Brandon let the garbage bag of shoes sit in the back of his SUV for three days. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t pulled it out or looked inside. Perhaps he was still feeling strange about his last encounter with Anthony, about sliding his fingers into his shoe while he was still wearing the damned thing. Or maybe he was building up suspense. The latter was certainly working, whether it was done intentionally or not. Just the plasticky smell of the garbage bag was intoxicating when he climbed into the car. The crumbly sound it made when it’s contents shifted as he went around a corner gave him a buzz.

When he finally did pop the hatch and hauled it up the steps of his building, he made sure it was after work one evening under cover of darkness. He wasn’t sure how to explain carrying a heavy garbage bag INto his loft.

Brandon set the bag on his bedroom floor. His cat, Sherlock, emerged from under the bed and underwent his usual, perfunctory smelling ritual, nostrils flaring and head bobbing as his little brain sorted out the odors with his tiny supercharged nose. Satisfied that he was 100% disinterested, he stalked out of the room, leaving Brandon alone for the moment he had been building up to for the last half week. From the bedside table, he grabbed a pair of nail scissors, which he deftly slid up the side of the bag, as though performing an autopsy on Anthony’s past footwear.

Plastic bag unfurled and, now serving as a placemat for his loot, Brandon began to sort through the pile, pulling out various styles and types of shoes in various stages of use and decay. He pulled out one of the Kenneth Cole loafers and did what he had so desperately wanted to the day Anthony had rejected them, bringing the opening to his nose and inhaling deeply. The shoe emitted a fragrance of leather and not much more.

A little disappointed, Brandon set them aside and grabbed the next item of interest, a pair of Merrell hiking boots. Brandon wrinkled his nose as he turned the shoe in his hand, examining the crisscrossing patterns of suede over mesh. These didn’t look like Anthony. And he must have felt similarly—the looked as though they had never been worn. What was he thinking even buying these, he thought, casting them back onto the plastic sheet.

The next shoe was of particular interest—a Lebron Soldier 10 hightop. It had definitely seen wear. It’s black mesh upper was scuffed and misshapen, the red-tipped Velcro straps curling slightly with being ripped open repeatedly. This was clearly a basketball shoe and not something Anthony had simply worn casually. Brandon plunged his hand into the pile and found the mate, which was in no better shape. He brought one to his face and detected a faint lingering funk. He immediately got hard, thinking about the amount of sweat that had to have soaked into the foam insoles and padded collar. He poked his hand in, as he always seemed prone to do when he wanted to explore the interior of one of Anthony’s shoes, when his fingers met with a soft resistance.

Brandon’s erection intensified instantly, translating to a ache in his throat. Had he really been this lucky? He extracted a crumpled up sock. Anthony must have worn these to the gym, perhaps even in the middle of a work day, and kicked then off in the locker room, jamming the socks in the sneakers and the sneakers in his bag before showering and returning to his work attire. He flattened the sock on his leg, a black ankle sock with grey and red soles and the red Puma emblazoned over the top, the letters declaring the brand across the heel. Brandon reached inside the Lebron’s mate, confirming his theory—a matching sock was hidden in the depths of that sneaker, too.

There was nothing for it. Brandon kicked off his own wool Allbirds, peeled off his socks, and stretched Anthony’s Pumas over his feet. Let’s face it—they were just socks. They felt like any other pair, although having been last worn on Anthony’s bigger feet, they did not snap quite as snugly around his toes as a freshly washed pair may have. But to Brandon this was electrifying. He ran his hands over the tiny, orderly rows of stitches, a thrill in knowing that the last time the Pumas had seen use, they had been worn by his hot, straight friend as he jammed them into the basketball shoes, presumably in a demonstration of his athletic prowess.

To complete the reenactment, Brandon began to peel the straps back on the Lebrons, the Velcro catches scratching out their ripping sound. This probably wasn’t even necessary, based on Brandon’s experiences with the Tubulars in Anthony’s garage. He knew that the shoes would be roomy enough for him to effortlessly slide them in. But he wanted the joy of seeing the straps wave open, and to feel them tighten around his feet as he tugged them back into place. He wasn’t disappointed. Precum freely seeping through his khaki colored jeans, Brandon sat butterfly-legged on his bedroom floor and ran his hands over and inside the high-tops, imagining Anthony’s feet were the ones inside of them instead of his own.

He could envision slow-motion footage capturing a moment where Anthony did a layup, the Lebrons gracefully leaving the glassy court floor. Brandon unzipped his pants as the mental movie magically cut to an interior shot of one of Anthony’s sneakers, his sock-clad foot leaving slightly rising off of the foam insole as he rose in the air, the word Puma gently rubbing upward against the back of the high-top. Brandon rubbed vigorously himself, barreling through his fantasy, staring at the shoes before him as, in his mind, Anthony slowly returned to the ground, white sneaker soles making contact, feet collapsing again against the floors of the Lebrons. In the movie, Anthony maintained his eye on the ball as it bounced from the rim and tipped into the basket, unaware that Brandon was inside his sneaker, watching his pattern on the sole of his sock compress the foam insole.

“Oh, Anthony,” Brandon murmured, feeling himself on the rim, slowly preparing to tip over the edge. It was a small shock even to him to hear the name on his lips at this moment, almost akin to him saying the word “gay” when coming out to a friend for the first time. Brandon had had plenty of fantasies in his life—dozens, even hundreds of them involving shoes, boots, feet, and faceless owners. Never before was there an identity or something so intimate as a name to go with it.

As if in response, Brandon’s phone vibrated next to him on the floor, a text notification illuminating Anthony’s name across the smudged screen. Brandon came knowing that Anthony was thinking about him in that exact moment. With a euphoric gasp, he watched his seed pump across the side of the Lebron, one pearly rope extending to his leg.

As the last of the aftershocks subsided, Brandon’s body hummed in satisfaction. Admiring his accomplishment, he backed his right foot from the baptized high-top and rubbed the cream from the mesh of the upper onto the bottom of his sock. Plunging it back into the shoe, he closed his eyes and savored the sensation of the sticky cum soaking through to his skin, knowing that he had done the same to Anthony.