, those clamps and the other things we lacked the time for right then.

  He unbuckled my jeans, letting them fall to my knees. I canted my ass as he caressed it. We both needed this, I thought, as he smoothed my underwear down my backside. Then I gasped as he slapped it, first once side, then the other. Gasped and moaned as he set up a rhythm, nothing too pun
ishing, but we also knew I’d feel this for a few hours. The barest thought made me shiver.

  “Somebody likes this.” I looked back over my shoulder to see Michael smirking at me.

  My breath came in shallow gasps. “I don’t think I’m the only one.”

  “Never said you were, and I’m about to like it a whole lot more.”

  Michael stopped and spread some soothing lotion over my pleasantly glowing ass, as he tore open a condom, swearing under his breath. I didn’t know where he stashed it, and I didn’t care. He wasted no time in opening me up, and I cooperated fully. I shuddered when he made contact and almost let go once he was fully seated in me, his pelvis planted firmly against my well-spanked butt.

  Michael grabbed my hair and yanked my head back. “I never said you could let go, did I?”

  “N-no.”

  He growled, and it went right to the root of me. I almost came right then. “No, what?”

  “No, sir.”

  Then Michael started moving, and all was for the best in this best of all possible worlds, at least for that moment.

  Neither of us lasted long after that.

  Michael moved quickly to clean me up afterward, wiping us both down with his damp towel.

  I grunted with discomfort, even pain, as I massaged the ache from my arms.

  Michael was on me in a short second. “Are you okay?”

  “My arms are a little stiff.” I wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  He pulled me to his chest. “That means you can barely move them. Rem, why didn’t you say something?”

  “Because we were both enjoying ourselves, and because I didn’t realize how much they hurt until we stopped.” I rested my head against him, listening to his heart.

  “Oh, Rem, what am I going to do with you?” He kissed my forehead gently. He rubbed some more lotion into my backside before pulling my briefs up and then my jeans.

  After we were both dressed again, we sat on my bed, and Michael rubbed my arms as I leaned back against him. I could never get enough physical contact from him. “So… something happened.”

  “Oh?” I was amazed at how much freight he loaded that one word with.

  I tensed up, and I felt Michael respond in kind. “Um… it’s about my roommate,” I said, telling him about my recent exchange with Brady.

  Michael listened in silence, slowly resuming his massage. “Did it never occur to you he was crushing on you? I’ve seen this for a while now.”

  I was thoroughly nonplussed. How did I not see these things?

  Michael shook his head. “That’s it, I’m coming over after practice tomorrow and studying with you. It looks like I have to make things clear to this Brady person.”

  When he did that, I felt stupid. It used to be cute, but it wasn’t anymore. Now it only grated on my nerves. I was honestly not an idiot, and I had the test scores and grades to prove it.

  “You might as well bring some stuff with you to keep in my dorm room. Maybe shower supplies and a change of clothing or two.” I nodded at the duffel bag. “While I approve of the things you seem to have secreted away in its pockets, maybe we can keep some of them here, too.”

  Michael sighed. “You know my parents won’t let me stay over.”

  “Doesn’t mean we can’t push the edges of your curfew.”

  Michael made a face. “I hate that word. It makes me sound so….”

  “Underage?”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s the truth.” I gave him a pointed look. “The last thing I want is your parents showing up and reminding me of that fact. Once was enough.”

  “Oh jeez, don’t remind me.” Michael shuddered. “That was only the worst day of my life.”

  The worst day of his life? I could have thought of much worse days that he’d been involved with—starting with confronting my parents about my serostatus when I was in the ICU—but being woken up by his parents in my dorm room when it had been clear that being woken up was not a euphemism? Not even in the top five.

  But yes, one evening early in CalPac’s semester before Davis High had started for the fall, Michael had tried to spend the night with me. That was it—spend the night. None of the little games Michael and I were so fond of, if only because we had never managed to find a safe place to play them. Without privacy it was surprisingly difficult to find a place for Michael to tie me up and dominate me, something that frustrated us both. So there we were, spooned up and dead to the world, when his parents managed to gain access to my dorm—it wasn’t that difficult—and marched their way right up to my floor and room and pounded on the door until Michael and I woke up at the late hour of ten thirty on a Friday night. Fortunately Brady was out at some party, so we were spared that bit of mortification.

  Then Michael caught my arched eyebrow and blushed. “Oh. Yeah. I’m sorry, but you know what I mean, right?”

  I nodded and hoped he’d grow out of this phase. Soon.

  He sighed. “You know they’re very supportive of our relationship, Rem—”

  “As long as we don’t actually have sex.”

  “As long as we don’t have sex,” he repeated softly. “I’m sorry. For some reason the fact that you’re in college is a barrier they can’t get past. Never mind that at this time next year we’ll be on the East Coast and doing whatever the hell we want.”

  “I spent the night in your room after the senior ball. We fucked like bunnies—”

  Michael flinched. “Yeah, about that. They don’t actually know that part.”

  “You have got to be kidding me. How could they not?” This was news to me. We hadn’t been particularly quiet, although now that I thought about it, he did cover my mouth with his hand a lot. At the time I thought he was just dominating me. I narrowed my eyes, thinking. How many other dots had I not connected?

  “The music, for one thing. They know I listen to it at night, so they’re used to it. I also took care of the evidence and made sure they’d never find it.”

  I sighed. “So we can study and hang out together but not really anything else?”

  “There are times like tonight, and we make out whenever we can,” Michael said. “Don’t forget that.”

  “But not actually make love like adults who’re in a long-term relationship?” I smiled to take the edge off my words.

  “You could always ask Lodestone if you could chaperone my regattas,” Michael said with a wicked grin.

  I laughed. I had to. “I think he’d see through that.”

  “Yeah, but until he did, think of the fun we could have.”

  “I’ve never been a fan of quickies.”

  He looked crestfallen.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. What we did was hot, don’t ever think otherwise.”

  Michael held me for a while. Then something occurred to me. He’d sworn under his breath while opening the condom wrapper. I’d assumed it’d been part of our lovemaking, but I also knew he hated condoms….

  “Michael… you’re still taking the Truvada, aren’t you?”

  He sighed. “Yes, but…. Why do we have to bother with both? I hate condoms. I’ve gotten through Truvada’s side effects. It’s not the most pleasant drug.”

  “Because I refuse to take any chance with your health.” We’d been over this so many times. “My viral load is currently in the undetectable zone, and I do my best to make sure it stays there. I’m also tested regularly. You know all of this. But if something changes before the next test, I don’t want to be caught—and you exposed—unawares.”

  “Yeah, but both….”

  I sat up and faced him. “Truvada puts you into the high nineties in terms of protecting you, assuming you take it regularly, but condoms? They’re only about seventy percent effective. You know that. Did you know they’ve never been approved by the FDA for the butt sex?”

  “I… no. I didn’t.” Michael looked surprised. “Somehow they don’t mention that in our safer sex classes.”

  “No, they never do,
but condoms do one thing Truvada and my meds don’t do—they protect against other infections.”

  “But if you’re not sleeping around and neither am I, then we’re neither of us at risk for anything a condom would catch other than HIV, right?” Michael looked at me slyly.

  I groaned and not in the good way. The cold hard reality was that so long as I took my meds as prescribed and my viral load was effectively zero, I was far safer a sex partner than a lot of people because I knew my serostatus. “I hate arguing with intelligent people. No, you’re right on that score, but, Michael? I’m terrified of anything happening to you, of me being responsible for anything hurting you.”

  “I get it, Rem, I really do.” Michael caressed my face.

  I leaned into his touch. “Why can’t we—”

  Then the lock clicked, and Brady walked in. He glared at us, and I felt Michael tense. I knew Michael disliked him. That might’ve been too soft a word. Loathed? I tried not to invest that much energy into someone I didn’t care for.

  So much for a round two. One of the things I liked about being young was the short refractory period, but not that night. “Shall we hit the dining room? That protein bar you ate in the car on the way back from the boathouse has to have worn off by now.”

  Unlike what I’d heard from my friends about a lot of college dining halls, the dining room attached to my dorm fed us well. While Goff told me he’d already lost five pounds due to a general refusal to put more of that slop in his mouth than he had to, I could already tell that the so-called freshman fifteen was a thing at CalPac, and I’d have to watch my step, or I’d pack it on. So Michael did not mind at all when I took him “out to dinner” at my dorm’s cafeteria from time to time. It was faster and cheaper than many restaurants and better than fast food.