Here’s a collection of outtakes from Tristan’s point of view throughout Lingus

​

ONE

 

Have you ever done something that you regretted later on?

 

I do things I regret all the time.

 

There have been exactly 128 regrets in my life. Each regret has a name, a birthday, a birth mother, a birth father, two hands, a pussy, and an asshole.

 

Yet…

 

I keep giving myself things to regret one weekend a month, for the most part.

 

It’s fun when I’m there, in the moment, with my cock buried deep into some new girl’s pussy or ass. They’re always hot and I get paid for it.

 

I get paid to fuck hot chicks. That’s any guy’s dream come true. You can say anything you want about porn stars; we don’t have morals, we’re mentally fucked up, we have emotional issues, the list of possible insults is endless. But ask just about any single guy if he would gladly fuck a girl with massive tits who begs you to cum on her face and you think he’s going to say no? He’s a liar if he says he wouldn’t.

 

Once I’m back home that Sunday evening after my flight back from L.A., the guilt hits me right in the balls.

 

I’m home alone. Calum is sometimes with me. But for the most part, I’m home alone. I only have him and my parents. Luckily, Cal doesn’t have much of a life either outside of work and his family, so he’s only too happy to come over and hang out when I’m not at the law firm or school.

 

But… when I first get back Sunday night… it’s just me in my big house. Alone.

 

It’s my fault. I know it is. I chose this life and now I have to deal with the repercussions.

 

Here I am now, sitting in Cal’s oversized Ford trying to stall so I don’t have to go into the convention hall. I hate these things. Hate, hate, hate these things.

 

“Let’s go, dickweed,” Calum rumbles over from the drivers side before he’s jumping out of the vehicle.

 

The difference between us is that he always likes this job and this life. His family knows what he does; he doesn’t have to lie to anyone or hide anything. The only thing most people don’t know is his real last name. He thrives in this industry.

 

I’m out and slamming the door shut a second later with my bag hanging from my wrist, following him toward the entrance we’ve been instructed to go in. The big beast of a man is already rubbing his hands together in excitement. “What do you think are my chances of finding some good snatch here?” he asks, knowing full well that I hate the word ‘snatch.’

 

“I hope you have a bunch of guys in line for your autograph like you did in San Francisco,” I mutter.

 

Cal shrugs, his normal goofy smile plastered on his face as we approach the doors to the convention. There are guards there checking out credentials, and then comparing names to ones listed on a sheet of paper; once they made sure we’re okay to go in, we’re shuffled through to find the area set up for different companies. I press my cap tighter to my head to avoid my natural hair color from being shown until I dye it black later on. Usually I try to do it before I get to the convention but that wasn’t the case today. “I take it as a compliment that gay guys think I’m hot. They’re experts when it comes to men, you know.”

 

I have to laugh because he’s only speaking the truth. Calum will take a compliment from anyone. Even the old lady in Dallas who told him his ass was too big. There are so many people in the back milling around; half of them I recognize and wave at, the other half I’ve never seen in my life. I spot a familiar looking platinum blonde ten feet to my left at the same time she sees me, then gives me the finger.

 

“Fuck you, Robby!” Lexy screams out over the shoulder of whoever she’s standing there with.

 

She would be my first regret.

 

Cal snorts from his spot next to me as we keep walking. “I’m glad you broke up with that psychopath,” he chortles.

 

Lexy brought me into this life, after a year or so of declining Calum’s offer, it was her who broke down my wall in one night. She’s my biggest mistake and regret. “You and me both.”

 

“Robby!” I hear someone squeal from out of nowhere.

 

I freeze and so does Cal, before my mouth is being assaulted by dry lips pressing against mine. The figure pulls away and smiles at me; I want to frown and push her away like I did the last time I saw her. “Hey Mandy,” Calum greets the redhead who ruined a month of my life.

 

“Hi Calum,” she coos back, twirling her long hair around a finger. “I just wanted to say hi to my two favorite men. I’ll see ya later, okay?” She’s turning on her heel and scampering away with her ass cheeks hanging out the bottom of her shorts. I don’t look. The last thing I ever want to think about when Mandy pops into my head is her ass.

 

Calum is looking at me with his mouth open, eyes wide, amused as fuck. “You’re thinking about her ass right now, aren’t you?”

 

A shudder wrecks through my body at the memory I’m trying so hard to repress but is managing to slither out of that vault it’s been locked into. Mandy Panda and her ass. Regret number 98. Let’s say that my dick was clean when it went into her asshole and when it came back out, it wasn’t clean anymore. I threw up all over the floor. The movie was cancelled, and I was traumatized for life. No amount of apologies could ever erase that memory from my brain. Walter finds us a moment later and he starts his rundown on when Calum and I have our autograph sessions; his starts in five minutes so he needs to get going to make it in time.

 

“Come to my signing so you can check out any potential snatch for me,” Cal tells me and I go along with it because I wouldn’t hold it past him to find a girl he thinks he likes only to be sorely mistaken later on.

 

This is my eighth convention and it all seems so routine by now. I tuck my hat closer to my hair and put my hood up, following only a few feet behind Walter and Cal as they maneuver their way through doors and then people. Everyone knows Calum; he’s tall, built like a bodybuilder, and has that idiot smile of his. People scream at him when he walks by and he’s just beaming, shaking hands, fist bumping, everything. There aren’t two sides to him like there are two sides to me- Tristan and Robby. Robby and Tristan.

 

There’s a long line for Calum Burro, just like there always is. I keep my head ducked and beeline toward the booth opposite his where I’m planning on just standing and watching him make a fool out of himself. There’s all kinds of women in line; older ones, younger ones, white ones, black ones, short ones, tall ones and they’re all cheering and screaming at him. No one is paying any attention to me, which is wonderful.

 

Out of nowhere, a short brunette is suddenly standing against the table I’m at and looking at someone in line. She isn’t paying any attention to me either; I don’t even think she’s seen me. I can’t tell how tall she is, but she’s probably about a foot shorter than me and she’s pretty. Like really pretty. She isn’t dressed like a hooker, she doesn’t have a ton of make-up on, she just looks fresh and just… very pretty. Normal. She’s staring at someone in line still, giving me the perfect opportunity to look her over. Slim and fit, I can already tell she doesn’t have fake tits. When I’m looking further down her silhouette, I see her hand appear out of nowhere, and then she’s picking in the seam of her pants.

 

I laugh and she doesn’t notice. Who picks out a wedgie in public?

 

I violate one of the most important rules I’ve set for myself when at porn con a moment later. I’m never to speak with anyone when I’m not in Robby-mode. Never. But I make a split second choice to break my rule for this pretty girl who’s picking her wedgie out without a care in the world. “Digging for gold?”

 

Alarmed coffee-colored eyes trail their way from my throat up to my face, and I can’t help the amused smirk on my face.

 

Priceless. The look on her face at being caught is just that.

 

 

 

TWO

 

“We appreciate your attention. On behalf of all Delta employees worldwide, thank you for flying with us,” the attendant over the intercom concluded.

 

Calum yawned loudly, not bothering to cover his mouth while he looked at me directly. “You look like shit.”

 

“I had a bad day at work,” I tell him. I feel like shit, too. I had a bad day overall, it began when I couldn’t sleep last night. Then, I forgot Yoda’s food at home before I took him over to my parent’s house for them to babysit. After that, I spilled coffee all over some notes I’d been taking for research on a case, everyone in the office seemed to be on my ass for some reason or another, and then I realized I left my glasses on the counter at home. I realized I was being a little melodramatic, but I could only blame lack of sleep for my shitty mood.

 

Cal shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

 

We sat in awkward silence a few minutes, which was rare for any trip with Calum. He was usually bursting at the seams with words and more words, all day, everyday I saw him. It made me feel bad that now after not seeing my closest friend for nearly a week, we were sitting next to each other in silence. “I’m just really grumpy for some reason. I’m sorry.”

 

He turned to look at me, his shit colored eyes amused. “I forgive you, I know it’s probably your time of the month. You always tend to get a little bitchy around then.”

 

“Shut up,” I found myself telling him like Kat always tells me. It sounded really stupid out of my mouth but he didn’t comment, thankfully. Kat. I wonder what she’s doing right now. She’s probably working on the book she refuses to tell me about. She’d let me read a few of her short stories last week. I was amazed at how good they were, not because I didn’t think she could write a good story but because they were really messed up love stories.

 

His big, vienna sausage-like fingers tapped against the armrest between us in unease. “I can’t wait to get this fucking weekend over with. Get it? Fucking weekend?” He snorted before his face went slack. “That wasn’t funny now that I think about it. I can’t wait to just get this over with, I feel terrible, Trissy.” he admits to me in the most worried voice I’ve heard out of him in the last fifteen plus years we’ve been friends.

 

“Why?”

 

“Because I feel like I’m cheating on Nikki,” he says with a sigh. “She said it’s fine, you know. She said she understands that I need to go get these contracts done so we can move on from this but still,” he sighs again. “If she went and had sex with six other guys this weekend, I’d die. I’d fucking die, man. I love her so much.”

 

Calum explained to me at the pub last weekend that he was quitting after this. I didn’t believe him at first, but when his face went stone still, I knew he was telling me the truth. Cal had always loved this porn star life more than anyone else I’d ever met. I don’t think even he knew how many girls he’d been with over the last five years but it was a hell of a lot more than me. Now, he was giving it up for Nicole. I still hadn’t been able to completely come to terms with it.

 

“You’re sure this is what you want to do?” I asked him, feeling like an asshole for even bringing it up, but I felt a moral obligation to make sure he knew what he was doing. I’d never seen him like this with anyone else in the past, not even a fraction.

 

His grin is wide and accepting. “I’ve never been more sure of anything, Trissy.” His eyes are wide and glazed over. “She’s the one for me and I knew it the first time I was with her.”

 

“I’m happy for you, Cal.” I tell him, slapping my hand down onto his thigh with force.

 

“You? Planning on quitting soon too?” he asks with a raise of an eyebrow.

 

The million dollar question. Not really. “I don’t know. I’m coming up here again in two weeks before school starts. This semester is going to be a killer for me, so I won’t be able to come up every month like usual.” That’s the extent as to how far I’ve thought about it….

 

Besides last night when I was packing my bag and looking at Kat cuddling with Yoda on the bed. I felt like such a piece of shit throwing in a bunch of condoms into my duffel bag while she lay there. We’re just friends so there isn’t a reason why I should feel bad about packing up my stuff but still.

 

“You’re an idiot,” Calum says loudly.

 

“Why?”

 

He shrugged at me and shook his head. “If you’re dumb enough not to know why you’re an idiot, then you’re a bigger idiot than I thought. You’re pretty much brain dead,” he deadpanned.

 

“Is this about Kat?”

 

“Is this about Kat?” he snickers to himself.

 

“We’re just friends. She’s okay with being friends. It wouldn’t be fair to her if I did porn and we were more than that.” I tried to explain to him the same thing I had kept repeating to myself in my head over the last three weeks.

 

“You don’t want a girlfriend but you see her everyday, right?” he asks me.

 

“Yeah.”

 

He rolls his eyes. “You like hanging out with her? She makes you happy?” I don’t think I’ve ever seen Calum this serious for so long before and it’s unnerving.

 

“Yeah, she’s fucking awesome, Cal. I wouldn’t go see her everyday if she didn’t make me happy… she’s like a female you but with only your best characteristics,” I tell him with a laugh because I’d thought of that a few weeks ago. She was just like Emmett except not as loud and she didn’t fart every ten minutes, Yoda made up for that absence with a vengeance now.

 

“You know, that exactly what Nikki said,” he says as wistfully as he possibly can before going quiet. He’s daydreaming about something for a couple of moments before snapping out of it and narrowing his eyes in my direction. He’s shifted his big frame in the tiny airline seat to face me, leaning forward a little. “Kat’s going out with some guy who’s going to make her laugh and feel good, then she’s going to let him fuck her. How does that make you feel?”

 

I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach.

 

Thinking about my little gold digger laying on someone else’s bed, letting some guy run his hands through her shiny and soft hair… I want to… I don’t know what I want to do.

 

I think about the time she fell asleep on the couch with me. I could’ve woken her up, I could’ve taken her upstairs and let her sleep in one of the guest bedrooms but I didn’t. She was great but she also made me realize how lonely I’d been for so long, so I pulled her against me because friends are there for each other, right? That’s what friends are for? She was so soft and warm, and she fit so well against me. It’s been years since the last time I slept with someone but that time was different because Kat knows me, Tristan, not Robby Lingus, and she likes Tristan more than Robby. I pulled the rubber band thing out of her hair once she was right there and ran my hand through her hair because I always wondered what it felt like. It was long, shiny, and always smelled good…

 

Last night when she told me that her friends all expected her to be the first one to get married I think I laughed a little, and then told her I could see why they would think that. I try not to think about how pretty she is because it’s distracting. I don’t want to make her feel uncomfortable with me, but there are times when I slip up and see that she’s more than just pretty or cute. I have to smash it down as fast as it comes into my head. Like the time in my bathroom…I’ve made myself lock that away in a place that will never get visited because those thoughts are not friendly. Not friendly at all. She’s great, like really great. Of course she’d probably be the first one married, it just makes sense.

 

“She told me she was going to hang out with Nikki and do wedding stuff,” I stammered out, thinking about some douche bag hanging out with her instead of me.

 

“She is, moron.” he huffs out, exasperated. “Look, maybe you don’t want a girlfriend because you love coming to LA to do this, and I get that. I do, you know I do. This is the last time I’m coming with you, man. I’m going to start working for my dad again in two weeks. You’re going to be done with school in a few months. Then what?”

 

Calum’s tone gives me goosebumps.

 

What then?

 

 

 

THREE

 

“This is the worst weekend of my life,” Calum huffs, planting himself in the seat next to mine.

 

I noticed when we first got in the taxi that his eyes were rimmed in a dull red but I didn’t say a word. We talked a lot over the weekend once we were both back at the hotel but it was just a bunch of nonsense. We talked about everything except what we both did in our scenes. “At least it’s over.”

 

He grumbles something under his breath and then folds his massive arms over his chest. “I can’t wait to get home.”

 

We sit together in silence while the flight attendant starts calling out group numbers to board the plane; since we’re sitting pretty close to the front, our group is the last to be called. Once we’re settled and strapped into our seats for departure, Cal starts talking quietly to himself again. “What’s wrong with you?”

 

“Nikki didn’t fucking call me all weekend,” he mutters, looking out the window. “What if she changed her mind?”

 

A small part of my heart clenches at the thought that she might leave him because of who and what he’s done over the weekend. I don’t know Nicole, but Kat talks about her all the time. As much as I’d like to reassure him that everything will be fine, I don’t want to give him any false hopes. His situation is the exact reason why I haven’t bothered to date anyone in a long ass time.

 

Back in high school, I felt guilty when I held another girl’s hand if I already had a girlfriend, so I couldn’t imagine fucking someone else. Lexy and Ashley were different because it wasn’t serious, they were doing the same thing to me. Porn was our job, so it was fine until it just wasn’t anymore. Calum doesn’t need to hear that though. “She knew what she was getting herself into. She probably won’t be thrilled to see you but cut her some slack.”

 

“I feel like my goddamn heart has been ripped out of my chest! I couldn’t get hard half the time!” His words are sharp and all angles. He’s upset. Really fucking upset.

 

A brief mental picture of Calum standing in front of the camera with a soft dick enters my brain and then I gag, feeling a little gay. I’ve seen his junk more times than any heterosexual man should ever see the same dick but this is Cal. We’ve been friends forever… I still want to puke though. “Uh…”

 

His fingers grip the armrest tightly. “I shouldn’t have come… I should have just stayed home.”

 

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I had the worst weekend of my life, but it was the worst weekend my cock has ever had since I started doing porn. I wasn’t planning on telling Cal how rough my scenes were but judging by the state he’s in, I think he needs to hear that he isn’t alone. “It took me forever to get hard,” I admit.

 

He looks at me out of the corner of his eye, the bulging vein in his forehead getting smaller by the second as he processes my words. He knows how huge that it for me, as well as I know for him. For either one of us to not be able to get a boner is damn near impossible. One of the most important things about being a man in porn is the ability to pitch a tent at command. “Why?”

 

“I guess I was just distracted,” I explain to him as vaguely as possible. I was distracted. All I could think about was Kat sitting on some douche bag’s couch playing Rummy. And Kat taking her clothes off to shower in some guy’s bathroom. Shit.

 

His eyes narrow. “Even when you were with Lacey Canada?” When I nod in response, he shakes his head. “She’s hot as fuck, dude.”

 

“I know she is, she just stood there staring at me like I was an idiot. Then she told me I was annoying and whiney because I kept apologizing for not getting hard.” Her scene was, after the incident with Mandy, the worst porn scene of my life. As hot as I had thought she was, Lacey was an equally mean bitch. I told her not to fucking look at me in the middle of it because I was worried if I saw her face, I’d lose my boner; the director thought my words were dirty but they were just the fucking truth.

 

“Whoa,” is the only thing he can respond with.

 

I would never hit a girl but maybe one day I could convince Kat to hit Lacey for me.

 

 

 

FOUR

 

I’m trying to figure out how she snuck in.

 

I’m not sure whether it was gradual or just all of a sudden but the fact is, she did.

 

The first time I realized the shift in my brain’s recognition of her was when she asked me to spend the night because I was tired and she stripped down in front of me. It was like my first time ever seeing legs in my life; smooth, lightly tan legs incased in tiny little shorts that my eyes couldn’t get enough of. Then when we went to sleep and I woke up, the patch of skin between her hairline and the strap of her bra were singing my name, pleading with me to take an inhale, and then a taste to make sure she tasted as good as she smelled.

 

She did.

 

There is something wrong with me. She’s my friend. My Kat. The person who has quickly became my favorite person in the universe, although I would never admit that to Calum.

 

It’s a confusing mess to understand how I went from viewing her as this untouchable object that I was okay with having around to this magnet for every possessive emotion I possess.

 

I thought I broke my hand after I dropped her off at home on Thursday. That blue dress should be outlawed in all fifty states.

 

My fist instinctively went for the drywall on the inside of the garage the moment I stepped out of my car. A resounding “fuck” blasted through the room, not at the pain of hitting the wall but because of the thoughts I had running through my head. An image of pulling Kat’s dress over her head and grazing my hands across the undersides of those perfect tits… Kat underneath me, moaning and writhing, begging me for release. Jesus, just thinking about having her wrapped around me…

 

Then I remembered she was going to a wedding with another guy. The same fucking guy who kissed her cheek at the party last month. Would he kiss her again? Would he get invited to spend the night at her apartment, and then sleep wrapped around her perfect body?

 

I punched the fucking wall again. The material tore at the skin of my knuckles, it stung and throbbed, and I couldn’t give less of a shit. I’m not sure where exactly my feelings toward her went from something sort of platonic to absolutely possessive of my friend. I was the one she spent her days with, I was the one who learned that she liked mayonnaise and not mustard, who knew she put ketchup on her sandwiches, I know how she drinks her coffee; me, it was me, who knew that. I had no right to feel that way for her, to feel like she belonged to me because fuck if that isn’t unhealthy and especially when I have Robby lingering in the background.

 

The fucking thought of her being with someone else and leaving me behind just… ripped at the lining of my stomach.

 

I just— I don’t understand how I got to this point.

 

Mother fuck.

 

I have never felt this way before.

 

It felt like every square inch of my body is strung so tight I’ll snap into two pieces at the smallest movement.

 

Movement, action, word… either of those three would be my undoing without notice.

 

The part that infuriated me about the stress I’d brought upon myself was that it all led back to the same thing.

 

The same thing that I’d try to distance myself from to avoid these kind of complications…

 

This time… probably the only and last time, my stress had a face. A face that seemed to haunt me whether my eyes were open or closed as of recently.

 

My sweet little gold digger.

 

I’ve spent years running away from any kind of connection that could bring on guilt when it came down to leave that one weekend a month. The same weekend a month I stressed thinking about three weeks out of the four. All it’s seemed like that I’ve thought about since that last time I spoke to Calum on the way back, was what he brought up. What was I going to do years from now? Or even months from now? A part of me… a part of me I’m not sure I completely understood detested what I did. I was embarrassed, I realized this since then because otherwise, I wouldn’t have to hide my identity. I wouldn’t have to be Robby.

 

What was so important about Robby Lingus to begin with? I didn’t know anymore. The sex, though fun, wasn’t necessarily great. The women were ultimately actresses. They were paid to enjoy, or at least pretend to enjoy my body.

 

Yet…

 

I had someone in my life who wasn’t paid to enjoy my company but she did.

 

Kat.

 

Fucking shit.

 

I know I need to make it known to her that I felt this oppressive thing in my stomach when I was with her but I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure whether or not she would think it was strange for me to change my behavior around her out of the blue and I thought I had time. Time to ease our way into something, but then I found out about the wedding and the stupid ass guy at the aquarium…

 

Would she call the asshole from the aquarium? The one who seemed to think he had a right to give her his number. Would she sit on the couch and scratch his head for him?

 

Leaving for the weekend felt like the worst decision of my life.

 

All I could think about was her. Her hair, her laugh, those slim, muscular thighs… I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing or even what I’m feeling. I’m obsessed. I’m an addict. I’m a possessive shit that can’t begin to accept that this person I feel so much for is out with some guy.

 

I didn’t do anything on Friday or Saturday. I couldn’t get hard to save my life. One of the assistants on set even gave me “Mr. Blue” in hopes of helping my problem… but nothing helped. It was like my dick shut down and refused to operate anymore. The idea of being with any of the girls prancing around each set made me sick.

 

So I got fired, sent home… the same thing in different words on Saturday. If matters couldn’t get worse, I logged onto Facebook for the first time in months and saw a new picture of her looking more amazing than should be legal with this black-haired fucktard holding her close.

 

I called Kat that night and she didn’t answer so I called Cal instead.

 

“What up, Trissy?” he gurgled over the phone.

 

“I got fired,” I spit out, trying to rein in the terrible mood I was in.

 

The other line went silent except for some whispers between Calum and who I would assume to be Nicole. “For real?” he asked after a minute.

 

“Yes.”

 

More silence. “Dude, you couldn’t wake up the beast?”

 

“He’s out of commission.”

 

“Kat?”

 

I tried not to growl in response, thinking about her and that fucking bastard she was out with. “Yes.”

 

Calum made a noise that sounded thoughtful before sighing. “You finally got your head out of your ass and come to terms with the fact that you like her? Idiot.”

 

“I don’t understand how it happened. One minute I could just switch it off and the next I can’t. She was pretty and I liked her but it wasn’t a big deal and now it’s not.”

 

“Now you know you have competition, dumbass,” he snorted like I was an idiot. Maybe I am. “Well, this isn’t about you anymore, dumbfuck. You can’t go in there guns blazing, ready to throw her over your shoulder now that you’ve got another man who might have his sights set on her—”

 

“Two men, Cal. Two douche bag assholes.”

 

He snorted. “Don’t ever call Ryan a douche bag asshole in front of Zoey at least, dude. I think she’ll kill you, and you already have Nikki telling me she’ll cut your balls off with those kid safety scissors if you hurt Kat. You don’t want to be the one she spends her day with, and then goes and spends her night with someone that still has a nut sack.”

 

I gripped my phone a little too tightly. “Fuck you.”

 

“Just sayin’. Look, calm your ass down and figure out what you’re gonna do. Your schlong is hibernating and I think that’s a sign. You already don’t like the idea of her getting her creamsicle from another guy, so imagine her getting her creamsicle, facial, cum shower—”

 

“Cal!”

 

“You get what I’m sayin’, Trissy? Don’t be a fucking hypocrite. You can’t fuck a bunch of girls and then go off and snuggle with her when you’re home, dumbass.”

 

I was really starting to believe I was a dumbass.

 

 

 

Five

 

“Oh sweetie,” my mom murmured into the phone in the same tone of voice she’d been using since I was a kid. Anytime that I fell down, broke a bone, or on the rare occasion that I failed a test, mom always used the same honey tone to soothe my body or mind.

 

Right now, it was the last voice I wanted to hear.

 

I’d tried talking to Calum about the Kat situation again, but all he agreed to say was that I needed to figure things out on my own.

 

I called the only other person I could possibly go to— my mom. My sweet, perfect mother who had been begging me to find a nice girl for the last decade. She was now only the second person in the universe who knew about my strange and somewhat uncomfortable feelings for a certain brunette that seemed attached to my every sense.

 

“You need to tell her, honey,” she cooed into the phone. “She deserves to know how you feel.”

 

A grunt built up in my throat as my thumb absently brushed over the now ripped skin on my knuckles. After the last text message I got from Kat half an hour ago, when she stated that she was going to the movies with the dickwad from the aquarium, I punched another wall. By this time tomorrow, I had no doubt that my hand would be black, blue, and resemble that of a person with rheumatoid arthritis.

 

“Don’t be scared,” mom continued after my ongoing silence. “There is no girl in the world that could know you and not love you.”

 

I choked at the second to last word my mom voiced. “I don’t know about love, ma.”

 

“Call it what you want, honey, but I’m speaking the truth. Just go tell her tonight before it’s too late. Girls love that sort of gesture. Your dad wrote me a poem that he recited in front of our entire biochemistry class,” she gushed with a happy sigh before raising her voice. “Brandon! Do you remember that? You called me your sweet rose!” I only managed to catch a hint of my dad’s voice in the background as he responded to my mom. “Even your dad remembers word for word what he said in the poem, can you believe that, honey? It’s been 33 years, good golly.”

 

My parents were the epitome of love that could last forever and it was also something that I never comprehended. Thirty-one years married and they were still just as in love as they were from the beginning. It was unheard of nowadays.

 

“I don’t know, mom,” I replied back. It wasn’t as easy as she made it seem. Just go and tell her that I have feelings for her? I didn’t want her to think I was just doing it because she went on a date with another guy, but I also didn’t want to lose any chance of having her as something more just because I was too nervous to tell her. Jesus, why was it easy to get buck naked in front of strangers but damn near impossible to voice my feelings to a girl that had done nothing but accept me?

 

“If you don’t do it, you’re going to regret it, honey. You know that as well as I do. Imagine if your dad wouldn’t have decided to announce his unconditional love to me? I probably would have never looked past his big bottle glasses to see how much of a stud muffin he was underneath that lion’s mane and those goggles,” she giggled over the phone. “Stop it, sweetheart!” My mom giggled some more at who I could only assume to be my dad. “I need to go… help your dad with some things, honey. Please do go tell your Kat what you’re feeling, and then bring her over, she has to be a lovely thing for you to care about her so much.”

 

I caught onto two things that my mom said. Your Kat and bring her over. I liked the sound of both.

 

“I will,” I managed to say. “Love you, mom. I’ll call you soon,”

 

Her giggles filled the other end of the line. “I love you too, honey.” All I heard before I hung up and/or gagged was, “Stop it, Brandon!”

 

Shoving my phone back into my pocket, I sighed and tried to figure out what I was going to do. I had punched the wall when she text me about her date and then had the violent urge to break something but I didn’t. The same images I had in my brain in the days before, flickered through my brain. Kat with another man. This time though, the man had a face that looked like a mix of the two assholes she’d been out with. I had hoped that she would have taken the subtle hints I’d thrown her way but she hadn’t.

 

There was a quote I couldn’t remember who said about time that I’d learned in one of my undergrad classes that ingrained itself into my memory, Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them. For some reason, the words struck a note in me. All I’d done is waste time.

 

 

 

Six

 

I was nervous.

 

I don’t even think that the word nervous was appropriate to describe what was coursing through my veins when I asked her to come to Los Angeles with me.

 

There were a lot of things that could go wrong with this trip.

 

We could run into one of the women I’d been taped with in the past.

 

Once I thought about it, that was really my only worry.

 

What would Kat think of me when I made Robby Lingus a reality in front of her?

 

It was one thing to talk about him or mention him in passing but to really make her see that he was real, that the things that he’d done in the past weren’t a fabrication of anyone’s imagination…

 

My stomach hurt.

 

There were so little things that caused that reaction in me, that I was stunned. While some people were scared of public speaking or the idea of being nude in front of others, I wasn’t. Those things, my body and my voice, were all somewhat tangible. They didn’t reflect me. I could show the world the body I worked out almost everyday and they wouldn’t know anything about me besides the fact that my dick was a little bigger than nine inches long and that even my pubic hair was bronze colored.

 

I was completely fine with showing others my outside, my voice, my ideas, but my likes, my loves… I was not.

 

No one besides Calum and my parents had ever known of my obsession with Star Wars. No one knew that I cried when I watched The Lion King for the first time. There wasn’t a soul who knew that I was scared of dying.

 

Was I scared that Kat wouldn’t understand after I showed her this other world?

 

Yes.

 

Yes.

 

Yes.

 

Once this weekend was over…

 

Fuck.

 

“Make it Universal Studios and I’m in,” she grinned in response to my invitation.

 

I got the oddest feeling right in the center of my chest when she said it. Kat didn’t know it, but I loved Universal Studios.

 

 

 

Seven

 

The more time passes between when I first realized I simply couldn’t do porn anymore and now, the more I realized that I did it for selfish purposes.

 

I don’t think I can really pinpoint what it was that drove me to do it besides the fact that I both liked having sex with some of the hottest women I’d ever seen and that I got paid to do so. I’d like to blame it on the fact that I was young, but I wasn’t that young when I started. I think my mom would say that I wasn’t emotionally mature.

 

What I did know, sitting there on my kitchen island watching Kat— my beautiful fucking Kat and her perfect, full tits, being tentative and shy as she kissed Zoey— was that she didn’t exactly love what she was doing. I’d been with enough women to know when they did it because they frankly liked getting fucked by just about anything resembling a dick and when a woman was there to collect a paycheck. The look on her face was neither one of those. The video lasted five minutes and was the softest of all soft-core porn I’d ever seen. Two girls, one who I thought was the sexiest fucking girl in the world and the other… I probably couldn’t even envision Zoey naked again if I tried, touched and kissed like the other was made of porcelain.

 

I heard Kat talking, explaining, retelling. I heard everything she said, but all I could think about was the gentle slope of her stomach, her perky breasts, her smooth skin, and then— she laid it on me. Her reasoning.

 

“How could I tell her no?” she asked, more to herself than to me, I think.

 

My beautiful fucking Kat. If I knew what heartbreak was I think that’s what my heart did. It shattered into a million tiny pieces because this girl was everything. What the hell did I need a heart for when I wanted hers? Her heart that was large enough to fit all of mine and a hundred others. To say that I was stunned by the knowledge that she did something of that magnitude for her best friend, would be an understatement.

 

I think I had a faint idea that I was in love with her the second day we were in L.A. at the beach. There was something about her laugh and the way she’d start screaming every time the cold Pacific water would swallow up her body that made me want that to never end. My mom had told me once that she knew she loved my dad when she realized that she wanted him in every moment of her life.

 

That was the way I felt about Kat.

 

I didn’t say anything or do anything until I could be sure that I wasn’t just falling in love with her, but that I was actually in love with her without any microscopic doubt.

 

It was her words and her selflessness that glued together any fragment of doubt in my mind that I loved her that night. I’d met a lot of people, but never anyone like her. No other woman, besides my mom, even came close to being remotely like Kat in even one aspect. She was her own person with her snorts and her deep laugh, her love of life, and her assurance of herself. If she could love her best friend like that, could she love me and my not-so-perfect past?

 

Then, it was just over.

 

I’d wasted and stalled enough time. When I grabbed her and pulled her to me, everything just came into perspective. She writhed and moaned, and all I could think about was that her kisses were the best fucking kisses I’d ever had. It was hands and more mouth, and I knew I needed to tell her what I’d decided. “Kat,” it came out of me without any effort. “I love you.” I could see it in her eyes when she heard me that she knew. That she understood.

 

I told her again because even though words didn’t seem like enough, I loved her. “More than anything,” because I did. When I started loving her more than anything, I don’t know, maybe it was always but I was too stupid to know or maybe it was when I knew that I was going to lose her one day when someone else could give her what I wasn’t then. The words felt real and alive in me. They were my truth.

 

Mom had told me when I picked up Yoda the week before that I looked different, “More… I don’t know? Alive?” she suggested, but I didn’t understand what she meant.

 

I was definitely alive and Kat said the one word we both needed, a whimper of a “Please” and I was taking her upstairs and dropping her on my bed.

 

When was the last time I’d had sex on a bed? I couldn’t remember and I couldn’t care because now I was on my bed with my goldie, taking off her skinny jeans and admiring her smooth, toned legs, then there were her underwear. Plain, white cotton bikini things and fuck my life, when were those things that hot? The last time I saw things like that were back in high school and I know for a fact that they didn’t do anything for me back then and now, it was the complete fucking opposite.

 

I wanted to prolong the burial of my cock in her. The more skin I saw as her clothes came peeling off by my hands, the harder it became to not just pull my jeans down to my knees and fuck her right then. Then, she was naked and looking at me with those dark eyes that had seen more of me than anyone else in my life, and it took all the control in the world to keep it slow.

 

Kat was all warmth and faint oranges, nipples that pebbled under my tongue, and Jesus, her smooth pussy was so fucking wet when I dipped my hand down to touch her. I couldn’t fucking compare her to anyone else. It was impossible. When I’d touched her back in Los Angeles, I couldn’t fathom that she was so hot, so fucking tight, and that wet. I swear I tried getting up to grab a condom, but she stopped me and I knew what she wanted. Bare. Holy shit.

 

She was so fucking special to me. The most special by the distance from here to the sun.

 

I wanted her to myself, I wanted her to always be my reminder that she made me different. With her, there, I would never be Robby Lingus, there would never be fake moans, forced dirty words, fabricated orgasms, or shitty attitudes beneath hard breasts or pretty faces.

 

I grabbed her hands and anchored them over her head after I slid between the wet valley of her thighs, and then it was me pushing into her. Smooth, hot, and a grip that resembled what I’d gone through when I first tried wearing regular sized condoms, wrapped me whole. I stayed in her longer than I could imagine, trying to ease my control and my breathing enough to last longer than a handful of minutes. She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, and I didn’t want to fuck this up.

 

My hips moved slowly and short, both for me and for her because I knew I was stretching her to her limit, and the simple fact alone that I fit in her that fucking perfectly was it. She was it. This was it.

 

The deeper I went, the more I sweat. The more she met each of my thrusts, the more I wanted this to last the rest of the night, if not the duration of my life. God damn it, her fucking pussy on mine was the best. She whimpered and cried, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I loved everything about her. My thighs and arms were straining and shaking because I couldn’t stop moving in her, twisting and dipping my cock so she’d feel just as good as I did.

 

I wanted her to cum and when she did, she milked me for the longest seconds of my life, making me frantic until I climaxed in her.

 

Everything was a lazy haze, I didn’t know how I could be that exhausted. I ran six miles a day and lifted weights four times a week. My body should’ve been used to this but it wasn’t, I guess it’d never been used like this.

 

I remembered going to a church retreat with Calum back when we were in high school and how the youth minister used to tell us that we should wait to have sex until we were married. “It was more special to be with someone that you loved and were linked to in the eyes of God,” he’d told us. I wasn’t married to Kat but his words, as I lay there on top of her, made complete sense to me.

 

Later that night, when I was deep asleep and I felt the tug on my arm, and then I saw her smiling at me with a smudge of drool on the corner of her mouth, she whispered, “I’ve loved you longer than you’ve loved me.”

 

I fucking loved her.