Page 39 of Him

Right?

Sigh.

I’m not a navel gazer. I don’t sit around inventing complex theories to explain my behavior. But tonight it’s impossible not to lie here and wonder… All those times I watched him fly down the rink with the puck under his command—was that simple admiration? All those times I watched his flashy skating with a warm feeling in my chest. Or when he’d smile at me from across the table. Was I hiding something from myself? Or was there nothing to suppress?

Fuck, does it even matter?

Desire is chemistry. And in a biochem class I took once, they taught us that all chemistry is just electricity. We’re all just bags of charged atoms walking around bumping into each other.

My electrons went seriously haywire for his tonight, though. Particlescollided.

Pushing my hips into the mattress, I wish I could feel it again—the press of his body. The scrape of rough hands on my forearms.

I don’t know why I want it. I don’t know if the craving will disappear with tonight’s rain shower. But right this moment it’s here. And it’s real.

The night now feels endless. And tomorrow will be an awkward eternity.

Yay.

I can’t even begin to imagine what Wes is thinking right now. He wanted me—I felt it. But he stopped because it would ruin our friendship. This man who fucks strangers off an app.

I’m still lying there face down in my pillow when his key finally turns in our lock. I freeze, of course. He tiptoes in. I hearthe thud of his hiking boots hitting the floor, and the soft swish of clothing coming off.

My dick hardens against the mattress. I’m actually hard, and all he’s done is walk in and undress.Interesting.

His sheets rustle as he gets into bed. And then there’s silence. A minute passes, then two. I’m not sleeping, and he can probably tell. Which means we’re like two teenage girls after a catfight at a sleepover—ignoring each other.

I roll over to face him. “If you’re trying to avoid me, you might have to do another seventeen laps around town. I’m still awake.”

Wes sighs. “How are you feeling?”

“Horny.”

He snorts. “That’s the beer talking. Did you know you go gay when you’re drunk?”

When I hear the word “gay,” I almost argue. But that’s not really the point. “I’m not drunk, Wes.”

What I am is very, very curious. Wes thinks he did me a favor tonight by heading us off at the pass, but now I have this giant question inside me, and I don’t think it will fade in the morning. But itwillmake things awkward. I’ll be watching him in the mirror while we both shave, wondering what it would have been like. Wondering whether it’s something I could really get into, or just a weird moment of happenstance.

“I don’t want to fuck with your head,” he whispers. “I wish I hadn’t ever done that.”

But it’s not my head that needs fucking.

“Come over here,” I say. “Please.”

“No fucking way,” he replies.

“I can make you.”

He laughs. “Did you smoke some pot while I was out, Canning?”

I laugh, too, and it’s such a relief. Because it means I haven’twrecked everything. But then I lift my hips, peel off my briefs, and throw them at his head. He bats them away, smiling in the dark.

Kicking the sheet off, I put my hand on my dick. And he stops laughing.

SIXTEEN

WES