Page 27 of Off Sides

My lips tug up in a smile at how dreamy he sounds right now. The guy is full-on swooning. Over what I’m assuming is two dudes. I should shut this down immediately. Tell him I’m not into that shit.

That I don’t want to watch it. But I sit there and listen when he pauses the show to give me a quick rundown of the first two seasons. “We can totally start from the beginning, if you want.”

“No, that’s okay,” I find myself saying. I can’t lie and say I’m not intrigued by the couple—David and Patrick. Will they kiss? I remember my mom watching shows when I was growing up—any time there was a gay couple, she’d make a big deal about how they just had to add that in. Shoving that lifestyle down our throats.

As if there weren’t plenty of heterosexual couples doing the exact same thing, which she had no problem with.

He starts the show again, and we pig out while I find myself laughing right along with Jonah—though we try our best to keep it down. Don’t need to wake anyone up.

“Was your family at the game?” he asks as the credits roll on the episode, and my entire body goes tense at just the mention of my family. He must notice because he clicks on the next episode to start it and cringes. “Sorry. We don’t have to talk about them. I was just curious.”

The episode starts, and we let the silence hang between us until I finally open my mouth, forcing words out. “They were. They go to every game.”

“That’s nice,” he says and sounds like he means it. But I hear the questions there. Wanting to know more about them.

“They aren’t nice,” I say, still watching the screen, my whole body kind of numb. “They aren’t like your family. Micah and Jenna. The girls.”

“Not many are like them,” he tries to joke, but there’s truth there. I can hear the pain in his voice. His father kicked him out because he’s gay.

Gay.

That word he’s so comfortable saying. The word I can barely even think in my own head. Jonah is gay.

“My dad played football. My grandpa—he lives with us—he played too. As did my older brother. Football and oil. That’s life for the Dukes.”

He nods, and I turn my head to look at him. “So it must make them pretty happy that you play too.”

I swallow around the lump in my throat—not making it go away in the slightest. “Nothing makes them happy. Everything pisses them off, and I’m sure they had plenty to say about tonight’s game.”

“We played the hell out of that game,” he says with pride and smiles at me.

I want to smile back, but I just shake my head. “They’ll have notes. Like I said, everything pisses them off.”

“You?” He asks it quietly, unsure if he should ask, I bet.

“Especially me,” I say with total honesty I’m not used to showing. “Something about me has always pissed them off.”

“Yeah, I get that. There was always something about me that my dad hated my whole life,” he says grimly. But he must notice how rigid my body goes next to him because his posture matches mine, and he scrambles to sit up a little straighter and look at me with wide eyes. “Not that you’re like me or anything,” he says frantically.

That should make me freak out. He connected dots. I’m not fooling him at all. He knows about me. But he’s letting me off the hook. Maybe I don’t want that though.

At least, not right now in this moment.

Every part of me is so damn tired of being on full-alert. Of acting right, according to my parents. I turn my head to face him, taking in his gorgeous face with those high cheekbones and that cut jaw. His eyes sparkle with wonder and maybe some regret about his words, but I see a flicker of hope there. Hope for what? I’m not really sure. Maybe he can see how badly I want to kiss him.

My eyes drop to his plump red lips, and I wonder if he can read my mind. About how badly I want to taste them. Him. What would it feel like?

I’ve kissed a few girls and one guy—but I can’t really count that. I fucked that up royally, and it’s been fucking me right back since it happened.

Since I made a reckless choice.

No one else is here right now though. Well, except his family. But they wouldn’t say anything if they saw us sitting this close, would they? Jenna sure seemed excited about us hanging out—it felt like maybe she was hinting at something—but maybe she’s just excited about Jonah having a friend.

I know my mom would be. But if my mom saw the way I’m looking at Jonah now—the way I can’t stop looking at him—she wouldn’t be happy about that. She’d tell my father, who . . .

I shudder, thinking about what he would do, then reluctantly pull back and settle my head into the padding of the couch, my eyes focused on the show. I feel his disappointment coming off him as he settles in next to me, but he doesn’t call me out on it.

He doesn’t ask about what happened or why I’m such a fucking coward. He just goes right back to the show, laughing and pointing things out to me. We watch until it’s David’s birthday and Patrick apparently thought it was a date when he asked him to dinner. What would that be like? To ask a guy out on a date?