Page 22 of Make Me Mean It

“Marcus, you’re going to drop him.”

Neither of them hears me.

Or, more likely, neither of them cares.

Theo finally gets an arm around Marcus’s neck and drags him into a headlock, laughing while they stumble into the middle of the living room, knocking into people who only seem to find the entire thing more entertaining.

Grown men.

Actual grown men.

Marcus somehow wins whatever ridiculous wrestling match they’ve started and tries to shove Theo onto the coffee table.

Theo’s eyes widen.

“Absolutely not,” he argues, shaking his head.

Marcus claps him on the back. “I wasn’t giving you an option.”

I look between them.

Apparently everyone else knows what’s happening, because the shouting gets louder while Theo glares around the room.

“Assholes,” he grumbles, though the grin he’s sporting ruins the effect, making it difficult to take him seriously. “The lot of you.”

He puts up considerably less of a fight when Marcus ducks and drives a shoulder into his stomach, throwing him over it again.

The chanting starts before he’s even on the table.

I drop my eyes to my notebook and start the paragraph again. I have an assignment to finish, and whatever the fuck they’re doing has absolutely nothing to do with me.

I reach the end without taking in a single word.

Marcus drops Theo onto the coffee table, and whatever chance I had of concentrating disappears with the thud.

Everyone crowds closer, laughing and shouting while Marcus climbs up beside him. Theo stands in the middle of it all with his dark hair falling across his forehead while he takes another drink of his beer.

He looks resigned to whatever humiliation Marcus has planned for him.

Then Marcus starts dancing, and I have to snort back a laugh when he misses the beat so badly I’m not entirely sure he can hear the same music as the rest of us.

His hips are nowhere near the beat, shoulders somehow moving to an entirely different song while he repeatedly crashes into Theo, who keeps trying to drink around him.

A laugh finally escapes me, loud enough that Theo finds me across the room. His mouth ticks up when our eyes meet, before Marcus crashes into him again.

Theo rolls his eyes, his body moving along with Marcus.

The next laugh never makes out, though it should. Marcus is still being an idiot on a coffee table, surrounded by half the team chanting.

Except I’m not looking at Marcus anymore.

Because Theo can actually move.

His hips find the rhythm easily, rolling lazily with the beat while he moves around Marcus, still laughing whenever Marcus gets in his way. There’s none of the awkwardness I would feel standing up there with an entire room watching me. Theo barely seems aware of them.

Or maybe he is, and he just likes being watched.

A strange heat pulses in my stomach and I have to shift against the couch, forcing my attention back to my notebook.