Page 33 of Jacked (Gymbos #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

AJ

“How necessary is the eggplant?” Slater weighs the purple fruit in his hand with a frown.

“In eggplant Parmesan?” I ask dryly. “Pretty necessary.”

“Fair enough. I’m a little skeptical though.” He tosses it into the basket I’m holding.

“You’ve never had eggplant?”

A dirty, teasing smile spreads over his mouth in response. “Just once.” He winks. “Come to think of it, it might be my new favorite food.”

He licks his lips in a purposeful, slow motion, holding my gaze and still smirking. I choke on a laugh and my cock plumps just enough at the implication that I have to move the basket to hide my reaction.

Seriously, how did Slater manage to slide so easily from seeing himself as completely straight to being comfortable openly flirting with me in the cramped grocery store around the corner from our apartment? It all seems so natural for him. I think I’m a little jealous.

“What? Too much?” he asks with a chuckle, rounding the corner of the next aisle and snagging a package of disposable razors to toss into the basket.

“No,” I say quickly.

The last thing I want is for him to get self-conscious and stop flirting with me.

I just need to get used to it. I need to find my footing and figure out how to flirt back.

It’s so easy when it comes to women. Genuine compliments go a long way, so do smiles, and if you can make a woman laugh you’re golden.

Come to think of it, that’s exactly what Slater’s been doing with me, and it’s definitely working.

All I have to do is find the confidence to give it back.

I clear my throat and inch closer to him while he compares two different types of hand soap.

“You have a really nice smile,” I say confidently, not letting myself drop my voice or mumble.

He looks over at me, that smile of his getting even bigger, lighting up his whole damn face like he’s made of sunshine or some shit. My heart stutters, and the urge to reach out and touch him rushes through me like a tidal wave.

“How the hell do you manage to be so damn cute? You’re, like, two hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle. Cute should not be a thing for you.”

Dammit, he really is better at flirting than I am. Heat rushes into my cheeks and I grin right back at him. That’s okay, I’ll keep working on it.

He tosses one of the hand soaps into the basket without any more deliberation and we continue on down the aisle.

I don’t even know what we still need to make dinner.

He distracted me too well, and now it’s entirely possible we’re going to end up back home eating Eggplant Aftershave instead of Eggplant Parmesan.

My steps stutter involuntarily as we pass the small section at the end of the hygiene aisle dedicated to makeup and nail polish.

For some reason, a bottle of royal blue nail polish catches my eye.

A memory rattles its way out of that box in the back of my head.

I was probably eight or so, and the girl sitting next to me in class was painting her nails under her desk.

She caught me watching her and offered to paint my nails at recess if I wanted.

I can still remember the way my stomach clenched and my heart beat faster, trying to figure out whether she was teasing me or being serious.

It seemed harmless enough and I wanted to say yes, but I couldn’t make myself.

“It’s a nice color,” Slater says, startling me out of the memory.

I grunt in response and tear my eyes away from the nail polish. He picks it up though and looks at it closer.

“Do you want it?” he asks. There isn’t a hint of judgment or teasing in his tone, so I let myself consider it for real.

Do I want to paint my nails? I haven’t thought about it in so long, I’m not sure if this is just leftover curiosity from little eight-year-old AJ or if I actually like the idea.

I shrug. “I don’t know.”

“It’s not a gender or sexuality thing. You know that, right? Anyone can paint their nails.” He says it gently, and I nod. “And look.” He picks up a bottle of nail polish remover from the shelf right next to it. “If you hate it, you can take it right off.”

I swallow and nod. “Yeah, okay.”

Slater grins and puts both items into the basket.

“Alright, I think that’s everything.” He pulls up the recipe he saved on his phone to double-check, rattling off each item while I grunt in confirmation after each one.

We really didn’t need a recipe—I could cook eggplant parm in my sleep—but in the spirit of teaching Slater to cook, I’m letting him take the lead as much as possible. I will step in if he tries to substitute the marinara sauce with chicken soup or something insane though.

We pay for our groceries and walk back to the apartment side by side, the backs of our hands brushing, the two of us trading glances and smiles neither of us can seem to tame.

Not that we want to. Every time he smiles at me I feel like a teenager with my first crush all over again, stomach full of butterflies, chest rumbling with laughter over nothing at all.

The urge to touch him thunders through me again.

We’re in Boystown, no one is going to look twice at a couple of guys holding hands.

I gather up all of my courage, my heart racing, and I reach for his hand.

Our palms are both slightly damp, and the first thing that hits me is how different it feels to have big, thick, masculine fingers threaded between mine.

I glance over to make sure he’s okay with this and see that smile on his face, bright as ever.

A few guys pass us on the sidewalk and I swear Slater preens a little when they briefly glance at our joined hands.

I don’t even have time to consider how their attention feels, I’m too busy getting fucking giddy over the fact that Slater seems so damn proud to be holding my hand.

“I love how unapologetically you you always are,” I say gruffly. “Everything about you is so confident and authentic, it’s incredible. I want to be just like you when I grow up, bro .” The last part is said teasingly, but I fucking mean it. I want to be more like Slater.

This time I actually manage to make him blush. His fingers spasm around mine and he bumps my shoulder with his.

“Dude,” he says, sounding choked up, and we both chuckle.

SLATER

We have to stop holding hands when we reach our building so I can fish my keys out of my pocket. We race up the stairs with our grocery bags swinging and our footsteps thundering. If I had to guess, our neighbors probably hate us. Oops.

Inside our apartment, we kick off our shoes and he follows me into the kitchen where we unpack the bags and I pull up the recipe again, determined to follow it to a T and cook him something edible for a change. I turn on the faucet and wash my hands, shooting AJ a look over my shoulder.

“Basic hygiene, very impressive,” he jokes.

I flick my fingers at him, showering him with droplets of water that cling to his furry cleavage and leave dark spots on his tank top. I stare at the mesmerizing path they find through his chest hair, trickling down until they disappear into the round curve of his full pecs.

“I can’t believe how long it took me to figure out that suffocating between a pair of beefy man titties is definitely the way I want to die.”

AJ makes a sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a moan, and flexes his pecs like the filthy tease he is.

My cock swells and I groan before forcing my attention away from his glorious chest and back to the task at hand.

I’m going to impress him with dinner if it kills me. Less ogling, more cooking.

AJ plants himself on the stool on the other side of the island, dragging the bag with the other odds and ends over.

While I study the recipe carefully again, he rifles through the bag for a second before pulling out the nail polish.

I don’t want to put any extra pressure on him, but it makes my insides all warm and fluttery to watch him roll the bottle between his hands, staring at it so intently as he works through whatever’s going on inside his head.

I know enough to know that presentation has absolutely zero to do with gender or sexuality.

Straight dudes can dress in drag, gay dudes can be masc to the max—it doesn’t matter.

But there’s something special about getting to watch AJ explore things he’s deemed “too gay” to enjoy until now.

Is there anything like that on my end? I puzzle over the question as I start to carefully chop the eggplant into evenly sized pieces.

Unlike AJ, my parents have always been open minded and liberal as hell.

Long before Cas came out, they were taking us to Pride parades and advocating for marriage equality.

They weren’t hung up on gender roles or anything like that either.

I smile at a stray memory of my dad in the kitchen on Sunday mornings growing up, wearing a pink apron while making us pancakes.

“What are you thinking about that’s making you smile that hard?” AJ asks curiously.

I look up to see him watching me while he unscrews and rescrews the lid of the polish.

“My dad. When we were kids, he had this weekend tradition of making pancakes for us. He would always ask us what shape we wanted, but no matter what you said, they always came out the same misshapen, long legged horror creature.” I laugh at the memory.

“It became a running joke. Cas and I would ask for a Christmas tree or a Ferrari or a star, and he would make this nightmare horse every damn time.”

AJ laughs along with me for a second, then sobers.

“Were they cool when your brother came out?” It’s easy to tell that he’s thinking about his own dad again and how he’ll react if and when AJ comes out to him.