I don’t know why I agreed to join Jared’s soccer team for a training session, to see if I want to become a regular member. Clearly, I decided that what my life needs is more opportunities to embarrass myself in front of attractive men while sweating.
Actually, I do know why I agreed to come to the training session.
Jared asked me.
This whole thing started a few weeks ago when Emmy wanted to play soccer at the park. Before I knew it, I was doing keepie-uppies and showing her how to do a rainbow flick. The delight on her face had been worth it, right up until I’d caught Jared staring at me with his eyebrows practically in his hairline.
“I thought you said you weren’t into sports.”
“I’m not. This is just…muscle memory.”
“Muscle memory that includes advanced ball tricks?”
“I may have played a bit in high school.”
“A bit?”
“Okay, fine, I was captain of the team for two years, and we made it to regionals, but that was before I discovered dancing at nightclubs and decided sleeping in was more fun than morning practice.”
Somehow my confession had turned into this: me, in Jared’s too-big shorts, psyching myself up to meet an entire team of queer men who are about to look at me and discover what happens when someone tries to put Humpty Dumpty back together using a YouTube tutorial and wishful thinking.
It’s hard. Especially because I know one part of me will always track the difference between how men treat me now compared to how they would have treated me before my accident.
Old Felix would have loved this. A whole team of fit gay men was basically my natural habitat. The admiring glances. The flirting. The casual touches leading to phone numbers. The way I never had to wonder if someone was interested. They always were.
Now the only thing people seem to be interested in is not staring too obviously at my face.
“The anticipation is always worse than the reality,” I mutter, repeating one of Annie’s favorite phrases.
“What?” Jared says.
“Nothing. Just something my therapist says.”
Annie and I have been working for months on not letting my fears keep me from doing things and remembering that most people are too busy worrying about themselves to judge me as harshly as I judge myself.
Despite Annie’s best work, I still don’t think I’d be doing this if it weren’t for Jared.
“So, tell me about today’s adventures. Did that anxious Chihuahua you mentioned yesterday finally let you take his temperature?” Jared asks.
“Yes, I managed to get it done while he was plotting my death. I could see the murder in his tiny eyes. And I also dealt with a poodle who had an eye infection. Did you know that dogs have an extra eyelid? It’s called the nictitating membrane.”
“Humans actually have a vestigial remnant of that membrane.”
“We do?”
“That little pink thing in the corner of your eye.”
“That’s a bit disturbing.”
“Human anatomy has quite a few other things we’ve retained that don’t have any useful functions. Like wisdom teeth, the appendix, male nipples.”
“Hey, my nipples aren’t useless,” I say without thinking.
A flush creeps up Jared’s neck and his hands tighten on the steering wheel. “Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t call them completely useless.”
The husky sound of his voice goes straight to my cock.
Great.
