Kyle took the train to my place. It was a decision that both confused and elated me with remembrance of our first time together. I drove down to pick him up and found him waiting at the terminal with overnight bag in hand.

I embraced him and he placed a careful kiss on my cheek. It was the first intimacy he had offered me in public. For a moment, I pulled away. Then, I twisted and kissed his lips. He smiled.

"It's good to see you," I said, suddenly awkward.

People were milling all about us, paying us no mind, but I was reminded that this was my place, not his. Now, it was my public image that would be seen with him.

We'd been together for several months now and had only just made good on our plan to have a date away from Mack. Together. Still, I was having trouble admitting to myself that our weekly trysts were more than drunken debauchery. With him in front of me here, in this place, it was even more difficult to deny.

"What did you tell Mack?" I asked him.

I made myself take him by the hand and lead him out of the station to my waiting car.

He paused.

"I told her I was going home to visit my parents," he said, reluctantly. "She says she doesn't want to meet them yet, so, I thought..."

"So, this is a secret," I said. It wasn't a question. Somehow, I had known. Somehow, this felt like cheating.

"She gets me to herself all the time," Kyle said. "I figure you can too."

My heart leapt inside of me and my feet almost missed a step. It was an echo of what I'd been feeling, a worry and a jealousy that had nestled into me from the first day we three had started dating--or whatever you'd call what we are was.

"I think that," Kyle hesitated. "I think that you and I needed Mack to be there that first time or we never would have gotten together--you were still hung up on being labelled gay. Maybe we still need her. But what we have is our own, you know?"

He stopped me and I turned to look at him. His eyes were searching, pleading. One phrase stuck out to me: Maybe we still need her. It implied: Maybe we don't.

I nodded. Kyle stepped closer to me, slowly. He kissed me with a tenderness that hadn't been there before. My heart leapt inside of me again and I accepted the kiss.

Suddenly, it struck me that Kyle was uncomfortable with us in public not because of me, but because of me and Mack. He'd never been uncomfortable about his and my relationship. That was all me.

Me without Mack: is that what he wants? I wasn't sure how I felt about it as images of her flooded my mind. She'd been his girlfriend first, but in the series of dates since the bowling alley, she'd started to feel more like mine, too.

"Let's not talk about Mack today," Kyle said, suddenly. "Let's let it just be us, okay?"

He squeezed my hand reassuringly and I squeezed back, uncertain.

"Okay," was all I said.

I popped the trunk for him and he dropped his bag inside.

"So, where are you taking me?"

I brought him on a hike up the side of Whering Bluff. Subconsciously, I may have chosen the location because I knew the trail would be quiet and we could be alone, but I also knew that from the top, we could see practically to his town off in the distance. It was a beautiful hike up near-vertical climbs in some places, but with plenty of places to stop and overlook the area.

If he noticed that I was hiding us, Kyle didn't say anything. If anything, he took the opportunity to pin me against trees and lay long kisses on me, his dick stiffening in his pants against me. Once, he'd gotten as far as bringing my cock out and dropping to his knees before I'd stopped him--in time for another hiking couple to pass us by unnoticed. He calmed down after that, letting me lead him to the top and point out the landmarks from the bare hill of the overlook.

I couldn't deny that it was a date. All of the other times we'd been alone together, there'd been alcohol or exhaustion or sheer horniness to explain what happened. Before that, there'd just been days playing video games or watching football or other people around to prove that our relationship was merely platonic. But I never would have climbed that hill with another man. It was the kind of outing I only would have thought up as an awkward second date with a Tinder match.

Throughout the walk--and between his advances--I could only watch him and his body, working and sweating up the hill. I felt his fingers intertwine with mine and his lips curl in a smile for me. I was happy.

"What are we to each other, do you think?" Kyle said afterwards. "I know we said we didn't want to be, you know, boyfriends, but..."

I'd brought him to the local diner for lunch, softening my explicitly romantic walk with an explicitly platonic eating place. Still, it felt right with him. Familiar. He reached his hand across the table to hold mine.

"Yeah," I said, looking down at our intertwined fingers, "it sure feels like we are."

"Fuck buddies with a shared girlfriend?" he said.

We laughed.

"I think I'm ready to label it," I said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

I kissed him, there in front of everyone. And I didn't give it a second thought.

We talked and ate together until the sun sank to an orange behind the silhouettes of houses. Afterwards, he paid the bill and I drove him home, heart thumping in my chest. This would be my first reveal, a collision of my straight world and my real world. I unlocked the double lock and stepped into my apartment where my roommate was waiting.

Jake was on the couch, watching the game with a beer. He turned when Kyle and I came in but made no motion of surprise.

"Jake, this is my boyfriend, Kyle," I said stiffly. "Kyle, Jake."

The word had slipped out more easily than I had expected. Jake received it without reaction.

"Nice to meet you," Kyle said.

Jake raised his arm from the couch and smiled.

"You guys want to hang out?" he said. "I've got the game on."

Kyle looked at me, then back to Jake.

"That's okay," I said. "We're gonna do our own thing."

The lump was rising in my throat.

Kyle grinned. Jake returned his attention back to the TV and didn't make so much as a motion of surprise until I led Kyle into my bedroom and shut the door behind us.

"You said it.'" Kyle said, sitting down on the bed.

"I figured he'd figure it out either way when he heard you getting fucked."

"What makes you think you'll be the one doing the fucking?"

I grinned and leapt across the room, knocking him over and pinning him to the bed. Kyle struggled against me, but not convincingly. I wrestled him down, planting forceful kisses on his lips and tearing at his T-shirt until he let me take it off. Then, my mouth moved down to his chest.

He stopped resisting when his pants hit the floor and my mouth found his cock. I slipped him into my throat and caressed his ass with eager fingers.

I pushed him down my throat as deep as I could before spitting him out. His fingers interlocked behind my head and forced me back down. My eyes watered.

After that, we were both stripping off as quickly as we could, clothes thrown out across the floor with little thought. I touched every part of his body before I reached for the lube.

"I've wanted you to myself since the first time we did this," Kyle moaned as I stroked my cock, ready to push myself inside of him.

Before he could try to get up or feign more resistance, I plunged myself inside of him. It was getting easier the more we did it, but no less exciting.

"Oh," he cried. "Yes, fuck me, Just."

If Jake didn't hear that, he'll hear this, I thought, thrusting harder into Kyle.

Kyle's cock was slapping against his belly. The headboard was banging against the wall. There was no point in hiding it any longer.

Something about his eyes, locked on mine, mine this sex more intimate than any we'd had before. I realized that we were right. Whatever this had begun as, we were boyfriends now. This was a romance.

"Justin."

My name was a whisper in his mouth, drawing me down.

He reached up and cupped the back of my neck, pulling me into him with a kiss. With one hand, I kept him pinned to the bed and stroked his cock with the other while I thrusted into him.

It didn't take long before I had turned him over and found the perfect spot. I was hitting it over and over, generating waves of pleasure that travelled through me and into him. With one hand between his legs and the other wrapped in my sheets, Kyle came explosively with a long, drawn-out moan that felt as much for my benefit as it was for Jake.

When I came moments after, I splashed it across his ample backside and collapsed back into the bed covered in my own sweat and semen. To my surprise, Kyle crawled up and nestled into me. Any cuddling that had been down between us usually came with the presence of Mack or alcohol. Today, we had neither.

His eyes found mine again and he kissed me. All day, I'd been anticipating this: fucking him. I thought that maybe it had drawn out the things I said. But, no. Having his warm, heaving body on mine in the bliss of sex, I still wanted him, still...

"I love you," I whispered, surprised to hear the words myself.

"I love you, too."