Rue

Last night, before we’d gone to bed, Ethan had dug out a spare head for his electric toothbrush so that I could brush my teeth. Now he’d found a spare towel so that I could take a shower and had cereal topped with sliced strawberry and kiwi waiting for me when I got out. It looked just like the picture on the front of the cereal box.

But he’d been serious about the TV. Or at least, that all I’d be doing was watching TV. He’d left the remote in my care, settled in with his back propped against my side, and was currently on his tablet filling an online shopping cart with seeds. I watched over his shoulder about as much as I watched the TV.

Finally, I asked, “Are those for the shop, or…?”

Ethan’s shrug jostled my shoulder. “Some for my garden, some to grow and sell in the shop, and I wanted to, uh—there are garden beds, around the edge of the shop. The outdoors part. My mum always used to fill them up with, like—one year she did watermelons.” He scrolled around on the screen, but he no longer seemed to be focussed on what he was doing. “She said it was inspiration. Cool things that get people’s interest and make them want to grow something interesting. I was thinking sunflowers, maybe. Giant ones.”

“That does sound pretty cool.”

“Yeah. But I don’t know if my dad’ll be weird about it.”

“It seems like he really wants you to be happy.”

“Yeah, but he’s an annoying nerd with a business degree.” Ethan leant back, past the support of my shoulder, until he slowly slid down so that he was laying across my lap. “I know he just wants me to talk my ideas through with him first and give an accounting of my expenses, but here’s the thing—I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

He made a discontented sound in the back of his throat. “It turns everything into ten times more work, and it’s annoying to have to try to explain myself, and I just want to do what I want to do.” He let out a harsh sigh, like maybe he knew that sounded a little unreasonable. After a little tapping, he held up the tablet to show me a picture of sunflowers that were probably almost as tall as I was. “Look. These. No one’s using the garden beds, and I’d do all the work.”

“They’re nice,” I told him as I soothed a hand through his hair. “Nobody’s told you that you can’t, right?”

He rocked his head in a shake against my thigh. “Just trust me, it’s more complicated than it seems.”

“Okay.”

“Because I’m complicated, and I can’t just not be.”

“Mmhm,” I agreed, my fingers rubbing gently against his scalp.

“That feels nice.” A pause. “Want to kiss?”

I laughed. “I thought you only wanted to watch TV and eat biscuits?”

Ethan sat up, but he dipped his head so I could keep rubbing it. “I mostly just meant that I didn’t want to go out and do anything. Also, while I don’t want you to act like kissing me in front of my dad is a literal crime, I didn’t want to make him think too much about what we might get up to because I’m worried he’ll try to teach me about anal sex. And I don’t think he knows anything about anal sex.” He butted his head against my hand. “So can we kiss?”

“C’mere,” I said as I tilted his chin up and leant in towards him.

He did ‘c’mere’—right into my lap, straddling my hips, no hesitation. Was it embarrassing to be rock hard in approximately three seconds? He could definitely feel it, too. Not that he wasn’t quickly getting there himself, his body squirming against mine as he kissed me far more carefully than I felt the mood called for. A grabbed a handful of his ass and held him firm against me as I ground upwards, seeking friction. His mouth parted from mine in a gasp and his hips stuttered.

As he pushed himself back and shot a guilty glance down at his crotch, it occurred to me that this whole thing had actually gone remarkably similar to that fantasy I’d had in his bedroom on the first day, except only one of us had come in our pants. Go me, I guess. I stroked a hand down his back as he processed what had just happened.

The emotion he settled on seemed to be ‘physical discomfort with wet underpants’ from the pinched expression on his face and the delicate way he climbed off my lap. He hobbled bow-legged to the hallway and disappeared.

I adjusted myself in my pants and did my best to think wholesome thoughts. Mostly I just felt smug, honestly. He’d been worked up enough over me to go off from barely a touch. Sure, we were both teenage virgins so I couldn’t take too much credit for his lack of endurance, but I was still going to count it as a personal achievement.

I thought I was doing pretty good at being chill and not reading way too much into every little thing, like the way he’d left the room so quickly without even really looking at me. He was probably embarrassed and uncomfortable, so it made sense. But then when he came back from getting cleaned up, he walked right by the couch and continued to the kitchen and suddenly I started wondering if maybe everything wasn’t as okay as I thought after all.

But then he reappeared with a bowl of salad which he set on my lap and a plate of biscuits that he placed on the coffee table and I realised he’d just gone off to make me lunch. It was about time for it.

“Damn, this really is a whole meal,” I said as I stirred the salad. There was definitely a good bit of vegetation in there, but he’d heaped it with cheese and dressing and slices of boiled eggs. It looked as nice as anything you’d get in a cafe, and a lot more generous with the toppings.

Ethan gave only a nod in response as he settled in on the other end of the couch to continue his seed shopping while I ate.

That was my first sign that maybe things weren’t so fine after all. I tried telling myself I was probably just being too sensitive again, but he kept his distance even after I was done eating and any attempts I made to talk were met with single word responses, if that.

Somewhere along the line, I’d fucked up, though I couldn’t figure out where even though there was a pretty narrow band of time between where he was definitely fine and suddenly maybe not so fine. But I hadn’t really done anything… had I? He’d been the one who’d climbed on my lap and kicked things up a notch. I’d grabbed his ass, but that wasn’t exactly a huge escalation… right?

He’d gone to the bathroom ten minutes ago and still hadn’t reappeared and now I was starting to wonder if maybe something was really wrong. This was all my fault and I knew I should probably just leave, but I was going to check on him first.