But then his mom died.
Cameron had been a baby, and their dad was left with five boys of his own and no interest in being an actual parent. He’d tried for awhile to hold his dad’s attention, but he’d failed. As the years passed, and they all grew older, Andy’s memories of his mother began to dull and fade, and he desperately wished he’d been as old as Charlie so he could have had three more years to remember her by.
He had memories of her, of course, but mostly big events like birthdays and baseball championships, and he remembered how round she looked when she was pregnant with Cameron. But most everything else now was just a blur.
“You with me?” Leonidas’s voice cut through his thoughts, and Andy forced a smile, glancing quickly to Leonidas, then to the wine. He grabbed the bottle from the crook of Leonidas’s leg and took a drink.
“I’m here,” Andy said.
“I offered condolences.”
“Don’t need them.” He passed the bottle back to Leonidas. “So, I prefer Andy.”
“Then Andy you’ll be.”
He frowned, wishing all things in life could be so simple.
“What about you?” he asked, not wanting to think more about his father.
“I want to know more about you,” Leonidas said. “Are you an only child? You don’t act like it.”
Andy scoffed. “I’m one of five. Well, technically six. When my father died, we found out we had a half-brother.”
“How did that go?”
“Turbulent.”
“Are you the oldest?”
“Second oldest,” Andy answered.
“I’m the youngest,” Leonidas offered, brushing his lush curls away from his forehead. “I have two sisters.”
“I can’t even imagine what that had to have been like as a kid.” Andy remembered fighting and wrestling and having enough brothers to nearly make up their own soccer team. Not to say girls couldn’t do those things, but it had to have been different.
“It involved a lot of tea parties.”
“Dresses?” Andy smirked.
“I don’t need sisters to put on a dress.”
Andy’s stomach twisted in some kind of way he’d never felt before, and he closed his eyes, fighting off the vision of Leonidas in a dress, in silk, in lace, in something he’d always thought of as feminine until that very moment. He could picture the sharp angles of Leonidas’s hips jutting out from behind a lace slip. He could imagine the way it would feel to slide that slippery material up and off of him.
Fuck.
He cleared his throat. “Right.”
“You like that.” It wasn’t a question.
Andy grabbed the wine and took another drink, curious if his cheeks were as dark as the merlot against his tongue.
“I don’t hate it,” he answered quietly.
“Are you…” Leonidas paused, tipping his head back and staring up at the puffy clouds that floated across the crystalline blue sky. “Are you into things like that?”
“Like what?” Andy asked. “You in a dress?”
“Me in a dress. Me on my knees…” Leonidas dropped his chin and stared at him.
