Platonic Read Online Free PDF Page A

mouth, but a solid fifteen minutes of working him with lips and tongue and fist has Patrick twisting a hand in Mark’s hair and grasping at his shoulder as he throbs on his tongue and comes in the condom.
    This time Mark gets to watch the pull of pleasure over his face.
    Afterward, with Mark bent over the desk, Patrick’s fingers in Mark’s ass and his mouth on Mark’s balls, Patrick assures Mark that he can teach him how to swallow his full length.
    ***
    It’s frighteningly easy, what they get going. Most of it happens at Patrick’s apartment; faculty and the other students can’t know. It happens late at night when they’re both strung out and a little bit tired, or lazily over the weekend. They fuck a lot, and slowly any animosity on Mark’s part fades with the realization that this can be good, can be what he needs. They become friends. They have sleepovers that aren’t awkward in the morning. They get breakfast afterward and talk about politics and philosophy.
    Knowing Patrick graduated summa cum laude a couple of years ago and wishing to know how, Mark takes advantage of their time together without guilt. He learns things about himself and about Patrick, about sex. He asks for things he usually wouldn’t because it seems as if there is so much less to lose and because Patrick coaxes him into it. His time with Patrick teaches him how to communicate better than any of his prior “real” relationships have.
    They get drunk on the sofa one night while watching an old black and white movie on TV.
    “So how is this different from having an actual, in-love romantic relationship?” Mark asks, his hands around Patrick’s ankles as they rest in his lap, slowly rubbing the smooth skin there. He knows it’s different; it feels different, it feels easier, but he isn’t sure how.
    “Commitment. I don’t want to marry you,” Patrick says and stretches for the vodka bottle.
    “That’s good,” Mark says. His words feel heavy on his tongue and his mind feels slow. “I don’t want to marry you either.”
    “That’s a relief. At the start I think you did. You kinda came at the whole thing backwards, if you think about it.”
    “Hey!” Mark pinches Patrick’s calf.
    “You happy with this?”
    “Yeah.” He means it. “I’m just trying to figure it out.”
    “This is easy. No marriage, no kids, no nothing. Don’t get me wrong, you’re an incredible lay and I like your brain, but if you left tomorrow I’d be okay with that.”
    “That’s ‘cause you have all your other fuck-buddies.”
    Passing the vodka to Mark so he can take a swig, Patrick doesn’t deny it.
    “You’d miss me if I died,” Mark remarks a few minutes later.
    Patrick laughs, unfazed. “Yeah, I’d be upset, I really would. But I wouldn’t be heartbroken.”
    “We’re not that good friends?”
    “Not yet.”
    Mark humphs and kisses the top of one of Patrick’s big toes.
    “So how come you were so desperate to marry me?” Patrick asks.
    “I wasn’t—”
    “Yeah, you were.”
    “I want that,” Mark admits, his voice immediately tight and small with the admission. “I want the wedding and the children and the house.”
    “You’re what? Twenty-three? You’re supposed to be having fun.”
    Mark just stares at Patrick’s feet and tries to think why he hasn’t been having fun for the last few years. Sure, he can blame his parents—his father especially—and his own dedication to his studies. But Stanford has its fair share of fun; he makes friends easily and he knows he doesn’t have to study quite as hard as he does, not all the time. Patrick means relationships, though, means having sex for the sake of it, and that has never seemed to fit Mark. Not until now. He wonders if perhaps this is one more thing to add to the list of things that are not quite right with him. He wonders if being so deeply in love at sixteen, as he had been, might inevitably make you chase that feeling forever.
    “Who was before