Page 56

Tommy

Isat across from Amos, legs crossed on his sofa, my laptop in hand. “Dude, you can’t say, ‘It was fun,’ to a group of Broadway fans. You aren’t just a jock any longer and one-liners won’t cut it.”

Amos chuckled, like he always did when he didn’t want to answer my question—something that hadn’t changed in the years since we’d been roommates.

“Feelings first. How did it feel?”

Amos took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Okay, so when we almost made it to the Super Bowl, we lost, but in that last game, I caught the ball as it was thrown from thirty yards away.

I’d fumbled similar catches many more times than I’d caught them.

But… when it mattered most, I caught that damned ball and ran my ass off down the field. The opposing team came at me like angry hornets after someone who’d knocked down their nest.

“It was surreal.

In that moment, I wasn’t trying to win a place at the Super Bowl, although that was important to me, of course.

I wasn’t playing for money, or fame.

I wasn’t even playing to win. I was just playing the game. I felt like my world had righted itself as I ran down that field.”

He paused for a moment, then smiled.

“When I crossed the line, making my first and only touchdown of the night, I felt like everything I’d ever done in football— all the training, the sweat, blood, tears, the hiding, the pretending— right in that one moment had been worth it.

Even if our team hadn’t won, that was my defining moment in football.”

I watched him as he continued to think. “My career was in the toilet and really not for anything I’d done. Just because some idiot reporter…”

He stopped and shook his head. “Sorry, didn’t mean that.”

“You did, and it’s appropriate. Keep going.”

He smiled and nodded. “Just because someone found out information about me that wasn’t anyone’s business but my own. So when I was on that stage, auditioning, I had the same feeling I had that night on the field. I wasn’t performing to impress anyone. I never dreamed I could get the part, because I was a football player, not an actor, and certainly not a singer. At least, that’s what I had believed about myself.

“So I was there to have fun, and, Tommy, I really did! I can’t even begin to tell you how much fun I had at that audition. Then”—Amos squeezed the bridge between his eyes—“they asked me to sing about my dad.”

He turned toward me then, looking me in the eye. “Have you ever had something so profound happen to you that your broken pieces came together and fixed themselves? Even when, if only for a moment, you’re whole again?”

I thought of the night Amos had made love to me in the small New Mexico town. “Yeah, I know that feeling,” I said.

“That’s what happened while I sang the lament for my father. I… I don’t know how else to explain it.”

I let out the breath I was holding and leaned over to kiss him. “You couldn’t have explained it better than you just did.”

“Do you kiss all the men you’re interviewing? ’Cause I might get jealous.”

I kicked him lightly with my bare foot but didn’t respond to the question.

“Okay, tell me about your opinion of Alec in Wanderlust, and Alec in particular.”

I spent another hour asking him as many questions as I could think up. Mostly pulling out his emotions. I might not be a journalist who covers Broadway, but I knew for a fact people would be much more interested in the emotional side of things than the grunts and short answers my sports folks were accustomed to.

He studied his lines later that day while I sat cuddled up against him, typing my article. Occasionally, I’d stop and ask him something I missed and needed an answer for. Something I knew would make the article better.

By the time I was done writing, I knew it was one of the best articles I’d ever written... mostly because I had so much insight into the guy I was writing about.

I double-checked my work, making sure I didn’t have any pesky typos, then sent the first quarter of the article to the New York Press, knowing of all the publications out there, this one would be the most likely to scoop up the story.

It wasn’t just a sports article, or an article about a new and upcoming Broadway star. No, this was about so much more. I’d already spoken to my contact at the Press and had been told whom to send it to. If I was lucky, they’d have already told them I was sending this their way.

I closed my laptop then and put it aside before snuggling deeper against Amos. He opened his arms and let me all but crawl onto him. God, I would never get used to how amazing that felt… how right I felt when I was cuddled into Amos’s arms.

I didn’t even realize I’d fallen asleep until Amos picked me up into those huge muscular arms, causing me to yelp like a surprised puppy.

“Amos, what’re you doing?”

I asked, chuckling.

“Wooing my man.”

I slipped my arms around him, not even worrying about how ridiculous this must look, and laid my head onto his gloriously thick shoulder. He laid me onto the bed and began taking off my clothes. Of course, this proved too much for me, so I sat up, only to be pushed back down.

“Stop, this is the catch-up stuff I was talking about. Now, let me have my way with you.”

I shook my head, but I was putty in Amos’s hands. As my unbuttoned shirt fell open, he began to undo my jeans before surprising me when he flipped the pants off in one swift motion, taking my underwear down most of the way with them.

He quickly dispatched them, too, and began to move his tongue up my torso toward my neck. My heart soared through the night as we made love again and again.

Damn, I thought, as I lay happily ravaged under Amos, his glorious weight pushing me into the mattress. He’d already begun to snore in my ear, and I smiled. Luckily, his snores weren’t the kind that could wake the dead. Instead, the sound was a soft rumble that quickly lulled me to sleep beside him.

I was happier and more sated than I had ever been in my life once again.