A Man is Known by his Actions

“Something you want to talk about?” Gavin repeated, his mind immediately running through a list of probable topics. He’d already told his best friend everything about his late-night run-in with Ashley, and he’d already told him about Victoria and Kurt getting together. The only thing he could think of that Zack might want to talk about was the argument he’d had with the pair while Zack had been cooking breakfast. “Alright, shoot.”

“Listen, I need you to tell me, and be completely honest, if there’s anything going on between you and Ashley?” Zack asked gravely, his face expressionless.

“Me and Ashley?” Gavin was baffled. “Uh, I already told you we kinda fucked and masturbated last night.”

“No, I mean, anything more going on between you two,” Zack clarified, watching Gavin’s face as the other teen stopped washing the dish in his hands and turned to look back at him. “You two aren’t like 'together' behind my back or anything are you?”

Gavin gave a short laugh and shook his head. “No way. Anything that’s happened between us has been purely physical and completely accidental. I know how it might look, but I swear, as your best friend, there’s nothing more going on than what we’ve told you.”

Zack breathed, relieved, a soft smile rising to his lips. He knew that Victoria had gotten it wrong. This was his best friend she was talking about, and Ashley had always been open and honest with him. Despite the mistakes they’d made, he knew he could trust them both. A more foolish man might have taken Victoria at her word and gotten pissed but he was thankful that he had to good sense to actually talk to his friends, rather than making assumptions based on bad facts.

“Thanks, man,” Zack said, cheerfully, slapping his friend on the shoulder. “That’s all I needed to know.”

“Yeah, no sweat,” Gavin replied, bemused but glad that the issue had been insignificant and easy to clear up. But it still perplexed him, because the question had seemingly come out of nowhere. If this was what he had been thinking, why not ask it after he found out what happened last night? Before Zack could leave, Gavin continued. “It’s not like you to be so insecure about these things though.”

“Well, yeah, it was just something Victoria said that got me thinking, and she was pretty convincing,” Zack admitted, scratching his head. Though, thinking back, Victoria’s lack of clothing had probably clogged up his rational thinking.

At hearing Victoria’s name, Gavin groaned, turning back and placing the rinsed plate in his hand into the dishwasher. “I wouldn’t trust anything Victoria says about me at the minute. Everything she does seems to be done to hurt me.”

“She’s not happy with Ashley right now either,” Zack remarked, mentally acknowledging that Victoria was likely taking her anger at her best friend out on Ashley’s relationship with him. “They had a fight this morning over Kurt, because you’d gone around telling everyone they hooked up.”

“It is true, I did do that, but I wasn’t spying or gossiping. People just kept asking and I didn’t think anything of telling them. They left the door half open, it didn’t seem like they were trying to keep it a secret either. But now Vicky just seems to be on this scorched earth policy now,” Gavin said, taking another plate and running it under the water. Curious, he asked, “What exactly did she say to make you think that?”

“Oh, she seemed to think, on the night they caught you jerking off with Ashley’s underwear in the living room, that Ashley wanted to be the one to sit on face,” Zack explained, a little uncomfortable even saying these words to his best friend about his own girlfriend. “She had nothing really to prove it though, just a look in Ashley’s eyes she claimed to have seen.”

Gavin froze, swallowing hard, holding the plate steady beneath the stream of water. He knew the silence would be damning but he didn’t know what to say. He should deny it…but what if he asked Ashley later, and she told him the truth. Then Zack would know Gavin lied and it’d look even worse for the two of them. Maybe he could talk to Ashley before Zack got to her…but then it might look like they really were conspiring to cover something up between them. To simply tell the truth though would absolutely nuke his relationship with Ashley without her even realising.

Unfortunately, just as he thought, the lack of reply from Gavin was extremely telling to Zack, his relaxed and calm composure becoming tense and strained again, his eyebrows curling down, furrowing his forehead as all the apprehension and dread came rushing back to him. Clearly his best friend was hiding something, struggling with whether to tell him, but if this concerned his relationship with Ashley, Zack wasn’t going to be dissuaded. He needed to know.

“Gavin,” He entreated stiffly. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“It’s really nothing,” Gavin contended. “She was probably drunk when she said it.”

“I’ll decide if it’s nothing,” Zack said, remembering Victoria’s insistence that either of the Woodsen girls would have been able to drink twice as much as anyone else that night of the foursome and still be of sound mind to know exactly what they were saying.

“Alright, alright, but for the record I don’t think it matters. It was just the **** and the lust and the general atmosphere of the-”

“Gavin!” Zack growled, furious intensity behind his eyes.

Adjusting his glasses on his face, nervous sweating having cause them to slip down his nose, Gavin sighed, seeing no way out of it and resigned himself to telling Zack what he needed to hear. Mentally apologising to Ashley, he began, “Okay, well, during the last round of Never Have I Never, we’d stopped drinking and we were betting clothes. I was out and so was Chloe, so it was down to Ashley and Hannah.”

Zack caught the implication that, if Gavin was out, it meant that he was sitting naked with the three girls. Nothing unexpected so far.

“For Ashley’s turn, she said she never wanted to suck my cock, but Hannah wasn’t buying it. She asked a lot of questions, like if Ashley hadn’t thought about it during the night before when she jacked me off into her panties. Ashley denied everything and eventually Hannah took off her underwear and Ashley won,” Gavin continued, his voice becoming more strained and anxious as he continued. “Then she announced that she lied.”

“What?” Zack seethed. She’s always painted the scenario as heat of the moment, domino effect events and yet here she was, drunk or not, admitting to a premeditated desire to suck another man’s cock. A desire that had predated their separation because it had begun the night before when she’d made him cum into her own underwear. And yet, by the sheepish look on Gavin’s face, Zack could tell that he wasn’t finished. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

“Right, so, the three of them blow me, but I’m still hard, because, of course I am. It’s three smoking hot women completely naked right in front of me. It was like something out of a wet dream. Sorry, too much information, I know. But also, **** makes me horny. Dunno why, but that’s what made my first time with Victoria so easy. And it was just the general eroticism of the whole night-”

“Gavin!” Zack cut in again. “Get to the fucking point.”

“Ah, sorry, so we’re all done, but Hannah, you know Hannah, she’s all ‘it doesn’t have to end’ and she’s asking Ashley if there’s nothing else she wanted to do. Ashley admits there was one thing, and then she throws her leg over and sits on my face. She said pretty much what Victoria did, that she was tempted the night before but didn’t,” Gavin revealed, watching his best friend’s face flicker between fury and heartbreak. “But, I mean, so what? Haven’t we all wanted to do something with someone else? Just desiring it isn’t a crime.”

“But she didn’t just desire it. At the first opportunity, she acted upon them. She didn’t have to do anything about it, even if she wanted it or had to admit it as part of the game. But she did. She acted upon her wants and whims, ones she’d begun harbouring while we were still dating, following through even though she knew how I felt,” Zack countered, shaking his head, his eyes wide, pupils constricted. “I was right. She needs the thrill and risk. She is just a cheater.”

“Aren’t you responsible for that too?” Gavin asked, **** the mend the damage he felt he’d caused. “She cheated with you first when she was with Brandon.”

“I thought that we had something more meaningful than just a cheating fling. The only other person I’ve fucked is Lisa, and that was at Ashley’s behest,” Zack replied, sucking on his teeth as he felt like just screaming. “But apparently, she’s been thinking about other people, just waiting for the right time. She might say that she loves me, Gavin, but she hasn’t shown it.”

“Please, Zack, before you decide on anything, just talk to her,” Gavin pleaded, doing everything but dropping to his knees to beg. “I’m sure she’ll be able to explain it.”

“Oh, I definitely intend on talking to her about this,” Zack assured him, though his furious, determined tone did little to comfort his best friend.

Without any further discussion, Zack stalked from the room, his mind heavy with everything Gavin had told him. He was sure that if he talked to Ashley she could explain everything, just as Gavin suggested…but he was tired of her explanations. Especially since they left out important details like wanting to sit on his best friend’s face and suck his cock. And he was under no delusion that that was all Gavin and Ashley did. And maybe she’d wanted that too. But no matter what her true feelings or desires were, she always painted herself as the innocent, stumping into these situations. When the reality was maybe she wanted to be in those situations more than she was willing to admit…and more than Zack had been willing to accept.

Pondering all of this, he left the kitchen, his head bent low in thought as he walking into the living area.