By Hunter Perez

I work in commercial real estate and I am frequently sent around the country to broker property sales and leasing. I am usually sent to the same cities over and over – New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles – but one assignment required that I go to Albuquerque to coordinate the sale of an apartment complex. I had never been to Albuquerque and knew nothing about it except that it was a jokey reference in several Bugs Bunny cartoons.

My initial online research into the city turned up nothing that piqued my interest – I am not one for museums and historic sites, so I feared that my distraction options were limited. I wondered if any of my connections on social media could offer better ideas on possible free time adventures in Albuquerque, so I posted an inquiry on my page for suggestions to keep me amused during the leisure time portion of the trip.

For a few days, I received no input from my social media connections – it seemed that no one in my online circle ever found their way to that location. But then, I received a message that I was never expecting.

“Hey stranger, LTNS! What good luck to know you’re going to be in my part of the world! I am negotiating on the purchase of a ghost town about an hour outside of Albuquerque. It was a thriving area in the 19th century and was used as a movie set in the 30s and was a tourist attraction in the 50s. I would love to get your real estate input on whether this could make a good purchase. And, of course, I would love to see you again. Send me a direct message and we can make this happen. Nicky Danielson.”

Nicky was not part of my social media network. In fact, I had not been in touch with him for nearly 10 years, nor did I give him thought during the past decade. Yet seeing his name and knowing that he wanted to reconnect unleashed strange emotions.

I knew Nicky when I was in college – I was a junior and he was a freshman. We became acquainted because he was struggling in his English classes and he was sent to the college’s tutoring center to get his writing up to college level. I was the tutor assigned to help him, though I can’t say I was impressed. He was a pale, somewhat doughy kid with long hair and a sullen low-energy personality. Truth be told, I was a somewhat antisocial character and not interested in making friends, especially with someone two grades below me.

After about a month as tutor and student, an electrical fire started at the tutoring center and burned the place to the ground. We were forced to relocate our lessons elsewhere, but there were few on-campus options – the cafeteria was too noisy and the library wouldn’t enable us to continually converse. With no feasible option, I recommended my off-campus studio apartment. The place was quiet during the day, and since we usually had our tutoring sessions in the early afternoon I figured I could enjoy my lunch at home and then try to get Nicky’s writing skills up to par. Plus, I could still get paid for my tutoring.

In our first tutoring session at my place, Nicky seemed uncomfortable. It was no secret on campus that I was gay, though I never really flaunted it, but perhaps he was uneasy about being alone with me in my place. For the second session, he was even more ill at ease – to the point that he was making me nervous. But midway through our lesson while we sat at my kitchen table, he blurted out, “Do you mind if I kiss you?”

I didn’t know how to react – Nicky didn’t send off any gaydar pings, and there was nothing in his behavior to suggest I aroused his fancy. He began to look crestfallen when I didn’t immediately answer his request, so I laughed slightly and said, “If you want to, but it won’t help with your writing.”

Nicky quickly leaned forward and pressed his lips on mine, inhaling and exhaling with a gusto that nearly threw me off my chair. I pushed myself from him and found myself laughing out loud.

“I think you’ve confused kissing with inflating a Thanksgiving parade balloon,” I said.

Nicky didn’t find that funny and he looked away, slumping in his chair. I reached over, put my hand under his chin, turned his face to mine and whispered, “Just follow my lead.”

I kissed him slowly but firmly, moving my chair closer to him while drawing his body closer to me. Nicky’s nervousness evaporated and I felt a warm serenity from our shared emotion. We disengaged and stared at each other; I smiled and then he smiled. Without saying anything, I stood up, took his hand and directed him to my bed. By the time our passion was exhausted, it was close to midnight. Nicky fell asleep on my chest and I spent most of the night staring at the ceiling and wondering what I got myself into.

We started to see a lot of each other. Maybe too much. Looking back, I realize that I was the worst thing for Nicky. He fell madly in love with me, but I didn’t really love him. I loved the sex and the attention he gave me, and I callously exploited it the fullest. I would ask if he could clean my place, take care of my laundry and grocery shopping, and even have meals ready for me when I was working late on a second job I had in the school’s library. He handled those chores with happy efficiency. It was the first time I had a degree of power over someone and, yes, I abused it.

One night, he asked me for a favor. He produced a box of handcuffs and asked me to cuff him behind his back. I chuckled at this unexpected bit of kinky fun and gladly obliged him. Once he was cuffed he began to rub his body against and try to kiss my lips.

“What do I have to do to get uncuffed, sir?” he whispered playfully.

“I could use a little servicing, boy,” I said, pushing my hands on his shoulders to force him on his knees, at which point I unzipped my fly and brought out my cock for him. I never saw him happier.

I looked at Nicky’s message on my social media page and choked when rereading “I would love to see you again.” I felt ashamed remembering how I didn’t want to see him again.

During that semester, a friend contacted me with the opportunity for a job managing a luxury condo complex in Martinique. I was bored of my college studies and eager to get out of classrooms and make something of my life. I thought it would be fun to go someplace different and dive into the working world.

Ahead of the Thanksgiving break, I told Nicky that I was dropping out and would be leaving the country.  He started to cry violently and sobbed that he loved me and wanted to go with me. I didn’t say where I was going, as I had a feeling that he would try to follow me, and I explained that I couldn’t take him with me due to the nature of my job and his need to complete his education. I also tried to assure him that he would find someone else after I was gone. Nothing I could say would console or appease him, and I spend the night holding him while he tried to dial down his emotions.

When I left college and headed for Martinique, I wanted to make a clean break with the world I was leaving behind, especially Nicky. I terminated my social media pages and took a new cell phone number that only my immediate family was provided. My brother informed me that Nicky made several attempts to reach me through my family. I instructed my brother not to forward any communications from him and Nicky eventually disappeared completely from my life.

But, clearly, I didn’t disappear from his life. I had returned to social media a few years ago, but never thought of tracking Nicky down. Was he stalking me and waiting for the right moment to get back in touch? Or was his outreach just a random coincidence? I don’t remember him being from New Mexico, and I couldn’t imagine how he became wealthy enough to want to buy a ghost town.

I was also curious regarding how he might have changed over 10 years. I looked at his social media profile and found no information about what he did for a living. His social media page had exactly four photographs. Three were typical gym rat selfies taken in a bathroom mirror to show off his physique – the doughy kid from a decade ago obviously found the weight room and turned his body into a creation worthy of a fitness model’s career. The one thing unclear in those photographs was his face – his phone obscured most of his face, although I could see his long hair had since been replaced with a high-and-tight cut.

The fourth photograph was truly unexpected. It seemed to be taken in a suburban backyard and showed Nicky in an orange speedo while he held a skinny guy in a headlock at waist level. The imprisoned guy had a desperate look on his face while his body was twisted in an unnatural pose. Nicky, however, had a deep smirk and his face seemed more chiseled than I recalled. His body was a mass of muscles, a complete work of human power. I would never have guessed that the person in that photo was once the college kid in my bed.

I found myself gazing at that photo for the longest time, dumbfounded at how Nicky had changed and wondering what it would have been like to be the other guy who was trapped in Nicky’s muscular headlock. The hypnotic attraction of the photo was eventually broken when a direct message window popped up on my screen – it was Nicky.

“Did you get my message?” he wrote.

I was going to answer, but there was something that didn’t feel right. I was not nostalgic to reunite with him, and suddenly the smirking muscleman in the photo seemed like a stranger whom I did not wish to know. He messaged again, writing, “Please. I do miss you. I still love you.”

I found myself directing my cursor to the settings tab to block Nicky from contacting me through social media. Another message flashed on my screen: “I still love you. Please see me.”

I held the cursor over the setting for “Block” and trembled.

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Metal would like to thank the author, Hunter Perez, for this story!  He’s also author of The Friend Request, available on Amazon.