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“It’s about political intrigue and murder as well as titties and dragons,” Marcus griped. “It was this or Pride and Prejudice. Your choice.”
I could picture Gavin giving him the blank stare of death with his golden eyes and golden hair messy and sticking out everywhere. My friends were way too pretty for their own damn good. Thank god the idea of fucking either of them gave me hives. We were too much like brothers.
“Okay, princesses, quit your bitching over television programs. I need to talk to you about something serious.”
“The hurricane?” Gavin asked. “I thought it wasn’t going to be that bad.”
“You never know,” Marcus said. “That city is fragile as shit.”
“It’s not about that. I had the house taken care of already, and I’m st—I might be staying in the city tonight, so my ass isn’t in a desolate mansion away from civilization if things go bad.”
That hadn’t been part of my thought process at all, but they didn’t need to know that. My original plan had been to send out a thirsty message to a former booty call in the Hamptons and spend the weekend riding him into a mindless stupor.
“So, what’s it about?” Gavin asked slowly, his voice lowering with suspicion. “Is it about that dumb fuck Bravo?”
I winced. “Uh.”
“I knew it!” Marcus shouted so loudly and triumphantly that his voice could likely be heard down on the street. “You’re fucking him, aren’t you?”
“No, he’s not.” At my pause, Gavin sighed. “You’re not, are you?”
“Once. And a blowjob.”
Marcus broke into laughter that still wasn’t loud enough to drown out Gavin’s irritated sigh.
“Man, what is with you? He treated you like shit, and you still let him hit it?”
The question wasn’t unexpected, but it still hit me like a kick in the stomach. I hunched forward to shield myself against the wind and to brace myself against their disapproval.
“It’s complicated, man.”
“Complicated,” Gavin spat. “A few weeks ago, you were ready to kill him because he was throwing all those gay subs, and now you’re sucking his dick. Goddamn it, Simeon. Why?”
“’Cause,” I said moodily. “I don’t know, okay? It started off as a joke. Us flirting and dissing each other and shit, but then I realized . . . he’s not straight. He’s into me.”
Marcus’s laughter broke off. “Oh shit, I was right. Man, I am the smartest person in this busted-ass group of friends.”
“What are you talking about?”
The wind whipped out particularly violently, gusting against the speaker and muffling my question. I turned again, trying to find a good angle so they could hear me.
“I was just telling Gavin a couple of weeks ago, when Adrián started trying to clapback at tabloids on Twitter, that the dude was always practically obsessed with you. When you first signed with the Barons, he subtweeted for weeks. Even after that, he stayed on you over every little thing. Dude was next level keeping tabs just so he could pop shit.”
“Okay, and?” I asked, confused. “What’s the point?”
“The point is,” Gavin boomed, aggressive and impatient. Noah had smoothed his edges a bit, but his prickliness was still present and accounted for. “That just because all of Bravo’s homophobe bullying shit was him trying to cover up the fact that he was sweet on you doesn’t mean you have to bless him with your mouth or ass.”
“All right, well, I wasn’t really trying to say it like that, but . . .”
I rolled my eyes. “You two won’t even let me talk. As usual, it’s like my two daddies bickering over what mistake I’m making now.”
“Sorry, man.” Of course Marcus was the one to check himself. “Go ahead.”
I waited just in case Gavin tried to bust in with another rant. He didn’t, so I cleared my throat and tried to put it into words. No matter how I tried to form the sentences, they sounded wrong. That I thought Adrián’s confusion had led to his hostility, and that him being brought up in the world of professional sports had fed into his behavior and lack of awareness about his own feelings for me.
And I was convinced he had feelings beyond lust. There was no other reason why he’d looked so hurt and rejected after I’d told him about Judd. Or why he defaulted to protective so quickly. It wasn’t just about being blessed with a blowjob. He cared about me in a way he wasn’t set up to deal with. My main question was . . . what should I do about it? Tell him to go fuck himself, or keep exploring whatever was between us until I figured out whether it was just a game to me or . . . if I really wanted to nurture this connection into becoming more?
I’d never actually had a relationship before, so the notion was abstract to me. Football had been my life since junior high, and even after I’d accepted my gayness, there hadn’t been a lot of opportunities to find out, gay boys around my age in high school. The fact that I’d had my sights set on the NFL from age sixteen had also scared me into never doing anything that could get me outed, which meant no sneaking around with the same boy.
