LUKE
At dinner—dessert—I don’t know what to focus on. My first instinct is to stare at Sam’s ear and chest, and wonder if the second ring will turn me on as much as the first does.
But a very close second instinct is to watch Jeremy and Steven for any clues. It’s not like I have the best gaydar in the world, but I’m surprised I’ve never picked up on anything from Jeremy before.
On closer inspection, there are a couple of things that Steven does that make me see it. One of them was the way his gaze slowly scanned over Sam, and then the way he blushed when Mr. Sam smiled at him.
But he got zilch from Jeremy, and something nagged at me about the whole thing. Shouldn’t Steven be checking out his boyfriend at the table, when he thinks he can get away with it?
“I’m going to Simon’s end-of-year party tonight,” Steven says when Sam asks what his plans are for the rest of the week, now that school is out. “Then just hanging with my . . . friends, I guess.” Steven looks at Jeremy then. “You coming tonight too?”
Jeremy shakes his head. “Nah. Dad wants to take me to a movie, if I recall.”
Sam jumps in his chair, and it’s obvious he’s forgotten all about his fake plans. “Oh yeah, well . . .” He looks at his son and Steven. “I guess if you want, you can go.”
Jeremy lights up. “For real?”
“Um, yeah,” Sam says. “Just so long as you’re safe.” I swallow a chuckle at the way he blushes as he says that. Then he adds, “And I don’t want you to sleep over. Be home at eleven.”
* * *
“So, he’s not allowed to sleep over, eh?” I say after Jeremy and Steven leave and Sam and I are settled on the couch. We turn on the television and there’s some movie on with a woman vigilante blowing up stuff.
Sam stares at the screen, and his face lights up blue and green. “It’s not because I have a problem with gay sex, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Oh, you don’t?” I say, raising a brow.
He blushes as he shrugs and then he manages to scowl at me. “He’s just too young for any sex.”
“Yeah.” I get what he means. It’s terrifying thinking the boy I’ve helped raise is sexually active. “I shoved a couple of condoms in his hand before he left,” I say, focusing back on the screen. “I just . . . It’s not that I want him to go out and do that. I’d just rather he be safe, you know?”
I hope I haven’t crossed the line doing this. I let out a relieved breath when Sam says, “Thank God. I totally didn’t even think of that.” He shivers. “It’s really weird thinking about it. It should be the other way around, you know? Me, the adult, having the sex life.”
“Well . . .” I feel sick inside as I force myself to say with a smile, “maybe things will work out for you on your date this Friday.” Then I add (with a truer smile), “She might dig your hair and metal.”
Sam flushes and steals the blanket I draped over my legs. “It’s not really me, the look, but I don’t mind it. Just for a while.”
“I think you work it.”
He closes his eyes and smiles, resting his head back against the couch. “I so work it, don’t I?”
And it’s the smile, in combination with the way he’s stretched out, his feet propped up on the coffee table and the blanket pooled in his lap, T-shirt stretched over his chest showing a bump over his nipple, where the plaster is over his piercing—it’s all this and then the sigh he gives that sends a traitorous signal to my cock.
It’s turning super hard and aching in my jeans, and the bulge is becoming more than obvious. No amount of nasty thoughts can keep me from seeing the beautiful sight in front of me though.
I pinch the edge of the blanket and drag it back over me. Only once I’ve arranged it, Sam opens his eyes and with a cheeky grin, yanks the blanket back over him.
As he does, the blanket tickles over my sensitive bulge and it feels so good I want to link my hands behind my head and moan, thrusting my hips up so he will do it again.
I don’t. Of course. I hunch forward, resting my elbows on my knees, and clasp my hands together. “You know, I should probably head back over.” I slowly stand, facing away from him slightly.
Sam laughs. “Unless you have some hot date you didn’t tell me about, sit your ass back down. You’re not leaving me here undistracted.”
I glance down at him, and he’s biting his lip.
“I’m going to be sitting here and worrying pretty much until Jeremy comes back home,” he says. “I’d like it if you’d worry with me.”
I let out a breath and sit back down. I worry too. Always have, always will. “Only if I get the blanket,” I say, trying to tug it back.
He shakes his head. “How about we share it?”
I have to sit closer to him than before to do that, and even though there’s still an inch between us, I can feel his heat caressing my side. It’s hot enough to bring tears to my eyes as I try to gather up the courage to give up on my hope, and just tell him, finally.
But every time I open my mouth, nothing comes out and I have to shut it again.
After a while, Sam grows restless. He picks up the remote and turns off the television, drowning us in navy darkness. “The movie’s boring,” he says and then stretches up from the couch. “I have a better idea.”
“What’s that?”
Sam beckons me out of the room and I follow to the kitchen, where he pulls out a bottle of bourbon. “Let’s drink. And we can play board games or something.”
I take the bottle, open it, and sniff. The stuff is nasty.
“Leave that crap here. Come on.” I jerk my head toward the door. “Grab your keys.”
We trek over to my place where I find whiskey that’s half decent. I pour us a couple and we take it to my solid dining table. “What game you want to play?”
Sam blinks rapidly and downs half of his drink in one mouthful. “How about Taboo?”
I freeze as I think of his list, and wonder if he’s thinking the same thing, and why he’s mentioning this game of all the games I have here.
“Or . . . uh, I don’t know. We could just play some cards?” He shrugs.
I drink all of my whiskey. Then I leave, coming back when I have a dusty box of Taboo in my hand.
“Been a long time since it’s been played, huh?”
“You have no idea.”
He looks at it for a while. His eyes slowly light up, eager, and there’s something almost excited in the way he glances up from it to me. But then he frowns, shakes his head at something he’s thinking, and drinks the rest of his whiskey.
“Have you ever . . . thought about it?”
“About what?” I say as I pick up the bottle and pour us both another shot.
“What it’s like with another guy, not a woman?” Sam turns his dark, thick-lashed gaze to the table between us.
I swallow, because this is the moment, and I can’t push it off any longer. “Sam,” I say. “I have to make something clear to you. I’m—”
But he cuts me off, laughing. “You don’t have to tell me you’re straight. I know. I was just wondering if it ever crossed your mind. Once, maybe.”
I don’t know how to continue. It feels like the world doesn’t want me to tell Sam the truth. Well, maybe that’s not the case—but I know I’m using it as an excuse anyway. It’s stupid and ball-less of me, but I can’t help it. “You know I’m straight?”
“’Course,” Sam says, laughing. “I never once for a second actually thought otherwise. It was just a question, you know?”
I’m quiet. And then, “Sure. I’ve thought about being with a guy.” Every day of my life. “You?”
He blushes, and that combined with what he says next has me lost to another hard-on.
“I don’t know. Not really. Maybe.”
“Well, if you wanna try it. We can definitely try it together.”
Shit.
I did not just say that out loud. Please don’t let me have said that out loud. It was the whiskey talking. Must have been.
I pinch myself hard on the thigh and tell myself to shut up and stop letting my dick control my mouth. But it doesn’t want to listen to me. Even as I sink into my chair, it’s stretching, eager to hear Sam’s answer.
“You’re kidding, right?” he laughs, and then he slowly sips his drink, looking at me over the rim of his glass, gaze traveling down my face and over my chest. Whiskey misses his mouth and runs down his chin and onto the table. “Shit. Sorry.” He wipes it up with his sleeve, doing everything he can to not look up at me again.
I wish he would. Maybe then he’d see the truth on my face without me having to say it.
“It’s okay,” I say and pick up my own drink, willing myself not to say anything more. But I can’t help it and they pour out. “And I wasn’t kidding.”