Page 52 of Necessary Time

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I corrected, frowning. Or was he? He kind of was. Maybe. We’d talked about what it would mean, but it didn’t feel official. Was it?

“You don’t like that?”

“I’m just thinking about it.”

“And?” he prompted.

Another big difference between Los Angeles and Brixton was the noise level. LA was almost always loud, and making our way out of Hollywood back toward Santa Monica, the noise levels were higher than normal. Cars and people, laughter, conversation. The city was so alive, full of so much potential. Grayson pulled up to a stoplight and I turned to look out the window, finding a massive apartment building climbing so high into the sky I had to angle my head outside to see the top of it.

I bet a building like that had a doorman.

“I think I have bigger things to worry about than whether Colin is my boyfriend or not,” I said.

“Right,” he agreed. “If I was a virgin fooling around with a virgin, I’d be stressing it too.”

“Who said I’m a virgin?” My cheeks burned, giving him answer enough.

“When it comes to men,” he amended, and again he wasn’t wrong. “And I just made a guess about Colin.”

“He’s…we’re on the same page.”

“It’s not like porn, you know that, right?”

The light turned green and Grayson accelerated through the intersection. The building already far behind, I watched the rest of the city race by as he drove west.

“I know that.”

“You need lube,” he said. “Lots of it. And prep. Jesus, don’t forget prep.”

“Like the…” I pinched my thumb and finger together, trying to gesture about the pill. “HIV thing?”

Grayson snorted, clearly amused. “How do you know what PrEP is, but not poppers?”

“If you could tell me about poppers, I could know about both,” I snapped.

“I could never.” He pressed a hand against his chest, feigning decency.

“Instead you’ll tell me about lube and some other kind of prep?”

Grayson held his hand up between us, folding two fingers down and keeping the first two pointed toward the sunroof.

“Prep,” he repeated, scissoring his fingers apart. “Lube.”

“Oh.” My mouth fell open, and I quickly looked away, understanding what he was trying to explain. Grayson was talking aboutphysicalprep, like preparation. That was mildly terrifying, but it made a lot of sense because cocks were big and assholes generally seemed…less big.

“Oh,” he repeated, returning his hand to the steering wheel.

“What else?” I asked.

I was perfectly happy with how things were between me and Colin, but I knew that wouldn’t last. Hand jobs would get tired sooner or later and I’d want to do more. He would want to do more. Honestly, I already kind of did, but we’d only talked about going slow a week ago. But it had been a long week. And I felt a lot more prepared for things now than I did back then.

Shit.

Was I ready for sex?

“You look like someone is speaking to you in a foreign language,” Grayson said.

I shook my head, trying to clear it.