“What?” Knox demanded. “Is it someone from back hom—I mean, the Hollow?”
I shook my head. “Nah.” I scrolled past a guy named Blue4You and shook my head. “These names. Sweet Gay Jesus. If a guy calls himself Diccrater, does that mean he wants to rate my dick? Or like… he wants to put his dick in my crater? Because either way, I amnotturned on. Wait untilafterI click your picture to try to play mind games with me, thanks.”
“Is that right, LumberjackLuvr?” Knox mocked, and then he froze.
My eyes flew to his in shock and more than a little horror. “You know my profile name?”
Knox finished buttoning his shirt soefficientlyhe almost seemed angry. “Yes. So? Was it a secret? If I open the app, I can’t help but see you on my Nearby page since you’re practically on top of me at all times— I mean…” He paused and swallowed. “You know what I mean.”
“You saw my dick pics?” I demanded.
“What? You don’t have any—” He closed his eyes and sucked in a breath as he saw how neatly he’d fallen into my trap.
“You clicked on it,” I accused. “You clicked my profile.”
“Curiosity.” He waved a hand and tucked his shirt into his jeans, though a flush climbed high on his cheekbones. “And I saw nothing I haven’t seen before, since you waltz around with your abs on display constantly.”
“Constantly?Constantly?”
“Why, Jesus?” he demanded of the hotel’s popcorn ceiling. “Why, if I’m forced to spend time with this man-child, must he also have developed this tendency to repeat himself? Is it because I teased Webb yesterday? Is it payback for the sandwich rectangles?”
“Don’t try to be cute.” I sat up straighter and swung my feet onto the floor. “Here I was, attempting valiantly not to be acreeper—or, like, not anexcessivecreeper,” I corrected, “while I watched you changing, and meanwhile, you’ve been looking at pictures of me on Grindr!”
“I… you were watching me change?” He sounded bewildered.
“Of course! Jesus Christ. Your mouthwatering ass was perched there, two feet from my face, defying fucking gravity, and as you keep reminding me,I’m twenty-four. Do that math, Knox.” I shook my head. “But I was trying to play it cool, since you weren’t interested.” I paused, eyes narrowed. “Right?”
“What? No. Or… yes?” He looked exasperated. “Learn to structure a question, for God’s sake.” Knox ran one big hand through his hair. “You and I are… we’re colleagues, Goodman. Sort of. So this is not a discussion that we should even be having. And aside from all that?—”
I coughed, “Bullshit.”
“Aside from all that,” he repeated—and he was right, people repeating themselveswasannoying—“there’s a significant age difference between us, and with that comes a significant gap in experience. Nothing will ever happen between us because I’d be taking advantage of your youth, and I?—”
I burst out laughing. “Oh my God. You’re a walking, talking logical fallacy. Age does not equate to experience, Mr. High Standards, because I have plenty of experience. Like…plenty.”
Knox’s eyes flared, and his jaw worked from side to side for a minute. “I’m not having this conversation,” he said at length. “And I am not having sex with you.”
I made a squawking noise that would have been embarrassing if I hadn’t been too outraged to care. “Who asked you to?” I challenged. “I said I liked looking at your ass. I didn’t say I wanted to claim it.”
He huffed out a laugh. “No, because you want me to claimyours. Not happening.”
I put on my pity-face. “Your loss.” I jumped off the bed, whipped off my T-shirt, and grabbed my own suitcase from the floor so I could heave it onto the bed.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“Seducing you, obviously.” I rummaged through the bag until I found a polo shirt and yanked it on, then turned to the mirror and ran a hand through my wavy hair until the mess looked just-fucked instead of fucked-up. “Later.” I grabbed my phone and patted my ass pocket to make sure I still had my wallet before heading into the living room.
“You’re going out.” Knox made the words sound half-questioning and half-accusing.
“Ding ding ding. Don’t wait up. Oh!” I wrinkled my nose. “And don’t bring anyone back here to fuck, okay? It’d just be awkward with four of us here.”
“Where are you going?” he asked as I wrenched open the door.
“A bar first.” I grinned, quoting his own words back at him. “And then who knows?”
I realized pretty quicklythat there were several problems with my plan for “I’ll show Knox how fuckable I am” vengeance sex.
For one thing, though the number of available Grindr gays in Boston was exponentially higher than anywhere I’d ever lived, that just made weeding out the weirdos that much more time-consuming. By the time I’d had my second drink in the hotel lobby—and, yes, watched Knox walk out the front door of the hotel, because I was a sap like that—I’d decided that Grindr was not for me. Not in this town. Not at this juncture. I was going to have to do things the old-fashioned way.
