As I turn back to him, I can tell he’s genuinely concerned.
“I’m sorry. That was a joke. I didn’t mean to actually get you concerned about it.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Mikey, trust me, any pain I’ve experienced has been trumped by the pleasure, so it’s nothing.” But his face is locked in a frown. “Dude, come on. Chill.” I move to him and kiss him. “I would tell you if I didn’t like something we were doing.”
“Just want to make sure. I don’t want to scare you off. You know I was serious about what I was saying. That we do something tonight. More than sex, I mean.”
“Like a date?”
His sad expression shifts to confusion. “What? No. Not like a date. Like friends hanging out. I think we deserve to have a little fun since we’ve been go-go-go on this house.”
“Go-go-go on a lot of things besides the house.”
He smiles and wraps his arm around me, pulling me close so that our torsos are flush.
“Come on. We’ve been doing this long enough that we can fucking go out and have fun together. I don’t think of you as just a fuck buddy, Scott. I think of you as a friend.” His words make me kind of sad, and he must notice since he goes on with, “What? Why is that a bad thing?”
“It’s really nice, actually. It reminds me that I don’t have many friends. I mean, I have Jordan, but I’m not like you where I can go out and meet people like that. If I go to a bar by myself, I typically leave by myself, too.”
“Well, I can tell you’re a little guarded, especially with people you don’t know.”
“I’m sure that wasn’t totally clear when I confronted you that first night after you were fucking that girl,” I say, teasing.
He chuckles, but his expression turns serious again. “Sometimes I wonder what you’re so guarded about. Why you try to keep people out all the time? You’re too amazing to keep all this goodness all to yourself?”
“Oh, now I’m amazing?”
“Yeah, you are.” He says that so seriously that I can’t really make a joke of it, but I don’t want to hear it either. I start to turn away from him, but he grabs my chin and forces me to look at him. “You’re amazing.”
I blush for the thousandth time since we’ve known each other.
“And no matter what your dad or your siblings think of you, you don’t have to feel like you’re less important than anyone else.”
Those blue eyes of his seem to peer into mine and see all my faults. How insecure I am. How I’ve never felt good enough, not just for my family or Sam… but for anyone.
“Okay, can we avoid turning this into a Dr. Phil episode?” I ask. “Please?”
“You’d prefer if we turned it into a hot porn?”
“Didn’t we just do that?”
“Fair enough.”
“So what were you thinking for tonight?”
“Dave & Buster’s, maybe.”
“Oh, really? What if someone sees us out and tells Jordan?”
“Then we’ll tell him we were out having some fun. Come on. We could use a few games to relax.”
“You really are just a big kid, aren’t you? Well, except with sex, that is. With that, you’re just a big man. A really big, girthy man.”
He wears that conceited smile—the one that makes me never want to compliment him again, but how can I not when there are so many things about him that are worthy of praise?
“Well, your boss needs you to get back to work first,” he says. “And if you’re real good… and I do mean real good, he’ll treat you to some fun tonight… and then some fun after, too.”
