Out of Frame

by Megan Erickson

  “What’s that mean?” I said, hoping he didn’t get irritated that I asked questions. But I liked hearing his steady voice, and it was turning me on a little to hear him spout numbers and odds. I noticed he often fidgeted and didn’t always look people in the eye when they talked to him. Here at the table, playing this game, confidence radiated off him. His presence was intoxicating when he was in his element.

  Quinn cocked his head a little as he thought. “I’m betting she’ll roll a seven or eleven before she rolls another four.”

  “Huh.” I looked at the table and watched as she did her ritual again. “So you’re betting against her?”

  He nodded and his lips twisted into an odd smile. “Sometimes you gotta go with the house.”

  She rolled an eleven. The table groaned, because they’d all betted on the pass line.

  Quinn grinned, then collected his winnings.

  And I wanted to kiss him.

  Three more players rolled before Quinn got the dice. He held them in his hands, rolling them slightly in his fingers. I watched as his gaze scanned the table and then he threw.

  Nine.

  I bumped him with my elbow. “That’s my lucky number.”

  “Oh yeah?” He grinned at me over my shoulder. “How come?”

  “It was my jersey number in high school. Basketball.”

  The camera crew drifted away from us, maybe because Levi was making a racket over at the roulette table, high-fiving everyone around him. And I wasn’t doing much of anything.

  I smirked and turned back to Quinn. He frowned, but his posture was relaxed as he tossed the dice on the table. They hit the opposite end and rested. “Eight!” the dealer called.

  “So what does that mean?” I asked.

  “Means I can still roll. Wish me luck.”

  He rolled three more times, and the numbers must have been good because the table grew progressively more excited. Quinn’s pale skin was flushed the whole way down to his neck. The air around us was buzzing, everyone at the table on edge. I wasn’t even playing, yet my skin tingled and my blood pumped hot through my veins.

  I could see how this could get addicting.

  On Quinn’s fourth roll, everyone was holding their breath. “No seven, no eleven, no seven, no eleven,” he chanted as he shook the dice in his hand.

  He threw.

  “Nine!” the dealer called.

  Quinn threw his hands in the air, and the table cheered.

  I reached up and squeezed the back of his neck and leaned in. “Way to go, kid.”

  He paused, eyeing me, but then his face split into a huge grin. “Thanks, old man.”

  In the end, Quinn doubled our money. I was one hundred dollars richer, and thoroughly entertained.

  “But how did you know when to bet what you did?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “A lot is luck. But sometimes I feel like . . . I can tell when people aren’t lucky. When they’re going to roll shit. And that’s when I bet with the house.”

  I stopped along the casino wall and leaned against it, crossing my arms over my chest. “Really?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it,” he said. “And sometimes I’m wrong.”

  “You weren’t wrong much today.”

  “No,” he said quietly. “But I am wrong sometimes.” He took a deep breath and scanned the casino floor before locking eyes with me. “I’m much better knowing who to bet on at the craps table than in real life.” He laughed softly and ran his hands through his hair. “You know what I mean?”

  “I’ve bet wrong in real life so much, man.” I blew out a breath. “Paying for it now.”

  He cocked his head. “How so?”

  How freeing would it be to just blurt it all out? Right here, right now. Tell Quinn, Hey, I’m bisexual, but I signed a contract to keep that a secret. Life’s a bitch. I betted wrong.

  Quinn was looking at me like he trusted me, and that sucked. That sucked a lot. He’d have better luck betting on the house than on me.

  The camera crew was still focused on Levi, but I knew any minute that could change, and they could come over to see what I was up to. What I wouldn’t give right now to take those cameras and smash them on the wall to bits.

  Just a couple more months, J. R. Get your shit together.

  So I took a deep breath and shook my head. “It’s not important. Let’s go cash in your chips.”

  “Most of these are yours,” he said.

  “You won them.”

  “You invested in me!” His eyes were big and so goddamn blue.

  “Buy me a T-shirt or something. It’s fine.”

  He narrowed his eyes and his body tensed. “I don’t need your money.”

  Shit, now I’d insulted him. “No, that’s not—” I sighed. “Okay, I’ll take back one twenty-five. Keep seventy-five for yourself. That’s fair.”

  His hackles lowered as he stared at his chips. “Okay, that’s fair.” His smile faded and he glanced at the distant cameras, then back to me. “Are there live feeds here?”

  I pointed to the far corner. “Over there. I’m not mic’d up, so they can’t hear us.”

  “The cameras make me nervous, you know? I don’t know how you do it. The thought of so many people watching me makes my heart race.”

  I shrugged. “You get used to it.”

  He nodded. “Okay, well, since no one can hear us now . . . I just want you to know, since we’re hanging out, that I’m . . .” He chewed his lip. “Gay.”

  My first reaction was jealousy. I was jealous as hell of Quinn, who could just blurt it out like that. “Okay,” I said.

  He blinked. “I just want to make sure you’re okay with that.”

  “I bunk with Levi, who’s like a one-man Pride parade. It’s okay, man. Really.”

  His smile was tentative. “Um, okay.”

  “So do you want to get your cash now or just stand here and hold your chips forever?”

  He hesitated, like he needed time to deal with the subject change. “I-I’d like my cash now.”

  “Great, then get on it. I’m hungry and I think the lunch buffet is open.”

  He shook his head at me with an eye roll. “Yeah, yeah, I’m hurrying.”

  “Good, because it’s going to take a crowbar to pry Levi away from the roulette table.” We glanced over at Levi and Jess, who were holding hands as the wheel spun.

  “Good God, we’ve created monsters,” Quinn said.

  The wheel stopped and Levi put his hand to his forehead like he was fainting while Jess wailed in agony.

  We looked at each other. “Let’s just ditch ’em,” I said.

  “Are you supposed to let the camera crew know where you’re going?”

  “I’m supposed to . . .”

  Quinn’s eyes glittered as he spoke in a hushed whisper. “I’m going to cash out. You slip out the back and meet me on floor three. That buffet is small but they have Alaskan king crab legs.”

  I held out my hand for a fist bump. “Good plan.”

  He bumped me back. “It’s go time.”

  Like a man on a mission, he trotted away from me toward the payout desks. I found a side door and slipped out as the cameras stayed focused on Levi.

  Chapter Six

  Quinn

  There was a live-feed camera in the dining room, but apparently J. R. had studied the locations, because he managed to sit us out of frame. He said there were certain times they were required to wear mics, but not always.

  I wasn’t sure what had made me suggest a mission impossible to stuff ourselves with crab legs. With J. R., I didn’t always second-guess every little decision. Maybe because I was so focused on him, that my analytical mind was too overrun with attraction to deal with worries. Either way, a thrill ran up my spine, a surge of excitement that spread out to m
y fingers. Sure they were just crab legs, but they were spontaneous crab legs. It was like a secret seasoning.

  We each had plates overflowing with crab legs. It was a little obscene, the carnage in front of us. J. R. took a deep breath and puffed out his cheeks as he exhaled. “So we have the legs.”

  “Check,” I said.

  “The melted butter.”

  “Check.”

  “Beer.”

  I clinked my glass with his. “Check and mate, and it’s only one o’clock.” I took a sip and grinned. “Spring break is great, isn’t it?”

  After a long glug of his beer, J. R. set it down on the table. “For you, this is spring break. For me, this is work.”

  I had never been good at hiding my emotions. Ever. Jess called me on it all the time, and I must have shown the way his words hit me like a punch, this is work. Because his eyes widened. “Oh shit, I didn’t mean it that way.”

  I shook my head. Why was I making this lunch into a thing? It wasn’t a thing. It was nothing. “No, really, it’s okay—”

  “No, it’s not. That . . . didn’t come out like I wanted it to.” He sighed and picked up a crab leg. “I mean this trip is work. This? Eating crab legs and drinking a beer without a camera on me?” He cracked the leg open. “That’s not work.”

  Right, it had nothing to do with my companionship. And the sooner I remembered that, the better off I’d be.

  He’s straight. He’s a celebrity. He has a girlfriend. Knock off the hero worship, Quinn. I nodded. “I totally get that.” I picked up a crab leg. “So let’s dig in before the crew finds us, right?”

  He laughed as he dipped a hunk of meat in the melted butter. “Right.” He dropped it in his mouth and I looked away so I didn’t track the butter dripping down his chin. “So where do you go to school?”

  I concentrated on cracking my crab legs and piling the meat on a separate plate. “East Carolina University.”

  “What are you studying?”

  I wiped away some crab juice that had squirted in my eye. “Uh, I’ll graduate in May with a bachelor’s in computer science.” And then I had to decide which job offer I’d take—the one in North Carolina, where I could live at home, or the one all the way in . . . California. I took a sip of my beer. I wasn’t thinking about that now. When I glanced over at J. R., his gaze was on my plate of crabmeat. “What?”

  He blinked and quirked an eyebrow at me. “What are you doing?”

  I looked down at my hands, then back at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Are you eating any of the meat yet?”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m just getting it out of the crab legs.”

  He stared at me like I was crazy. “Why the fuck would you do that?”

  “Because I like to eat it all at once.” I braced an elbow on the table.

  “Let me get this straight. You take the time to pick out all that meat before you enjoy any of it?”

  “Hey.” I poked his arm with a claw, and he jerked back a little. I grinned. “Don’t knock my technique. I put in the work now, and in the end, I get to gorge myself on a whole plate at one time.”

  His gaze dropped to my plate, which was already pretty full of crabmeat. “Huh.”

  “Yeah, huh. Try it some time.”

  He stuck another hunk of meat into his mouth and chewed. “You into delayed gratification or something?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t mind waiting if it’s something I really want, you know?”

  He chewed slower now as he watched my face. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “I did the same thing with my Lucky Charms as a kid. I would save all the marshmallows until the end, because there’s nothing worse than getting to the end of your bowl of Lucky Charms and you only have those Cheerio-like things left. Everyone knows it’s all about the marshmallows.”

  I was sitting here talking about Lucky Charms to a TV celebrity, and yet he was watching me like it was the most interesting thing he’d ever heard. He was probably a great actor and in actuality couldn’t wait to get away from my boring ass.

  He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest, a small smile on his face. “Man, I never had Lucky Charms as a kid. Mom and Dad wouldn’t buy ’em for us. Said they’d rot our teeth. But I remember getting money for my birthday one year, and I went out and bought Captain Crunch.”

  I groaned. “That cereal is straight sugar.”

  “Right? I might as well have mainlined Pixy Stix. My mom had me so scared of sugar that I thought I was going to lose all my teeth after one bowl. I brushed like five times a day for a week until my gums bled. My mom had to sit me down and tell me to chill out.”

  “Your parents sound okay.”

  He cracked a claw and dipped it in butter. “Yeah, they’re pretty great. Tried to raise my brother and me right. What about you?”

  I ran my fingers over the sharp bumps on the crab leg. “Um, I love my parents. They love me. They are . . . strict.” That was an understatement. “I knew early on I was gay, and it was like they wanted to put me in a bubble. Jess is probably the only reason I wasn’t homeschooled. Which, you know, is fine for some kids, but I wanted to go to public school. With her. So I fought my parents to stay in school.”

  He leaned in. “You had a hard time in school for being, uh, who you are?”

  I shrugged. “It wasn’t too bad. I’m from a small town in North Carolina. Jess’s older brother is gay, so I guess he kinda paved the way for a lot of us after him to be open.”

  He nodded. “That’s good. I’m glad you had that. You an only child?”

  “Yeah. How’s Darren, by the way?” I knew about his younger brother who had been diagnosed with sickle cell anemia. Darren had even been on the show once, when J. R. visited his hometown.

  J. R. stared at his hands on the table. “He’s doing good right now.”

  “That’s great.”

  At that, he grew quiet, and I let him. We ate in silence for a while, and I wondered if I said something weird. It wouldn’t be the first time, but J. R. didn’t seem uncomfortable, just thoughtful.

  By the time I was halfway through my second beer, I was feeling emboldened. I was a lightweight, after all. “You know, you’re not at all like you are on TV.”

  He jolted, as if my voice startled him. “What?”

  “You said on the deck how the camera doesn’t show everything, and you’re right. At least, when it comes to you.”

  He wasn’t eating anymore. His plate of empty shells was pushed to the center of the table, and his intense dark eyes were trained on me. “So, what do you see?”

  Well, shit. “Uh, you’re nice. And funny. And easy to talk to.”

  “What did you expect me to be like?” Still with the unwavering stare pinning me in my chair.

  I swallowed. “Uh, not nice?”

  He barked out a laugh and broke the intensity of his gaze as he leaned back in his chair and ran his hand over his shaved head. “Well, I wasn’t nice the first night. I’m still not always nice, Quinn.”

  “Well, you’re nice now. At least I know . . . you’re capable of being nice.”

  He looked at me again with pursed lips. “Yeah, well, you’re probably going to want to remember that as this trip goes on.”

  That sounded ominous, and he didn’t elaborate as a waiter came over to take his empty plate.

  I stared at my mound of crabmeat, took a deep breath, and dug in.

  ***

  J. R.

  I should have made an excuse and left. My phone was buzzing with text messages from our producer, Doug. Where are you?

  I was surprised he hadn’t found a way to work a line item into our contracts requiring us to be implanted with tracking devices.

  But instead of leaving, I grabbed another beer and sat down to watch Quinn eat. I knew some
thing was shifting beneath us like quicksand and I couldn’t seem to find my footing, yet I didn’t want to stop. I wasn’t talking to him like I’d talk to a guy. To a bro. A friend.

  I talked to him like we were on a date.

  And this wasn’t a date. It wasn’t anything.

  Which was why I should have walked away. But watching Quinn lick the melted butter off his fingers and give little contented sighs was making it nearly impossible for me to get up and walk away without causing a scene. I could feel my pants getting a little tight, my cock liking the sounds coming from Quinn, the sight of his tongue licking his lips, the brightness of his eyes when he focused on what I had to say, like it was important.

  I thought I was good at self-control, but this guy was seriously testing me. It wasn’t even the fact that I liked to look at him. I liked to be around him. He didn’t treat me like J. R. Butler. He treated me like . . . a normal guy. In the last couple of years, people did one of two things when they met me—picked a fight to get on TV, or kissed my ass to get on TV. It was never about me. As a person. With Quinn, I felt almost human.

  “So, what do you want to do after the season is over?” Quinn asked, his blue eyes fully focused on me.

  I picked at the label on my empty beer bottle. My go-to answer was that I wanted to act. It was what I always said, even when I didn’t believe it anymore. Looking at Quinn, though, I didn’t feel like answering with a lie. “I want to act, but . . . I’m not sure how well it’ll work out.”

  He smiled, and I didn’t know what was so good about that. “I would think you’d have a lot of options after everything is over.”

  Options. Yeah, sure. But what would I have to do to keep those options? “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “I always knew what I was going to do. My parents were great, but I mentioned they were strict. I think they had me on the collegiate path in kindergarten. There was always a plan. Rules on what I could or couldn’t do to adhere to that plan.” He blew out a breath. “It’s exhausting to be aware of consequences for every single action.”

  I laughed. “I guess that’s called being an adult.”