Chapter 3

Joey

“It’s like you’re not even listening to me!” I’m shaking, hissing into the phone as I put my car in park and drive away from GMQ and possibly the sexiest man my eyes have ever seen, and my best friend of eight years is choosing now to act daft.

“I’m listening, brat. You’re just not making any sense.”

Hearing her sigh on the other end of the line as my Bluetooth finally catches up and switches the call to hands-free grates on my last frazzled nerve.

“Never mind,” I mumble and reach for the red end button on the dash.

“Don’t you dare hang up on me.” The warning in her voice makes me pull my hand back. I grip the steering wheel so hard my knuckles hurt, but it’s the only thing keeping me from turning my car back around. “Just calm down, take a few breaths, and start over. Keep in mind it’s the middle of the night, and I just got woken up by your screeching.”

“I don’t screech,” I argue.

“Just tell me what happened.”

“Fuck,” I grunt as I shift my hips for the millionth time this evening. If I thought sitting across the table from Anthony was hard, I never even considered the difficulty of driving with a raging hard-on.

“Is the deal too jacked up to fix?”

“What?” I shake my head even though she can’t see me. “And, there was a gorgeous man there!”

“Freddie?” She chuckles. “I thought you said he was the biggest idiot known to man, and I know for a fact you’d choose brains over good looks any day of the week.”

“Freddie wasn’t there. Macintosh sent in another architect to help me fix his shit. After meeting this guy, I think I need to send Freddie flowers or something.”

“Someone has a crush,” she taunts. The smile in her voice pulls a smile to my mouth as well. “Wait. Is he straight?”

Straight, long, and thick, I want to say but keep my mouth shut.

“Who knows? Everyone seems to be a little gay at the end of the day.”

“Really?” she huffs. “We’ve been over this. Either you choose to be, or you don’t. So are you saying he was a little gay tonight?”

“Your homophobic upbringing is showing again,” I warn.

“Fine. Either you’re born that way, or you aren’t. Better? Where does it leave this guy on the scale of gayness?”

Laughing, I shake my head at her idiocy, wondering if she’ll ever fully relinquish all of the fucked up beliefs her mom and dad instilled in her.

“He was gay enough.”

“What exactly does that mean? He was gay enough for a blowjob but not gay enough to bottom?”

Cocking my head to the side as I stop at a red light, I nod in approval for her correct terminology.

“It didn’t get that far.”

“Jesus,” she moans, and I can hear the sheets rustling as she turns over on her bed. “Is this another one of those situations where a guy winks at you or smiles in your direction, and you’re thinking of filing paperwork to adopt kids with him?”

“Once,” I hiss, indignant that she’d even bring that up. “And that guy was barely in the closet, and you know it!”

“He was married with four damn kids!” she counters. “That is as straight as they come.”

“He was flirting with me. You were there to witness it.”

“He had something in his eye,” she reminds me. “Which he made clear when you came to his rescue and started calling him baby.”

“He loved every minute of it,” I argue with a smile, because her reminding me that turning the straightest guys gay really isn’t something that happens, is an argument we visit frequently.

“You scared his kids, and his wife, although mildly amused, didn’t appreciate your impromptu massage.”

“I wanted to make sure he was okay.”

“We were in the middle of the grocery store.” She huffs again. “Can we please get back to the straight guy at the office? I have to open in the morning.”

Cringing when I look down at the clock, I feel like an asshole when I see it’s after three in the morning.

“He kissed me,” I blurt. “Well, I kissed him.”

Her knowing chuckle widens my grin. She knows me so well.

“And he was a little gay because he didn’t punch you in the nose? That’s not a little gay, Joey. That’s just not being a huge asshole when someone misreads a situation.”

“Right,” I mutter.

Refusing to argue with her, I keep my mouth shut. I don’t mention that he was the one to come around that table with so much heat in his eyes that it seared my skin before we even physically touched. I don’t tell her that his cock was hard just from the back-and-forth flirting and it grew even thicker when my palm was gripping it.

Why don’t I tell her? She’s my best friend, and I tell her everything, but there’s something about this situation, about him, that makes my lips snap shut.

I don’t bring it up because he pushed me away and said we can’t without another word or explanation. Even though I was the one playing hard to get and his tongue fell right into my mouth as I’d hoped, I know I have a history of building situations up from nothing. Take the guy from the grocery store with sand in his eye for example.

Sighing, I make the final turn into my neighborhood.

“You still there?” Andi asks with a yawn.

“I’m here. Just glad I have you to be the voice of reason.”

“Are we still meeting at the Tavern tonight?”

“I need about a million hours of sleep,” I mutter, her yawn contagious even through the phone.

“You have to go. I don’t want to be there with the guys without you.”

She’d go even if I wasn’t there because she’s done it before. The fact that she thinks she’s head over heels in love with my brother never keeps her away from a social gathering.

“I may make an appearance,” I concede.

“Get some sleep, handsome. You’ll be ready to drink and dance by the time the sun sets.”

We both yawn again before a loud beeping nearly breaks my eardrums.

“What the hell is that?” I yell over the noise echoing around the inside of my Corolla.

“My alarm,” she says when the noise finally fades away. “Fuck every person who thinks coffee and pastries before six in the morning is a good idea. I gotta go.”

By the time I hang up with Andi and make it to my driveway, I’ve convinced myself that what happened at GMQ was a fluke, half-truth, and mostly conjured in my sleep-deprived head. Despite the erection I’ve had the entire drive, I know, whether he’s gay or not, nothing will happen with Anthony. I’m never in the office, and his adamant shut down of our kiss is enough to make me keep my distance if we should happen to run into each other again.

I curse my sloppy as hell brother when I stumble over his boots discarded near the door. My entrance is so graceless, I hear him mumbling for me to shut the fuck up from behind his closed bedroom door when I pass it on the way to mine.

In desperate need of a shower and a rough fuck, I begin to gather my personal items to carry to the shared bathroom. The quick bang isn’t something I can manage tonight even if I have the energy, so before I get out of my room, I just toss my shower shit on the chair near the door and begin to strip. My cool sheets and rock hard cock are calling me. Who am I not to answer?