Blake’s next text saved me from that. Never mind. Can’t now. See you at the game?
I’d been avoiding the soccer matches since Blake dumped me. At home, I never missed one.
Maybe. I sent back. I wasn’t playing some game with him. I was too confused to know what I was doing.
I really should go to calculus.
Fuck it. I walked down to the lake.
* * *
“Dude. You got laid.” Connor looked up from his laptop as I came in.
I froze, trying to sniff myself. I’d stayed by the lake until the cloud cover had made the rainbows vanish, then had cleaned up in the first bathroom I came to, but there was only so much I could do without a shower. I think the paper bag had taken the worst of it.
Had Connor noticed beard burn? My neck had gotten scraped a little. It wasn’t only Wyatt’s personality that was prickly.
“No shit. You totally did?” Connor shut his laptop.
“You said it like you knew.” And I’d just busted myself.
“I was only kidding. Because of your green shirt.” He pointed at my henley. “You know, you wear green on Thursday if you’re horny and wear green on Friday if you got some. But now you’re busted.”
I sat on my bed.
“So, ex-sex or rebound?”
“Uh—” I didn’t think of Wyatt as a rebound guy, or one of those just-wanting-to-get-off guys from back before Blake.
Connor stretched his arm across the space between our beds, offering his closed fist. I pounded him back.
“S’all good.” Connor stretched out on his bed again. “You were really letting down the side.”
Connor watched a lot of British comedy.
“The side?” I got what the expression meant, but I couldn’t figure out what side we were both on.
“Dudes. I’d think guys were—you know—easier. You can hook up without complications. You should be getting laid all the time.”
Guys were plenty complicated. And I’d done all the casual hand jobs and blow jobs I wanted to do before I started going out with Blake. “What about you? You seem to be keeping up the side.”
Connor’s face got red. “Not as much as I want to. My high school girlfriend and I broke up because we were going to different schools. I’ve been stuck in a dry spell.”
I’d been so caught up in my own trauma, it never occurred to me that Connor had gone through something too. He was a nice guy, never joked about gay being gross or suggested I was looking at his junk. And since the first day when he’d boldly dropped trou before putting on a robe and heading for the showers, I’d worked super hard to not ever see his junk. I couldn’t even tell you if he was cut or not.
“Amy?” I could try to make up for being a sucky, self-absorbed roommate now.
“We’re going out tonight. Some indie band she wants to see in the town park.”
Connor’s taste in music was varied, assuming you could discern between the different subgenres of metal he listened to, always considerately with headphones on.
I winced in sympathy. “Maybe it’ll be folk metal.”
“Their name is Peace From the Cycle.”
“Oh.” So maybe straight guys did have to suffer to get laid. “Well, after that I hope you get lucky.”
“Thanks. Um, do you know about the code for—”
“Like a sock on the doorknob?”
“Yeah.” He sounded relieved. “Not saying anything will happen.”
“No, it’s cool.”
He swung around to jab my knee with a sock-covered toe. “‘Specially since you already got some.”
* * *
In an effort to make myself scarce, I agreed to go with Makayla to the soccer game. It was apparently a big deal—Coborn’s archrivals in the league or whatever. I figured the odds of seeing Blake were slim since he’d be totally focused on the game—match, whatever.
Since Whitney had turned zombie, we had to meet her inside the stadium, which was a safe zone. She and Makayla had an agreement that if they were heading out together, Whitney would give her a two-minute head start.
Coborn didn’t have a football team so the soccer team was the big fucking deal as far as fall sports went. I heard they had a good wrestling team, and the idea of muscular guys in superthin singlets tangled together sounded like free live porn. I knew what I’d be checking out over the winter. I’d been to every soccer match Blake played over the two years in high school so I understood the basic rules. I couldn’t always figure out whether something should or shouldn’t have been a foul, but I knew good ball-handling when I saw it. Yeah, go ahead and laugh at that for a second.
We managed to find some seats in the student section, squeezing in on the bleachers. Makayla had half her ass in my lap, but I didn’t mind because it was a cold night. A perfect fall night that makes everything look sharp and clear. We stood to cheer and sing something that sounded like weird moans as our team came out.
It was weird seeing Blake like this. Every other time I’d seen him in his uniform, lining up on the field, we’d been boyfriends. I’d always had a sense of pride in that, seeing his wavy auburn hair and wide shoulders, standing out in his bright keeper uniform. Now I was only some random student cheering from this cramped corner of the stadium. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.
I got into the game though. Coborn was fast, but the other team was good at controlling the ball, trying to slow them down. Our keeper made three amazing saves. One of them made everyone in the stadium suck in their breath as he barely got his fingertips on a free kick and sent the ball over the net.
We were roaring when the team came back on for the second half of the scoreless match. I stood up to let Whitney and Makayla scoot by on their way to the girls’ room, why they couldn’t go during the half I have no idea. As Blake trotted to his place on the sidelines, our eyes met. He smiled and winked.
Or maybe he was winking at someone else. I turned and looked over my shoulder but no one else seemed to be suffering the fluttery stomach I was from that wink. When I looked back, he was shaking his head, still looking at me. Then the ball dropped and his attention was back on the field.
The happy feeling from Blake’s attention was quickly buried under an avalanche of guilt. I’d had another guy’s come on me that morning. And it was one thing to say yeah, we were guys and that sometimes might happen, but what had happened with Wyatt didn’t feel like just getting off. And if it had been Wyatt’s first time with a guy, I was a total shit to have been whispering how much I wanted to suck him off and then get excited about Blake winking at me not even twelve hours later.
With everything so tense in the match, I couldn’t tell if that quiver in my gut was because it was Blake or just that I liked being noticed by someone everyone was cheering for. Fuck, I’d lost track of the play.
The other team had a corner kick coming, our defense scrambling to get coverage as our keeper pointed and shouted. There was a slam of bodies on the line, the ball went sailing over the top of the net and our keeper went down and didn’t get up.
Trainers went running onto the field. I was torn between watching that and Blake doing high-knee sprints and jumps to warm up on the sideline. If our keeper was out, Blake would be going in. With the league championship and consecutive scoreless streak on the line. The senior keeper hadn’t let in a goal all season.
A stretcher cart came out, and I knew Blake was going in. My gut was in knots. I doubled over.
“What happened?” Makayla asked as she pushed back into our row. It sounded accusatory, like I’d dared to let all this happen while she was taking a piss.
“Concussion, I think.”
Blake joined the teammates gathered around the stretcher. As they started to wheel the guy off, everyone clapped. Blake looked up at me and gave me a tiny thumbs-up gesture. I made it back at him, and Makayla turned to stare at me.
“What the hell is that all about?”
I shrugged. She got on her phone. The girl was
faster than a supercomputer when it came to accessing the information she wanted. I wasn’t surprised when a momentary search had her elbowing me.
“Blake St. Pierre. He’s from your hometown. Oh my God, he’s the one who dumped you and then—wait. Are you back together?”
“No.” At least I was pretty sure we weren’t. This morning I’d known that was what I wanted more than anything, even passing the damned calculus midterm. Then Wyatt had happened. And now I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. Though I still really did want to pass the calculus midterm.
Whitney leaned forward to look around Makayla. “That didn’t sound like a convincing no.”
“I don’t know what we are. That was just because he’s nervous,” I said, while my stomach looped itself around my pancreas.
“I don’t blame him. The crowd will go nuts if he gives up a goal now.” Makayla was pretty damned unhelpful in the calming nerves department.
I guess the injury got our team fired up. We scored right away, then the ball never left the opponents’ end of the field until there were ten minutes left and we’d scored two more goals. The crowd sucked in a breath again as they took a corner kick, but it went right to Blake who saved the shot.
Makayla elbowed me. “Bet he’s got really good hands.”
“Shut up.” The back of my neck heated again, spreading out toward my Dumbo ears.
“Big hands. Is it true what they say about big thumbs on guys?”
“Shut. Up.” I was ridiculously pleased—and guilty. Because I was starting to wonder if that happy feeling was actually about the guy or only pride at being associated with Blake and his sexy sportstar thing.
I was still thinking about it when we headed back to Fisher, fireworks going off from the top of the stadium behind us. Another boom went off and we turned to look. Blue was the featured color, no big surprise there, but I immediately thought of how the sparks were exactly the shade of one of Wyatt’s eyes.
We turned on a path for Fisher and got grabbed by two zombies who took our human cards.
“This is all your fault.” Makayla punched me as she untied her bandanna from her arm and turned it inside out to the neon green side.
My heart was still racing from being startled. “Me?”
“You. Getting all goofy over your man, not watching where we were going.”
“Why do I have to be the lookout?” I untied my own bandanna and turned to watch one more bright blue shower of sparks.
“Because you’re like ten feet taller than I am, doofus.” She put the bandanna around her head like we were supposed to wear as zombies, then yanked it off. “No way am I going to do that until I can fix my hair around it. So, are you going to take Mr. Douchecanoe back? You should at least make him sweat for an answer.” She finally paused.
“I don’t know.” My answer scared me more than the zombies had.
Chapter 9
Saturday afternoon, I was trying not to fall asleep over my freaking calculus text.
Vectors and functions were boring enough to be a lullaby for a tweaked-out insomniac, but I was also tired from the Humans vs. Zombies event this morning. The human side had won, which meant everyone who’d turned in the past twenty-four hours got “revived.” As long as Makayla didn’t get grabbed again, I wouldn’t have to hear any more crap about the bandanna fucking with her hair.
Connor’s bed hadn’t been slept in, he’d skipped the event and he still wasn’t back, but from the thumbs-up emoji he’d sent around noon, I knew he wasn’t dead. From zombies or sex. Could a zombie have sex or would parts break off?
I jerked awake and forced myself to stare at the practice problems. Maybe if I made it about predicting the velocity of jizz? If I’d jerked off twice already, and the rate decreased by a factor of—
Someone knocked. A fleshy thud, like the side of a fist, rather than knuckles. Then the soft slap of a palm and steps moving away. Even if it was some dude in a suit trying to recruit for Campus Conservatives, it had calculus beat. I scrambled up and yanked open the door. Wyatt was just about to disappear around the corner.
“Hey,” I called after him.
“Hey.” He turned. He wore a white apron over his jeans. A big stain of orange spread over his left thigh.
We stared at each other for a minute. His side bangs were over his face as usual, but now that I knew about it, I saw glimpses of his dark eye glittering behind the white-streaked black hair.
I didn’t want him to take off for wherever he’d been going so I blurted, “Just get out of work?”
Fuck. Brilliant conversation starter, Ethan. No wonder guys were desperate to get rid of me.
He shook his head. “Quick break. What are you doing?”
“Same shit. Different day. Trying to figure out parabolas.”
Wyatt slouched a couple steps in my direction. “Uh—Blake stopped by—while I was at work.”
Blake had become the absolutely last subject I wanted to discuss with Wyatt, but I said, “Yeah?”
There was an edge of disappointment to Wyatt’s usual irritation, like he’d been super psyched about the new X-Men movie only to find out there wasn’t much guy-guy flirting in this one. “So he told me.”
Told him what? That wasn’t much to go on. I tipped my head and waited.
He snapped the rest of the words out. “He stopped by to tell me to plan on hitting the library after work. To stay out of the room. Because—”
I could figure out the rest now, thanks. Blake was planning on getting laid. What guy would say no to the new superstar hero goalkeeper? I’d known it was going to happen, and I couldn’t say it wouldn’t bug me. I’d probably want to punch something after seeing him with some other guy. But it didn’t hurt like it would have just a week ago.
Wyatt was still talking, and since it was the longest string of words I’d ever heard from him, I wanted to pay attention.
“I know you said—yesterday—didn’t mean anything. It was just—” His voice dropped to a whisper “—sex.”
“Wait. What?”
Wyatt had made what my American short story professor described as an interesting inference without textual evidence.
“Come in my room.” I grabbed his arm.
His eyebrow—brows—went up and there was that familiar smirk.
“Asshole.” I dragged him through the door, then shut it.
“I have to get back to work.”
“Give me a minute. When I said that, and my exact words were that it doesn’t have to mean anything, I was trying to give you an out. In case you were freaked or thought it was gross.”
“Yeah, ’cause gross shit always makes my dick hard.” He echoed my words, so at least he paid attention sometimes, but he’d missed a big chunk.
“What I said before that—” So good. God. I want to do that again. Wanna suck you. “—about wanting to do it again, it wasn’t only from a happy-dick high.”
He tucked the bangs behind an ear. “When did you say that?”
“Um—after I came—and you came.” Oh hell. “It was right before ‘wanna suck you.’” It sounded ridiculous with us standing here like this.
He swallowed, and I stepped closer. He smelled like a locker room, steam, sweat and disinfectant, but I’d dated a jock for two years and that was fine with me. I watched his face as I reached for him. He met my gaze until we were kissing. Then it was hard, against the wall by my desk, lips and tongue, mouths and breaths. Hungry.
Damn right, I wanted. And he wanted too. He kissed back like this was mouth-to-mouth and he was dying. And it made my dick hard so fast it ached.
He pushed me back like he had the last time. I was learning to read the very slight expressions on his face. This was a question he was afraid to ask.
I shook my head. “Whoever Blake’s bringing to the room tonight, it’s not me.” Though I was stupidly pleased Wyatt had made his cranky way over here to ask me about it.
He tipped his head toward me, but then leaned back against the
wall with a sigh. “I have to get back to work.”
“Can you say you got sick?” I suggested. “Food poisoning from that disgusting vegetable soup.” I pointed to his apron.
“Can’t. Need the cash.”
“Later?” My dick and I put a lot of hope into that word.
He shook his head. “And I’m working again tomorrow,” he added before I got any more desperate. “Look. After yesterday, I know I’m...”
I waited for him to get it out. Get himself out.
“...gay.” He straightened up. “I’m not trying to blow you off.”
It was my turn to raise my eyebrows and smirk.
He didn’t play along. “But there’s some shit about me you need to know.”
“You also work as a stripper.” I wrapped my hands around his hips. Hard, sharp angles. My hands went farther, finding the firm muscles of his ass. God, it wasn’t a stripper pole I was thinking of him grinding on.
And with all those edges he had those full lips. Those soft full lips.
“I’ll talk to you later.” He pushed me back and moved around me. He paused to look down at my desk and shook his head. “And seriously, Ethan, you need to check in with Academic Support.”
After he left, I looked down at my calculus notes. I’d doodled a spunk-shooting dick. I guess it was better than a zombie with parts falling off.
Maybe I should have known it was me Blake expected to be bringing back to the room that night. That he thought his 10:00 p.m. text would have me running.
Hey, babe. Meet me behind the student center. I’ve got a bottle of that Moscato you like and the fountain does rainbow colors at night.
Just like that. No apologies. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted, and it killed me how well he knew me. Blake wasn’t the only one who could use a sure bet. I was sick to death of jerking myself off, and I didn’t know where things were going with me and Wyatt. That didn’t mean I should fuck it up before it had a chance to go anywhere. I wanted to know whatever it was about him he thought I needed to hear about. I wanted him making that raised eyebrow smirk and picking on me about calculus.
The decision to turn Blake down was easy enough to make, figuring out what to say wasn’t. Telling him what he could do with the bottle of wine would make him think I was pissed and wanted him to try harder.
Getting Him Back Page 6