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Chapter1
Frankie
Frankie was already latefor class, so he decided to go in for one last kiss before he left.
“I’ll see you tonight?” he asked as warm, soft lips brushed his ear.
“See you tonight, sexy.”
Chris, Frankie’s latest hookup, bit into the soft flesh of his earlobe, pulling on it for just a beat before he released Frankie and walked down the hall to his own class.
Frankie shook his shoulders and straightened his polo shirt. He liked to think of his style as unpretentiously preppy. Some of his friends had coined it “gay on vacation,” but so what if he loved how the pastels accentuated his pale skin, and he enjoyed the slimmer cut of polos, cardigans, and sweaters?
He alsowasgay, or bi, or pan, or whatever, so they could all just suck a dick. Or rather, he would suck a dick, most likely Chris’s that night at the frat party they were going to. He’d been seeing Chris for all of six days since the last frat party he’d attended the weekend before. The guy didn’t want anything serious, but he wasn’t closeted like some of the other guys on campus. In general, most of the campus was pretty queer friendly, this frat included, but there was still a lot of toxic masculinity on Greek row, as well as in some of the clubs and groups Frankie had sampled throughout his three years in college.
Frankie was getting tired of it. He loved a nice, muscular jock as much as the next gay, but what he really wanted was a guy who wasn’t afraid to challenge his own masculinity and question the more typical gender roles. Or perhaps a nice woman who could peg him into the mattress and have him begging for more. He was a complex guy, what could he say?
He strolled leisurely to his next class, not really thinking the extra minute it would take him to arrive would be any more egregious than the nine minutes he was already late. This was one of Frankie’s favorite classes, and the professor was great, a young woman who treated her students like colleagues, not subordinates. Maybe that was the difference between college and graduate-level courses. Frankie’s advisor had suggested he take the 501 Entrepreneurship class as an elective, and Frankie hadn’t regretted his decision for a moment. They were only partway into the semester, but he felt like he had learned more in this class than his past three years in school combined.
The caliber of the students helped. A lot of them were taking the class to network to try to suss out future business partners. Frankie wasn’t sure if he wanted to start his own business, but he wasn’t opposed, and some of his classmates would make excellent business partners. As he walked into class, he ducked his head and waved shyly to Dr. Thompson, who nodded at him, not missing a beat in her lecture, which was apparently on small business insurance.
He jogged up the auditorium stairs to the back of the class and slid into an end seat so he wouldn’t disturb anyone by climbing over them, although, he’d met a fair number of his friends, turned hookups, turned back to friends that way. Clambering over them, showing off his particularly goodassets. One such friend was sitting four seats away, typing frantically on her computer.
He leaned over and whispered, “Did I miss anything important?”
Gabby rolled her eyes at him and immediately turned back to typing. Gabby was in her final semester of grad school and only needed this and her dissertation class to graduate. Gabby had absolutely no time for Frankie’s shit, which made him want to bother her more.
“So long as you aren’t worried about your small business, family, and/or personal finances being highly liable and at risk, you didn’t miss a thing,” a smooth voice said from the other side of the aisle.
Frankie didn’t bother turning around to answer his friend Diego. Well, “friend” was sort of a loose term. Frankie had met Diego the first day of class when they’d nearly run into each other vying for the frontmost seat in the auditorium. Frankie was several inches taller than Diego, but he was long and lanky, whereas Diego was sturdy with wide thighs, a sort of barrel chest, and a round, inviting face.
“Glad to see I’m not the only one eager to start the next stage of my career,” Diego had said, his warm voice rolling over Frankie and striking a chord deep in his chest.
“Oh, I’m taking this class as an elective actually. I mean, the idea of starting my own business has occurred to me but I wouldn’t even know what I wanted to do. I was sort of hoping this class would help.”
Diego looked him up and down, eyes lingering for a moment on the rainbow lanyard hanging out of his pocket. “Undergrad?” he asked, one of his dark brown eyebrows raising a little cockily.
Frankie squared his shoulders and was about to say something snarky in return when the professor walked in. Diego glanced at him one more time and then dashed for the seat. Frankie let out an indignant growl, but he stopped when he heard a chuckle from behind him.
He turned to find the professor laughing and giving them both fond looks. “Good! A little competition is exactly what I like to see from day one.”
Frankie glared at Diego, who just gave him a smug expression and gestured at the row behind him that had a few seats still open.
As the semester wore on, Frankie found himself often seated near Diego, and they even worked on a few role-playing scenarios during class. While Frankie’s first impression remained the same, Diego was cock-sure and a little smug, he was also whip-smart and seemed to have a passion for entrepreneurship. Frankie figured he could learn a lot by sticking near Diego and so they’d formed a somewhat tenuous classroom camaraderie. Or maybe a truce. Diego would say something smart but often condescending and Frankie would respond with something outrageous to try and get a rise. At the very least, it made the class interesting.
There was a small part of Frankie that wanted to know more, to find the cracks in Diego’s facade and figure out what made him tick. He had a sort of rugged handsomeness, and there was something enthralling about his deep brown eyes and immaculate copper skin. He always had a five-o-clock shadow, which had recently been drawing Frankie’s eye more than was strictly polite. Diego’s clothes were nice and well designed, but he always wore them baggy, keeping wandering eyes, such as Frankie’s, from getting a sense of what his shape was like underneath.
Diego made a soft tutting noise when Frankie didn’t respond to his jibe. Frankie did his best to glance casually at Diego from the corner of his eye, but what he saw had his head snapping around to take in Diego more fully.
Diego looked exhausted. Although his typical haughty grin was tugging at the corner of his lips, the rest of his face was drawn, and he looked sort of sad. Frankie turned around in his chair and was about to ask if he was okay when Dr. Thompson called on Gabby to answer a question, and Frankie reluctantly had to turn and face the front of the room again.
He wasn’t able to get a word in during the next twenty minutes of lecture, but when they were instructed to break into conversation groups Frankie fluidly slipped out of his chair and into the open seat next to Diego.
“Hey, conversation buddy,” Frankie said, flashing Diego one of his winning grins.
Diego looked up from his notebook sharply, and glanced around as if to check if there was anyone else in the vicinity who could be his conversation partner.
“Hello, Franklin. I am… not sure if you’re fully prepared for this conversation since you decided you had more important things to do than be on time,” Diego said. He flipped through his notebook like maybe he would find a way out of the conversation in there.
