Page 84 of The Falcon and the Foe

To me.

The words hung on my tongue. I felt my heart opening up, the cobwebs getting brushed away. We’d only spent a little bit of time not hating each other—a weekend in the woods and this incredible day that seemed to stretch the boundaries of time. But already, I knew it wasn’t just heat between us.

Whether or not that was a one-sided opinion on my part, I couldn’t say for sure.

“What were you like at twenty-five?” Cal asked.

I racked my brain for stories, but the truth was, things were much different. “I was starting at my current company, but in an entry level position, still learning the ropes and eager to grow. I’d just met Malcolm on a dating site.”

“So you guys were one of those couples who used a dating site not for anonymous sex?”

“We were boring. My sister pushed me to join. She said give it six months. Malcolm and I were just about the only two guys on there who didn’t have dickpics as profile pictures.”

“It seemed to work out.”

“He was the first guy I dated.”

“Are you serious? Nobody in college?”

I shook my head no, and it hit me that period in my life was definitely over. No going back. “I went to a small, conservative school. I didn’t come out until after graduation, and then I just...focused on work. I went to this gay night at a bar once and made out with a big, burly guy.”

“Hot.”

“Not. It was awful. It was like making out with a lizard.” I shuddered at the memory of his disgusting, smelly tongue flicking in my mouth in a truly interspecies manner. “It didn’t inspire me to have more encounters.” I shrugged, suddenly feeling embarrassed at my lack of experience. Cal said everyone had a past, but I sure as heck didn’t. “I guess I never had a wild side.”

“Uh, you’ve definitely proven that wrong today. You have a wild side lurking inside you, Russ. It just needs to be coaxed out.” Heat burned in his eyes.

“And how do you suppose we do that?” I growled, flames of fire licking at my lungs.

“Just keep doing what we’re doing. Who says this has to stop?” Brightness returned to his face. “I think this is the perfect arrangement. You never had a wild side; I had years of awful sex. It’s been literal years since either of us was intimate with another man. We can make up for lost time. Just like the Falcons have badge progression, we can have our own kind of badge progression.”

Cal never ceased to think outside the box. He had crafty ways of justifying having sex, although it stung to hear our relationship called an arrangement.

“Are you game?” he asked.

Judging by the hard-on forming in my pants, the answer was yes. Said hard-on would have to take a raincheck because we had to pick up our boys from school.

I was game. But as I drove away, I realized that I might be game for more with Cal, and it was sadly one-sided.

25

RUSS

Ididn’t know if Cal helped me unleash my wild side, but we had a lot of fun trying.

We ate lunch together every weekday, though our version of a lunch combo was sandwich, chips, drink, and hot sex. Sometimes, I would go over to Cal’s house with takeout, and then we’d bonk. Other times, he would come visit me in my office, where he’d carry on with half of my co-workers about God-knows-what. And then he would exhaust his mouth even further by crawling under my desk and sucking me off—after I closed the blinds and locked the door, of course. I’d bite on my arm to cover the orgasm that ripped through my body thanks to Cal’s wondrous tongue and the sensual delight of his beard scratching against my thighs. On two occasions, I met him at the grocery store for his lunch break, where we made out feverishly in my car until the last second he had to go back to work. I returned to my office, displaying a face charred with a well-earned razor burn.

And once—only once—we met up at Caroline’s for half soup-half sandwich and one hundred percent sex in the bathroom. Cal bent over the toilet while I fucked him quickly, resisting the urge to slap his ass. I hated being in public restrooms, period, so it was a testament to how badly I wanted Cal that I allowed us to do that.

But at Cal’s house was where the magic really happened. The loud, long, incredible sex where I could take my time to discover his strong, cuddly body and make it sing like an instrument getting tuned.

What made this time even more special was how fun it was. I laughed as much as I moaned, either at Cal’s comments, or bickering over positions, or trying to get into position while staying quiet. It was like a game that only the two of us knew about, and the rest of the world was our obstacle course. We talked and joked about every aspect of our lives: families, hopes, dreams, music, movies, past adventures. I hadn’t been able to talk to someone like this in ages, opening myself up without trying to meet some expectation of being this perfect parent.

At the next Falcons meeting, the activities on the docket were Sky High, a game where scout teams had to build the highest structure possible using a random assortment of items we’d compiled. (Inspired by our epic Jenga game) After that, I ran a lesson on map reading since Google Maps was useless in places without cell reception. Then with time left, the scouts broke off to work on their individual badge projects. Cal and I would check in on each to make sure they were making sufficient progress.

“Are you coming to Spirit Day this Friday?” I asked while we put maps on chairs in the meeting room.

“I’m trying. Currently playing Tetris with schedules to make it work. Friday’s always the toughest day to find coverage because everyone wants to take off.”

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