Page 52 of Off Plan

“Now that sounds like a story.” He leaned his body toward me on the blanket, his legs crossed beneath him, and grabbed a beer for himself. “What happened? You puke? Confess your undying love for the cafeteria lady? Get a B+ on a test? What happens when Loaferscuts looseand has five beers?” he teased, lifting his bottle to his lips.

“I don’t know where you get this idea of me.” I sighed. “I jumped off a building.”

Fenn choked, spraying beer all over both of us, and I laughed out loud.

“You did not.”

“Did, too,” I confessed. “Slid right down a construction chute from the top of my high school onto a blow-up mattress on the ground. Broke my elbow. Dislocated my shoulder.”

“You?”

I sighed again. “I have done alotof shit when dared to do it. It’s kind of a personality failing. Stubbornness.”

Fenn’s lips twitched and his eyes gleamed in the fading light. “Is thatso?” He drew out the last word tauntingly. “Let’s test that.”

“Let’s not. I said itwasso.Was. Past tense. When I was young and foolish. We’re not testing it.”

“Truth or dare, Loafers.”

“No! Nope. I’m thirty-five, not seventeen, and I’m already gonna be feeling this beer until next week.” Nevertheless, I took another long swallow of the dark brew. Fenn knew his stuff when it came to beer.

“If you play, I’ll play, too,” Fenn singsonged. “All my deep, dark secrets revealed.”

I paused in my drinking and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Really?”

“Cross my heart. You can even have the first question, and I’ll give you a truth.”

Oh, man. “Fine, I’ll play,” I agreed. “Why have you been avoiding me for the last week?”

“How did I know it would be this?” Fenn groaned. “You’re so predictable.”

“How did I know you weren’treallygonna answer?” I retorted. “You’resopredictable.”

Fenn snorted and looked resolutely at the water. “I don’t fuck straight men. I don’tfuck aroundwith straight men. It’s as simple as that.”

My cheeks burned. “I don’t recall asking you to… to…”

“Is this like the Cooter Key thing? There are just words beyond your Loafery vocabulary?”

“I don’t recall asking you tofuck me,” I enunciated clearly. “Or fuck around with me.”

“Not in so many words,” he agreed. “But your dick did a lot of talking. Like a mime, pointing out a hole in your wall.” He dropped an arm between us in a parody of my wall-building from a week ago and fluttered his lashes flirtatiously.

I blew out a breath. I’d known that was why, really. I wasn’t sure why I’d expected there to be more to the story. I felt a little disappointed, like I’d wasted a truth.

“What, no comeback?” Fenn demanded. “No ‘but I am innocent and straight, and my poor dick was confused by the jet lag, and stimulus is stimulus, and if you hadn’t fallen on top of me that never would have happened’?”

I blinked at him, deciding how much to say. Every thought in my mind ended with a question mark. “Jet lag would be tricky to claim since New York is in this time zone.”

He assessed me silently for a minute, then said, “Fine. My turn. Why the hell did you come here?”

He made it sound so personal, I had to laugh.

“It was all part of a master plan to destroy you, Fenn. I could tell you more, but…”

He nudged me with his elbow. “Truth, remember. What made you leave your cushy Loafers life and come down here?”

“My cushy Loafers life.” I snorted. “It was not cushy. At first,” I amended. He looked like he didn’t believe me, which was annoying. “Not kidding.”