14
RYAN
The whole time that Stefan and I eat my roasted chicken and vegetables at my tiny dining room table, he keeps giving me this … look.
I’m trying to watch TV and not notice it. But every time I laugh at the show that’s on, I turn to him to see if he’s laughing too, and instead, I find him just staring at me.
Staring at me with those bright blue eyes … and chewing.
Staring and chewing.
“What?” I prompt him, my mouth full of broccoli.
He presses his lips together, shrugs, then says, “Nothing.”
Nothing. Yet he continues chewing and staring at me, his eyes glistening beautifully under the hanging light.
I ignore him and return my attention to the TV, determined not to engage in Stefan’s weirdness tonight. Try as I might to ignore him, I still feel his fierce blue eyes on the side of my face.
“You do something with your hair?”
I turn to him and stop chewing. “What?” I grunt through yet another mouthful.
“Your hair.” He nods at it. “You do something to it? New look or … or something?”
I swallow, then lift an eyebrow. “Same as it always is.”
“Hmm.” He shrugs. “Looks nice.”
I narrow my eyes quizzically. “Thanks …?”
“So how was school today?” he asks.
I roll my eyes. “You’re acting like I’m your kid who’s come home from his first day in high school. What are you? My daddy?”
“Hey, if you’re into that. Alright,” he grunts, snorting from his own dry attempt at humor. “Just don’t hide your bad report cards or I’ll have to put you over my knee.”
I almost choke on my bite of chicken thigh. “Alright. Well, that escalated quickly.”
Stefan kicks me lightly under the table, like a playful nudge with his foot. “You’re my best bud,” he tells me, his eyes sparkling and his jaw set tightly. “You know that, right?”
I stare at him hard. Seriously, where the ever-loving fuck is all of this coming from?
“Sure,” I reply tentatively.
“Good.” He shovels up his last forkful of carrots before rising from the table. “Going for seconds. Damn, you can cook.”
“The vegetables are just steamed,” I mumble.
“Then … you must be … one steamy … dude,” he sputters, his corny joke coming out slowly like he has to reach for every word through a fog of whatever the hell’s going on in his head.
I stare at his back while he serves himself some more from the kitchen. I don’t know who this version of Stefan Baker is and where he came from, but something’s definitely going on.
A couple hours later, Stefan and I have had our turns in the bathroom to shower, and now we’re stretched out on the couch. Stefan is mindlessly watching whatever’s on TV while I’m typing away on the laptop balanced on my thighs.
Truth be told, I’m paying attention to neither the TV nor the crap on my computer screen. All of my attention is on Stefan, who I’m trying not to look at. He’s wearing a white tank top and a loose pair of navy Nike sweat shorts. Of course he’s free-balling it, which I noticed the second he came out of the shower and walked down the hall. My eyes went straight to his crotch as I saw the outline of his cock swinging with his every stride. I had to look away, too certain Stefan was paying attention to what I was ogling.
Is he doing this deliberately? Is he trying to make me insane while he’s staying here with me?
If that isn’t enough, he’s got his arm thrown over the back of the couch. My couch is small enough, so he might as well have his arm around me even if we aren’t directly touching. I’m getting a direct view of his armpit when I turn my head, which I’m ashamed to say is … actually really sexy. There’s something so hot about a man’s pit, the way it smells whether it’s clean or after hours at the gym when it reeks of musk and masculinity and effort. Right now, he smells as clean as the soap I keep in the shower, and I could press my face right into that sexy pit of his and breathe for days.
But I’m not looking. I’m staring straight ahead at the TV and letting my brain decompress from a mind-numbing day at the school where next to nothing happened at all. Even Dana left me alone, mercifully. I expected her to attack me again and ask all her usual questions about Stefan, but the only visitors who came to my office were a sweet teacher with a question about one of her students, and the eleventh grade assistant principal who, upon poking her head in, realized she had the wrong counselor’s office.
My Monday has been like a hundred other Mondays, with the sole and glaring exception of the hunk of man who’s staying at my house. A hunk I used to know so well.
A hunk who’s got his sexy pit halfway in my face.
“Fuck,” Stefan mumbles suddenly.
I halfway turn to him. “What’s up?”
“Nothing.” He shifts a bit in his spot, his arm adjusting behind me, and then he resettles with a little sigh. His fingers mindlessly graze the back of my shoulder.
I stiffen up slightly. It could just be an accident, his fingers touching me. Surely he’s not trying to cuddle me or something.
Fuck, my mind is so insane right now.
“How was Parker’s?” I prompt him, opting for small talk while I attempt (and fail) to calm down my raging pulse. “Done yet?”
“That’s just it,” he grunts, shifting uncomfortably again.
“Yeah? Something happen?”
With the arm that’s not thrown over the back of the couch, he gives his own neck a firm rubbing, wincing as he does so. “Yeah, bro, something happened at Parker’s.”
“What?”
“I think … I think I pulled a muscle,” he answers, eyeing me as he slowly continues to rub his neck and grimace. “My shoulders and back are all sore and fucked-up.”
“Oh. That sucks. You need a painkiller or something?”
“Nah. They don’t help.”
“I have some ibuprofen. Couple pills should help.”
He grunts and shakes his head, declining, then turns his eyes back to the TV and continues to rub himself, appearing frustrated.
I return my attention to my laptop, biting my lip and unsure why he isn’t just going for the pills. Stefan has always been a bit stubborn about taking advice. I guess it’s almost comforting, how the best and worst parts of him are still there behind his bright blue eyes and intimidatingly muscular form.
“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath—again.
I eye him. He returns my glance, but then his eyes linger as if glued to mine—lost in secret thoughts and full of wonder—just like they were while we were eating earlier. He has that same invasive, hypnotizing look.
Something in his eyes makes all of my efforts at calming my heart fail instantly. It’s racing in a matter of seconds.
And then I realize in an instant what’s going on.
“Do … Do you …” I start to ask, swallow, then nod at him. “Do you want me to, like …?” I make a tiny shoulder-massaging gesture with my hands.
His face tightens. Something in his gaze flickers. Then, out of breath as if he just pushed down a door with his brute strength, he chokes, “Only if it’s alright with you. Is it alright? Do you mind?”
Oh my God. Do I?
Is he serious right now?
“I, um, well, I mean …” I shrug. “If you really want me to.”
“Yeah, I do,” he answers so quickly, he hardly gets the words out before he pulls his arm off of the couch and turns his muscled back toward me. “Fucking aches, man.”
I set the laptop next to me and turn toward his backside.
The white tank top stretches across his wide shoulders like a canvas, textured by his symmetrical, rippling back muscles and his two broad shoulder blades that create a valley down the middle. The straps at the top of his tank pull over the cords of muscle that slope up either side of his thick neck, where I’m about to put my hands.
Help me. I can barely breathe here.
I reach for his shoulders and spread my fingers.
When they touch him, it feels like putting the last piece of a puzzle in place. It’s also like gripping the top ledge of a brick wall, to be frank. I feel like some long-unfulfilled desire in me has, at last, been sated—like a thirst I didn’t realize I had.
Then I start to move my hands—squeezing, pushing, twisting.
Massaging his shoulders feels like kneading a big stone and pretending it’s dough.
“You can really dig if you want,” he coaches me. “Get in there. Be rough. You aren’t gonna break me.”
“Obviously,” I grunt as I continue to twist and press (in vain) my thumbs into the meat on his neck and shoulders. It isn’t long before my own arms ache. Massaging a guy like him is hard work.
He groans. “Mmm. That’s it. Yeah.”
My body is turned awkwardly toward him, both of us seated, as I put as much force as I can manage into sinking my fingers into his muscles. I massage him with as much strength as I can. I press. I push. I knead.
I have never felt shoulders this strong before. I have never felt such a challenge in doing something so simple as giving someone a little neck massage.
Are my fingers giving his shoulders a massage, or are his shoulders giving my fingers a massage?
It’s literally giving me an arm workout.
“Good,” he moans, slouching slightly. “Good, bro. Harder.”
I smirk at the back of his head. “You want to make this sound any more like a gay porno, Stefan? Keep it up, then.”
A smile breaks along the side of his face that I can see. “Oh yeah,” he lets out, playing the part. “Give it to me, bro. Give it to me hard. Yeah!”
I laugh. He laughs. But something else happens inside me. Something very real. Something that reacts to the deep, masculine sound of his laughter. Something that makes me literally consider situations I might find myself in where he genuinely says that very thing he just said—and means it.
Something that I might catch myself fantasizing about later.
He turns his head slightly. “You alright?”
“Yep,” I practically squeak, working his shoulders as best as I can. “How am I doing?”
“Perfect,” he assures me. “Just keep doing … whatever it is you’re doing.”
“I’m breaking my fingers in slow motion.”
“Keep doing that, then.”
The more I rub his shoulders, the more turned on I get. This is clearly another of his tactics to psychologically and sexually own his gay best friend for life. He has to know what he’s doing to me.
Or does he think he’s doing this … for me?
Is his letting me touch him some kind of repayment for my letting him stay here? A compensation of sorts? That’s way too fucked-up to even consider, right?
“I’m lucky as hell to have you in my life,” he says suddenly.
The words cause my sore hands to freeze. Between what he’s saying and the weird, longing ways he’s been looking at me, I have to assume either Parker told him someone we knew from high school died and it’s making him clingy and emotional, or there is something else completely at work here that he’s not letting on.
He halfway turns his face again. “Why’d you stop?”
“Why’d you say that?” I ask, my hands resting motionlessly on his thick shoulders. “About being lucky?”
“I just …” He shrugs, causing my hands to bob up and down. “I think, as kids, we don’t tend to realize what we have. As adults, we slowly start to see how damned temporary everything is. It makes me realize I need to appreciate what I have while I have it. Hey,” he adds, shrugging his shoulders more deliberately. “Don’t stop. You were doing so good.”
My heart flutters, and then I resume massaging him.
He lets out a dry chuckle. “Seriously, though. You never really know the beauty of what you have right in front of you.”
The beauty. Of what I have.
Right in front of me. Gripped by my hands.
Stefan Baker.
Yeah, I do know exactly what I have right in front of me.
“Just one fateful slide into home base …” Stefan gives a rueful shake of his head. “One fateful slide, bro. Pop. The end.”
Oh, shit. That’s where his mind was going. “Not the end.”
“The end of baseball,” he clarifies, his voice soft.
“Not the end yet. You don’t know that.”
“You sound just like my dad did when I first got injured and called home. Not that I’m comparing you to that miserable old bastard,” he adds. “But he was all full of hope. Certain that I would just turn right around. He pushed and pushed, always did.”
“He coached the Little League team for a season,” I recall.
“Assistant coached. Half a season. Because Coach Eagle was on a business trip or something. And that season, we won the most games.” Stefan laughs with a hint of disbelief, shaking his head. “Guess that means you have to be a dick to succeed in this world.”
“I got my dream job by being nice,” I point out. “And by acing tests. Studying hard. Also not having a social life. Or dating life.”
I mash my thumbs into his shoulders, working my way down to the middle of his back. It’s breathtaking, the perfection of his form as my hands subtly explore him, muscle by muscle.
“But you weren’t nice. Not at first.”
I frown at his back as I press all my weight against my hands to really get a good dig in there. “What do you mean?” I grunt.
“You had to break away from me by being a dick. Remember?”
He’s bringing up our falling out senior year. It’s the time when we parted ways for good. I said my piece—or rather, yelled it. He said his—or rather, yelled it. And then just like that, we went from being best friends to being strangers.
It was worse than my worst breakup.
Maybe now, in retrospect, I really did see it as a legitimate breakup because I’d never felt anything more emotionally painful than I did the day our friendship ended. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I remember every single word I said—and the ones he shouted back. I remember the trickle of sweat that ran down my back and settled at the top of my ass crack. Weird detail to recall, but it’s there in my brain.
It happened in the cafeteria. Tater tots day. Everyone saw it.
Everyone.
I keep massaging him, despite the pang of guilt his bringing that up has inspired. I’m determined not to get all emotional or defensive on him, so I just mutter, “Yeah, I remember.”
“But it allowed you to go do your thing, didn’t it?”
“I … guess it did. Yeah.”
“And now look at you.” His voice carries a lightness about it. “Masters and dream job and everything.”
I nod even though he can’t see it.
Suddenly, he rises from the couch and spins around to face me, then spreads his arms. “Bring it in.”
I blink up at him. “Huh?”
“Bro-hug. Bring it in, Ryan. I need this. You need this. We’ve had long days.”
“I h-had a fairly uneventful day, actually,” I sputter—a fairly uneventful day until now.
“We’ve had long years.”
Those words of his sober me. I look up at Stefan’s body, encased tightly by his white tank top, which accentuates his two big pecs perfectly, his tattoos snaking across his skin underneath. His bulging biceps are out and free from the torture of stretched sleeves, and he waits for me to press my body against his.
Uh, I mean, hug him.
I rise off the couch and come in for a hug. His big arms wrap around me quicker than I expect, pulling me against him tightly. My face is smashed against his chest as his strong hands trap me, one firmly affixed to my shoulder blades, the other to the back of my head.
My ear against his firm and shapely chest, I hear his heartbeat thump, thump, thump through me with vigor.
And every single breath is Stefan. All Stefan. Totally Stefan.
The intoxicating smell I washed out of my sheets the first night he crashed here.
The lingering scent that hangs on his clothes, on his skin, and that fills his bedroom at home—which I still remember intensely.
My whole soul is filled from my lungs, to my smiling mouth, to my quickly swelling cock.
Wait. Quickly swelling cock?
I try to shift myself to conceal the stubborn beast, but Stefan’s hold on me won’t relent at all. In fact, I can swear he squeezes me against him even firmer.
Either he notices and doesn’t care, or he’s so consumed with this hug that he wouldn’t even notice if all the walls of my house fell down at once.
Unexpectedly, he brings his head down, and the side of his warm face rests upon my hair.
He isn’t letting go. And from the feel of it, he isn’t planning to let me go anytime soon.
He just breathes. And lets his heart beat. And holds me.
Then his hand that holds the back of my head starts to move. His fingers spread, tangling slightly in my short hair.
His fingers … move.
Is he stroking my hair?
Chemicals are rocketing through my body now. My eyes are wide open, but all I see is the muscular, flexing bulge of part of his shoulder and arm. I wish I had pressed my face against his chest the other direction; that way, I could possibly sneak a look at his face, because that would reveal all the things I need to know right now. Namely: what’s going on in Stefan’s head.
“Ryan?”
His voice is deep, yet quiet. It casts chills through my whole body, just that one uttering of my name.
“Stefan?” I shoot back, muffled slightly against his warm, broad chest.
“You know I care about you, right?”
“Sure,” I answer too quickly, the word coming out in a little squeak. “I know.”
“I don’t want to do anything that would hurt you. Or make you feel bad. Or mess you up in any way.”
I swallow. I have no idea what he’s getting at. I feel like I’m having this totally out-of-body experience with Stefan’s massive shoulder since that’s all I can see.
“I really don’t,” he insists. “I’ve thought about it for years and years. ‘Ryan Caulfield …’ I’d think to myself. ‘What’s that fucker up to now?’ You’ve always been on my mind, man.”
“You, too,” I choke out.
“Am I?” I feel the tremor of a little chuckle in his chest that he doesn’t quite release. “You mean you really haven’t spent these past eight years hating the shit out of me?”
I smile against his chest despite all the what-the-fuck-is-going-on that’s circling inside my skull.
Then, quite suddenly, I remind myself that I have a couple of degrees in psychology. Why the hell am I being a dumb kid again when it comes to Stefan Baker?
It makes perfect sense why he’s acting like this.
He’s just lonely. That’s what this is. And he’s suffered a life change that is not only extreme, but potentially traumatizing. His whole life’s worth has been dependent on baseball. When he scores homeruns, he feels value in himself. When he wins a game, he feels a sense of accomplishment. His teammates are his family.
I was once his family.
And then it all went away. No more screaming fans watching from the bleachers. No more butt-slaps on his way in and out of the dugout. No more camaraderie that he was so used to, that he relied on for assurance and validation, that he grew to love.
He’s alone. And scared. And needing. And hurt.
His future is now a blank slate of what-the-fuck-do-I-do-now.
“No, Stefan,” I finally say, offering my words to the silence in the room like sacrificial lambs. Here we go. “I have always … had a place in my heart for you. I don’t know if it’s because I was gay and never … let myself realize that I … liked you. I thought that the way I felt about you—our close bond as best friends—was how all best friends felt toward each other. Maybe I had something more for you inside me. Feelings.”
“Feelings?” he murmurs softly.
This shouldn’t be so easy to say, yet the words slip right out of my mouth and spill across the ribbed white tank top material that covers his chest. “Yeah. Feelings. Whatever. I didn’t know what they meant back then. But I knew you were the most important thing to me. Always were. And even after we … parted ways …” I swallow, my hands that I have wrapped around his body sinking slightly. They’re an inch away from resting on the top of his butt. His lower back is a canyon between two impressively thick cords of muscle, by the way. “After we weren’t friends anymore, I still felt … very strong things when it came to you. I missed you. A lot. I wondered—many, many, many times—how my college career would have been different if you were by my side … as you had been all through high school.”
He doesn’t say anything in response. His grip, as well, doesn’t let up any. I’m still half-suffocating, crushed against his body as he holds the hug with ceaseless strength, never letting me go.
I feel incredibly safe in his powerful arms. A tornado could pound its way through my living room, and the pair of us would be the only thing that remains—two dudes, standing here hugging like idiots.
“Ryan?”
I lick my lips. “Yeah?”
“I … I want to try something.”
At last, his arms relent, but he doesn’t let me go. He simply pulls back a bit, arms still locked behind me, and he gets a look at my face—a long, hard look at my face.
I stare up into his rich blue eyes, which burn with need.
“Try what?”
“This,” he answers, then brings his lips to mine.