Chapter One
Cam
Mason Gray, your face is mine.
I mean that fondly, of course. Now that I’ve had a few weeks to get to know Elwood High’s new varsity football team water boy, I’ve decided to offer him a taste of what it means to date a strapping young lad.
It should be the easiest “yes” in years. I’m single. He’s single, probably. I’m spectacularly attractive. He’s symmetrical from the neck up. I’m a big fan of all the genders. And he wears beanies and rainbow gloves, so I’ll eat my own ass if he’s not a little fruity.
Most importantly, I know Mason Gray has eyes for me. Whenever I glance over from the field, he’s watching me from the sidelines in his water boy jersey, tapping his clipboard. Clearly trying to be as cute and dainty as possible to fit that soft boy aesthetic that drives women feral.
“Well, Cameron,” he said politely when I called him out for his hungry gaze just last week, his smile never reaching his eyes, “I’m probably watching you because you’re the quarterback, so you’re usually holding the ball.”
His pitifully obvious desire for me is bursting at the seams, so I’ll spare him time to get to know me. Because I’m a good person.
“He’s going to say no,” Darius—our biggest linebacker and teamcaptain—tells me as we jog a warm-up lap around the track wrapping the football field. The Southfield Hawks aren’t here yet, so I have plenty of time to acquire Mason as my boyfriend and make out with him passionately behind the bleachers. It’s usually the first thing my partners ask of me, anyway, so I’m fully prepared to get it out of the way if it means I can proceed to stare at him unblinkingly without being labeled a creep.
“Why would he reject me?” I ask with a cheeky smile. “I think he’d be honored. It’s the first time in years I’m asking someone out, rather than the other way around.”
Darius wipes beads of sweat from his warm brown forehead, or maybe he’s massaging away the headache he likes to pretend I give him on a weekly basis. “Sorry, why exactly do you need to pursue the guy who has a track record of rejecting everyone who wants to date him?”
“His face.”
“What about it?”
“It’s high-quality,” I say with a scoff, because shouldn’t that be obvious? “And it looks soft. And he has nice skin.”
He really does. Mason is more pleasant to look at than anyone I’ve ever met. He’s a smooth plain of pale ivory, and his lashes are long and as deeply obsidian in color as the feather-soft hair constantly rumpled atop his head. His eyes are big and round and perfectly spaced apart and a sweet honey brown. My carnal desire to stare at him means I must be attracted to him.
Which means his face is mine.
“Don’t do this, Cam,” Darius pleads, slapping a beefy hand on my shoulder. “We need your ego for the game.”
As if anything could wound my rock-solid ego.
Five minutes later, I approach Mason. He’s writing on his clipboard, pretending like he can’t see my hulking figure in hisperipherals, his cheeks appropriately flushed considering my proximity. “Hey, water boy,” I say.
Mason spares me a glance. “Yes, quarterback?”
His eyes are astonishingly cold in comparison to the warm color of his irises. “You and me,” I say, jabbing a confident thumb into my chest. “I’ll be the sun to your moon if you’ll be the tides to my beach.”
Fucking nailed it.
Mason scrutinizes me with measured intensity. “Are you having a stroke?” he asks.
Uh…hmm. Can’t say that’s ever been a response to my poetry. “I’m asking you out,” I explain, in case he’s not well-versed in romantic dialogue like I am.
“Why?” Mason asks.
Yet another response that catches me off guard. I’m starting to feel like a deer in headlights. But okay, fine, he’s making me work for it. I can respect the game. “Because you have bewitched me, body and soul,” I say with a gleaming grin.
Mason gives me a contemplative nod. “You like that movie?”
“What.”
“Pride and Prejudice,” he says, his arctic eyes unblinking.
Damn it. Of course I’d pursue the one person alive who’s into that romancey shit. “Just because it’s not my line doesn’t mean I can’t mean it,” I point out.
