“So, since it’s Friday, are you coming over to my place to go swimming after school today?” I asked Gary as we headed for another scintillating day at Edison High School.

“Yup. I wouldn’t miss it for anything. How are we getting to your house?”

“My mom’s going to pick up Chloe at Jefferson Middle School, then pick us up and drop us at my house; then she’s taking Chloe to the dentist. They won’t be home until somewhere around five-thirty or six. So that will give us unfettered use of the pool for at least two hours.”

“Cool. Did you remember that we don’t have PE today?” he asked.

“Why won’t we have PE?”

“Ryan, Ryan, Ryan! How quick you are to forget!”

“Forget what?”

“We’re having sex ed today instead of PE. So, no suiting up, no getting sweaty, no showering after. Just listening to forty-five minutes of bullshit that we already know.”

“Fuuuuck! I forgot. Probably exactly the same bullshit that we sat through last year when we were freshmen.”

“Yup.”

“Maybe it would be better if we sat in on the girl’s sex ed class.” I grinned and wiggled my eyebrows.

“As if!”

Actually, I discovered that the class was better than last year’s. Instead of Coach Blathers — his last name was actually Mathers — there was someone new, Coach Templeton, who was young and did a hell of a lot better job explaining stuff and actually making it interesting and fun.

Like, instead of telling us that most boys masturbate and then just going on to the next thing on the list, he asked, “How many of you have never masturbated?” Two guys, Kenny Post and Bret Williams, raised their hands. They’re the class wiseasses. So then he asked, “How many of you think those two guys are lying?” and everyone raised their hand except Kenny and Bret. We all busted up laughing, including Kenny and Bret. We immediately liked our new coach.

We were able to get out at exactly 3:05 PM, and my mom was waiting for us at the pick-up area in front of Edison High. Fortunately, she didn’t grill us much about how school was. After I told her we had our sex ed class today she suddenly didn’t have any additional questions. Chloe did, but Mom told her to shush. Five minutes later we were home and Mom and Chloe were on their way to have Chloe’s teeth sanded or whatever it was they were going to do to her. She doesn’t mind going to the dentist. I seriously don’t like going to the dentist. So, better her than me.

As soon as we got in the house I ran out back and made sure Mom had turned on the pool heater — she had — then checked the water temperature and found it was okay. Then I ran back inside to my room.

Gary was standing there holding his maroon Speedo with the gold stripes on the left hip. He tossed it on my bed. I opened my dresser drawer and pulled out my Speedo that was the same color and design and tossed it on my bed. Then I started to strip. I was down to nothing but my boxer briefs when I noticed that Gary was struggling with his jeans.

“So, why aren’t you getting undressed?”

“I can’t get these fucking jeans unbuttoned!”

“Why not?”

“The button hole is too small.”

“Then how did you put them on this morning?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t have any problem with them. It’s like the buttonhole got smaller.”

“That’s not possible unless you went swimming in your jeans in PE today and they shrank, although it would be very unlikely that they’d shrink, and besides they wouldn’t let you get in the pool in your jeans, and since we had sex ed during PE today that makes it totally impossible.”

“Just shut it and gimme a hand, okay?”

“Okay.” I knelt in front of him and looked at the button and buttonhole. “That buttonhole is like really tiny. Lemme try to unbutton it. Pull your belt off; that’ll make it easer to get to the button.”

Gary pulled off his belt and tossed it on my bed. I grabbed the waistband in the front and tried to unbutton his jeans. No go!

“Suck in your stomach and I’ll try it again”

Still no go.

“Fuck! This button hole is really small,” I said. “Tell you what, grab the waistband on each side of the fly and pull it together.”

“Okay. Uh! They’re really tight! This is about as much as I can pull the two sides together.”

“Okay. Lemme try….” I kept trying to push the button through the buttonhole. It wasn’t working.

“What kind of jeans are these?” I asked.

“I don’t know. My mom bought them somewhere.”

“Were you there when she bought them?”

“No.”

I looked up from where I was kneeling and smirked. “Your mommy buys your jeans for you?”

“Shut up!” Gary grinned. “She buys them when she’s shopping and sees them on sale.”

“Why don’t you tell her to not buy off-brand jeans?”

“As if! She’d do her…” here he mimicked his mom’s voice, “…Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know. I bought them because they were on sale!”

“Sounds like my mom, too. Here’s what I did to solve that problem. She bought me a pair of jeans and, while they were actually a little hard to unbutton, the main thing was I hated how they fit. So I got some scissors and cut the button off. She was pissed, but I told her it was because they were too hard to button and unbutton, they didn’t fit right, and that from now on I wanted to pick my own jeans.”

“Did it work?”

“Yes.”

“That wouldn’t work with my mom. She’d just sew the button back on and tell me to wear them. Let’s try to unbutton them again.”

I stared at his waist. “Tell you what, let’s unzip the fly. That oughta make it easier to pull the two sides together.”

“Okay.”

He unzipped the fly. I grabbed the two sides of the fly and pulled them together as close as I could and held them as tight as I could.

“See if you can get it unbuttoned now.”

Gary tried to force the button through the buttonhole. The button wasn’t one of those metal ones that Levi and Gap and Old Navy jeans have. It was a much thicker button made of some kind of hard plastic. Another no go. I released the sides of the fly.

“The button is so thick it’s gonna be a bitch to get through this tiny buttonhole. I still don’t see how you were able to button them when you put them on this morning.” I thought for a moment. “What’d you have for lunch?”

“A burger. Today is Friday so they had burgers. They’re pretty good for cafeteria food.”

“Yeah, and your burger probably had 2,400 calories. Your waist probably grew another couple inches.” I tried, probably not very successfully, to hide my grin.

“Don’t be silly. Those burgers in the cafeteria probably have fewer calories than the ones at Habit. Let’s try it again.”

“Wait a minute. Can you just pull your jeans down and off?”

Gary tried that, but it was definitely a no go. Like mine, his hips were wider than his waist, and his butt was in the way, too.

“Okay, lemme get in there and pull the two sides of the fly as close together as I can. I’m gonna have to put my hands inside your jeans to do it. Then you’ll have to force the button through the buttonhole. Is that okay?”

“Whatever. Just do it!”

So that’s what I did. I reached my right hand inside at the bottom of the fly in Gary’s jeans and grabbed the right side of the fly and as much of the fabric as I could in my right fist, then grabbed the top of the fly on the left side and pulled them together as tight as I could.

“Uhh!” Gary groaned.

“What?”

“I’m trying to unbutton it!”

The back of my right hand was pressing and rubbing on the pouch of his boxer briefs. I could feel him getting chubbed up.

“Is it working?” I asked.

“No!”

I tried grabbing more fabric with my right hand and pulled my hands together as tight as I could.

“Now?” I asked.

“Uhh…no!” His breathing had gotten fast like he was doing some sort of exercise. Then I realized what it was. He was getting excited because he was hard! Very hard!

“Wait a minute. Keep pulling… I think I'm getting it through that damned hole!”

So I pulled my right hand down, getting a really good feel of his crotch even though it was only on the back of my hand. I liked what I was feeling inside Gary’s crotch. By now I was also getting excited and I was hard! Very hard!

“I got it! I got it! It’s unbuttoned! When you pulled the fly down that made it easier to push the button through the buttonhole.” He took a deep breath and let it out.

I grabbed the sides of his jeans and pulled them down to his ankles.

“Ryan! What are you doing!?”

“Pulling your jeans off so the stupid button doesn’t decide to rebutton itself.” Even though it was silly, we both laughed. Of course, I was more interested in being able to see the lump inside the pouch of his boxer briefs.

I stood up and stared at his now very extended pouch.

Gary looked down at the pouch on my boxer briefs which was similarly extended, then at my face, then back to the pouch in my boxer briefs.

“What are you looking at, Gary?” I asked, then grinned and wiggled my eyebrows.

“What were you looking at, Ryan?” Gary asked, and then he laughed.

“Same thing on you that you’re looking at on me.”

“How ’bout we go swimming now?” he asked.

“How ’bout we go skinny-dipping now?” I suggested.

“Yup. Let’s bring our Speedos with us so we can put them on when your mom gets home so she and Chloe don’t see us naked.”

“Sounds like a very good plan.”

We finished getting undressed, grabbed our Speedos, and, as my gramma liked to say, ‘naked as the day we were born’ we ran through the house to the family room and outside. We dropped our Speedos at the edge of the pool and jumped into the water.

We stood facing each other.

“Do you wanna…?” I asked.

“Yup, definitely,” Gary replied. So we did.

We also discovered there are things that we could do underwater that we never thought could be done underwater. Go figure!

Just as my mom got home with Chloe, and as we were hurrying to put on our Speedos, I suggested to Gary that we could have a lot more fun a lot more often if we were boyfriends.

He agreed. “Let’s do it, Ryan. That sounds like a really, really good plan.”