Speech and Debate Pt. 07

"I'm sorry," I began again, still flustered and totally unaware of what the hell she was talking about. "I...,"

"Now, there are several people to choose from, any of whom should count themselves lucky to have you on their team. Take your pick."

She held out the clipboard to me and I took it from her without thought. My eyes scanned the names, all of which I recognized.

There was Amanda of the popular girls, and Ian the jock. Amanda had even placed a little heart over the second A in her name, though that particular letter didn't call for the embellishment. I guessed she was envious of people with an "i" in their name and decided to insert her own Lisa-Frank-esque flare on her signature.

There, at the very top of the right hand side of the page was my name, under the heading "Tutors." It was written concisely and neatly in blue pen.

But it was not my handwriting. I recognized the script immediately and scanned the left-hand column for the name I knew I would find there.

Sure enough, "Daniel" had written his own name third from the top on the, "In need of tutoring" side. I couldn't help but smile a bit. He signed me up to tutor and signed himself up to be tutored, even though he didn't need it. It was a small gesture, but one that I was sure was meant for me.

"I'll take Daniel," I said, my confidence rising in me as I handed the clipboard back. The double entendre was lost on Dr. Plarston, but I laughed to myself at my own witticism.

Dr. Plarston seemed surprised, her eyebrows arching high over her glasses as she took the clipboard.

"Are you sure?" she asked. "There are plenty of other people in need of..."

"I'm sure." I said quickly, halting her apparent concern for my well-being if she placed me directly in the path of a jock. She was a smart woman. They don't just hand out PhD's willy nilly.

I smiled my best smile to reassure her; my heart leapt in my chest as I watched her check off my name and Daniel's on the list before her. It was done. Dr. Plarston still seemed taken aback as I gave her my goodbyes and headed back out to my next class, a new found spring in my step.

I essentially floated above the sidewalk as I made my way to my favorite reading spot, a big tree in the Annex courtyard, the same spot Daniel had first approached me on our first day back from Boston. He had promised me would find a way to see me. He had not disappointed.

I was grinning like an idiot when I fished my phone from my bag and authored a text to Daniel. He stood about 10 yards away with his usual cohort of jocks. And Amy. Always Amy. She was like a bad case of acne I just couldn't seem to shake.

DAVID: You don't know what you just did. You're in my world now, Jock-Boy. You may own the gym, but I got the brains.

I sent the message.

I watched as Daniel reacted to its delivery and removed his phone from his pocket. He let out a burst of laughter as he read it, making his friends turn towards him as he tried to regain his composure. Daniel didn't seem to pay them any mind as they looked to him for a reason behind his outburst. He swiveled his head around, searching for me. When he found me, my back leaning against my familiar tree, my eyes locked on his face just waiting for him to meet my eyes, he smiled broadly.

No one else existed when he smiled at me like that. I was surrounded by a hundred other students, but I saw only Daniel. Even Amy was like a ghost in my vision.

He turned his eyes to his phone and I watched as he tapped out his response.

DANIEL: Bring it, Nerd. Game on.

Fuck. I nearly exploded right there.

My cock was growing in my jeans at a rapid clip. I'm pretty sure Daniel noticed my condition despite me trying to cover it with my books. Damned hormones.

I leaned my head against the trunk of my tree and stared through the newly budding branches to the bright blue open sky. I let the light stream down on me and closed my eyes to bask in the happiness his reply had sent me spiraling into.

So few words with such a profound impact. I was definitely addicted.

In that near euphoric state, I heard Amy's voice break through my fog like an eagle screeching from on high. No, an eagle is too majestic. Her voice was more like that of a Harpy.

"Who the hell are you texting?" she griped, reaching for the phone in Daniel's hand with her well-manicured claws. They seemed more claw-like now than I had noticed before.

"No one," Daniel said, drawing his phone away from her and moving out of her path as best he could. She nevertheless continued in her struggle to wrest the phone from him until he was able to put it in his pocket and physically pin her arms to her sides when she tried to retrieve it.

"Then why are you smiling like an idiot if it's just 'no one,'" she demanded.

"Are you jealous or something?" Daniel asked.

Ooohh. Bad move.

I'm as gay as the day is long, but even I knew you're never supposed to bring up jealousy to an agitated female teenager. Not unless you have a well mapped plan of escape.

Amy nearly went nuclear.

"WHY!? Should I be? Are you texting another girl? Who the hell is she?!"

Daniel paid her little attention as he gathered himself and began to walk away towards the Senior parking lot. Amy continued to harangue him from behind, desperately trying to get him to turn around and confront her. Daniel was having none of it. He just walked and let her rant behind him, only giving her the satisfaction of saying:

"It's not a girl!"

A few moments later my phone buzzed in my hand.

DANIEL: First tutoring session. My house. 6:30 after baseball practice.

It wasn't a question.

I quivered a bit at his commanding tone, even given my intellectual upper hand. I could get used to this power struggle.

I had always been acutely aware of the relative cheapness of my vehicle when I parked next to the Mercedes and BMWs my classmates had been given upon that most sacred of teenaged milestones: the driver's license. But I was never more so than when I pulled into Daniel's driveway.

I had to check the address I'd been given by the Upper School Administrator when I informed her of my tutoring plans, just to ensure that I hadn't somehow gotten turned around and ended up in Martha's Vineyard or some other haunt of, "The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous."

But I was in the right location.

His house was gigantic. My own modest home could have fit easily inside his garage, with its space for 4 cars as well as a window that hinted at some sort of large room overhead. A FROG, as they are called down south: Finished Room Over the Garage.

The yard was immaculate and expansive, with a wrought iron fence at the back that hinted at a large wooden deck and the bright unnatural blue of an in-ground pool. Was that a stone fire pit off to the left? Of course it was.

The main house itself stretched up for three visible floors, in a square boxish shape with large front facing windows and hunter-green wooden shutters to each side. The entry way was flanked by two massive columns that supported a large triangular brick and stone awning. The massive front door was banded in brass and surrounded by intricate frosted glass windows.

I must have gaped as I exited my puny little car and headed up the front walkway to the main door. In my awe of this domicile, I didn't even realize that Daniel's familiar red Jeep wasn't in the driveway. Perhaps he had parked it in one of the copious garage spaces?

My stomach lurched when I pressed the doorbell and heard the sonorous "bing bong" echoing inside through what I could only assume were palatial marble lined floors and mahogany encrusted furniture. I was looking up to the ceiling of the front awning with its matching brass bound porch light when the door swung open in front of me.

I don't know what I was expecting to find, but certainly not the diminutive woman who stood before me with an inviting smile.

"Hi, hun! You must be David," she said with a southern drawl that made it seem like she was singing her greeting to me. It instantly put me at ease.

She was shorter than me, maybe around 5'6" with long dark hair that she wore loose around her shoulders, curled at the ends. Small strands of silver were dusted in it's ebony lengths, but it only made her appear wise, not old. She wore a brightly patterned silk scarf tied around her temples to keep her locks from falling into her face. And what a face it was.

Her skin was smooth and olive complected, just like Daniel's. Tiny lines crept from the corners of her eyes and encircled her mouth so that she almost seemed to be on the verge of laughing at any moment and made her age an impossibility to guess. She wore a simple tan shirt and khaki pants that fit her well and showed off her athletic body. She was barefoot on the hardwood floor (no marble, thank god!) and her toenails were painted a bright purple, the only sign of the expected southern style.

"Umm...Hi, yes, I'm David." I said, my nerves making my voice break a little as I spoke. "Is Daniel home?"

She smiled at me and I suddenly realized why I was so nervous. Her brown eyes sparkled and danced in the setting sunlight.

Daniel's eyes. They were nearly identical. The same soft brown, the same wide openness, the same full, dark lashes. Those eyes were truly windows into her being, as they were into her son's. And now, they showed only joy at meeting me. My nerves gave way under her stare and I eased even more.

"He's not home yet, sweetie. Why don't you come in and wait for him. He shouldn't be but a minute or two. You hungry?"

She extended her arm to me and stepped aside to usher me into her home. I mumbled something in reply as best I could as I followed her in and she shut the door behind me.

"The kitchen is just down that hallway there. Let's get you fed!"

She motioned towards the hallway in front of me, which seemed to stretch on past the limits of my vision. The massive nature of the house dwarfed her as she walked in front of me, her bare feet making little slapping noises on the shining wood floors. But she seemed a part of the place as well. In the coming weeks, I would find touches of her personality on nearly every surface of the place, from the art on the walls to the tools in the kitchen.

In no time, she had me seated on a high stool at the massive island that dominated her kitchen and she busied herself with making me a snack of baby carrots and hummus.

"We like to keep it healthy here," she joked as she set the plate before me.

"Oh, please," came an unseen voice from somewhere behind me. "She's just doing that to impress you, is all. Don't let her fool you."

I turned in my stool to search for the source of the voice, but saw only one long hairy lower leg draped over the back of a white couch that faced the largest TV screen I had ever seen. The owner of that hairy appendage remained obstructed from my view until he lifted himself up a bit to stare at me from his lounging position.

"Oh hush, Adam. I'm doing no such thing. You mind yourself," Daniel's mom clicked towards the man. "Don't mind Adam, hun. He's home on spring break from Vanderbilt. I, for one, can't wait till he goes back!"

"Hi," Adam called from his couch.

"Get up and say hello properly please, Adam," his mother admonished. Adam sighed as if this was a huge inconvenience on him, but rose and shuffled to the island.

He was taller than his little brother, of a height with me, but the resemblance was clear. Where Daniel was muscular and built for contact sports, Adam seemed crafted of longer, leaner stuff; not lanky, but built for...I don't know...the tour de France instead of Baseball?

He plopped himself down in a stool next to mine and repeated his greeting.

"Hey, I'm Adam."

"David," I said. I wasn't sure if I should hold out my hand for a proper shake, but thankfully Adam saved me from wondering.

"Mom, can I have a hot pocket?" he asked.

"Fine. Just don't spoil your dinner. Your father will be home shortly and we will be eating as a family."

Adam rolled his eyes and lumbered to the freezer to make his chosen snack while his mother continued to move around the kitchen, collecting supplies for the aforementioned dinner.

"So," Adam said in my general direction, "you tutoring my little bro?"

"Yeah. SAT's."

"Didn't he already take those?"

"He can take them again if he wants to, Adam. Leave the poor kid alone," his mother chided, rising from a cabinet with a large stainless steel stock pot big enough to boil me inside.

"I'm only asking, mom. Jeeze!" He pressed the buttons on the microwave and watched his chosen snack rotate inside. "Didn't you go to Boston for the Nationals? Are you the same David?"

"Adam!"

I stopped with a hummus laden carrot stick halfway to my mouth and stared at him. He stared right back at me, through another set of Daniel's eyes. His mouth curved up a little in a slight smile that seemed to say, "the door is open, bud. What are you going to do?"

I cleared my throat.

"Yeah. I went to Boston. Not the same category though. I'm in actual Debate. Lincoln Douglass style. You know? After Abraham Lincoln. The 16th President. Emancipation Proclamation? Freed the slaves. Daniel does original oratory, but then you already know that don't you. Why wouldn't you? Not like he'd hide that fact. I was in Boston too. For what it's worth. I mean, we didn't win anything. The snow made us late? Remember? That snow storm? Never been so cold in all my life. Never seen that much snow in one place. So we didn't get points or anything so it didn't really matter if we went in the first place. But I was in Boston. It was my birthday too. 18th. In Boston. In the snow. But it didn't matter cause we were late..."

"Christ dude, take a breath!" Adam squawked as he did his best to hold back a laugh at my distracted ramblings. "Nervous much?" He waggled his eyebrows at me from across the room and winked.

The sun was apparently taking up residence in my face. I blushed from toes to hairline in a blink.

"You go to your room Adam Samuel, and don't bother David again! You hear me, young man? You get!"

His mother did his best to save me, even using Adam's middle name, a sure sign of coming trouble for those of us raised down South. Adam shrugged his shoulders and shuffled from the kitchen down the same hallways I'd traveled, headed to some distant part of the manse I couldn't yet begin to fathom, a shit-eating grin still plastered across his face.

I let my heart rate slowly come back to normal when I heard the front door open in the distance and then close just as quickly.

"David?" Daniel called from afar, "You here?"

When Daniel arrived in the kitchen and smiled at me seated at the island, I don't think he was aware of just how obscenely sexual he looked. To me at least.

A navy blue baseball cap sat low on his brows but did nothing to hide his beautiful features. His white button down baseball shirt was unbuttoned and hung loosely around him, exposing a dirty and nearly see through white tank top. The black swirls of his trimmed chest hair poked from above the neck of it and I could just make out the outline of his dark nipples. His tight baseball pants were stained in orange-red mud on the knees and thighs but they hugged his legs in all the right places. His crotch was full and pulled up tightly in what I could only assume was the jock strap he wore beneath. The smell of his sweat and exertion hit me like a tsunami and I blinked in awe at him.

"Daniel! You look a mess! Why didn't you shower before you came home?" His mother asked with a look of embarrassment plastered on her features.

"Because I didn't want to leave mu buddy David here at your mercy for any longer than absolutely necessary, Mother."

"Very funny," she scoffed lovingly. "Now you boys head up stairs."

I jumped from my seat, doing my best to hide my eagerness. Daniel's chest heaved in his sodden tank top and he stared at me with an intensity that I had come to recognize meant sexual games were about to commence. My body's own intensity began to build as well.

Daniel jerked his head toward the hall way and I followed him as he turned. He very nearly ran towards the stairs and I bounded up behind him.

"Shower! Please!" his mother called to our retreating backs.

One good thing about a sprawling mansion is that I got to walk behind Daniel for much longer than anticipated and watched his rounded muscular ass move beneath the stretchy white fabric of his baseball pants. By the time we neared his room, which I am still not sure exactly how to get to, I was already have erect and near crazy with madness at the urge to touch him.

Daniel closed and locked the door to his room and immediately his mouth was on mine. He held me against him, unmoving, just breathing me in in one long inhale as our lips pressed together. He released me on the exhale.

"That's much better," he said. "I was about to burst I wanted to kiss you so bad downstairs."

The long kiss and the compliment were more than enough to make me his.

I steadied myself a bit against the emotions and looked around his room. In my fantasies, Daniel's room was covered in sports memorabilia and trophies of all shapes and sizes, satin ribbons in blue and red and yellow marking off all of his many athletic achievements. And those things were there, if in smaller numbers than anticipated. There was a queen sized bed with a grey plaid bedspread. A desk with a laptop and desk lamp. Windows. A dresser. Dirty clothes scattered around the floor. A bookshelf with old notebooks and a few novels. A bedside table and alarm clock.

I don't know why I expected it to be anything other than what it was: completely ordinary. It looked almost exactly like my room, except for the size, the trophies, and lacking in books. But other than that, not so different from where I was comfortable.

But it smelled of Daniel. The room reeked of him and the scent that I had come to adore as being HIM. I took it in for a moment as he watched me. I was turning in small circles and gazing at everything when his arms captured me from behind, wrapped around my stomach and pulled my back into his chest. His lips pressed into my shoulder and I eased into his embrace as if I'd been born to reside there.

"Mmmm, that's nice." I said to the air.

"It is." Daniel kissed my ear and I shivered.

He kissed down my neck and I trembled. His hands moved from around my waist and he grabbed at my growing cock through my jeans. I sucked in through gritted teeth, the strength of his grip taking me by surprise, reminding me that I was almost always at his mercy. I throbbed under his palm.

"Daniel...I...," I started. His fingers found the button of my jeans and undid them with one masculine hand.

"Yeah?" he breathed in my ear.

"Ohhh...I...I," my zipper came down slowly. Daniel flattened his palm on my belly and slid his finger down my hips and under the elastic of my boxer briefs. I felt the tips of them brush my pubes.

"You...?" Daniel teased.

He grabbed my cock in his grip and tugged me from my pants, my dick bouncing into his palm in the open air as he gently pulled on me.

"Fuuuck...," I tried to resist it, but it felt like my skin was melding to his, like we were becoming one person as he jerked my cock from behind.

"So, what do you have to teach me, nerd?" Daniel whispered, his teeth coming down on my earlobe as he said it through gritted teeth. I moaned and pressed my ass back into his growing dick, my body ready for him to take me right there.

I don't know how I did it, but I somehow shook myself free of that trance and turned to face him, backing up by about 2 feet, a safer distance when I wanted to essentially pounce on him.

"You need to go shower." I said as firmly as I could. "And we WILL be getting some studying done. You may not actually need SAT tutoring, but you could use some help in your other classes I'm sure."