I opened my eyes and immediately grabbed my neck. My throat hurt like hell and I wasn't sure why. "Thank God you're alive," whispered a voice behind me. Then the person gently kissed the back of my neck.
"Lionel?" A sharp pain shot through my throat as I spoke. My voice came out hoarse.
"It's okay. I'm here."
"What happened?"
"You don't remember?"
"No." He squeezed me tighter and kissed my neck again. I felt his limp dick press against my boxers which pressed against my skin. I had a flash of me with boxers on and him cumming on me. Then my mind flipped through images of Lionel hitting me and choking me. I jumped away from him. "Please don't touch me," I whispered as I leaned against the wall.
He moved close to me. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you." I couldn't look at him, but I couldn't force myself to turn away either. "You know I love you." He reached out and tried to place a hand on my leg, but I moved my leg away. "Don't be like that. I said I was sorry."
"Get away from me." I kicked at him, trying to get him out of the bed. He grabbed my left foot and I kicked him in the chest with my right. He let go of my foot and I proceeded to kick him repeatedly until I had successfully kicked him off the bed.
"Calm down!" he shouted.
"You tried to kill me," I croaked out, barely above a whisper.
"I would never try to kill you. I just lost it for a second, but I never wanted to hurt you."
"That's the problem. You never want to hurt me, but it seems like that's the only thing you're good at."
"Don't say that shit!"
"It's the truth." I had to cough to clear my throat. "I know you don't want to hurt me. I know you can't help yourself and that's what scares me. What's going to happen the next time you lose it?"
"It won't happen again. I promise."
"You can't promise that and I'm not going to ask you to." I slowly started to stand up. "We can't live together anymore."
"What?" he asked.
"You heard me. We can't live together anymore."
"Where do you expect me to go?"
"Nowhere. I'm going to leave."
"But you can't."
"I have to." I reached under my bed and grabbed my duffle bag.
"You can't be serious," he said as I walked over to my dresser and started packing clothes. He walked up behind me and pulled me close to him. "Don't leave me," he begged. I kept packing. I felt his hand rub down my stomach before slipping inside my boxers and landing on my soft dick.
"Stop." His tongue glided along my neck. I pushed him off of me. "I said stop." He looked stunned. I took off my boxers and threw them across the room, then I found some clothes and put them on and then I continued packing.
"How can you do this?" he asked when I zipped my bag.
"How can I not?" I picked up my bag and grabbed my wallet. "I'll be back for the rest of my things." He blocked the door. I took a quick second to glance over his beautiful body. Allowing my eyes to take in his chocolate skin and luscious lips before tracing a path down his chiseled abs. I found myself licking my lips as I looked at the monster between his legs and then I looked back at his face, reminding myself that I had to give all of it up. I had to give him up.
"What do I have to do?"
"Get out of my way and let me leave."
"I can't do that."
"It's the only thing I'm asking you to do. This is already hard enough so please just get out of the way."
"Ask me to do something else. I'll do anything." I tried to push past him, but he pulled me in to a hug. "Damn! Come on Lucas, don't do this shit to me. What do you want me to do?" he hissed in my ear. He dropped down on his knees, keeping his arms around me and almost breaking me in two with the death grip he had on my waist. "I'm begging you. Don't leave me. I'll get help. Just tell me what you want me to do. Please?"
I looked down at Lionel's head pressed in to my stomach and said simply, "Let me go." I tried to pull one of his arms off of me.
"No, I'm not letting you go again. Neither of us is leaving this room until we get some shit straight!"
"I can't stay here."
"Yes you can and you will. I know if you leave this time you might never come back and I'm not going to take that risk. You're staying."
His grip loosened a little and I broke free. "I'm sorry." I opened the door and he quickly kicked it shut with his foot.
"I don't know what I'll do if you leave me," he said in a less frantic tone. Something about the way he said it stopped me from reaching for the door again.
We all have those moments in our lives where our mind tells us the right thing to do, but our heart overpowers all reason. I should have opened the door and walked away from him; instead, I allowed him to pull me back in. "You're not going to hurt yourself, are you?"
"I don't know. I mean my life is fucked up, I'm fucked up, everything is fucked up. It's not like anyone would miss me anyway. I'm just another screwed up black kid." His newfound calm alarmed me even more.
"Lionel don't talk like that."
"Why not? It's true. You don't even want to love me anymore. You're leaving me." He paused before saying, "Everyone leaves me."
I dropped my bag, defeated. "I'm not leaving you. Okay, are you okay now? I'm not going anywhere."
"Maybe you should leave me. I don't deserve you. You're too good of a person to be stuck with someone like me. I can't be normal like you, no matter how hard I try."
"I'm not normal," I said as I sat down on the floor next to him.
"Yes you are and I've ruined us." He sat back on his feet. "I hate myself. I knew I shouldn't have fucked around with you. I tried to leave you alone, but it was too hard and now I'm losing you."
I grabbed his face and turned it to me. "You're not losing me, at least not tonight." I stared deep in to his eyes and then I leaned forward and kissed him. "See, I'm still here."
His response was to pull me in to a longer kiss. I spent the first second of the kiss thinking about how horrible my breath was. Then I was distracted by my mind yelling at me for being dumb enough to stay. He stopped kissing me and said, "I'm going to get help. Just promise you won't leave me."
"I promise."
He put his hand on my shorts. "Let me make you happy like I used to."
I pushed his hand away. It was his nature to turn to sex to solve our situation, but I didn't want to. "That's our first problem. Sex can't fix what's wrong with us."
"Maybe not, but I know it'll make you feel better."
I stood up to get away from him. "I'm staying, but we're not sleeping in the same bed. I'll sleep in mine and you sleep in yours."
"But I sleep better when I have you in my arms. At least let me hold you until I fall asleep."
"I can't." He looked as if I had punched him in the face. "Look, it's not because I don't want to. I do. It's bad enough I'm staying here with you! We both know what we're like in bed together and I don't trust you to behave. Hell I don't trust myself in bed with you."
He looked up at me with sorrow in his eyes. "Fine. As long as you stay." I took off my shoes and got in my bed, fully dressed. He sat for a few minutes after I moved and then he finally peeled himself off the floor and got in his bed. "Lucas," he called.
"Yes."
"Thanks for staying."
"You're welcome." He was quiet after that besides the sounds of him tossing and turning in his bed. I listened to him for hours before I dozed off. I woke up in the morning with a familiar feeling of warmth around me and I involuntarily smiled when I realized Lionel had crawled in bed with me and he was holding me closely. My smile got even wider when I turned around and saw he was wearing boxers.
I reached out and tapped him lightly. His eyes opened slowly. "I'm sorry. I couldn't sleep," he said almost immediately. I wondered what he did for sleep all those years before we slept together and that's when thoughts of her entered my head again. My face fell and Lionel started pulling away from me. "I didn't mean to upset you."
"It's fine. It's not you. I just thought about something."
"About what?"
"Let's not talk about it, right now." I leaned in and kissed him. "I'm going to go get cleaned up." I rolled over him and got out the bed.
"Can I come with you?" he asked.
"The answer to that question has always been no, and today is no different." I looked down at him and stroked his cheek. "Nice try, though." I gathered my stuff and went to take my shower. The shower took forever because I kept zoning out on random thoughts. I thought about how odd it felt to be so intimate with him this morning. I thought about my decision to stay. I thought about possibly making the biggest mistake of my life. I thought about losing him forever. That thought scared the shit out of me. I spent so many years of my life wanting him and now he was mine. Sure he was damaged more than most, but he was still mine. If I couldn't fix him, who could?
I felt a draft and I looked over to see Lionel peeping through my curtain, leering at me. "How long are you going to be in there?"
"I'm almost done. Why? Have I been in here a long time?"
"Long enough for me to take a shower and get dressed. For a second, I thought you ran away." He let out a nervous laugh.
"I told you I wasn't leaving and I meant it. You don't have to worry about that."
"I guess I'll see you when you get out then," he said with a smile on his face.
"Okay." He closed the curtain and I tried to quickly finish my shower. I stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around my waist. As I stood in front of the sink taking out my toothbrush and toothpaste, Henry walked in.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey." I glanced at my reflection in the mirror and I was ashamed of my bruises so I looked down at the sink.
"Look, it's none of my business, but"
"You're right, it's not," I told him, trying to stop him before he gave me his opinion.
"My uncle used to beat on my aunt," he said. "She would show up at our house late at night with bruises all over. Sometimes she had broken bones. I remember one time he broke her finger because she didn't turn off the light fast enough. My mother begged her to leave him, but she used to tell my mother that she was just jealous because she didn't have a man. Things went on that way for a long time until three years ago. It was the middle of the night when my twelve year-old cousin showed up at the door with his little brother and sister. My mother asked them where their mother was and the little one said, `Dad said Mommy's with God now.' I had to catch my mother because her knees gave out. A few minutes later, she was calling the police and sending them to her sister's house." He stopped to wipe his right eye. "Of course it was too late when they got there. We found out later that he left her on the floor, bleeding to death. It took her hours to die." He wiped his eye again. "Can you imagine what she must have gone through? Oh, and let's not even talk about the trauma to her children and my mother. It's been three years and I don't think any of them are over it yet." A hesitant laugh escaped from his lips. "I mean look at me. I'm doing the best out of everyone and thinking about it still brings me close to tears. Every time I go home and see my cousins with my mother I remember how they got there and it hurts like hell to think that all my aunt had to do was leave him. How can you love anyone more than you love yourself? Or love a man more than your children? I'm not telling you what to do about Lionel, because it's your business, but I will tell you this: don't love him more than you love yourself. If something happens to you, your family and friends aren't going to miss the way you loved Lionel, they're going to miss you. I want you to think about your family the next time he hits you. Picture the look on your mother's face when she has to come identify your body at the morgue, because that's where your relationship is headed."
"Thanks for the memo," I said in a harsher tone than I intended, "I'll be sure to keep that in mind."
"Did you hear a word I said?"
"I heard everything you said, and I'm sorry about your aunt, but I'm not her and Lionel's not her husband. Lionel is going to get help and everything is going to be better."
"My uncle got help a few times. He was always good for that first month and then it was as if nothing had changed."
"Henry! Will you please back off! I am fine! Okay?"
"Okay." He started walking towards a shower. "I know we're not really friends but please remember that you can come talk to me whenever you need to."
I shook my head and he got in the shower. The bathroom seemed smaller for some reason, like the walls were trying to fall in on me. I finished brushing my teeth and I attempted to look at myself in the mirror. I was surprised when I couldn't look myself in the eye.
When I entered our room, Lionel was doing some sit-ups. He stopped and sat up. "How are you feeling?" he asked.
"Like I was hit by a train," I told him as I forced a smile on my face.
He didn't smile back at me. "I'm sorry," he said.
"Don't keep apologizing."
"I have to."
The rest of the day was awkward. Lionel was tip-toeing around me, constantly apologizing for everything. We went out to dinner after practice but neither of us had much to say, so we ate in mostly silence, throwing in the occasional comment. When night came, Lionel and I cuddled up in my bed and fell asleep.
A few days later, we were still slightly uncomfortable around each other, but things were getting better. He had gone to the school medical center to get information on therapy and anger management classes. He decided he would rather go to therapy than do the classes. He talked to the coach and told him he had personal issues and he wanted to speak with the school therapist. The coach was shocked but he said he was pleased that Lionel was trying to take care of himself both physically and mentally. He made a few phone calls and told Lionel the school would foot the bill, but he had to wait until the new semester started. I was pleased that he wouldn't have to pay for it and that he was going to get the help he needed. Unfortunately, we still had two weeks before his first session was scheduled.
Copyright Lustyville 2006 Please send comments to lustyville@yahoo.com and check out my yahoo group at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lustyville.