Heights 4

The car ride to Crimson Heights was quiet for the most part. Occasionally, I would try to say some things to Bryan but he didn’t seem interested in saying anything to me. In all the years we had known each other, this was one of those rare times where I felt uncomfortable being around him. I knew what he was thinking, that I was choosing to leave him, to leave Orangewood, that I was trying to forget everybody I knew, most importantly that I was leaving him behind.

My heart started to speed up as we exited the Crimson Heights exit of the freeway. Up until that moment, I hadn’t really believed I was leaving, it was still all a dream to me, but the closer we got to the apartment complex, the more real it became, the scarier it became.

All of a sudden, without really thinking, I asked, “Are you mad at me?”

Bryan stopped the car at a red light. “What would I be mad at you about?”

It was a hot day outside. The sun was glaring through the car windows hot and angry. My forehead had already begun to sweat. “About everything. About me coming here.”

“I’m happy for you,” Bryan said. He was telling the truth and lying at the same time. There was still so much raw sadness scratched across his voice. He looked at me, his large brown eyes slightly glazy. “I’m just a little bit…I don’t know…I know this is what you have to do…it’s just gonna be weird not seeing you everyday…” A horn honked behind us. The light had been green for several seconds. “I’m gonna miss you,” he said.

“So am I,” I told him.

The apartment complex came into view. It was a lot larger than I last remembered it to be. It was still weird knowing that I was going to be living here with about a dozen other really hot dudes. I know that bothered Bryan, whether he admitted it or not.

I looked up at the balconies overlooking the city and remembered being on one of those balconies with Dylan, making out with him when he was dressed only in his underwear, remembering the sweet tanginess of his skin, the soapy masculine smell of his body, the feeling of his big dick grinding against my crotch, the slippery wetness of his tongue…I was going to be living in the same building as him. Instead of seeing my boyfriend everyday, I would be seeing Dylan everyday.

“We’re here,” Bryan said. I must’ve spaced out, because all of a sudden we were in the parking lot.

I should’ve been excited, I wanted to be excited, but a part of me felt like I was being sent off to prison. “Let’s get your stuff out of the trunk,” Bryan said. He opened his car door and stepped out. Hesitantly, I did the same. “This is a nice place,” Bryan said as he handed me my large duffel bag.

“Uh-huh,” I replied.

“What’s wrong with you?” Bryan asked. He closed the trunk down hard.
“What do you mean?”

“You don’t look too happy to be here. I just thought you were going to be more enthusiastic or something.”

“…I am. I’m just...” I didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “I’m cool. Like you said, it’s just gonna be hard not seeing you all the time before. I don’t know anybody here, I don’t have any friends here…”

“What about Dylan?” Bryan asked. There was a sharp jealousy in his voice when he said Dylan’s name. “You know him.” He looked at me for a few seconds, knowing that what he just said was making me uncomfortable.

“I’ve only met him a few times. I don’t really know him.”

Bryan picked up my other suitcase and started to head in the direction of the lobby. “Let’s go.” I followed behind Bryan. He didn’t have any trouble lugging around my bag even though it was really heavy and it was really hot outside.

I watched the movements of his beautiful body. He was wearing a tight fitted emerald green shirt that clung nicely to his muscular arms and chest, and a pair of snug fitted khaki shorts that did a good job at showing off the meaty roundness of his ass and also his strong muscular calves. I should’ve felt lucky to have a boyfriend as good-looking and just all-around great as Bryan was. He was beautiful in every way a person could be beautiful in my opinion. I hoped he knew how much I actually did care about him.

We went inside the building and I asked the lobby person, a cute, tall slim girl, who looked as if she could be a model herself, named Andrea, what floor I would be staying on. “Josh Hunter, right?” she said. I told her yes, and then she said, “You’re going to be on the sixth floor.”

“Is the elevator working?” I asked. “Because I was here the other day and I was told it wasn’t working.”

Andrea shook her head. “We haven’t been having any problems with the elevator this whole week.” She handed me my keys and smiled, “Welcome to Heights,” she said.

Bryan and I waited for the elevator to come down. “So when you were here with that Dylan dude, what did the two of you do?” he questioned.

I tried not to look nervous or guilty. “Basically he just showed me around the place and to some of the other guys that live here.”

“That’s all?”

I tried to push the image of me kissing Dylan out of my head. “Yeah, that’s all.”

“Are you lying to me, Josh?” Bryan asked. He stared at me intensely as if he were trying to peer into my head and see what I was thinking.

“Bryan, you don’t need to worry about stupid shit like that. There’s nothing going on between me and—”

The elevator doors opened, and, I should’ve guessed this would happen, because this was the kind of ironic shit that happened to me all the time, Dylan stepped out of the elevator. He was wearing sunglasses, but it was still more than easy to recognize him. Of course he looked fucking gorgeous as usual. It was weird because he was dressed almost the exact same as Bryan, except for wearing a tight green muscle shirt, Dylan’s was yellow, which matched perfectly with his smooth, golden skin. When he saw me, Dylan broke out into a huge grin. “Guess who’s here,” he said.

He came up and hugged me briefly. The smell of him came rushing into my nose and almost made me weak. Dylan pulled away from me, looked over and saw Bryan, who was not smiling at all. He looked Dylan up and down, and even though his expression was pretty blank, I could tell there was some anger brewing up behind those brown eyes of his.

Dylan took off his sunglasses. In that sexy, slight Southern accent of his, he said, “You must be Bryan. I’m Dylan Phoenix. Josh told me all about you.” That wasn’t true at all. Dylan reached out his hand to shake Bryan’s. Bryan reluctantly did so, but I could tell, and I knew Dylan could tell too, that Bryan was not happy to see him.

“What did he tell you about me?” Bryan questioned.

Dylan glanced at me and then at Bryan, that same smug, adorably cocky look on his handsome face, “A lot of things. But mostly he said that you were the only thing about Orangewood that he would miss.” That was another thing that wasn’t true at all, but I didn’t say anything. Bryan just nodded. “You must be sad that he’s leavin’,” Dylan said.

“I’ll be alright,” Bryan responded, trying to sound as self-assured as he possibly could. “And so will Josh.”

“Yeah,” Dylan said, “and if he’s not, I’ll be here to make sure he’s alright.” He might as well have just punched Bryan in the face. I could tell that Bryan wanted to go off of him right then and there, but for my benefit, and because he didn’t want to seem insecure, he did not. Dylan patted me on the shoulder. “You’re pretty lucky to be with him,” he told Bryan. “He’s gonna be a star soon.” He moved passed me, grazing his arm against mine as he passed, sending a current of electricity down the left side of my body. “Gotta go,” Dylan said. “Nice to meet you Bry, and I’ll be seeing you later on tonight, Josh.” And saying that, he was gone.

The elevator doors closed.

Bryan looked at me accusingly, as if I had done the most unforgivable thing a person could do. He didn’t say anything, he just glared. He mashed the Up button and the doors opened again. Once we entered and the doors closed and I pressed the button to the sixth floor, the panic inside of my body started to rise as the elevator did.

“I wanted to fucking kick his ass,” Bryan fumed. “I can’t believe he had the nerve to say that shit to me.”

“Yeah, well that’s how he is.”

“You’re fucking making excuses for him?” Bryan yelled.

“No, I’m not. And don’t scream at me. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Bryan chuckled. “Yeah, you didn’t do anything.”

The elevator doors opened again and we were on the sixth floor. Once again, like last time, the hallway was bombarded with the sound of loud music and guys laughing and talking raucously. A tall guy, very trim, muscular and smooth, with short black hair came out into the hallway, only dressed in a pair of white jockey boxer briefs. His body was chiseled to perfection. As he came closer I recognized him as that guy, Gabe. He was the first person I met when I first came here.

“Josh, right?” Gabe asked me. He came up to me and Bryan. “Dylan called and told me you were coming up. Here give me your bag,” let me show you’re gonna be staying.” He took my bag from me and hoisted it over his shoulder, turned and walked in the direction of my new apartment. I couldn’t keep my eyes of his body, especially his hard round ass as it shifted left and right in that tight underwear he wore. Bryan was looking too, even though he probably was trying to force himself not too. The guy was gorgeous, there was no need to try and deny that. Gabe led me to a door at the end of the hallway…directly across from Dylan’s apartment. “This is where you’re gonna be staying.” He opened the door and led us inside.

The place was fucking huge and already fully furnished, plush white carpets, a large white leather couch and love seat, the biggest flat screen TV I’d ever seen attached to the wall, just the whole fucking works. “This is where I’m going to be living?” I asked Gabe.

Gabe led us into a short hallway filled with photographs on the wall of all the different male models staying in the complex; there were a couple pictures of Gabe, a few of that guy Shane, a headshot of Dylan, which was pretty similar to the one I saw in the agency’s lobby…and right next to his was a black and white photograph of me, one that Wolf had taken of me in his office as I leaned against his window dressed only in my underwear. I mean I’ve always known I had a good body, but in this picture, I had to admit it, I looked really good just all over. It looked like me, but at the same time it looked like someone else.

Gabe showed us to my new bedroom. It was definitely bigger than the bedroom Bryan and I shared. I had a king-sized bed all to myself, a walk-in closet and a balcony entrance. “This is where you’re gonna be living,” Gabe said. He dropped my bag onto the bed. “You can look around some more. Just come over if you need something.”

“Am I going to be staying here by myself?” I asked.

“Probably not,” was all Gabe said and he left the room.

“Nice place,” Bryan said. He placed my suitcase near the closet.

“Yeah, I know. It’s ten times better than where we live.” I hadn’t meant that to sound mean or anything, but when I looked over at Bryan, I could tell that he was a bit hurt by that comment. With every second that passed, he appeared more and more uncomfortable, maybe because he felt like this place only belonged to me, and he didn’t belong here at all. I sat on the bed. “Come over here,” I told him.

Bryan sauntered over to my bed and sat beside me. He looked really rigid and anxious. He kept looking around the walls, the ground, the sliding glass doors, everything except for me. “Yeah, this is better than where we…I mean I live.”

“I still live there too,” I said. “I mean just `cause I’m staying here doesn’t mean I won’t get a chance to be there too.”

“…I don’t know,” Bryan said sullenly. He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing.”

“Bryan, don’t be like that, just tell me what you’re thinking.”

“You don’t want to hear what I have to say.”

“That’s not true.”

Bryan finally made eye contact with me. His eyes looked so miserable and heavy. “I don’t want you to be here,” he said softly. “I really just want you to come back home with me.”

When he said that I felt like my heart was going to sink into my stomach. “I can’t…you know I can’t do that.”

“I mean I want this for you, I really do. Honestly. And I know you want this too. But…I just don’t feel right about it now. Feels like things are gonna change between us…I mean things have already changed…”

“What do you mean by that? Nothing’s changed.”
“Feels like it has to me,” Bryan replied. “Maybe I’m just being insecure or something, but I just feel like things won’t last between us for too much longer.” He looked away from me again.

“Don’t say that,” I said, my voice starting to sound a little shaky. “Why are you saying that? Bryan, I’m not interested in anyone but you.”

“Are you being honest, Josh?” Bryan asked. His eyes were growing glazy again. “Are you really telling me that you’re not interested in him?”

“Dylan is just some dude. That’s it. Yeah I think he looks really good, but he’s not you. I’m not trying to do anything with him. I don’t want to be with him. He’s not the kind of person I would ever want to be with.”

“You say that now…”

“Well, fuck, Bryan! What do you want me to say? I don’t like him. I don’t know him. I’m here to do a job, not fuck every hot guy around here.”

“I don’t want you to do anything with him,” Bryan said. “Just don’t do anything with him. I really want to trust you, Josh. I do trust you, but just…please don’t do anything with him.”