“Your conversation and my conversation would go very differently,” Felix muttered.
Shane rolled his eyes. “You don’t know that. Maybe he feels the same way.”
“Hedoesn’t,” Felix snapped. “Just leave it, okay?”
Shane blinked. Felix didn’t blame him. Felix didn’tsnap. He was breezy and fun and if he got annoyed, he was at least entertaining about it. You could get away with a lot if you made people laugh.
Felix looked around the room. Everybody was too busy talking themselves out of smuggling puppies back to their dormsto pay any attention to Felix getting vulnerable in a rare moment of honesty.
“My first time sucked,” Felix said with a grin he didn’t feel in the slightest. “I had never even kissed anybody before I got to college. Then I got here and there weresomany gay people. And even better, none of them knew me when I was a kid. You get it.”
Shane nodded. He came from a small town, too.
“Anyway, I wanted to do everything,” Felix continued. “And I wasn’t very picky about who I did it with. So my first time was with this older guy who had graduated but still came to college parties. He wasn’t very considerate, let’s say. And things got better after that, but that first time still sucked. I want Jacob to…”
He stopped, his voice catching in his throat. The puppy in his lap whined, licking worriedly at his hand. Felix petted him, grateful to have something to look at that wasn’t Shane. “I want Jacob to have a nice first time. Abunchof nice firsts. You know? And I’m good at sex. Fuck, Ilovesex. I know you think it’s a big deal, but it’s really not. I’m just giving my best friend a good time.”
“So you’re just gonna…” Shane paused, and Felix was reminded that Shane was still a prude, no matter how many times Felix had walked in on him having sex lately. “Walk him through the ropes,” Shane continued, stroking his puppy absentmindedly as it dozed against his legs. “And then go back to normal?”
“Exactamundo,” Felix said. He looked around the room, desperately searching for another topic. Then he felt a rush of warm wetness on his legs and couldn’t even be annoyed. “WHOA,” he said loudly, and lifted his puppy off his lap just in time for the last squirts of pee to get on the gym floor rather than his pants. He stood up, ignoring the puppy as it whined and pawed at his damp jeans.
“Okay,” Felix said, examining the wet patches on his jeans and twisting toward the volunteers at the front of the gym. “We need a cleanup over here!”
The volunteers looked up. One of them was on the phone, the other was mopping up another ‘accident,’ waving at him in a way that meant she’d get to him in a minute.
Felix plucked at his jeans and sighed. “Shit. I need to ask my cleaning guy how to get puppy piss out.”
Shane frowned. “Yourwhat?”
“Never mind.” Felix got his phone out of his pocket and started googling. It couldn’t take much to get piss out of denim, right? Or was it another tomato juice situation where he had to learn the many uses of baking soda?
Shane eased his own puppy out of his lap and stood, avoiding the small puddle on the floor between them. “You know you can always move in with me and Nate, right? We need a roommate.”
“Nope,” Felix said, popping the ‘p’ and ignoring the sinking feeling in his gut. He only had until the end of the semester, he was running out of time. “I’ll talk Jacob into living with me. Just you wait.”
“Jesus Christ,” Shane muttered. “Just talk to your best friend, dickhead. Ask him?—”
A familiar voice said, “Ask me what?”
Felix whirled. Jacob was walking toward them, wearing a hoodie so tight it could only be Felix’s. One of the many, many reasons Felix enjoyed the rare occasions when Jacob stole his clothes: they wereveryform-fitting. But for the first time, the sight of his own clothes straining over Jacob’s chest made Felix sad, not horny. He could sleep with Jacob, he could watch Jacob wear his clothes, but it never meant what he wanted it to.
“Ask me what?” Jacob repeated as he joined their little group. He gave Felix an expectant look, only for his face to quickly morph into confusion. “Why are you wet?”
“Take a sniff and guess,” Felix said.
Jacob’s nose wrinkled. “Already? I told you to bring wet wipes. Here, I have some.”
He rummaged in his tight hoodie and brought out a pack of wet wipes. Felix took one, rubbed his hands clean, then paused when he noticed the logo. “You hate these ones,” he said. “You said they smell like feet.”
Jacob shrugged. “It’s the sensitive skin one.”
Despite what his parents said, Jacob didn’t have sensitive skin.Felixdid. And suddenly Felix was thinking about the air freshener in Jacob’s dorm, which Jacob switched from ‘Florals’ to ‘New Car’ after Felix complained the floral one gave him a headache. And about how Jacob kept hand cream in his backpack all through winter because Felix’s hands got chapped from the cold.
Hedidlove Felix. Just not in the way Felix wanted.
As Felix tried not to tear up at Liberty Heights Biannual Puppy Day, Shane cleared his throat. “Hey Jacob,” he said. “Would you ever date Felix?”
Jacob stared at him like he wasn’t entirely sure those words were English. “What? That’s not… what kind of question is that? Felix is my best friend.”
