Roll Tide by Janey Chapel

A snippet featuring the BFF universe characters, first introduced here, in honor of the BCS Championship Game Thursday night.

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California didn't look anything like Alabama.

Instead of the rolling hills and green trees he and Jake knew back home, Route 1 came with cliffs that dropped down to the sea, rocks, sand and flowers in colors Corey couldn't name. The sun had started to set in the wrong place, but it shone down warm on them once they found a slice of beach to claim as their own. The girls all had white teeth and tans. The boys looked like they'd been carved by the rough surf into slick planes and angles.

Santa Monica felt like a foreign country.

"You about done communing with nature or whatever?"

Corey turned his head and watched as Jake shook the beer can in his hand and tipped it up, pouring a few drops of foam onto the sand.

"Just about," he said. "You ready to go?"

"In a minute,” Jake said with a shrug. “I'm running out of beer.”

Corey had gotten him to ditch the non-stop tailgate party at the Rose Bowl by holding up a six-pack of Bud, aiming a leer at Jake's crotch and pointing toward the parking lot. He supposed he could be accused of teasing, but he couldn't think of anything else that would tear Jake away from the steady stream of alcohol-induced boosterism. In Alabama, if football was religion, then the tailgate was the altar.

The University of Alabama had made it to the BCS Championship Game. The boosters had bought themselves a coach for a shitload of money, and in a few hours' time, the Crimson Tide would roll onto the field against the University of Texas Longhorns, with the national title going to the victor. He and Jake would be in the stands watching, painted red down to their boxers, screaming themselves hoarse over action they'd see better on the Jumbotron than from their nosebleed seats.

The flight out, the hotel room they were sharing with three other guys, the rental car and the jacked-up California prices had eaten a hole in his savings account that he'd be filling back in until he turned thirty.

But none of that mattered.

Being there mattered. Being there with Jake mattered.

Corey breathed in a lungful of alien, exotic smells: exhaust fumes, sea spray and baby oil. A rock -- probably a chunk off some long-gone volcano -- nudged against the arch of his foot and he pressed against it, letting the small pain bring everything more sharply into focus. Life didn't get much better than this, and he didn't want to miss a minute of it.

"It's nice out here," Jake said. He stripped off his shirt and leaned back on his elbows. "Too bad there's so many people."

"Why?"

Jake spread his knees, drawing the fabric of his khaki shorts tight across the front, where his cock stretched a blunt line. He shifted his hips. "You know why."

Yeah. Corey knew.

There'd never been daylight involved before. They'd always used the dark to hide and the drink to excuse what they'd been getting up to: hands shoved down unzipped jeans, mouths set to whatever skin could be found, frantic and furtive, rocket fast.

"You want to--" Corey hadn’t ever put words to it. Fool around? Hook up? Fuck? None of them sounded right to him.

"Don't you?" Jake dropped his head back and closed his eyes.

"We can't," Corey said, his voice strangled. "Not here."

"So let's go back."

Corey guessed sleeping on the beach and eating fish tacos for breakfast wasn’t an option. He sighed. Back to the party. Back to the beer, the pig pickin’, the rah-rah, doing the wave with eighty thousand people, forty thousand wearing orange, the other forty wearing red. Do or die time: score or go home. Win or lose.

Corey flexed his toes in the sand, stepping hard on the pebble. He’d take the bruise with him; a reminder. "Okay, let’s go,” he said. “By the time we get through traffic, it'll be about time for the kickoff."

Jake laughed and squinted up at him, shading his face with his hand. "Screw the game."

Corey started. "What?"

Jake sat up and leaned in, saying softly, "If everybody's at the game, then..."

Holy crap. "Nobody's at the hotel."

Hey, look, maybe he wasn’t a California surfer dude or a starting QB or even particularly bright, but point him in the right direction and he’d get there eventually. In this case, it meant giving up the sand, the sunset, the pissed-off ocean smacking against the shore, trading it for a few hours in a hotel room…with Jake.

"Now you're getting it,” Jake said, the promise in his smile making Corey’s dick jerk in his pants.

The Tide would just have to roll on without them.

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© Janey Chapel 2009

Visit Janey Chapel's page at the GLBT Bookshelf