Defining Us: The Calvin & Eric Story (69 Bottles) (45 page)

I groan in frustration as he walks away from me, slamming his bedroom door shut. I reach for my bag and decide that running away from this is the wrong reaction to have. My reaction was all wrong and while I want to walk away and let things cool down between the two of us, fear that we might never resolve this keeps me in place.

I pull the pack of smokes from my guitar case and step out onto his patio. I need to cool down before I go knocking on his door. I need to figure out how to explain to him why I said the things I did. Well, I know why. Seeing him fall apart is one of the scariest, most gut wrenching things I could ever imagine. Whether the case is mild, like just now, or severe like the first time we tried to be together, it’s just all kinds of fucked up and I’m never angry at him. I’m angry at his past. Angry for all the reasons he was put into that situation, which of course brings back the memory of the phone call and that fucking voicemail. I hang my head after lighting up. The smoke fills my lungs, making them sting with their starvation for oxygen, but then I exhale.
 

With each exhale, I release all the tension in my body, all the hatred I have for Calvin’s father and what those doctors did to him.
 

Fuck, he’d been doing so well and I knew, I knew the other shoe would fall eventually. I knew that eventually we would be right back here, where we are today, but I never thought I would have this type of reaction, that I would get pissed off at him, and I’m actually not. In fact, he said all the right things to make me think the opposite, to make me change my tune, but he walked away from me before I could say anything to him.
 

I shake my head before pulling another drag from my cigarette.
 

“Why are you still here?” I hear Cal behind me and I jump, turning around quickly.
 

“I…I’d planned on coming and talking to you, I just,” I run my hand through my hair, “I needed a minute to clear my head.”
 

“I’m not sure we have anything to talk about. You’ve made how you feel very clear, Eric. You say so much, say you’ll be here, you’ll support me, but when something happens, you…I don’t know, you just make it all about you.”
 

“I know. I, fuck Cal, I didn’t mean it to come out the way that it did.”
 

He raises an eyebrow at me. “That may be so, but it came out that way.”
 

I pull a drag from my cigarette. “No, I was angry and frustrated because you’d lost it again. I guess some part of me had expected the shoe to finally drop but then when it did, I got so angry with everything, except you, that I just…I don’t like seeing you like that. It breaks my goddamn heart and I want to take it all away from you, shoulder it for you, or at least lessen it for you.”
 

“You can’t, Eric. You know this. I don’t know when something is going to trigger and god forbid it ruins your plans when it happens.”

“Dammit, Calvin. That’s not…that is not what any of that was about. It was my frustration spilling over about not being able to help you, not being able to fix it or take it all away. It’s me being pissed off at what’s been done to you, because goddamn no one deserves that history, especially not you.”
 

“But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s real and it happens to me, Eric. I can’t fix it. I can’t make it just wash away, I can’t. God knows I wish I could. I would just rip those memories from my mind if I could, but it’s obvious that I can’t because if I could, I would have done it by now. Whenever we are together, I fight it, and sometimes I have to fight harder than others. But today, just now, I didn’t know I needed to put my blinders on, I didn’t know that I needed to do everything I could to stop it from happening.”
 

“I know and I’m sorry. I was and am being very selfish and I have no right to be that way.” I snuff out my cigarette in his butt can on his balcony and step closer to him. “I’ll go,” I breathe. “Maybe we both just need some time to chill.”
 

Without warning his lips are on mine, hot and hard. I pull back, shocked by his attack, though it’s far from unwelcome. “Stay?” he breathes.
 

I give him a concerned look, the look reflects the words flowing through my mind. “When you fall apart, it scares me to death. I’m going to be selfish and tell you that I don’t know if I can handle another episode today.”
 

He cocks his head and asks me, “Why does it scare you?”
 

“Because I never know which you will be there, this you or dark you. Dark you isn’t fun, Calvin, and that hurts me more than you throwing your keys on the couch and telling me to drive myself home. I know I’m sounding selfish again, but that side of you says some seriously hurtful stuff. And no matter how hard I try to convince myself that it isn’t you, I wonder sometimes if it is.”
 

“I cannot promise you an episode free night, unless we have a sex free night and I’m not going to lie, I do not like the idea of that one bit. I’ve missed you, I miss you-”
 

I can’t stop the kiss from happening, it’s like my heart took over my body and forced me to kiss him, shutting him up, and he moans, melting into my arms as I wrap my hands around him. Sliding my tongue along his sends my heart racing and blood whooshing through my ears, defining me to everything but his soft whimpers of pleasure as I kiss him harder.
 

After a few more strokes of his tongue, I pull back. “I’m not staying so that I can get in your pants,” I tell him, feeling the need to justify why I’m kissing him. “If it happens, it happens, Calvin. I have no expectation that it will, but I’ll be dammed if I don’t at least hope for it. I’ve missed you too.”
 

He gives me a small smile before stepping out of my embrace and grabbing my hand. “Then let’s go make a new memory,”’ he tells me as he leads me toward his bedroom, the one he came out of, the one he ran away to minutes ago.
 

“Why’d you come back out?”
 

He turns to look at me. “I smelled your smoke. I couldn’t understand why you stayed.”
 

I smile at him. “I stayed because leaving things unresolved isn’t how this is going to work between us. We talk thought things and a lesson learned tonight is that when we’re both so heated, maybe we need to separate and think before we blow up at each other for no reason.”
 

“Or maybe we’re better at this than we both think we are.” Calvin smiles back at me as he ushers me into his room. Though I’ve crashed at his place a hundred times, I’ve never actually been in his room. Only caught glimpses of it through a partially opened door.
 

His room is decorated in browns, blacks and shades of grey; similar to the rest of his apartment. It holds a masculine touch, but yet it’s something that still screams the Calvin I know and love.
 

He closes the door behind me and with barely a heartbeat to spare, he kisses me, pulling my lips to his as he pushes me backward toward the bed, toward what I desire most from him. I smirk. “What?” he breathes against my lips.
 

“Make-up sex.”
 

“Mhmm,” he murmurs before pressing his lips against mine once more.

KISSING Eric has made me almost frantic, eager and desperate. I’ve never felt the desire I’m feeling right now. I want to put our fight behind us and while sex probably isn’t exactly the right way to do that, I can’t stop now.
 

I pull his shirt over his head and I lean down, kissing along his chest, down his abs until I get to the waist of his jeans and I start to unbutton them. I want him in my mouth, need him to feel me. I don’t know what has come over me, but I am more determined than ever to prove to him that I can do this, that I will do this and that we will work through all of this madness inside me.
 

I pull his jeans wide, pulling the button fly free quickly. “Whoa, easy champ.” His hand cups my chin, lifting my face up to look at him. “Where’s the fire?” he asks softly.
 

“I don’t know, I just, I want you, Eric.”
 

He smiles at me and releases my chin, I go back to pulling his pants down, freeing his hard-on and wasting no time I suck it into my mouth quickly. My barbell clicks against his and the sound sends shivers racing down my spine and my cock hardens in my jeans. I lower myself to my knees, stretching up, giving myself access to undo my pants.
 

When my cock falls free, I hear Eric hiss and I look up at him through hooded eyes, peeking through my eyelashes, and he shivers. I taste a drop of pre-cum falling from his cock and I let it slide over my tongue, coating me and coating him. He tastes sweet with only a hint of bitterness to him and it tastes like heaven, like home.
 

I grip my cock in my hand and start to stroke it slowly. Pleasure forces my eyes closed as I continue sliding my tongue over his cock, and bringing my other hand up to stroke him in time with my mouth.
 

But I don’t stay there long. I let my hand slide down to his sack and I roll his orbs between my fingers. His legs are trembling with pleasure and an inability to spread his legs wider because of his jeans, but it doesn’t stop me from sliding my hand along the crack of his ass and I watch his whole body as it trembles with pleasure.
 

A wave of my own need slithers down my spine, sending goosebumps flying over my skin.
 

“I have an idea,” Eric says above me. His voice is full of husky lust and I’m turned on that much more. He extracts his cock from my mouth and I pout. He chuckles. “Stand up.” I do and he starts to toe off his shoes. Once they’re off, he goes for his socks and his pants. I am so enraptured watching him that I don’t move. I catch his sly little smirk as he wiggles his ass before climbing up on the bed. He lies down on his side, then says to me, “You coming?”
 

I smile and very clumsily get to work on sliding my own shoes and pants off my body and I climb up on the bed. “Turn around,” he says as I’m about to lay face to face with him and suddenly his idea clicks for me. I smile and turn around before laying down, my cock in his face, his cock in mine.
 

He wastes no time sucking me into his mouth and I’m spurred on, grabbing his cock in my hand and then placing the tip between my lips and flicking my tongue against his cock.
 

Fuck, it’s nearly impossible to concentrate on what I’m doing with him sucking on my dick like his life depends on it. Pleasure causes me to pause more than a few times and then he lets me free of his mouth only to slide his tongue along the seam of my sack and I moan out my pleasure as he makes his way closer to my entrance. Toying with it with his tongue and then his finger. “Ah fuck,” I cry out when his finger penetrates me.
 

That initial spark of pain fades away quickly as he continues sliding himself in and out of the tight ring. The pleasure is so intense that I forget I have his cock in my face. I suck it into my mouth a little harder than I’d intended and he grunts in shock or pain, I’m not sure which, but I back off, slowing my pace.