Page 18 of My Brother’s Best Friend

QUINCY: All right, let’s do this. I’ll see you there at 5

MILLER: No you won’t

QUINCY: What?

MILLER: Glory hole, remember? You won’t see me at all

Unfortunately for me, it was already four-fifteen, and it was going to take half an hour just to bike back to Adair. You’d think that the rush would mean that at least I didn’t have time to freak out about what was happening, but you’d be wrong.

I had a lifetime of freaking out about the most mundane situations imaginable, and this was far from mundane—for me, at least. By the time I got to The Port Hole, I really did feel sick to my stomach.

Just as well that I’d gotten there a few minutes early. I could head straight into the bathroom and get situated—and if I did need to puke, well, that was what bathrooms were for, right? The bar wasn’t too crowded yet—Miller had been right about that—and the men’s room was empty, thank God.

I forced myself to walk to the last stall at a normal pace and stepped inside. The lock was shaped like an old-fashioned anchor. I flipped it, turned, and looked at the wall shared with the stall next door. Levi had been telling the truth. There was a hole, right at waist height.

Somehow, I’d thought it would be smaller. It was more of a glory crater, a glory gaping maw, than a hole. Which I supposed could be thematic, if you thought of it as the gullet of some kind of ancient sea monster, but it still seemed odd to me, because no one’s dick was that thick.

Maybe it was so you could stick your balls through too? Though I supposed a bigger hole would make other things easier as well, if your glory-gullet-ing plans extended beyond a quick, anonymous blow job.

Come to think of it, Miller and I had never actually agreed on what we’d be doing once he got here. I’d been picturing myself sucking him off, maybe begging for some pointers on my technique, but his profile had mentioned getting fucked. Was that what he expected?

One more thing to panic about, which was nice, I supposed, for variety’s sake, but my head was starting to pound from its ceaseless anxiety-spiralling, and as minutes ticked by and no one entered the bathroom, it only got worse.

Had Miller changed his mind? I checked my phone again and again, but there were no new messages, nothing explaining that he was running late. Maybe he’d gotten cold feet. Maybe he really was a closeted father of four, and a last-minute Little League emergency had pulled him away. Maybe he had to cut more orange slices for practice, or pick little Jenny up from ballet.

Or maybe he was never coming in the first place. Maybe this was all some kind of joke. Or, worst of all, maybe Miller had gotten a glimpse of me when I’d walked into the bar. What if he’d seen me head back to the bathrooms and decided to pass?

It was a little weird, wasn’t it, that I’d been waiting in the bathroom for twenty-five minutes and no one had come in? I was starting to wonder if I’d entered some kind of parallel dimension, died and gone to a spectacularly embarrassing purgatory the moment I’d walked through the bathroom door.

By five-thirty, I couldn’t take it anymore. Miller wasn’t coming. It was time to admit that.

I walked out of the bathroom, my face on fire. The bar was much more crowded than it had been when I’d entered, but I just pushed through the throng, my eyes on the ground. I didn’t even worry about whether people were staring at the awkward giant lumbering through their midst. I just wanted to get home.

With a sigh of relief, I reached the front door. I pushed it open with a slam, stepped outside—

And walked right into Jordan, sending him tumbling to the sidewalk.

5

JORDAN

What do you wear for your first visit to a glory hole?

I knew the whole point of Quincy suggesting we use the one at The Port Hole was that we couldn’t see each other, but really, it was just our faces we’d be hiding. He’d still be able to see my shoes. My pant-legs. Possibly a hint of shirt cuff or hem, depending on how big that hole was.

Every little thing counted. I wanted to get this right. After all, I wanted to keep him coming back for more. And possibly tell a friend or two to join him.

Come to think of it, did Quincy have gay friends? How did he know about this glory hole, if he’d never hooked up with a guy before? And what were the chances he was even going to show up tonight, given how nervous he’d told me he was?

To be perfectly honest, the more I thought about this, the more I wondered if I was making a mistake. On the surface, this was exactly what I’d wanted when I made my profile. But I’d also made that profile this morning. Before I saw Cam.

Ugh. No.

I wasn’t allowed to think about him. It was creepy enough having a crush on a straight guy, but it was way worse when he was my brother’s best friend, who would be horrified to know I was thinking about him this way.

I had to push Cam out of my mind and concentrate on the task at hand—or mouth, in this case. Focus all my attention on the holing process. Or would that be glorying? What was the word for glory hole participation, anyway?

Glorification? That sounded a little religious. But then, a really good orgasm could feel kind of spiritual, so maybe that was appropriate.