He’d spent the last two years of his marriage convinced he and Marty had low libidos and that it was normal, that they were just getting older and it didn’t mean anything. But clearly his dick wasn’t as old as he thought it was if it thought getting to know his new cohost better was a good idea.
On the one hand, at least now he knew he wouldn’t be walking into a potentially hostile work environment every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. On the other hand, developing a sudden hard-on for his flamboyant coworker seemed like a recipe for disaster. In personality, Aubrey was as far removed from Marty as a gay man could probably get.
Maybe this was some kind of weird psychological divorce phenomenon. After all, Nate didn’t exactly go out and meet people. Only rarely did he encounter available gay men in the wild, and his dick had just chosen the first one that had come along. Obviously Nate couldn’t act on it. It’d probably go away in a few weeks, anyway.
He groaned and rolled over on the couch, pastries forgotten. “This is your fault,” he said in the general direction of the ugly vase on the console table which always reminded him of Marty. They had bought it on their honeymoon in Murano, half drunk on wine, and had somehow managed to have it shipped home in one piece. Now it stood in Nate’s living room as a monument to his failures, in case he ever forgot to be humble.
Finally he sighed and got off the couch. His appetite had deserted him, but the gym was still calling. Maybe he could make those pastries his reward for working out instead of jerking off to unwanted fantasies about his coworker.
Chapter Four
THEY DIDN’Thave a show Thursday, preempted by some kind of network special on Michael Phelps or something; Aubrey didn’t care enough to pay attention. Instead he took the time to grocery shop, catch up on his Twitter feed, and work out in the gym in his building. Jackson had texted him a blow-by-blow breakdown of the show when he watched yesterday, and Aubrey was pretending to give him the silent treatment for insinuating that Aubrey wanted to get in his cohost’s pants. He did—Nate was, like, five-alarm-fire hot, with an absurd shoulder-to-waist ratio and the hockey ass and that carefully clean-cut image that made Aubrey want to mess him up—but Nate was married, and Aubrey was a grown-ass man, and he wasn’t going to be a creep. But if he said that to Jackson, Jackson would say “methinks the boy doth protest too much,” and then Aubrey would have to fly to Seattle and maim him.
He capped off the day with a trip to his therapist, who handed him a notebook and no-nonsense instructions. “You’ve got to stop believing everything is about you or has to be about you,” she said, waving the book until he took it. “So next time you find yourself getting worked up because you think someone’s ignoring you, I want you to write down what other things they might have on their mind. And every time someone spends time with you or does something considerate of you, you’re going to write that down too.”
Aubrey had thought graduating from high school meant the end of homework, but apparently not. He couldn’t exactly say he didn’t need to do this work either. He wanted to change, so he accepted the assignment with a mental note to get a really obnoxious sparkly plastic cover for the book.
Friday morning he got a text from a guy he used to train with—free ice time in exchange for a practiced eye and some feedback while he worked up a routine to audition for one of the on-ice Cirque shows in Vegas. In Chicago it wasn’t so much about paying for ice time—Aubrey’s trust fund handled that—but finding an open slot could be challenging. Besides, he hadn’t seen Greg in ages.
Which was how he found himself standing at center ice in a rink that had seen better days, probably sometime in the sixties, judging by the hockey pennants hanging from the rafters. But beggars and choosers, et cetera. The ice was smooth. Aubrey didn’t care about anything else.
“So, Cirque, eh?”
Greg barely nodded as he started a warm-up lap of long, elegant backward crossovers. Aubrey kept pace with him easily, neither of them pushing yet. “Too old to compete,” Greg said, flicking his gaze at Aubrey and then toward the ceiling.
God, didn’t Aubrey know howthatfelt. “Figure skating has completely ruined ‘Pretty Young Thing’ for me, I’ll tell you that.”
With a snort, Greg segued into a breezy one eighty, arms outstretched. “Let me shed a tear for you, white boy. Come on. No one’s prettier than you,” he teased.
“Sorry, I don’t fuck straight guys,” Aubrey laughed and put on a burst of speed. Three more long strides and he toe-picked into a casual single axel.
“Tuck your arms in, you’re sloppy.”
Aubrey flipped him the bird. “Do I look like I’m trying to impress you?” He had ice time a couple days a week to stay in shape. Now that he had retired, he got to skate because helovedit. Though it admittedly wasn’t quite as much fun without thousands of people watching. “What kind of routine are you putting together, anyway?” He caught up to Greg and matched him stride for stride, holding his arms out at his sides to mimic his posture, the way pairs skaters might. “You wanna try some lifts? I might have to hit the gym first.” Greg had an inch and probably ten pounds on him, which Aubrey might have been able to handle if he’d ever skated pairs.
“I was thinking something a little less….”
“Gay?” Aubrey offered dryly.
Greg pivoted and kept going backward. “You said it, not me. But I was thinking something Broadway style, maybe? Big gestures, overdrawn emotion, that sort of thing. Plenty to choose from that have two male parts. ‘That Guy’ fromBlood Brothers. ‘Consider Yourself’ fromOliver!‘The Confrontation’ fromLes Mis.”
Aubrey raised an eyebrow as Greg broke away for a lutz. Not much to critique there; he executed it perfectly. “You made the leap from ‘less gay’ right to show tunes, huh.”
“Hey, no stereotyping.”
They finished their warmup, which got competitive about five minutes in, and then took a quick break for water and to scroll through playlists on Greg’s phone. Aubrey had a reasonable knowledge of musical theater, but he didn’t recognize all the songs, so they cued up a few to listen to while they freestyled.
Before Aubrey knew it, their time ran out—the doors to the locker rooms kept banging open and closed as a hockey team trickled in.
“Cool-down?” Greg suggested. He skated over to his phone to change the playlist.
Aubrey nodded and reached for his water bottle, breathing hard. His muscles sang with exertion, and he imagined happy little exercise endorphins dancing through his veins. Skating didn’t feel as good as sex, not by a long shot. But he hadn’t exactly been tearing up the club scene lately, and the exertion loosened him up in the same way.
He grinned when Greg changed the playlist over to disco. “You’re sure you’re straight?” He paused. “Actually, scratch that. Are you sure you’re not as old as the kids make you feel?”
Greg threw a sweaty towel at him. “You wanna go, tough guy?” He backed up, making a “bring it” gesture.
Aubrey snorted but put up his fists—all for show—and skated after him anyway. “Have you ever even been in a fight?”
