Rumor Has It (Longwood U)

Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

SPARROW

A very loud slam startles me awake. My eyes snap open and I hold my breath. Was my building just hit with a bomb? No wait, I don’t think I’d just hear a crash if that was the case. Did someone just run their car into the building?

Slam .

“Sparrow! Open your damn door.”

My muscles relax. Not a car or a bomb. Just Xavi, who could be either if he chose. I rub my face with my hand and yawn.

“Sparrow!” He slams on the door again. Picking up my head, I can just barely see over the edge of the loft to where he’s got the door open, but the security chain is still keeping him out. “I’m going to bring metal cutters next time.”

Sighing, I pull myself up and head for the stairs. They’re not stairs that would meet code, but the kind that are smaller and can be removed if I want them out of the way. The treads are smaller than what’s probably safe and there’s no railing, so I generally climb them like they’re a ladder.

They’re perfect for what I needed them for and they’re unobtrusive and don’t take up a lot of space.

I push the door closed so I can undo the chain and pull it open. My cute bestie is standing there with his hands on his hips glaring at me.

“Did we have plans today?” I ask .

Xavi rolls his eyes. “No.”

“Did Enfield go somewhere and you’re lonely, so you decided to drop in on me?”

His cheeks flush a little. I smirk and take a step back. “Fine, you can come in, but I’m going back to bed. You’ll have to entertain yourself.”

“It’s ten!” he says indignantly.

“I’m tired,” I retort and head back for my stairs.

Xavi shuts the door. I hear the deadbolt, but he doesn’t add the chain again. Which is fine. There’s no way I’m going to be able to sleep now that he’s here. Pity. I was having a good dream. My dick thinks so too.

He follows me up the stairs and crouches beside my bed to frown at me some more. I ignore him for a minute until I can feel that he’s not going away. Sighing, I open my eyes. “What?”

“You could at least invite me to bed,” he says, pouting.

“Will your husband like that?”

He rolls his eyes. “He’s seen us cuddle. He’s not threatened.”

Sighing, I scootch back and hold up the blankets. “You know the rules—no street clothes in bed.”

Obediently, Xavi strips down to his tighty-whities and tee, then climbs into bed with me. I wrap my arm around him, bringing the blanket down. He snuggles back and then pulls forward again. “Put your cock away.”

“You interrupted a good dream. You have no one to blame but yourself.”

He sighs in exasperation. Honestly, he’s acting as if he’s the one being put out. “Why are you still in bed, anyway?”

“It’s the weekend and I don’t have to get up early.”

“So you stayed up too late fucking around at Rumor, huh?” he asks.

Dak flashes before my closed eyes. That’s no way to convince my cock to go down. “No. Rumor isn’t a late-night operation. It’s not a brothel.”

Xavi snorts. “I still find it amusing that they have a website with their hours of operation.”

“Otherwise, horny straight guys looking for what they presume is easy cash will show up at all hours. If you’re going to try on dick for a day, you’re doing it in the daylight. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Longwood is pretty cool,” he comments. “It’s a very progressive school as far as that’s concerned.”

“One of the reasons I chose it.”

“And it’s just far enough away from home where none of your family can randomly drop in on you,” he adds knowingly.

Don’t get me wrong—I love my family. My parents are amazing. I have the best triplet siblings a guy could ask for. And my extended family of neighborhood aunts, uncles, and cousins is equally as great. Nemy has five siblings, whom I love as if they were my own. The Whitaker uncles have three kids. Uncle Zarek’s six sisters have a dozen between them. I have a very large extended family.

And they’re shit at knowing what personal space is. I don’t hate it. Really. I’ve had an amazing childhood and am thankful all the time for my big family and how close we are. But seriously, I need some space. I’m twenty-five, for fuck’s sake. I’m far too old to have siblings and cousins and dads and uncles busting up in my space.

If I’d gone to Rainbow Dorset, they still would have. As much as I truly love that school, the seven hours’ distance was necessary. They can’t just drop in. And I purposefully got a studio apartment so there wasn’t anywhere for someone to stay with me.

It was just time I had some space.

Yet, I really miss them. I’m constantly thankful that Nemy is here. Just so I have a little piece of home who isn’t always up in my business. And he’s a good kid.

“Yeah,” I agree. “There’s that too.”

Xavi and Enfield bought a place twenty minutes away from campus as soon as I told Xavi I was going back to school and where. I don’t think he’s ready to be more than a town away from me yet, which I’m totally cool with. I love that my bestie is so close.

“Why are you really still in bed?” he asks.

“I’m tired,” I deadpan. “It’s easier to sleep when you’re not chatty.”

“It’d be easier to sleep if your erection wasn’t pressed to my ass,” he huffs.

“I told you. You interrupted a good dream. Now it’s your problem. ”

He snorts. “You dreaming about the guy from Rumor?”

My breath catches and my cock jumps. Something Xavi doesn’t miss. He laughs. “You are, aren’t you?!”

I sigh. “I don’t know who I was dreaming about. I just know that it was a good dream. As is evidenced by my cock.”

“Which got all excited when I mentioned the guy from Rumor.”

“Yes, well… he’s been a little maddening.”

It’s been two weeks since the second time we met at Rumor. In those two weeks, I’ve been called three more times for him. All three times have been very different and yet, we get to about the same place before he runs.

I’ve offered to let him fuck me first, but he seems equally terrified of that.

Yet, I keep going back when they call me. Wyatt joked that I should just give him my number and we can work this out outside of Rumor. I teased him that he’s tired of handing me $300 for each visit with Dak.

It’s the first time I’ve gotten the impression that they’re not at all hurting for cash. He just laughed and told me that I could live there and work in Rumor for years and they’ll happily pay out whatever I earn. My ‘fanbase’ would love that. They’re already trying to figure out what to do when I graduate because replacing me is going to be difficult.

I may have gone home and hunted down their porn account. Based on views alone, the content with me in it are definitely their top sellers.

They’re happy to give me money when I’m apparently bringing in a whole lot for them.

However, I have no interest in seeing myself messing around with random men, so I deleted the app again. It just felt a little awkward watching myself have sex.

“What’s he doing?” Xavi asks.

“Nothing wrong,” I say. “He just… he can’t get over the cameras. We get to the same moment, and he always suddenly remembers the cameras and turns into a frightened deer. Freezes. Then literally runs out the door.”

“That’s why you’re so hard. He never gets you off, huh? ”

“The point isn’t to get off early. We’re supposed to get to the end, you know?”

“I don’t know,” he muses. “It’s $50 for each orgasm, right?”

“No. It’s not cumulative. $50 for mine and $50 for his.”

“That’s what I meant. Might as well get up to $350 or $400. No one says you have to stop after the orgasm.”

“At this point, I’m going for gold. I want his fucking ass.”

Xavi laughs. “But realistically, how many guys make it that far?”

“Oh, almost none. But he fucking wants to. He doesn’t care about beating me or the money. He’s there for me.”

“So he says.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s fair. But in the few minutes we’ve talked leading up to heading into the room, I’m inclined to believe him. He’s working something out internally, and he needs me to find the answer.”

“He’s just hot for you. I think maybe he should admit it already and you can both move on.”

“Yeah,” I agree, except I don’t want that to happen if the way my chest tightens at the thought means anything at all. Which is silly. I know almost nothing about him except that he’s apparently less straight than he thought, and he wants to understand himself in that regard.

I’m the only man he’s found attractive so I’m integral in finding his answers.

Once, I’d told Xavi that I enjoyed taking all these guys’ firsts. That’s why I kept going back to Rumor. It was amusing to see how hard they’d get. How hard they’d come. And equally as amusing to see their freakouts. I could get through half a dozen men in a couple hours depending on how insistent they were that they’re straight.

But Dak… There’s something different about him. Maybe it’s the way his cheeks get pink. Or how obviously into it he is. How badly he wants me. Not some random guy, but me. Only. Me.

Is that what makes this so different? Because I’m the center of his desire? I’m the only one he wants to experiment with?

Because I’m not a challenge to him. He’s not trying to beat me. He’s into me and me alone. I like that.

“What’s his name?” Xavi asks.

“Hmm? ”

“This guy you’re dreaming about?”

I roll my eyes under my eyelids. “I told you; I don’t remember the dream. Only that it was sexy.”

“You didn’t say it was sexy.”

“My dick is ready to poke through your underwear. I think that’s a given.” Though, that’s not entirely true anymore. I’m definitely softening.

I adore Xavi, but he’s just never been my type. He’s far too soft and sweet for me. We used to muse that life would be better if we just loved each other because we get along so well.

When he’s not busting up in my space waking me up, anyway.

“You know what I’m asking.”

“Dak,” I answer.

“Dak who?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if that’s his real name. This is anonymous fucking.”

He hums. “Do you give them your name?”

“They know me as River, so yes, although no one actually calls me River except at Rumor so I doubt they know it’s my actual name.”

“Sparrow would be much more identifying. If they looked up River, they’d probably find your Maddy.”

I grin. “Oh boy, would my parents be furious.”

Xavi laughs. “Nah. I think they’d find it funny. I also think it would keep the people trying to identify you confused because you and Maddy don’t look anything alike.”

“Not true. I share a lot of features with Maddy.”

Growing up with a nonbinary parent meant we were always trying to find a parental title that wasn’t gender specific. One day, my Uncle Sage came over and showed my parents a book. It was an autobiography of a transgender woman and she explained that when she went from mom to dad with her kids, that it was confusing and didn’t really reflect how their relationship looked. Especially since their mother was very much present.

Honestly, the story of the family was beautiful. This wasn’t a broken household where this woman’s truth tore the family apart. She’s still married to her wife—her wife loved her just as much as she did when they married. Their kids weren’t confused or upset, but rolled with it, loving their mother just as much as they had their father.

It was a truly amazing, uplifting story.

But the point that Sage was showing us was how they didn’t call her Mom or Mommy or whatever. It started out as a teasing joke as she was transitioning that she was Mommy and Daddy so they started calling her M-ADDY. And the name stuck.

My parents loved that, so we started calling my nonbinary parent Maddy. When asked, my siblings and I say that it’s two-fold—they’re neither mommy nor daddy but sometimes, they’re mommy and daddy.

You weed out the dipshits this way too.

I hear a key in my door a few seconds before the bolt pulls back and the door swings open. Xavi and I lift our heads and try to crane our necks to see who let themselves in. Honestly, I’ve given out two keys and one of those assholes is already here.

“I need to stop giving out keys,” I mutter as Nemy walks in. He’s got a paper bag in his hand as he looks around the empty space.

Process of elimination has him looking up into my loft. A smile lights up his face. “You’re having a cuddle and didn’t invite me?”

He shuts the door and crosses the space to set down the bag. I lose sight of him because of my angle and the loft floor, but it isn’t long before I hear his feet on the ladder steps and his adorable face pops up.

Nemy strips and then dives into bed with us. We wrap around him, and he sighs contentedly. You’d think this man was touch starved, which is not the case. He just comes from a very cuddly and affection-positive household. So it was a rude adjustment for him to step into the real world where not everyone is quite so openly affectionate and forthcoming with their emotions.

We spent a lot of last year cuddling while he worked through some shit in his new reality. And maybe the mess he’d created for himself. Thankfully that turned out well enough.

“What brings you to interrupt my sleep?” I ask.

“It’s like 11:30 now,” Nemy says. “Why are you still in bed?”

“He’s having sexy dreams. His dick is still pressed to my ass.”

I sigh dramatically. “It’s practically soft. I question Enfield’s endowment if you think this is hard, beautiful. ”

“Enfield has no issue in the dick department,” Xavi says.

“But really,” Nemy interrupts. “Why are you still in bed?” He leans up on his elbow to look at me. “Are you depressed, Sparrow? Is that why you’re sleeping all day?”

I pull him in close and hug him tightly. “No, precious. I’m just tired. Been a long week.”

“A long week of being edged without satisfaction,” Xavi mutters.

“Ohhh,” Nemy cheers, sitting back and grinning. “Story time. Tell me.”

I glare at Xavi who simply bats his eyes as if he’s all innocent and shit. Fucker.

“Childhood friends are the worst,” I hiss.