His lips are swollen when he looks up at me, a sheepish expression on his face.
“I should clean up,” he says and starts to sit up, but I tell him to wait and climb out from underneath him. “I’ll do it.” I grab two washrags, get one wet, and come back to him. He looks good in my bed.
Joey reaches for the rag, but I push his hand out of the way and clean his skin for him, then dry him off. He gets himself tucked away and fixes his clothes while I drop the dirty towels in the laundry.
He is sitting up, feet on the floor, looking uncomfortable as he pulls on his shoes.
“You don’t have to leave.” I shove my hands in the pockets of my sweats and lean against the foot of the bed. A blush creeps up his neck, and it’s fucking adorable. I know it’s a stereotype to assume all jocks are dominant, bold, aggressive, dumbasses, but I’ve never met an athlete as soft as Joey.
Not soft like wimpy or anything, but he’s not in your face. He tends to be submissive,at least with me,and it’s caught me off guard. I definitely want to watch him on the ice, see what he’s like. He’s the captain of the team so he has to have a dominant streak in there somewhere.
“I should go.” Joey doesn’t meet my eyes when he stands. “I’ll see you around.” He does some kind of weird half-shrug thing and walks past me.
“Hey, this doesn’t have to be awkward,” I turn and say to his back. “I would like to be your friend.”
He stops with his hand on the doorknob and sighs so heavily his shoulders drop.
“You’re not like anyone else,” he says to the door. “And that scares the shit out of me.”
Then he’s gone.
I don’t know what to do with that, and it bugs me. He’s not like anyone else either, but he didn’t even give me a chance to tell him that. He ran. Is that what he does instead of communicating? Or is this too new, and he’s not comfortable yet?
I pace my room for over an hour, going over it in my head. I’m not one to wait when a conversation needs to happen. Rip the Band-Aid off and get it over with. Deal with the problem head-on.
I hate this waiting shit.
Frustrated with myself, I grab my phone and call my best friend and former foster brother, Brent.
It rings a few times before his face appears on the screen.
“Hey, man, what’s up? Must be getting laid since I don’t have twelve new memes or TikToks on my phone.” He shoves a bite of pizza in his mouth and talks around it. “Bad lay? It’s still early.”
“Would you shut the fuck up?” I scrub a hand down my face, and he snorts. He knows I’m not mad at him. “I’m in asituation.”
Brent stops shoving food into his face to look at me. I have his attention now. “What kind ofsituation?” He eyes me with suspicion.
“Would you believe—”
“No.”
“You didn’t even let me finish!” I bark back at him.
“You know exactly what you did, out with it.” He takes a drink of what looks like red Gatorade and gives me the hand motion to continue.
I sigh and pinch the bridge of my nose. “Okay, here it goes. I hooked up with a guy at a bar last night. This morning, I ran into him at the on-campus gym, and he’s a hockey player for Darby U. I told him to stop by if he felt the need. He did. We fucked around a bit, but it got weird and not the sexy kind of kinky weird.”
I really have Brent’s attention now. I don’t think he’s even blinking.
“He was obviously into it. I asked him about edging—”
“Probably don’t need to know the specifics dude.”
“—and he goes limp. Like he’s done.” I get up to pace my room again. “He says something about it being hard to get off, then he starts sucking my dick and runs.”
“To clarify, he did not get off?” Brent asks.
“Nope.” I run my hand through my hair. “I tell him to come back, let’s just hang out or whatever, watch a movie. Well, halfway throughThe Amazing Spider-Man,he’s hard. I get him off, it’s hot as fuck, we make out for, I don’t know, an hour or more? Then he leaves. On his way out, he says I’m different and that scares him.”
