Page 16 of Want Me
“You could have just said so. I told you I was down.” It didn’t help that his eyes were still closed, his expression serene as if he’d just finished a fucking yoga class.
When I didn’t say anything, he finally opened his eyes, fixing me with an inquisitive gaze.
“Fine. I weirded out. A little bit.” I held my finger and thumb an inch from each other, and he responded with the same gesture, except he separated his finger and thumb as far as he could.
“It’s not your first time with a guy, so is it the fraternity stuff?”
“How do you know it’s not my first time?”
Eric exhaled a lazy chuckle, rolling his eyes as if the answer was obvious. “You never would’ve let me fuck you if it was your first time.”
I shushed him sharply, glancing around the hallway. No one there, of course.
More soft laughter from him. “So what’d you do? Play doctor with the neighbor boy and enjoy it a little too much? Pick on some poor sap in high school only to figure out,oh shit, all that angst you felt was just a boner in disguise?”
I kicked out at his leg to stop him. “Quit being a dick.” I rolled my lips inward, wondering why I was even going to tell him in the first place since we were just fucking around anyway. “I did play doctor with a neighborhood kid when I was little, but I didn’t know any different, and I did the same with a girl, too, so I figured it evened out. And then when I got to middle school and all the girls started getting tits, it overshadowed that old stuff, so I figured it was just a random thing. Until summer before freshman year.”
Eric’s eyes brightened with interest as I continued. “I worked in a restaurant as a busboy, trying to save up some extra cash for fall, and there was another guy I worked with and…it just sort of happened. We didn’t fuck, though, like penetration. A few hand jobs. He blew me a couple of times.”
“What happened to him?” Eric’s stare was contemplative, assessing.
I shrugged. “I left for school, and that was it.” He didn’t look like he believed my succinct ending, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t his business that I’d missed Cade more than I’d thought I would. We’d hung out all summer, and when we hooked up, it was always under the pretense that we were just two dudes getting off together because we were already around each other, so why not? We’d never even kissed. But yeah, I’d still missed him when I’d left.
“Nothing since then?” He narrowed his eyes at me.
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Is this an inquisition? I don’t fucking know. Because I like chicks, too, and life’s a lot easier being the kind of guy I am if I stick to chicks. And besides, I haven’t been interested in any other guys. Not even a little.”
“Until now.”
“I’m not interested in you. I’m interested in hooking up with you.” I caught the change in his expression. It was brief, but it was there—a flash of hurt or anger. I didn’t know him well enough to distinguish which, though. It felt good to say at the same time it made me feel shitty. Eric was always so calm and collected and confident, reducing me to a whimpering mess with his touch and his looks. I could get off on the powerlessness in the heat of the moment, but afterward, it irritated me to no end. None of that was really his fault, but I’d already established my brain didn’t function well around him.
“Fair enough,” he said, his tone mild and unbothered. He’d dropped the curtain again, but I didn’t feel the relief I expected to at returning to status quo.
“I don’t think my fraternity brothers would be that cool with my experiments, though.”
“Yeah, well. No worries. Your secret’s safe with me.”
That was supposed to be reassuring, right? So why did I feel a flash of disappointment that he wasn’t invested enough to be frustrated by my concern over secrecy? Whatever. I needed to just get out of there. And then I remembered—
“Shit, my stuff. How’m I going to get it?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll handle it. Wait right here.” Eric put his hands to his knees and stood up, skimming a palm over his temple to smooth his hair back.
“Now?” I blinked.
“Well, yeah. It’ll take me five minutes.”
Eric vanished around the corner, leaving me alone in the hallway. Seconds ticked by and my mind started racing as I waited. That was a bad idea. I should have just gone with him because at least when I was around him, I seemed to be incapable of complex thought processes. Now I was just stewing over letting him fuck me again—what it might mean. If it would happen again.
By the time he got back, I was pacing. He was absolutely soaked and dropped my backpack to the floor and made a flourishing gesture with his hands, grinning.
“Did you just walk in there?”
He chuckled. “Nah, gave some freshman five bucks to go get it for me. But really, I could've gone in. I just figured you’d freak out and worry more. You’re overthinking this, man. That dude has probably already forgotten, okay?”