“Fine.” I reach for the sleeve dangling past his hand, but he pulls his arm away, hiding both of them behind his back. “It doesn’t even fit you,” I point out, the hem hitting so far down that I can barely see his shorts.
“That’s the point,” he says simply, opening his arms. “Come here.”
I step between his legs, letting him pull me in, wrapping my arms around his waist. The grocery list forgotten.
“Let me have it, okay? It makes me feel cute.”
I look down at him. His black hair, a permanent mess, and his features softened with something I think I feel too. “You’re always cute,” I tell him, sounding way more sincere than I mean to.
“I know,” he agrees, pulling me the rest of the way in.
We kiss on the counter until it turns more heated, and I can feel his hard cock pressing against my stomach. He thrusts against me once, and I pull back, stilling him with a hand on his thigh.
“You know, someone stealing my stuff is the reason I moved in here.”
Mike pulls back with a frown. “What?”
“I had this roommate, and shit kept going missing from my side of the dorm. Notebooks and pencils at first. I thought I was losing my mind. But then I went to do laundry one day, and my boxers were gone.”
Mike scrunches up his nose. “That’s so creepy.”
“Yeah,” I agree, frowning at the memory. Thank god that’s over. “It was my Spider-Man boxers, too.”
His face breaks into a wide grin, his eyes going all crinkly. “Someone stole your Spider-Man boxers?”
“Nate got them for me for Christmas.”
“That’s—” He presses his lips together. “Wow. I feel cheated. I want to see you in Spider-Man boxers.”
“There are others.”
Why did I say that?
His eyes light up. “How many pairs are we talking?”
“Basically all of the Avengers.”
He looks so delighted by this information that I don’t have it in me to be embarrassed about it. He grabs my shirt, pulling me back between his knees, wrapping his legs around me. “I’m glad your creepy roommate stole your underwear.”
“Why?”
“Brought you to me, didn’t it?”
I don’t have anything to say to that that isn’t way too much for the moment, so I slide my fingers over his cock, hard in his shorts, and we don’t do much more talking after that.
Ryan is already there when I get to the gym, glaring at his phone.
He does that sometimes. Shows up too early, and by the time I get here, he’s already warmed up and ready, which makes me feel like I’m running late even when I’m not.
“You’re late,” he says.
“I thought we were meeting at nine.”
We fall into our rhythm, lifting, spotting each other, the familiar back and forth we’ve done every week for over a year.
Things with Ryan used to feel easy. He was the kind of friend who didn’t require much maintenance, and I liked that about him. It was enough to show up and exist in the same space.
It doesn’t feel easy today.
