The Worst Best Luck (3 page)

When they left the restaurant, there was a crowd of camera trucks at the other end of the street.  “What’s going on?” Matt asked a passerby.

“Someone finally won the lottery.  One winner.  Seven hundred million.  Can you believe it?  At that store down there.”

Matt laughed.  “Lucky bastard.  Poor bastard.”

“Poor bastard?” Peter asked.  “Why’s that?”

“Well, most people, it pretty much ruins most people’s lives, doesn’t it?  I mean, they go and blow it on drugs and hookers, or,” Matt ventured, “a solid gold house.”

Peter laughed, getting the Simpsons reference.  “Right.  I remember one guy they showed on the news, it was crazy.  He was walking around his giant mansion with the camera guy and he was saying, here’s my three Lamborghinis, and here’s my suit of armor, and here’s all this crazy shit I bought.  And he looked so sad, like, I don’t know, like he felt obligated to buy all this stupid shit he didn’t want and now he was stuck with it.”

“What would you do with that kind of money?”

“Drugs and hookers for sure.  No, seriously?  I can’t imagine.”

“Become a Broadway producer.”

“Definitely.  Bring back Busby Berkeley extravaganzas.  Because I wouldn’t have to turn a profit.”

“Bring back Busby Berkeley from the dead to do it.”

“ ‘We’re in the money, the skies are sunny…’” Peter sang, doing a  little finger doodle dance.

Matt joined in with a surprisingly clear and pleasant singing voice.  “ ‘We gotta lotta what it takes to get along!’”

Then Matt stopped and it took Peter a second to realize it.  He spun around and met Matt’s eyes, serious now in his smiling face.  “Well,” Matt said, “this is my place.”

“Ah,” Peter said.  “Well…”  Of course the date was over, of course Matt had picked a restaurant close to his house so he could make an easy escape. 

Matt walked up the steps, and Peter couldn’t believe it.  They were just singing together, but that was it?  The end?  Not even a thanks, goodbye?

Matt turned around, eyes hooded, smoking, inviting.  “You coming?”

“Oh.  Oh!  I didn’t…  Yeah.”

Matt unlocked the door to his building and held it for Peter, putting his hand gently on the small of Peter’s back as he passed.  It was like a hot wire stuck in his spine, the shock of it blinding him for moment. 
Oh fuck I’m gonna get laid by this insanely hot man I can’t believe it!

“Apres vous,” Matt said, letting Peter go first over the threshold into his apartment.

“Merci,” Peter laughed nervously.

He blinked, stunned again.  Matt’s apartment was made of books.  Bookshelves lined the walls, full of straight spines, with more crooked spines laid on top of them at whatever angle they could be made to fit, with some more books stacked up on the floor in front of most of them. 

There were books on the coffee table, three of them with bookmarks sticking out.  An old tube TV with no tube was full of big picture books about the golden age of movies.  Where there weren’t books, there were plants. 

“Wow,” Peter said involuntarily.  Without thinking, he went into browsing mode, an automatic reflex in the presence of so many titles.  History books, lots and lots of history.  Literature, a whole bookcase full of Oxford World’s Classics and Penguin Classics.  Contemporary fiction, good stuff, David Foster Wallace and David Mitchell and Dave Eggers…  He laughed, realizing that a whole shelf had whimsically been given over to Daves.

“Nice,” he said.  “And putting
The Making of 2001
at the end, genius.”

Matt laughed.  “You got the joke.”

Peter nodded.  He felt ashamed that he’d thought for a moment that Matt wasn’t bright because he was a mechanic.  Hell, the guy was a genius, probably. 

“Make yourself at home,” Matt said.  “Glass of wine?”

“Sure.”  Peter realized that he’d been so hypnotized by Matt’s library that he hadn’t taken off his coat.   “So what was your major?”

“Aha,” Matt said as he uncorked the bottle.  “I was hoping you’d ask the right question.”

“What’s the wrong question?”

“Well,” he said, pouring generously, “the wrong question, the New York question, is ‘Where’d you go to school?’  Because to some people, that matters more than what you learned.”

“And what did you learn?”

“Comparative literature.”

“Compared to what?”

“Mostly movies.  I focused on literature of the 20s and 30s, compared to the movies of the same time, how they dealt, or didn’t deal, with the same themes.”

“Thus all the movie books.”

“Yeah.”  Matt was next to him, pressing the glass into his hand.  Peter took it and sipped it as he continued to browse, but he was losing his focus now with Matt at his side.  He turned to see Matt looking at him, reading him, it felt.  The way Peter was reading the spines of Matt’s books, as if seeing him through them. 

Matt was out of his coat and sweater, revealing a white v-neck t-shirt with short-capped sleeves that showed off his muscular arms.

“So,” Peter said chattily, trying to diffuse the tension. “You went to school, and got a degree in Comp Lit, and now you’re a mechanic.  That’s kind of an unusual path.”

“Yeah.  I guess I realized I wanted to touch things, you know?  Not just think about them.”  His real meaning was clear.

Peter swallowed.  Things he thought he knew, things he relied on to be true, that were as solid as bookends and paperweights, were suddenly feeling like leaves, and Matt was the breeze lifting them up, scattering them effortlessly. 
It can’t be true,
they said, but they were just leaves, and couldn’t really talk.

Matt’s hand stroked the side of Peter’s face.  Peter was breathing hard, his pulse racing, the fear in control, paralyzing him, preventing him from breaking off from this thing, so terrible, so wonderful… And when he closed his eyes, that was when Matt knew to kiss him on the lips.

Just lightly, softly…
The kind of kiss a prince would use to awaken a sleeping beauty,
Peter thought absurdly.  His mouth opened in a gasp of shock, of pleasure.  Matt tasted
so good,
so sweet and clean.  It was like getting into a bed made with freshly-laundered sheets. 

Matt took the glass from his hand, knowing without looking exactly where a gap on a shelf could accept it.  Then the other hand was on Peter’s hip, stroking, finding the V…

Matt smiled.  “You work out,” he whispered, nuzzling Peter’s throat.

“I run,” Peter said, reaching up to stroke Matt’s hair, to pull it back to see that perfect face eagerly lapping at his neck.

“Marathons, I hope.”

Peter laughed.  “Why, you planning one?”

Matt looked up, the devil in his smile.  “Yeah.”

Peter half laughed, half groaned.  “Well, I’m not in condition, it’s been a long time.”

“Since you ran a marathon?”

“The kind you’re planning, yeah.”

Matt smiled.  “Okay.  Come here.”  His hand was back on the base of Peter’s spine, and Peter felt like a puppet, albeit a willing one, as Matt pressed him face down onto the couch.

Now,
said the dark voice,
now you’re on familiar ground.  Just like Cody, he’ll yank your pants down and…

But instead, Matt got on his knees next to him and started massaging his legs – like a pro, in fact, working his hams and his calves and bringing the blood to them, warming them up.

“Oh my god that feels good,” Peter sighed. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.  You certified?”

“No, but my last boyfriend was.  He taught me a trick or two.”

“I bet that was mutual.”

“Heh.  I think he learned a few from me.”

So what happened to him?
Peter wanted to ask. 
Tell me so I don’t do whatever it was he did to lose you…

“But he moved out west,” Matt said as if reading his mind.  “I’m a New York City boy, my life is here.  We’re still friends.”

What must that be like,
Peter wondered,
to have a positive healthy relationship that ended well, when two people moved on…without tears or grief or recriminations…
 

“And you, no boyfriend?” Matt asked him, his powerful fingers getting closer to Peter’s glutes.

“No…not for a while.”

“You don’t want one?”

“I do!  I do.  It’s just easier said than done, you know?”

“Yeah.”  Now Matt was working Peter’s glutes, still like a pro, so that Peter could still think that Matt was treating them as “my glutes” and not “MY ASS.” 
My ass that’s on fire…

Peter couldn’t help it, he shifted, spread his legs, arched his rear.  He turned, one eye meeting Matt’s solemn gaze, inviting, hoping…  He buried his face in the pillow, waiting to be taken…

Matt climbed on top of Peter, straddling him, bringing Peter’s legs back together with the force of his own.  Then his hands began to work on Peter’s shoulders and back, the muscles as hard as bricks.

“Oh, God, that hurts.”

“You’re tense.  Not just ‘right now’ tense, either.”

“That’s true,” Peter laughed.

“Breathe.  Deep.  In.  Out.”  Peter did as he was told, felt himself relax. 

“Rinse.  Repeat,”  Matt continued, making Peter laugh.

Matt reached into his pants and adjusted himself, taking the strain of his jeans off his giant erection, before stretching out, putting his weight on top of Peter.

Peter felt Matt’s legs, the toes of his still-booted feet holding Peter together, felt his big strong arms slip under him, his hands curling up to cup his shoulders…and then, Matt let his hips settle against Peter’s ass. 

It was like a lead pipe in Matt’s pants, and it made a dent the size of the Grand Canyon in Peter’s left ass cheek.  “Holy shit.”

“It’s fucking big, ain’t it?” Matt whispered in his ear, his hair curtaining Peter, protecting him from the whole world outside the two of them.  “My monster cock.  My blessing and my curse.”

“Curse!” Peter laughed.  “How could that be a curse?”

“You know how hard it is to get a guy to swallow it?  Really deep throat it?”

“Oh yeah,” Peter said casually, shocking Matt.  “You have to suck it upside down.  The bottom has to be in 69 position to get it all in there.  If you try it right side up, it just keeps denting the back of his throat.”

“You got some experience there, do you?”

Peter laughed, realized how practical he’d sounded.  “I don’t look like I do, I know…”

“Yeah you do.  I saw it in your eyes.  Such a nice young man, till you get his pants off.  Then he’s the very devil.”

Peter nodded, on familiar ground now.  “That’s right.  A succubus, just waiting for a man like you, ready to drain his tap dry.”

“Fuck,” Matt said, his own turn to lose his breath.  He started to grind against Peter’s ass, felt him respond with lavish enthusiasm. 

“Fuck me,” Peter said.  “Fuck me.”

“Yeah, no doubt,” Matt said.  “In time.”  He got up enough to turn Peter over, face up, and pull off his polo shirt.  Then he tore his own shirt off and pinned Peter’s wrists back against the arm of the couch. 

Peter looked up at him with disbelief, adoration, at the compliments given to Matt’s body by the light and shadow from the “make-out lighting” Matt had turned on when Peter wasn’t looking. 
You’re my god now,
he thought. 
Just let me worship you.
  But it wasn’t to be, just yet, because first Matt began to worship him, grazing on his neck, his earlobe, his nipple, refusing to let Peter move, touch him in return…

Then he took Peter’s wrists and brought them together, holding them now with only one hand, as the other moved down, undid his own belt, slid it off, put the tongue of it against Peter’s lips.  Peter opened wide, licking it, his eyes glassy with lust, agreement. 
Yeah, I want that on my ass!
 

Matt smiled, dropped the belt on the floor,
yes, later
, then reached down and undid Peter’s own belt, his pants, his zipper, reached in and squeezed his equally stiff cock, not nearly as large but not, even Peter knew, laughably-sized.  Cody would have mocked it, it if had been, he knew, so clearly it wasn’t totally inadequate.

Peter’s eyes were closed now, his brain overloading on the sensory messages from his skin. 

“I’m gonna make you cum tonight, Peter.”  Peter’s eyes flew open, the oddity of hearing his name during sex was so jarring.  He’d just been…whatever he was to Cody, a hole, a function.  To be here, to be addressed…and for someone to even care if
he
came, what was that?

Matt saw it, had been ready for it.  “Yeah, you.  I’m not cumming till you do.  Fuck, I’m not cumming till you cum twice.”

Peter laughed, game on now.  “You wanna bet?  You wanna bet I can’t pull a fucking load out of you before you can say ‘boo’?”