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THIRTEEN
Sebastian
If I had expected to wake up the next morning a changed man, I was wrong. What happened instead was a slow dive into the greatest days of my life. Spring winds took the last memory of winter away. Cherry trees blossomed, grass grew taller and greener, and flower beds around campus were rich brown with soft dirt feeding the newly planted flowers. Sunshine arrived at Northwood and a winning streak filled the Titans with optimism. It was almost too easy to believe that nothing could ever be wrong again.
Tyler was never too far from me. As it had become a custom years earlier, whenever we traveled out of town for a game, he and I shared a hotel room. For the first stretch of time that I had stopped measuring, Tyler and I were incapable of taking our hands off of one another. Doe-eyed looks were hard to conceal in bars and locker rooms, so we didn’t linger for too long with the crowd. We had only just discovered some wonderful things we could do to one another and our bodies screamed that we were running out of time. It took us weeks to remember that it wasn’t the case. But before we learned that lesson, we were in a constant hurry to be on our own. And that earned us a few noteworthy looks from our teammates.
Some of them had gone through a similar period. Beckett and Caden, just last year, had begun missing group parties. Avery, who had been lowkey seeing the enemy captain, the notorious Blizzard Breaker, Grayson Reed, had acted in a similar manner. And Sawyer, who was comfortably deep into a relationship that promised to last a lifetime, was scanning the tables in bars with significant looks between all the couples and suspected couples. The number of single guys around us was dwindling. Jordan seemed wholly uninterested in people whatsoever; Asher was leaving the house but never spending the night away; Paxton, Kieran, and Phoenix kept their cards close to their chests.
The hotel rooms we were assigned usually came with two single beds, but only one of the beds ever got used. Neither Tyler nor I minded narrow sleeping spaces. Even as boys, we had always had a way to make room for each other. Only now, we learned that wrapping our arms around one another was a great space-saving method.
We flirted with the idea of swapping roles since the first time he topped me. Tyler wasn’t completely sure if he should try it and it was a feeling I recognized and remembered all too well. However, it was me who was more reluctant to change the things that worked. Just now, for a while, I lived for bottoming. Having my best friend and official boyfriend wrap his arms around me and hold me down, enter me, fill me, and bite the back of my neck while throbbing inside of me was immeasurably better than anything I had done in my life.
Tyler’s interest was growing, of course, the longer he saw the kind of pleasure I was experiencing from my role. He floated the idea as something that was obligatory in an undefined future. “Perhaps,” he’d said. Or, “One of these days.”
I wasn’t going to press him on it. Each new day proved to me that we weren’t actually running out of time. We didn’t need to hurry and get to everything now. The more we found quiet corners in the shadows to kiss one another, the clearer it was that a lifetime of these kisses lay ahead.
So as days turned into weeks, we started returning to the old normal. Tyler would kick my ass at the soccer table one night and I would kick his the next. Then we’d take it to our room and resettle the score privately. And the more time we spent returning to the society of the team house, the stronger my bond with Tyler felt. It was the opposite of what I’d expected would happen. Somehow, with the two of us being surrounded by friends, it felt like a silvery wire of connection glowed between our hearts, marking us as a unit the very same way it marked Beckett and Caden.
New habits entered our lives. Kissing Tyler when leaving the room was something I did by instinct. Leaving otherwise seemed unimaginable. And it was the impulse that I had to remind myself of when we were surrounded by other people. Taking his hand at random was a reflex, not a conscious decision on my part.
Once, I narrowly escaped revealing us as a couple when we were having beers at the Thinker. I’d had my first one too quickly and my hand randomly traveled to the back of Tyler’s head. That was nothing unusual, we’d both reminded ourselves from time to time, but when the beer made me sway, I rested my head on his shoulder. Still, we’d acted like that in the past, so nobody paid too much attention to it until I caught a faint whiff of Tyler’s cologne, and it catapulted me into the memory of being in his arms, kissing his neck and chest, licking his body wherever I wished. The flash of images made my face red with heat and I lifted my head to claim the kiss that was due, remembering at the last moment that three joined tables were witnessing my foolishness.
I had avoided the disaster that night, but a new thought was worming its way into my head.
It was Tyler who voiced it a week later when we lay in the lazy slumber after sex. “I wonder if the guys are starting to notice something different.”
I licked my lips and allowed my heart to stumble with fear before gathering my thoughts. “If they are, nobody’s saying anything.”
Tyler looked into my eyes. “They’re good people.”
I nodded my agreement.
“If they know,” he said carefully. “I mean, it’s not like they’ll want to out us, right?”
“It’s not our teammates I’m worried about,” I admitted. “Them knowing isn’t the worst thing that could happen.”
Tyler silently agreed with me and we drifted off to sleep for a while.
Whether it was just a careless blunder, the trust I had in our teammates, or, most likely, the sprout from the seed Tyler and I had planted on that night, the moment came on its own. And the reasons for it changed nothing. Tyler and I were playing table soccer while Asher and Phoenix took turns competing at the vintage Flipper we had in one corner with the rest of the arcade games. Beckett and Caden were playing something on the gaming console that only they cared about, and Avery had brought an intruder into our basement, to everyone’s surprise, even though we didn’t have any rules about who was allowed. Gray and Sawyer were chatting like old friends, a quiet air of respect for one another radiating for the whole room to see. We both care about Avery, it said. That’s all that matters.
The exchange between the two distracted me for long enough to be a nanosecond too late in my defense. Tyler scored the winning point and cackled victoriously as I pushed away from the game. I circled the table and sat on its edge, sipping my beer. The can was in my left hand and my right was around Tyler’s shoulders. “Laugh all you want,” I growled. “I’ll make you weep when we’re alone.”
Tyler looked into my eyes with all his natural naughtiness on full display. “If you’re threatening me with a good time, think again.” He pushed into me with his chest, and I threw my head back and laughed out loud, almost completely oblivious to the fact that we were surrounded by people. “I’ll make you beg before I’m done with you,” Tyler said.
“Holy shit,” Phoenix cried. “Get a bucket of water, they’re on fire.”
My cheeks burst into flames as Tyler and I simultaneously seemed to recall that we were in the basement and that seven guys surrounded us.
“What the hell was that?” Sawyer demanded.
I looked around the room, mouth open and eyes wide and unblinking. Even Beckett and Caden had stopped playing and Asher lost his ball in the Flipper machine while staring at us.
“You two?” Caden asked in a voice that was an octave higher than his natural one.
Phoenix wore a grin. Sawyer’s mouth was hanging open. And Avery blinked once, which probably translated into great shock.
“Is it the house, do you think?” Beckett pondered. “Some ancient hex turning us all gay?”
