I noticed him because we were the same age, and, well, there were few enough people in town that I pretty much had to. He was slender, on the edge of scrawny, and he stood out as one of those kids that was always just a hair off. His looks were normal enough- unruly brown hair, a few freckles across the bridge of his nose, but it was the eyes that hooked me.
I think it's his eyes that tip you off. Blue, but that totally unreal shade like you get on that first spring day when all the fucking birds are chirping and the bugs are buzzing and all you can smell is sun-warmed, damp earth. And you can see it, that little wobble in his mental orbit, right through them.
When we were kids, I just read it as the usual new kid in town stuff. He never outgrew it, though, which was just fine with me because frankly, I've always been a bit off myself. We understood each other, and our exchanges were always filled with half-spoken shorthand and gestures like we'd been born twins.
After puberty hit, the physical resemblance was lost. He stayed smallish, almost delicate, but not so much that he couldn't kick your ass for saying it. I've always been a bit taller, but I just kept getting broader until my shoulders were a good foot wider than his, and when I came back from my first summer at the military camp the difference was permanently etched in my new, rippling chest muscles. A lot of shit changed that summer.
Of course we'd been jerking off together since we figured out how the old skin flutes worked. Hell, we were in the ass end of nowhere, it's not like there was anything else to do but whack it and drink, and both are... enhanced by the presence of somebody else. It was a short hop from that to whacking each other off (which every guy on earth has done, I don't care if they claim otherwise), but it was never a big thing, just something to pass the long, boring weekends.
We were both hardcore skirt chasers- and pretty hard up, too, but what the fuck do you expect when there's only 20 girls in your class? Thank god for the porn superhighway that is the internet- when it hit town, we were two kids who'd just been handed the keys to the candy store. Added some variety to the wanking, with pictures and the 40 year old guys pretending to be 18 year old stripper cheerleaders who'll chat you up in a heartbeat. Sometimes we'd pretend to be the chicks and sit hunched over the keyboard, whacking furiously and cackling while we described luscious breasts and perfectly waxed pussies. It was the perfect fuel for the flames of adolescent desire.
I should have caught it sooner, but I was so excited at the prospect of getting the hell out of Dodge that I missed half of the unspoken conversation that spring. He was quieter than usual, and he always had his head cocked to one side with that half-confused, half-sheepish look he hid behind whenever a girl caught him looking.
I'd turned 18 in the fall, but we saved the good party for his birthday in the spring. Careful planning and oblivious parents allowed us to stockpile a truly massive amount of booze, and word spread quickly that his house was the place to be that weekend. The first real hint of trouble came that Friday afternoon, after his parents left for a conference on how to pay more attention to your troubled teen. We were down in the basement moving couches and setting up the stereo and he was getting pissy with me over everything.
I ended up yelling at him to go the fuck upstairs and wank until he was fit to be around people again. At that, he stormed upstairs. I could hear doors slamming all the way up to his room. Shit, what was wrong with him? Here we are, 18, with a cellar full of booze, a bunch of questionably legal cheerleaders on their way over, and the makings of a damned fine party, and he's locking himself in his room?
I grabbed two beers out of the fridge and headed up to talk some sense into him. Evidently he'd taken my suggestion literally, because after I picked the lock on his door I saw a glimpse of naked, pink flesh on his screen before he closed the window and glared at me.
"Dude, what the fuck?"
"Maybe I don't feel like having a party just so those assholes from school can pretend to like me as long as there's free booze."
