Page 60 of Rule 1: Never Accidentally Marry Your Teammate

“Thank you for being such a good host to my parents.”

Oh.

“They’re nice people, Noah.”

“I didn’t think they would come this weekend.”

“Of course, they were going to come.”

“I wasn’t certain.”

Something in his tone makes me hesitate. Maybe this isn’t about money.

“Because of the gay thing?” My heartbeat quickens.

“Yeah.”

The word slices through me, and I frown.

My mother certainly had no issue with that. And even my super jock, successful businessman father didn’t have any issues. But then they live in Boston and go to the Cape with regularity. Provincetown bursts with pride. It would be absurd if they suddenly declared a wariness around non-straight people.

But Noah is from a rural part of New Hampshire, and things are different there. Maybe all the gay men and women go to big cities for college and don’t come back.

“I guess they’re more openminded than you thought. That’s good.”

“Yeah. I wish I knew before that it wouldn’t be a big deal to them.”

I frown.

Because that sounds like Noah wanted to know his parents would have been cool with him being gay.

Even though we’re lying on a bed, the definition of inactivity, my heartbeat quickens.

He didn’t mean to imply that. Surely not. No way.

But there were those amazing kisses between us and those confessions that things with his girlfriend felt less exciting. He said he didn’t miss her after they broke up. Does that mean...something? Or might he be bisexual? Might he be interested in something...more?

When the reporter asked if he’d fallen in love with me at first sight, it felt like his answer was yes.

We roll closer and closer together, conscious of not wanting to wake up his parents, even though thewalls are fucking well insulated and with the amount of yawning they did, they’re not going to wake up. We’re almost sharing breaths, and every time I inhale, I take in his scent.

He now smells like my body wash.

I love it.

I want to pull him toward me, feel the warmth of his chest and press him against me. I want to trail my fingers along his body, to not only see how his muscles ripple, but to feel them against my touch.

The longing isn’t sudden, but it startles me all the same. I’ve never felt this way about another man. All those times I roomed with Troy, us in our twin beds, sometimes, when we first started, having sleepovers with women in those twin beds, I never once thought that I wanted to see Troy naked, wanted to touch him, wanted to make my main goal to ensure his happiness.

I blink, the strength of my feelings overwhelming even for me.

I’ve never walked into a locker room of half-naked, and sometimes, mostly naked men, and felt the need to stare at the floor or stare at the ceiling or rush into the bathroom to change so everyone in the room couldn’t tell I liked men.

All those times I went out drinking with my teammates, my body warm and happy and thrumming with alcohol, I never once looked at a man and thought...maybe.

But now... God, now things are different.

Because I am thinking about Noah that way. Not just when we are in a room alone together. Not just when alcohol flows through my body, wiping away instincts to prioritize propriety, not just when I happen to catch him with fewclothes on, and I can admire the way the muscular planes of his body formed him.