Including that time in the back of Tommy’s pickup out in the fields by that huge stand of trees where they went often to drink beer, smoke pot, look at the stars, talk about the babes they’d banged and otherwise shoot the shit.
It wasn’t like D hadn’t had thoughts, thoughts he jacked off to a lot, thoughts he hid and they messed with his head, until that night when he kept catching Tommy’s eyes straying to his crotch.
The drunker they got, the more Maryjane they smoked, the more Tommy’s eyes on his junk made that junk stand up and take notice until the feelings he was feeling he couldn’t deal with. That made him get pissed and he grabbed Tommy by the throat and shoved him against the side panel of the bed of the truck.
He got in his face, Tommy looked in his eyes, and before D could say anything, both of them close, breathing hard in each other’s faces, Tommy’s hands had gone to his jeans and he’d shifted up to his knees.
D didn’t even think.
Tommy got out a condom and handed it to D before he moved around, giving Diesel his back, yanking his jeans and shorts over his ass.
D just put on the condom and went in.
Tommy had come all over the side panel the minute he took D’s cock and D didn’t last long up that tight ass.
After that two minutes was up, they’d both knelt there in the bed of the truck in the moonlight, connected, breaths coming deep and fast, and he was about to threaten Tommy with what would happen if he said dick about what had just gone down when Tommy spoke quietly.
“Our secret, man. No one knows. Never. Not ever. Swear it.”
He’d then shifted D out of his ass, turned toward him, pulled off the condom and knelt in front of him, sucking down Diesel’s softening dick.
Not surprisingly, that visual of Tommy, a big, muscled, good-looking son of a bitch with a sculpted ass that was right then bared to Diesel’s gaze, rhythmically swallowing down D’s dick, and just the feel of Tommy’s mouth around his cock, that cock sprang back to life in a nanosecond. And ten minutes later Tommy took D’s load down his throat like he’d been waiting for it for years.
And D had given up that load knowing he’d waited for that, and what had gone on before, for what felt like centuries.
From that night on, they’d still hung out, double dated, and fucked . . . a lot. Tommy liked D up his ass but D could get him in the mood to give as well as take.
And it had always been their secret.
It remained their secret even after Tommy was caught in a raid on a gay bar in Indianapolis when he was twenty-two and his personal secret came out.
“D?”
Diesel jerked when Maddox called him and then he blinked because they were out of the garage, on Scottsdale Road, in the sun, and he was so up in his head, he hadn’t noticed.
He lifted a hand, flipped down the visor and the Ray-Bans he’d put up there before going in for the movie fell into his hand.
He slid them on and looked out the side window.
“Do you want me to ask my folks about the loan?” Maddox asked.
“Sure,” D muttered distractedly.
This was met with silence.
Silence that Maddox broke.
“Brother, what’s on your mind?”
“Tommy.”
Yeah.
Fuck.
That just came out.
It just came right out.
He didn’t share.
Ever.
He had nothing to share, nothing to give.
Nothing.
Nothing but his cocky, good ole boy self, creativity with giving orgasms, ability to take whatever was dished out to get his own, and as much love as he could shower on Molly, doing that along with Mad.
“Say what?” Mad asked.
“Tommy. Tommy Barnes. First ass I had. I was seventeen. He was eighteen. It was at night in a field in the back of his pickup after about ten beers and two joints.”
When D quit talking, Maddox gave him time to keep going, and when he didn’t, Mad prompted, “Yeah?”
“After that, I fucked him, he fucked me and we did it as regular as we could get away with it. Mostly I fucked him and he blew me. Loved sucking cock, Tommy. Loved taking it too.”
D shut up again.
Maddox didn’t say anything. Even when he stopped at a stoplight, he didn’t say shit.
Maybe this was because, in all their years, D had never told him this and now he had no clue why D was spouting this shit.
No, probably because of that.
When the light turned green and Maddox turned right on Camelback, D started talking again.
“Bar got raided in Indy. They said it was about drugs being dealt there but it was a gay bar and it was in Indy so everyone knew that was bullshit.”
“Right,” Maddox said low.
“He was outed, Tommy was.”
“Bet that didn’t go well,” Maddox noted.
“It totally did.”
He could hear the surprise in Mad’s, “What?”
D looked forward, out the windshield, but not to Maddox. “His parents disowned him. Said they never wanted to see him again, and they said that to anyone who would listen, including Tommy. Everyone in town had an opinion and there was a consensus that Tommy was a pervert. Shit was said everywhere, it was ugly. Tommy just packed up and took off. Moved to Chicago. Didn’t look back. As far as I know, and it’s been at least ten years, he’s never gone back. He didn’t act like he was run out of town. He acted like he couldn’t wait to go. Like he was finally free.”
Maddox gave it another beat before he asked, “So you never saw him again?”
“Saw him, yeah. For about a year, went up every few weekends to hang with my bud and also get my rocks off. My parents thought I was in Cleveland banging some girl. Every time I went he told me to get the fuck out of there. He knew where my dad was at, the shit that came out of Gunner’s mouth.”
Nothing for you there, man, Tommy had said. It isn’t about narrow minds. It isn’t about closed minds. It’s about hate. You don’t love the parts of a person you get that fit into your view of the world. You love all of a person and if you don’t, you don’t love them at all.
“D,” Maddox said quietly.
“About a year in, he got a job, a good one. They transferred him to Boston. He still lives there. Got two kids with his man. They got married last year.”
“So you’re still in touch,” Maddox stated flatly.
That made D look at him. “Not hiding that shit. It isn’t like we’re best buds anymore. We mostly lost touch and did that a long time ago. He just calls every once in a while. Checks in.”
Maddox had nothing to say to that.
“Maddox, it isn’t that big of a deal,” Diesel reiterated.
“I was still in touch with the first cock I had and you didn’t know it, would you think that was a big deal?” Maddox asked tightly.
“You are still in touch with Gavin. He was over for dinner last month.”
“Yeah, so you know about it.”
“I left because of him,” Diesel announced.
“Come again?”
D looked back out the windshield. “The great Hoosier state. I left after Tommy got transferred to Boston. Took everything I’d saved, packed up my truck and took off to Phoenix. I didn’t pick Phoenix because of the year-round sun or me liking saguaro or shit like that. I picked it because it was the farthest away I could get.”
“’Cause you had no one’s ass to fuck that was within driving distance that might not get you caught?” Maddox guessed. “But the bottom line was, you wanted ass to fuck and not get caught fucking it.”