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Page 6 of Final Boy at Randy’s (Diner Days)

CHAPTER SIX

Lennox

I groan as I slide into the seat at my desk, my shoulders and neck aching with exhaustion, my thoughts moving like molasses. It’s three in the morning, and I’m often up this late, but fuck, tonight took it out of me.

And it’s not over yet. Jamie’s not back, and I want to be up when he gets home. Reed’s here with Indy, but there was no way I wanted to deal with that, so I headed up to my room, leaving them to their privacy.

It’s not weird that he’s in my house.

Or so I keep telling myself.

I swivel my seat to the side and set my feet on either side of the box in front of me, flip it open, and start organizing shit. We’d gone back to quickly to pack all our shit, and I’d picked up all sorts of stuff left in the scramble, extra scripts, a jacket that I think belongs to Verity, a water bottle, just in the rush to get out, and I set them to the side, then work on the next box, getting everything tucked away neatly.

Once I’m done, I sigh and set my sketchpad on my desk. I flip it open and turn on my desk lamp before lowering the rest of the lights in the room. The blue color of the lamp eases my eyes. But I don’t reach for my pencil. I know it’s bad when I don’t even have the urge to draw, which I usually do every night for at least an hour, no matter the time.

Instead, I stare at my tentacle man with his huge cock and slight error in proportions, vaguely making plans for how to fix him, but not feeling inspired enough to actually do it. I just keep thinking about it though, my brain forging ahead on the problem, like it doesn’t know the rest of me is exhausted.

I hate being creative sometimes. There are times when I wish I could just turn it off. Think about nothing. Not feel this constant pressure. Like if I don’t create, if I’m not doing something , then I’ve failed my entire day somehow.

I stretch a hand out for a pencil when there’s a knock at the door.

“Jamie,” I mumble with relief, pushing up from my chair. I open the door, and my eyes dart upwards. “Reed?” Holy shit. “What are you doing here?”

He stands in the hallway, hands in his pockets, hat backwards, gaze moving over my face, like they always do. “I’m about to head out.”

My back straightens. “Is everything good with Indy?”

“Yeah.” He tilts his head, the light catching on one ear. “She wanted to get changed. And I need to?—”

He stills. He’s staring over my shoulder, past me, into the soft blue light of my room.

“Holy fuck ,” he mumbles.

He’s just standing there, hands fisting in his pockets, hardly any expression on his face. My awareness quadruples, slithering up my spine.

I forget, sometimes, what my room must look like to other people. I think it pretty much looks like what it feels like to be in my head—like a million images crammed together, all these ideas and details tucked into every corner, a thousand drawings covering my walls. Some are torn out pages of my sketchbook, nothing more than pencil on white paper, some larger charcoals and watercolors, but it’s all me—which means mostly blacks and grays, slips of color, a lot fantasy, definitely sexually risqué, and brimming with my obsession— wings —and all pinned to the faded dark blue of my walls.

“Is all this yours?”

I clear my throat. “Yeah.”

“May I see it?”

I hesitate.

I normally don’t care who comes in here. Don’t care what they think, what they see, what they conclude. I’ve been drawing long enough to feel comfortable with it and myself. But my entire body revolts against the thought of Reed in here.

He’s not Archer.

They aren’t the same person.

But it’s like my body doesn't know the difference. And I’ve learned to trust things like the tightness in my chest, the scrunch of my toes in my socks. Seven years of steady therapy has taught me to trust those things.

“Why?” I ask softly. It’s a real question. I want to know.

Why would he care? Why would he want to see?

“Because it’s like the library.” His eyes move back to mine. “Eerily beautiful.”

I stare at him, trying to deduce sarcasm. Trying to see if that answer is real.

It feels like it is.

But that doesn't erase the tightness across my chest, that echo of distrust that I can’t shake.

It’s enough to move my feet to the side, though. “Come in.”

He hesitates, and for a second, I think he might change his mind, then he steps through the door, hands deep in his pockets, the brim of his hat brushing his back between his shoulders as he turns.

I let him look in silence. Let him move around my room and lean in to study. I stand near the door, watching him take me in.

“This must have taken a long time,” he says after circling a quarter of the room, pausing at my desk to study my sketchpad.

“I don’t think about it like that.” I rub the back of my neck, aware of the itch of the garment tag. I usually rip them out. “I just add when I feel like it. There’s no timeline or plan.”

It’s been so long since someone I didn’t really know has stepped into this room. Usually it’s just Jamie or Indy, sometimes Umar or Jonas, but they’re used to it. They’ve seen it, hardly really notice anymore.

But Reed… fuck… he just keeps looking, and I shiver. I’m starting to feel splayed out. Like an insect pinned to a mounting board.

Reed turns on his heel, looking over my head—maybe at the metal angel that stretches over my doorway, wings made of knife tips.

“You like wings,” he says.

“I don’t know if ‘like’ is the right term.”

He pivots, his gaze digging into me. “What’s the right term?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe compulsion.”

It’s a theme I keep circling back to. Wings. Made of feathers, knives, skin, fire, water—anything I can think of.

It’s like this itch I keep scratching until my fingertips are numb. The mechanics of how wings arch out from the back of the shoulders, how a spine curves to hold the weight, the silhouette of the extension. Even when I don’t mean to focus on it, they always find a way to bleed out from my pencil, coming from somewhere deep, like marrow. This ache of longing that I feel deep in my chest.

So, yeah, obsession feels like the right word.

His eyes narrow. “I’m a wing.”

“What?”

“That’s my position.”

Fuck, his laugh is like his voice. A soft kind of reverberation, something that I can nearly feel.

I rub at the side of my neck, leaving my hand there, fingers pressing against the tendon behind my ear. “I have no idea about water polo positions.”

He steps toward my bed. “What’s this one?”

He’s pointing at a sketch taped next to my headboard. Two boys sitting next to each other on the sidewalk, their feet in the gutter. One is twelve years old, and the other is eleven. The younger one is leaning his head on the older’s shoulder—on my shoulder.

“That’s Jamie and me,” I say.

I remember this moment so well. I don’t remember what happened before—how we ended up sitting on that street corner, or what happened after, but I remember him resting his head on my shoulder, his hair brushing against my jaw, his legs stretched out into the gutter, longer than mine even though he was younger. Our tattered tennis shoes and the way the sun was straight overhead, sharp, distinct shadows directly underneath our legs.

I remember two boys on the street corner.

No matter what the rest of the world saw.

I know that’s what Jamie remembers, too. He wasn’t the first person I told, but he was the first person to hug me and tell me that he felt it too. He was the first person who used the right pronouns, who didn’t second-guess my own experience. Who didn’t call me out in front of all of his fucking friends, standing there by the lockers, using words that make my skin crawl.

That was all Archer.

I clear my throat, crossing to my desk, and then flip my sketchpad closed. My fingers are trembling slightly, my throat closing. But there’s no fucking way I’m going to let this feeling take over while Reed is in my room.

“Why did you ask about that one?” My tone is hard, pushing him for the answer.

He’s still studying the drawing, not looking at me.

“It seemed like an anomaly,” he says.

I slide the pencils into their pouch. “How is it an anomaly?”

He steps back onto his heel. “Everything else is otherworldly. And that feels very real.”

“It is real.” I have to clear my throat again. Fuck, I’m exhausted. Thoughts spinning because of the bizarre night. I need sleep, need rest, maybe some time to draw, just by myself, sketchpad resting on my knees, on the floor with my back resting against my bed. I need the space to just be me for a few minutes.

I turn back to Reed, about to say something like you can go now when I realize he’s watching me.

He takes a step closer, three feet away. “Let me show you.”

I stiffen, the hairs on the back of my neck rising. “What?”

“The positions.” His hands slip out of his pockets, where they’ve been for this entire time, the right coming up toward me, palm up, fingers open, reaching for me.

I stare at it. What the fuck is he doing?

“Let me show you.” His palm is wide and the lines across it are etched clearly, sharper than most people’s, and his fingers are long, nails neatly trimmed. “It’s easier this way.”

I keep hesitating.

He tilts his head, waiting for a moment, then he nods, his hand starting to fall.

And I put mine out.

I honestly don’t know why. I don’t know if I want to. I don’t know if I don’t want to. But he slides another half step forward, closing the distance between us, and his hand slides underneath mine, my knuckles settling on the heel of his hand.

That musk and cotton scent of him is stronger now, the slight sound of his swallow.

He cradles my hand, and then, with his other, draws his fingers along my palm.

“It’s a semicircle,” he says. “Like this.” He slides his index finger lightly across my palm, just above the wrist, that small koi tattoo between his joints, his touch no more than a tickle. “The goal is here. With the goalkeeper.”

He presses lightly against my skin, just above the center of my wrist. His chest moving with his breath, his eyes shifting to my face and then back down. “And then there are six other positions. The first is the hole.” He grazes his finger toward the center of my palm, not fully into the center, but close. “The hole here.”

I blink. “You have a position called ‘hole’?”

“Yes.” His lip crinkles up on the right. Something sparking in those cool brown eyes. Interest. Curiosity. The light reflects from my desk, casting his face in a blue hue.

“Alright, just verifying.” I tip my chin toward my palm. “Continue.”

“Then wings.” He shifts his fingers to the outside of my palm. “Usually around the two-meter line.”

“And that’s where you play?”

“Yes.”

“Do you tread water the entire time?”

His fingers holding up my hand tighten slightly. “Unless I’m diving or swimming, which generally you’re supposed to be doing. Not just staying in one spot.”

“That sounds difficult.”

“It takes a lot of stamina.” His gaze fixes on mine for a heady moment. A beat of blood swells low as his fingers shift toward the center of my palm, dipping into the hollow. “The flats are outside of the five-meter line. Two of them. And then there’s one point.” He presses just below my fingers. “Who is directly out from the goal and the hole. And that’s everyone.”

His finger drifts, a touch so soft and smooth that it tingles across my entire palm, stretching to my wrist, up into my forearm.

My breath shallows.

Fuck.

Why?

Why is he still holding my hand?

Why am I letting him?

I grit my teeth, stepping back. My hand falls. It swings down to my side and hangs there. It acts like a normal hand, attached to my wrist, fingers curling, thumb tucking inward. But I’m thinking about it. There, at my side, like it’s something else. Something different than just a hand.

My blood is pulsing, swelling to my t-dick, rushing into my ears.

I suddenly need to fill the silence. “How long have you played for?”

He stiffens, that faint moment of tension he had before, wafting all around him. “I was about ten when I started.”

“And you practice every day?”

“Not necessarily in the water.” His voice scrapes, a rough edge. All of him is shifting to that edge. “But every day is something. Although Sundays are light. Usually just an easy jog and yoga. But that's on my time. I don’t play for BU anymore. I coach.”

“You coach?”

“Yeah, assistant coach to the assistant coach. I’m really fucking good at getting coffee.” He steps back, but it’s like he fills up my room, reaching into every corner. Tension hovering around him. Whatever was in his eyes, it’s not present now.

I settle my ass against the edge of my desk. “Why don’t you like talking about it?”

His arms cross his chest. “Who says I don't like talking about it?”

“I guess, me?” Why am I pushing him so hard? Should I be? Probably not.

He shakes his head, lips pressing into something like a sarcastic laugh. “I fucking love it.”

“Okay.”

His eyes narrow. “It’s brutal, but it’s fun. Like getting tossed in a can of soda with thirteen other guys and shaken up. It’s…” He hesitates, and I wait, watching the way his shoulders keep tightening, the way he keeps stiffening. “It’s a team sport. Like full on, you can’t survive it on your own.” His voice cuts hard at the end. “It’s my fucking life.”

I rub at the side of my neck. “You must put a lot into it,” I say quietly.

His brows pull together under the backstrap of his hat. “I do.”

I nod, my ass pressing into the edge of my desk. The feel of him is still substantial, but I can feel it shifting, calming.

He pulls in a slow breath and then lets it out in increments. “I came to ask for a script.”

“What?” I’m mildly surprised.

“Indy said I could probably get a script from you.”

“Sure.” I push off my desk and grab a script from the bookshelf to my right. “Of course you can have one. I don’t know if we’re still filming, but here you go.”

He steps forward to take it from me, rolling it into a cylinder in his hands. “You don’t know?”

“After what happened today, I’m not sure.” My eyes move over him—all that long, powerful length, muscles still tight but loosening. “You probably get injured frequently.”

“It happens.” He taps his script to his nose. “I’ve broken this twice.”

“It’s still straight.”

His jaw ticks. “You’re not looking close enough.”

I’m looking pretty fucking close .

He smiles tightly as he steps toward the door. “Good night, Lennox.”

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