Page 148 of The Monster and the Masochist

“Hey!” he protested, reaching reflexively for the book I’d stolen, and I grinned at how red his face was getting. “Give that back!”

I danced out of reach and glanced down at the rainbow cover, feeling my eyebrows raise in surprise when I realized what it was he’d been spending his afternoon reading.

“You’re reading ‘This Book is Gay,’ by Juno Dawson?” I asked in disbelief, and when I glanced back at Nolan, I found him staring at me with a very un-Nolan look on his face. His cheeks were beet red, and he was literally fidgeting like a little kid who had just been busted with his hand in a cookie jar.

“Uhm… yeah…”

I returned my attention to the unassuming paperback and flipped through it, only to feel even more surprised as I realized he hadn’t just been reading it. He’d underlined passages and left himself little notes to refer back to later.

I paused on the page about lesbians and how the word dyke was not okay to use unless you were a lesbian reclaiming the word.

He’d highlighted most of that page.

A strange feeling caught in my throat, and I was overcome with an unexpectedly strong feeling of… affection.

He was… trying to educate himself?

Nolan watched me awkwardly as I continued to flip through his notes, and I couldn’t help the smile that was beginning to spread across my face as I took in his very detailed annotations on ‘Chapter 9: The Ins and Outs of Gay Sex.’

I smirked at him.

“Interested in learning about the male prostate, Nolan? There’s a lot of exclamation points on this page…”

I didn’t think it was possible, but his face turned even redder.

“Give me that,” he snapped, swiping the book out of my hands and shuffling over to shove it in his Gucci messenger bag.

I laughed, allowing him to take his book back this time, and the glare he gave me just amused me even more.

“Why are you reading about gay sex, Nolan?” I asked, genuinely curious.

He rolled his eyes in a clear attempt to downplay whatever was happening here, but it was obvious he was still feeling awkward and vulnerable, which caused me to soften slightly.

“I wasn’t reading about gay sex,” he muttered, and I quirked an eyebrow at him.

“You were quite literally reading about the ‘Ins and Outs’ of it, Nolan,” I chirped, intentionally drawing attention to the hilarious double entendre Dawson had used for the title of chapter nine.

“Ugh. You’re the fucking worst, Cass,” he groaned, dropping his head back and pinching his nose in frustration. I snickered.

“That’s already been established. Cuntzilla, remember?”

He glanced at me, and I faltered slightly when I realized my teasing was not getting me the desired effect.

I frowned, reaching out to gently touch his arm.

“Hey… I’m just teasing you, I think it’s great that you’re trying to read more diversely… I’m sure this is quite the diversion from your usual sports highlights and legal bullshit. I’m just surprised is all. What inspired you to pick this up?”

He peeked at me, looking like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to answer that, but I gave him a genuine smile, doing my best to show him that I wasn’t trying to ridicule him for being interested in LGBTQ+ literature. Quite the opposite. I was actually extremely impressed.

“Well… I keep saying the wrong things to you and unintentionally pissing you off… The other day I made that joke, and you told me I was… fetishizing you or something, and I… I didn’t mean to do that at all.”

I blinked at him in surprise, but he wasn’t finished. In fact, now that he’d started, he didn’t seem to be able to stop.

The words came out in a rush, and that warm, affectionate feeling in my chest only grew as he bumbled through trying to explain to me that he’d been a fucking idiot lately and he was clearly sorry about it.

“... Then there was that whole thing at Chez when I said that shit about your wife… You were so mad at me. I honestly didn’t think the ‘D’ word was that bad when I said it… Like, obviously my intention at the time wasn’t to be nice per se, but I had no idea there was this whole historical background to that word and just how fucking disrespectful it was for me to say something like that…”

He frowned and scratched the side of his head awkwardly before continuing.