Release

by Patrick Ness

Adam imagined the look on his dad’s face if he’d gone to him the first time after full penetration with Enzo.

Oh, myyy! Patrick, so naughty naughty!

“Just be a witness to this boy, son.” Adam was astonished (again) to see what seemed to be tears in his father’s eyes. “You could be so effective. So, so effective.” Well, Adam had thought to himself, I’ve had my mouth on his bare skin. That seemed to be effective.

A boy can only hope! :D

Why did everyone no longer a teenager automatically dismiss any feeling you had then? Who cared if he’d grow out of it? That didn’t make it any less true in those painful and euphoric days when it was happening. The truth was always now, even if you were young. Especially if you were young.

He’d witnessed to Enzo with his love.

So why did it still ache?

Because it was first love?

When I realized how things were, when I said to myself that I am not this thing I’ve been told I have to be, that I am this other thing instead, then Jesus, Ange, the label didn’t feel like a prison, it felt like a whole new freaking map, one that was my own, and now I can take any journey I want to take and it’s possible I might even find a home there. It’s not a reduction. It’s a key.”

At the end of the night, they kissed in a shadow outside. Enzo tasted of pretzels and warm, his lips as soft as a sleepy puppy.

It was so much easier to be loved than to have to do any of the desperate work of loving.

“You’re becoming Catholic?”

Lol

I love you but . . . It was always, always, “I love you but . . .”

Because there was always a wound, it seemed, kept freshly opened by a family who also kept saying they loved him.

Maybe love made you stupid. Maybe loneliness did.

“I love you,” Adam said, eyes firmly on the mountain.

Beautiful and hot scene!

If you ever fall, I’m here to catch you. Or not, actually, you’re a giant, but I’m here to at least watch you fall and then get bandages.”

Adam found Larry crying in his bedroom. Seven minutes and an ejaculation later, Larry was crying again, but for different reasons: gratitude and guilt.

“Is it okay if I haven’t kissed anyone before?” Adam had asked, finally up in Philip’s bedroom.

This is the one of the best stories of gay intimacy I have ever read in a book. Patrick totally nailed it.

“I’m sorry I’m a little hefty,” Adam said. “I’m not.”

“Never pass up the chance to be kissing someone. It’s the worst kind of regret.”