Page 11

Alexa Play: Vienna by Ben Platt

M y shift ended at eight that night, and as much as I wanted to avoid anything that might get my dick even close to hard, I agreed to hang out with Turtle for a bit.

“How’s training going?” Turtle asked as he deep-throated a joint, coating the papers with his saliva. We were crammed next to each other on the tiny couch he’d installed inside Shelly.

His laptop was propped up on a stool, and he had Point Break on. Both of us had seen it a thousand times, but after my weirdly sexual training session with Riddick, I was looking at everything a little differently .

Like… if I kept getting boners around Riddick, did that mean I was gay now?

I looked at young Keanu Reeves and tried to decipher whether or not I thought he was hot. He was definitely good-looking, but I wasn’t getting the same pulse in my dick that I did around Riddick.

Turtle slurped on his joint again, and I cocked my head to the side, wondering if I would get turned on by him basically giving his spliff a blow job, but… nothing.

I felt the same way I always did while hanging out with my best friend—who, if I was being honest, was also objectively hot—but it wasn’t doing anything for me.

I felt a little relieved, as I wasn’t in the mood to try to sleep with another rager and not be able to beat off, but it also just made me feel more confused.

If I was attracted to Riddick… shouldn’t I be attracted to all hot guys?

I guess I wasn’t attracted to all hot girls… Was I bisexual?

Ugh. My head hurts.

“Yo! Earth to the Finn Man! I asked you a question!”

I snapped out of my potentially gay—or bisexual—awakening and muttered an unattractive ‘uhhhhhh’ until Turtle took pity on me and repeated his question.

“How was training?”

I knew I couldn’t tell Turtle I was training with Riddick to ride Leviathans, but I had to tell him that I was training to up my game in general.

He already knew I planned to ride those waves, and if I didn’t give him some excuse, he was going to wonder why I wasn’t shredding the pipelines on the main beach with him every day.

I shrugged. “It was good. Kicked my own ass with swim sprints.”

Turtle nodded, finally lighting up the joint he’d just thoroughly pleasured with his mouth.

“Gnarly.”

“Yeah. ”

We fell into an amicable silence, Turtle puffing away while we watched Keanu and Patrick Swayze do some seriously unrealistic surf stunts.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” I finally burst out, turning to face my friend. He looked at me with hooded, red eyes, his usual goofy smile curling on his face.

“Always, brother.”

I didn’t hesitate. If I could talk to anyone about something like this, it would be Turtle.

“You ever pop a boner over a dude?”

My question didn’t really phase him. He just took a big toke and screwed his face up in thought as if he were trying to wrack his brain for an occasion where he might have.

“No, I don’t think so,” he finally replied, and disappointment brewed in my gut.

“But there was this one time where I got a major stiffy watching a show with Tom Selleck in it,” he said abruptly, taking another inhale of his joint.

This caught my attention.

“Really!?” I asked, trying not to sound as excited as I was to hear that I wasn’t the only one popping boners over older men.

“Hell ya, bro. It was that show he used to star in… what’s it called…” he trailed off, smoking and thinking again.

I waited for him to get there. This was how he earned his nickname, after all.

He was quick like lightning in the water but slow as a turtle on land.

Especially when he was getting high. I didn’t mind, though.

I liked that he took the time to gather his thoughts before he spoke.

It was something I never seemed to manage to do.

“Magnum P.I.!” He snapped his fingers in excitement as the name came to him. “He was always wearing these little shorts and showing off his chest hair. I dunno, man, something about that did it for Turtle Jr., if you’re catching my wave, bro,” he said, gesturing lazily to his crotch.

I nodded in understanding.

“Yeah, I could see that.”

“Right?” he said, grinning at me. “Man, that’s what I told my buddy Riko at the time. He gave me shit for it, and I was like, ‘Brother , you telling me if Tom fucking Selleck asked you to take a mustache ride, you would say no?’ ”

He snorted and ashed his joint, his eyes nearly fully closed now, as he giggled at the memory. “I told him he was full of shit. Everyone thinks Tom’s hot, man; it’s like science.”

“Do you think that makes you, you know… gay?” I asked, and Turtle shrugged.

“Probably not, man. I love pussy too much to be gay.”

“But you would fuck Tom Selleck if you could.”

Turtle somehow managed to give me a ‘what a stupid question’ look, even with his eyes basically closed.

“Get real, bro. ‘Aint no one fucking Tom Selleck. Tom Selleck does the fucking .”

And I wasn’t sure if it was a contact high or just the way Turtle had a way of making literally everything feel unserious, but I burst into hysterical laughter and couldn’t seem to stop for a ridiculous amount of time.

We spent the rest of the night watching the movie and arguing over whether or not Johnny Utah and Bohdi were secretly kind of into each other, and that was the reason for their spicy rivalry in the film.

By the time I left to head home, I’d decided I wasn’t going to worry too much about whether I was gay or not.

I was clearly attracted to Riddick, and I definitely was still attracted to Quinn. The only trouble was that I knew Quinn was into me, and she would hook up with me if I initiated something.

Could I say the same for Riddick?

Probably not.

Was he even gay, or into dudes, or whatever? Were the intense feelings that had started brewing in my chest completely one-sided?

Also, if they weren’t, what was I supposed to do about that?

‘Tom Selleck does the fucking. ’

My eyes widened at the realization that Riddick was definitely the Tom Selleck in this situation out of the two of us.

If he was into me… would I want him to fuck me?

My dick twitched in my shorts at the thought, and I swallowed.

Oh-no…

I was in trouble.

And this wasn’t the kind of trouble my dimples could get me out of.