This story is fiction. The characters and the places are fiction. Nobody in it is real. The story contains sexual situations between teens and pre-teens. You should be 18 to read. This story is mine, so do not copy it or post it in any form without my permission. Please, always be safe. Pretty please, donate to Nifty. These are my usual disclaimers when I say the usual in subsequent chapters.
Welcome back to The Perfect Game series. I know a lot of you have been eager for Book 3 to post, Well, I have been eager to post it. This is the third, and last, book of the trilogy. The first two books each covered one year in the lives of one group of boys in the fictional town of Mayfield. Book 3 will cover five years in their lives, taking the core characters from eighth grade through their senior year.
While I did some recapping, I would strongly suggest reading Chapter 60 of "The Big Time" before starting this first chapter of "Diamond Dreams." If you haven't read the first two books of the trilogy, welcome to Book 3. While reading "The Perfect Game" and "The Big Time" will give you a better understating of the story and the characters, I am sure you can enjoy Book 3 as a stand alone story.
Email me at thehakaanen@hotmail.com
Douglas
CHAPTER 1 THE LINE
<Friday, June 6, Vince's Basement>
The Mayfield boys of the Go to State Team had started putting together their dream a year ago. The then sixth and seventh graders had a dream. The dream was that when they got to high school they would be part of the first Mayfield High School teams to win back-to- back state baseball championships. The dream wasn't winning just one, it was winning two in a row. The Mayfield Mustangs baseball program had four State Championship trophies in the school's trophy case. What these boys wanted to do was trump that by being the first players to win two.
The players were now finishing seventh and eighth grades, and on this evening they were facing the second crisis of their organization. The first crisis had occurred just hours earlier after winning a 5-3 baseball game. How they dealt with what was happening right then in Vince's basement would probably determine the success of an organization that was in essence being run by a group of twelve and thirteen year old boys.
Eric, a seventh grader, had been the guiding force behind creating the organization. The other leaders in the group had been Noah, Rodney, and Kevin. The current crisis dealt with a keg of beer that was situated in the center of the basement of Vince's house. Vince's father had supplied it and many of the boys on the team were looking forward to downing its contents.
Four members of the summer travel team that the Go to State Team had created were not in the basement as Vince got ready to pour the first beers. Noah and his boyfriend, Bobby, had gone to the eastern part of the state with Noah's family. Rich, an eighth grader, didn't want to be at the party and Carl, a seventh grader, couldn't come because he and his father were going fishing the next morning.
The boys who were in the basement had their own stories. Of the eighth graders, Marty was a teenage alcoholic who had managed to stay sober for almost six months. But on this night he was ready to throw that away in order to support his teammates, in particular, Connor, another eighth grader. Marty knew he should never drink again, but that night he had an incredible craving for alcohol, and being there for Connor was his excuse to give in to that urge.
Conner had created the first crisis by crossing a line with the coach, challenging him and his rules. Conner felt that since the boys had chosen Coach Miller that gave him more leeway to say what he wanted. Coach Miller disagreed, and Connor was stunned when his teammates didn't have his back and sided with the coach. His teammates were now trying to placate Connor at the party. The party had been planned long before the incident after the game, but many of the boys were using it as an excuse to drink beer and get drunk.
Vince and Connor were regular party goers and used to drinking. They loved getting drunk, but, unlike Marty, they weren't controlled by alcohol. Rodney and Jerome didn't go to many beer parties, but they'd been to a couple of parties each during the course of their middle school years. Beer parties for kids that age weren't uncommon in the small town of Mayfield. There often was nothing else to do—at least that was their excuse and the excuse of the adults who supplied the beer.
Scott, Danny, Kraig, and Hunter had never been to a drinking party and were excited to find out what it was all about. In fact, other than a couple of beers under parental supervision, they had never had alcohol. Eric came to the party with Scott and Danny, saying there was nothing else to do. He said he had no intention of drinking because he'd signed the contract.
It was that contract that created the second crisis. The boys had four adult advisors, all of whom they had chosen. They had a business manager, Seth McCall, who was Noah's father. George Bednarzyck, an attorney, was their administrative advisor. They had picked Silvia Moore as their head fundraiser.
And then there was Coach Miller, who was all they said they wanted in a coach. He was organized, strict, demanding, and knew exactly what he wanted both from himself and from his players. And yet he was also willing to listen, and was developing a good rapport with his team.
When the boys discussed what they wanted in a coach, all of those factors were felt to be important if they were going to rise to the level they expected. Coach Miller set his expectations before he was hired. One of those was that the boys lay down the general rules they wanted him to enforce. Those rules were the basis of the contract each boy had signed. The contract stated that they would not drink alcohol during the summer season and that they would not attend a party where alcohol was being consumed by minors. And yet, here they were—all but six of the sixteen boys on the roster at a beer party.
When even Eric, who was having problems with his best friend Scott, the boy he considered to be his boyfriend, decided that violating the contract and attending the party would help him feel less lonely, the boys in Vince's basement all knew that the contract would be a worthless piece of paper as soon as Vince tapped the keg at exactly nine-thirty. To make it even more worthless, Eric, who had never had any alcohol, had just said he would drink with the rest of them. If Marty could throw away his six months of sobriety for the team, Eric felt he might as well drink, too.
Eric was a serious, studious, twelve year old. He was a very smart, very organized, and very determined tween. He had felt strongly about the sanctity of the contract they had all signed, but on this night, after the blowup between Connor and the coach and after the team made the decision to not support Connor during the altercation, he was weakened enough by his own personal issues to throw away a year's worth of serious work. Like so many his age, he thought they wouldn't get caught and everything would be the same as it was. But in his youth he forgot that once the group decided the rules they had made up themselves weren't important, things would never be the same again.
There were two other boys on the team who weren't at the party. They were Kevin and Lars. They had stayed at Kevin's house, where Kevin's father said they could have two beers apiece. Kevin, who was the regular starting catcher on the team, was a primary leader on the field, just like Eric was the acknowledged leader off the field. Kevin and Lars were best friends, more like boyfriends, on a team where a lot of sexual and loving relationships between the boys had developed.
While both Kevin and Lars felt a tinge of badness at drinking beer together, they never opened a bottle. Kevin had a change of heart and pointed out to Lars that they had signed the contract, and if they were going to show their parents, their coaches, their friends, in fact, the whole town of Mayfield that they were serious, then they had better be willing to abide by a contract they had written themselves.
"Well, Mr. Let's Do Everything Right himself is at the party," Lars said, referring to Eric. "So what difference does it make if we drink here in your bedroom? I mean we did say we were going to take up your dad's offer so we could drink here and not, like, get in trouble with Coach Miller or anything."
"It's just wrong, and I can't do it. It's even more wrong for Eric to do it, because he's the one we all kind of look up to in this group. I mean, think about it, if we can't follow our own rules then what makes us think we're going to be able to become good enough to make it to the state tournament when we get to high school?"
And there lay the dilemma for the boys. The past year for them had been a good one. They had gotten their group organized and operating to the point of forming an elite travel baseball team for their age group, the first one in quite a few years that consisted of just Mayfield boys. Not only that, but their middle school team, the Mayfield Middle School Titans, had been the undefeated champions of their league.
In two hours they had gone from a group with a sense of purpose to a group ready to flaunt the rules, a group lost in its own self- importance. Every winning team needs a certain amount of cockiness and the Mayfield boys had it. But now they were letting that cockiness inflate their egos to the point where common sense was being pushed aside. Where they had been a no nonsense, businesslike group of tweens, they had almost instantly morphed into a group of young adolescents ready to test the limits of what they could get away with. In other words, they were acting their age and the pressure of the group was leading them down a path that had gotten all too many of their contemporaries into a world of trouble.
Lars wasn't happy with Kevin's statement that he wouldn't violate the contract, not when his teammates were prepared to do the same thing just a few blocks away. "Kevin, you are being really lame. What about if we just had one beer?"
Kevin ignored Lars and looked at his phone. "Get your hoodie. We're going to Vince's," he said.
"Now you're talking. But...um...what are you going to tell your dad?"
"That we're going to see Kraig and will be right back."
"But it's after nine. Will he let us go out?"
"Hunter lives only like four blocks away. He'll let us go." One of the nice things about living in a small town like Mayfield is that for the most part parents didn't feel that the streets were unsafe after dark. "We just have to ask dad and not mom."
Which is exactly what happened, but not without a few pointed questions, such as, "Isn't this why you have a phone and can text and call and all of that modern stuff?"
"Yep. He just texted me to bring him some clothes. That way he can go from Hunter's house right to Scott's birthday party tomorrow."
"He can't come from Hunter's house to here and then to Scott's?"
"Dad, it will only take us a minute. You know what Kraig's like."
"I do, and you usually don't let him get away with stuff like that."
"Dad, please." Kevin was getting impatient and trying hard not to show it.
"I assume you plan to be back and not stay with your brother and Hunter?"
"If I don't come back, I'll call first."
"Just come back. And, it might be a good idea if you actually took some of his clothes with you."
Kevin flushed red when he realized he'd forgotten to bring clothes down with him. So much for making good plans, he thought. He noticed that Lars was trying hard to stifle a laugh.
"I'll be right back. I forgot the bag upstairs." He dashed up the stairs and came back down with a tote bag that had some of his own clothes. Since he and Kraig were identical twins, he decided it really didn't matter whose clothes he took, especially since taking clothes to Kraig wasn't his real reason for going out.
As soon as they got out of the house, Kevin said, "Come on, Lars, we have to run there. We got just a couple of minutes to get to Vince's house."
"What's this all about?" Lars asked. "Are we going there to get drunk with them after all you said?"
"Just shut up and run...you'll see why if we get there on time."
They did get there on time, at least as far as Kevin's plan was concerned. He hoped this plan went better than the one he had concocted to fool his father into letting him and Lars leave the house.
"Hey, look, it's Kevin and Lars," Danny said as Connor escorted them into the basement.
"You're just in time," Vince said. "I was just about ready to pour the first brewski of the night."
"Don't do it," Kevin said. Then Kevin saw Eric in the back of the room. Eric was simply not a person he expected to see in the basement, even though Lars had said he would be there. Eric was the one who set the tone for their group and was the last of his teammates Kevin expected to see ready to break the rules. He was the guiding force behind what those rules said, and the one who had been in their faces about paying them more than lip service.
"What are you doing here?" Kevin asked. Kevin didn't care what Lars had told him. He was going to put his friend on the spot.
Eric, who had already turned a bright red when he saw Kevin come down the stairs, now did the impossible by turning an even brighter shade of red.
"I wasn't going to drink," Eric said, knowing how lame that sounded as soon as he said it.
"You know you were gonna drink," Connor said. "You said so, so don't go lying about it."
Eric looked around him, hoping to find a hole to crawl into. He had already had second thoughts about being in Vince's basement, and now those were becoming third and fourth thoughts. Kevin and Noah were two boys he totally respected and whose respect he craved. He knew he'd let both of them down by being at the party.
"I can't do this, guys," Kevin said, addressing the entire group. "I just can't. And you know that better than anybody, Eric. I'm serious...if you guys drink, we're all but fucked. Eric, if you drink we might as well forget about everything we ever talked about. We're going to be totally fucked if you stay at the party, Eric."
"Shut up, Kevin," Connor said. After having his teammates turn their collective backs to him when Coach Miller yelled at him for calling the coach "dude", he was ready to drink with them. To Connor having his teammates ready to get drunk with him at the party showed he still belonged.
Now Kevin comes barging in at the last minute telling them all they shouldn't drink? Connor thought. To him that was complete bullshit. Even Mr. Goody Goody Eric, who never does anything wrong was there ready to guzzle down the beer. "Like, who the fuck is ever going to know what happens here? How are they going to find out?" He glared at the seventh grader standing in the middle of the room. "Unless, somebody rats us out..." He didn't have to mention who that somebody might be; the name was understood by all.
Kevin didn't flinch. He was now the catcher, coming out from behind the plate, ready to direct the team on the field. He felt confident and in his element. "Connor, I don't have time for your crap. Tonight this team is gonna find out if we we're for real or a bunch of stupid kids who are just talk."
Connor flexed his fists, but didn't make any kind of move. "You're the one full of talk, Kevin. I don't hear anybody else's jaws flapping."
"You're sounding exactly like Eric," Vince told Connor. "Back before Eric decided maybe he could party and drink beer like the rest of us." Once again Eric looked around for that hole.
Kevin reached into the bag he was carrying and pulled out a piece of paper. He unfolded it and held it up for everyone to see. "I was one of the guys who helped write this contract. I was proud to sign it, because how many kids get to make up their own rules? How many of us are trusted that much? How many kids could put together something like we did in a year? I mean think about what we did. How cool is that?"
Nobody said anything, although there were a lot of eyes looking around to see how everyone else was reacting to Kevin's talk.
Of course it was Connor who broke the silence. "Like you've never done things that got you in trouble in your life."
"Hell ya, I have. I'm sure I will be again." Kevin held up the contract. "But it won't happen by breaking this. I'm proud of what we've done and I want to be proud of what we're gonna do." He looked directly at Connor as he said, "We were together as a team during our game...and after it today. We showed how we want to do the right thing. What's wrong with you guys tonight? We didn't win the middle school championship with an undefeated season by thinking our shit didn't stink. Now it's like we think we can do anything we want."
"We're together as a team tonight, too," Vince said. "We're all here together to party and drink beer and get a little drunk. How many teams our age can do that? Yeah, we all signed the contract, so what? This is something we're doing together, too. That's got nothing to do with us thinking we're hot shit. It has to do with us not having to deal with bullshit."
Connor high fived Vince. "Just because you don't like what we're gonna do, doesn't mean it's the wrong thing to do," Connor said.
Kevin had the feeling he was losing the battle, so he decided to play his last card. "Okay, I'll tell you what. We'll see how together we are. Me and Lars are going to stand on this side of the keg," he said, pointing to the pony keg in the middle of the room.
"We are?" Lars asked.
"Yes, WE are," Kevin said, giving his friend a look that said "Don't fuck with me."
"Anybody who thinks the contract means something can come on this side of the room with us. If you think getting drunk together is more important than us being the best we can be, and if you think this thing," he pointed to his contract, still in his hand, "is bullshit, you can stay on that side."
He pulled out his phone. "Ten minutes, so you can all talk and make up your mind. After ten minutes we look at who is standing where."
"Fucker," Connor said. "I'm thirsty and want to drink now, not ten minutes from now."
Marty, who'd been sitting off to the side, silently observing the quarrel among his teammates, rose from his chair and quietly walked across Kevin's imaginary line. Eric wanted to be the first to cross the line and had started his move when Marty strode confidently across the room. Marty's surprise decision started a round of murmuring in the crowded basement room.
"I want to be part of something better than me," he said in a calm, but assertive voice. While nobody knew it at the time, Marty's decision to be the first to cross Kevin's line was an epiphany for the fourteen year old eighth grader. He wanted a beer so badly he was shaking. But for the first time in his life he decided not to take a drink simply because it wasn't the right thing to do.
Up until that moment his teammates had perceived Marty as an excellent ballplayer, a good teammate and friend, but also as a drunken buffoon, even after his almost six months of sobriety. Nobody knew it, but when Marty was the first to cross the line he had started in motion a process that would change that perception and eventually make him a leader, if not the leader, of the team. As the boys looked back at what had ensued that evening, they all agreed that if Marty hadn't crossed the line first with an air of composed, yet in some ways cocky, righteousness, the vote that night might have gone the other way. What they didn't know was that Marty didn't feel at all composed on the inside.
Nobody was surprised to see Eric cross over to Kevin's side right after Marty. Eric didn't want to be on either side—he wanted to be in his bedroom where he should have stayed instead of following Scott and Danny to the party. What Eric didn't realize was the fact that he'd had a vulnerable moment would raise his status among his teammates and friends. They saw him as somebody who wasn't simply some ultra serious, holier-than-thou kid who tried to be perfect 24/7, but rather as somebody who could screw up just like the rest of them.
Kraig and Hunter were the next to cross the line, just seconds behind Eric. While Kraig was the older of the twins, it was Kevin who was the alpha brother of the two, and Kraig knew Kevin would make his life miserable if he didn't come over to his brother's side. As he crossed the line, he wondered why Kevin hadn't had his planned beers with Lars. It had to be because of the contract, he concluded.
Of the thirteen boys in the room, six of them were now on Kevin's side of the imaginary line. The team was almost evenly split, which did not bode well for the future. The boys knew instinctively that they were going to have to go one way or the other as a team. But many were fighting the interior battle between doing the right thing for the team or saving face in front of their friends as well as showing their support for Connor.
"Guys, I almost did the wrong thing," Eric said. "I'm willing to admit it and I'm here to do the right thing. Kevin's right, and we all have to stick together as a team to prove that."
"Besides," Marty chimed it. "If I can stand here, I know you guys can."
"Ah, fuck it," Rodney said. He joined the boys on Kevin's side, giving them a majority. The boys remaining on Connor's "let's party" side of the line were Connor, Jerome, Vince, Scott, Danny, and Gavin. While Gavin wasn't on the team as such, he had signed the contract as a member of the Go to State Team, the informal name of the boys' organization. (The formal or legal name, was The Mayfield Mustang Travel Team.)
"What the fuck are we doing standing here," Danny said to Scott.
"It was my birthday, yesterday. Maybe I wanted to celebrate being thirteen with some beer," Scott said.
"And maybe you just want to celebrate it at Pooh Bear Pizza tomorrow, like you planned," Kevin said.
"He's right," Danny said. He had lost his enthusiasm for the party as he watched his teammates and friends cross over to Kevin's side. He left Scott's and joined the majority. Scott knew he was now supporting a losing cause and followed Danny. Jerome was right behind them, leaving only Vince, Connor, and Gavin behind him.
"Come on guys, if we don't empty this keg my dad's gonna be royally pissed," Vince said.
"Maybe that's what he gets for supplying beer to minors," Marty said, surprising his teammates yet again with his stance.
"Fuck you, Marty. Everybody knows you're a fucking alkie," Connor said.
"Which side of the line am I standing on?" Marty asked.
While the two were jawing back and forth, Gavin joined the majority. He had stayed back because he was hoping the eighth graders would see him as grown up by hanging with them. But most of the eighth graders were on Kevin's side now.
Connor grabbed a cup and poured beer into it, handing it to Vince. He then poured one for himself. "You guys can stand over there and think you're fucking better than everybody else, but me and Vince are still going to get drunk. We'll drain this keg by ourselves if we have to."
"Don't do it, Connor," Jerome said. "Stick with us."
"Why? You guys didn't stick with me when Coach Miller was reaming my ass. Fuck, he won't even let me suit up Sunday, because you shoved me under the fucking bus. I can drink cuz I don't plan to be there on Sunday. Fuck the coach and fuck all of you. I bet you assholes are gonna go narc me out now when I guzzle down my beer."
"That was public," Marty said. "This is private. We're not going to say a thing. But you want us to be on your side, so maybe it's time you gave us reason to do that. If you drink that beer, you won't be pissing on Coach Miller, you'll be pissing on all of us standing over here. And we're your teammates. Maybe it's time for you to be on our side."
"What the fuck's got into Marty?" Kevin whispered to Eric. "It's like he just morphed into some fucking superhero or something."
"Like you were my teammates after the game," Connor said. "Come on, Vince, let's get drunk."
But Vince put his cup of beer down on a chair and slowly strode over to what was now almost the entire team.
"Fucker!" Connor shouted at Vince. "Assholes!" he shouted at all of them. "You could at least let me get drunk. Fuck you all."
Marty walked back across the imaginary Kevin line and slowly approached his raging teammate. "Give me the beer," he said.
"Oh, so you're gonna join me? I knew the bleeping alkie couldn't hang tough." With a big grin, Conner handed Marty the full cup of beer and turned to pour himself a new one.
Every fiber of Marty's being said, "DRINK IT,,,DRINK IT...DRINK IT! IT'S WHAT YOU KNOW YOU WANT! DRINK IT,,,DRINK IT...DRINK IT." Marty's body shook as he raised the cup, inducing an audible gasp from the group behind him. But instead of drinking it, he placed it on the stool next to Vince's beer.
Connor had fully expected Marty to drink the beer, regardless of what he'd been saying. He'd been to enough parties with his friend to know how he thought and how he couldn't turn down alcohol. When Marty set the cup down Connor's eyes widened. Marty's next move was one Connor didn't expect at all.
He walked up to the Connor, grabbed him, and hugged him. "I love you, dude. You don't need to do it tonight."
"Faggot," was all Connor could think to say, but he didn't move away from Marty or try to break his hug.
"No, not faggot. Friend. Brother. Teammate. I love you as a friend and brother and teammate. We got your back, Connor. But you gotta have ours, too."
Connor and Marty had a long history of friendship and rivalry, of love and hate, of yin and yang. Marty saw the emotions welling up in Connor's eyes, and he knew if they burst forth, Connor's stock, which was already at low ebb, would drop even further. Marty knew all about being at the lower end of the pecking order.
"Come with me, bro. Let's talk." Marty let go of Connor, who silently followed him up the basement stairs. The rest of the boys looked on in shocked silence, as they saw something from Marty nobody had ever seen before.
Eric broke the spell. "Okay, guys, let's help Vince clean up the basement."
"Fuck, what am I gonna tell my dad?" Vince asked.
"Tell him we did the right thing," Eric said. "He should appreciate that, him being a dad and all."
While the boys were helping Vince put things away, Marty was out in the backyard with Connor. Connor had managed to not break out crying, to the relief of both boys.
"Everybody hates me, don't they?" Connor asked.
"Like you ever cared about that," Marty told him. "You fucked up with Coach Miller today. We all know you fucked up, and you know you fucked up. All of us almost fucked up down in the basement tonight." One thing Marty had learned in his program for staying sober was the importance of admitting you were wrong and of apologizing. He was about to provide that lesson to Connor. "If you go down those stairs now, before everybody leaves, and apologize for being an asshole, it will all be cool."
"If I do that, they'll think I'm some kind of wuss," Conner said.
"That's what I used to think," Marty said. "But one thing I'm learning is that they won't think that at all. They'll think you're strong, like a man."
"You're full of shit as usual, but I'll do it because I like playing on this team."
"Good. I learned the hard way how bad things can go when you think you're fucking better than everybody else. They all end up thinking you're a piece of shit."
"So, you're not drinking again, ever?" Connor asked.
"I'm not drinking tonight, I know that," Marty said. That was something he couldn't have said a half hour ago when the compulsion to drink was overwhelming. Marty had found out again how giving yourself to others can help to quench that urge. "Now, go apologize before it's too late. And make sure everybody knows it was your idea."
Connor and Marty reentered the house had stepped down to the basement. Eric, Danny, and Scott were just starting up the stairs. They stopped when they saw Connor and Marty.
"Hey, guys," Connor said loudly to get the attention of his teammates. "I just want to tell you I fucked up today with Coach Miller and you guys. Sorry. I'll be at the game Sunday."
He turned around and went back up the stairs, not waiting for any reaction, not letting anybody see the tears that finally burst loose. Nobody said it, but they all had the feeling that Connor's terse apology had been Marty's idea. Marty's stock had gone up yet another notch, but Connor's had risen as well.
As Vince's basement cleared, his father wondered what had happened. "Did everybody get mad at each other?" he asked.
"No, dad, it was just the opposite. Everybody decided to do the right thing," Vince said. Vince's dad looked at his son like he'd lost his mind, but Vince just smiled and hoped his dad wouldn't take the pony keg out of his allowance.
Outside, the boys headed back to the places they said they would be that night, or went home. Kevin and Lars went back to Kevin's house. As they walked together, Lars asked Kevin the question that had been bugging him ever since Kevin told him they were going to Vince's house.
"How did you know about the whole `the party starts at nine-thirty' thing?" Lars asked.
"Kraig texted me."
"So that's what you were looking at on your phone. And as soon as you saw that you knew nobody had any beer yet and you might be able to stop them and you became Kevin the hero."
"Nah. Marty was the hero. When the champion drinker of Mayfield Middle School said he wasn't drinking...well, you saw what happened."
"Yeah, but you got it started."
"Maybe, or maybe Eric would have figured things out at the last minute."
Lars couldn't help but laugh. "I got a hard time imaging Eric being bad, and he was almost as bad as he could get. I was kinda surprised when you said I was going to stand next you, though."
"You didn't think I'd let you go anything else did you?"
"No, sir, Mr. Catcher. And since you were the hero," Lars said, "you deserve a reward."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. You get to fuck me."
"Oh, I was going to do that anyway."
Kraig and Hunter went back to Hunter's house. When Hunter's dad asked why they were coming back so early, they just said they weren't having any fun. They went to Hunter's room, got naked, dry humped, and Kevin fucked his best friend not once, but twice. They slept naked and cuddled together.
Scott, Danny, and Eric ended up at Danny's house. They, too, had to explain why they came back late at night from Scott's house. Their excuse was that Scott's sister was having a slumber party and they were tired of being around a bunch of gossipy and giggly high school girls.
Eric and Scott had been boyfriends, but Scott had discovered girls. He had lost his virginity to his sister. He had also gotten into some very heavy making out with Tama, both of them wearing minimal clothing. But, Tama had insisted that he wouldn't get more from her until he told Eric they were no longer boyfriends and that he would quit having sex with him. Scott was reluctant to hurt his friend, but he also wanted to keep his girlfriend, not realizing it was possible to find one who was less of a bitch that Tama was.
Danny had messed around with Scott back in early sixth grade and also with both Scott and Eric later. It was mostly jerking off, with some mutual masturbation and a little bit of cock sucking. But Danny and his best friend Carl fucked each other frequently, even though they both had girlfriends and knew they weren't gay. They were comfortable with having sex with each other, often talking about girls while they were making out.
That night at Danny's house, they talked about what had transpired in Vince's basement, Eric once again expressing his remorse over his saying he would drink beer.
"Don't worry about it, Eric," Danny said. "Now we all know you're human instead of some robot, so you moved up in the world."
"Yeah, but I do the sex stuff with all you guys, so it's not like I think I'm perfect."
"Oh, you think you're perfect," Scott told him, "the only thing is you're perfectly horny." That got the boys to laughing and giggling. Danny and Scott talking about girls, and soon all three boys were sitting on the floor jacking off. Eric wished he was sucking the two thirteen year olds sitting with him, but he was happy to watch them both cum over themselves before he shot his own load.
The eighth graders weren't into sex with other guys like the seventh graders were. Except for Marty they all slept at home and in their own beds.
Before Eric had gone to Danny's house with his two friends, he told them he needed to talk to Marty for a few minutes. Danny and Scott waited patiently up the street for Eric to finish.
"Want to come with us? Spend the night?" Eric asked Marty.
"Have sex?" Marty asked with a smile.
"That, too."
"Thanks for asking. Another time, maybe. I gotta take care of something else?"
"What?"
"There's somebody I need to talk to...no, somebody I WANT to talk to, tonight."
"Okay. You were awesome tonight," Eric said. "You saved our whole group from really...well...fucking up." Cussing was not something Eric did often.
"I didn't do anything. I was just tired of being everybody's drunk joke. I had a chance to be something different, something better, and I just took advantage of it. Same as we do in sports...take advantage of the breaks we get."
"Luck is ninety percent preparation and ten percent perspiration, or something like that. I think the work you told me you've been doing so you won't drink anymore had you ready to do the right thing."
"I almost didn't do the right thing tonight," Marty said.
"I almost didn't either," Eric said, "and I've never had a beer to drink in my life."
"Thanks for being my friend, Eric. I love you."
"I love you, too. Stay sober."
"I will tonight, thanks to all you guys."
He watched Eric join his friends and pulled out his phone. He hit speed dial for a familiar number. Mr. Bednarzyck answered.
"Marty. It's late. Is something wrong?"
"Sorry, Mr. B., I needed to talk."
George Bednarzyck had known Marty since back in September when he found the then thirteen year old drunk in the little public park at the recreation center. A recovering alcoholic himself, he'd given Marty a lot of his time and experience in the hopes of teaching the boy how to live a sober life. While Marty usually called him when he was supposed to, he'd never called him out of the blue like this.
"Okay."
"I almost got drunk tonight," he said matter-of-factly.
"Did you drink at all."
"No."
"Do you want to come over and talk."
"Please. And can I spend the night?" Marty didn't want to go back to his house. He was positive his father would come home drunk, like he usually did, and on this night he didn't want to be around his father's drunkenness.
Mr. B had given Marty an open invitation to spend the night at his house if things got rough. As far as Marty was concerned, this was one of those nights.
"Sure. The guest room is yours. Jeffrey's in bed already, but his Marty detector might wake him up when you come in." Jeffrey, or Jeff, or J.J., or Hurricane Jeffrey, was Mr. B's seven year old son, who was a bit of a handful. Jeffrey idolized Marty and called him his big brother. In return, Marty saw Jeffrey as his little brother.
Marty had slept with Jeffrey in the little boy's bed, and had given him his first orgasm and his first blow job. It was something Marty felt guilty about, but he now saw it as a big brother teaching a little brother. He was sure Mr. B knew what was happening in his son's bed, but trusted Marty when Marty told him he would never hurt his son—meaning he would never do anything the young boy didn't want.
"I'll come quietly. I want to talk to you tonight, not the Hurricane."
"Do you need a ride?"
"No. I can walk. It will help me think. I'll be there in fifteen minutes or so."
Marty hung up and started in the direction of Mr. Bednarzyck's house. For some reason his feet felt light, like he could walk to his sponsor's house without them ever touching the ground. A lot of good things had happened to him lately, like winning the East County Middle School League championship. But tonight, nothing good had happened to him—instead he made something good happen, he had changed something he could change, and it felt good, really good. He couldn't wait to tell that to the man he now saw as his dad.
Next: Hurricane Force