That shuts him up. But Blake Riley is squinting at my chest now. He’s a big puppy dog of a guy with messy brown hair and no filter. “It’s, like, hypnotizing almost. It says, ‘Yowza. I fucking dare you to look away’.”
“It says, ‘Three hundred dollars, please’,” I correct. “It’s expensive to look this good.”
Blake snorts, and Forsberg says I should ask for my money back. Then the topic moves on to another brand of smack talk and speculation that the bus won’t ever show up and that we’ll all die of blue balls in Vancouver.
Eventually we board, though. I take a seat alone. We’re halfway to the airport when my phone buzzes with a text. I have it set so that none of my texts (especially the photos) show up on the screen unless I’m logged in. It’s a pretty crucial precaution, and the text Jamie has just sent me proves why. When I authenticate my thumbprint, the screen fills with a picture that is not safe for work. It’s both dirty and hysterical all at once. Jamie’s very hard dick fills the shot. Only it’s angled toward the wall where the full, pink head leans against a flat nail that it’s presumably pounding. And Jamie has used some app to draw a happy face on his cockhead. The effect is startlingly transformative. His dick looks like…an expressive, alien creature performing some minor home repair.
I give a snort of laughter. And here they thought myshirtwas gay. I’ll show you gay…
“Wesley?”
Blake rises from the seat behind me to say something, and I press down on the menu button of my phone so hard that my knuckle cracks.
“Yeah?” I wonder what he saw.
“Remember how I asked you whether you liked living at 2200 Lake Shore?”
“Sure?”
“My stuff got moved there yesterday. I’m your new neighbor on the fifteenth floor.”
Seriously?
“That’s great, man,” I lie. When he’d asked me if I liked the place, I should have told him all the drawbacks.It’s too far from the subway. The cold wind off the waterfront is a bitch. Nothing against Blake, but I don’t need any of the neighbors to know me. I work pretty hard to fly under the radar.
“Yeah, the view is killer, right? I’ve only seen it during the day, but the lights at night are probably spectacular.”
“They are,” I admit. As if I care. The view of my boyfriend’s face is the only one I want right now. And we still have a four-hour flight until I get home to him.
“You can help me find all the best bars in the ’hood,” Blake suggests. “I’ll buy the first round.”
“Awesome,” I say.
Fuck, I’m thinking.
It takeseighteen years to get back to Toronto.
By the time we’ve landed and gotten our luggage back, it’s seven o’clock. I’m really looking forward to spending some time with Jamie, but there’s a deadline. He has to leave at six o’clock tomorrow morning for an away game in Quebec with his major juniors team.
We have eleven hours, and I’m still not there yet.
Every red light on the way home makes me seethe. Butfinally I’m pulling into the parking garage (a feature of the building that I’d boasted about to Blake, damn it). I wheel my giant duffel into the elevator and luckily the car climbs toward our tenth-floor apartment without any stops. I fish my keys out so they’re ready in my hand.
At long last, I’m twenty paces away, then ten. Then I’m opening our door. “Hey babe!” I call out like I always do. “I made it.” I drag my duffel over the threshold, then toss my suit coat on top, abandoning these things beside the door, because all I need now is a kiss.
Only then do I notice that our apartment smells amazing. Jamie has cooked dinner for me. Again. He is the perfect man, I swear to God.
“Hey!” he calls, emerging from the hallway leading to our bedroom. He’s wearing jeans and nothing else except—and this is unusual—a beard. “Do I know you?” He gives me a sexy smile.
“I was going to ask the same thing.” I’m staring at the sandy-blond beard. Jamie has always been clean-shaven. I mean—we’ve known each other since before facial hair. He looks different. Older, maybe.
And hot as blazes. Seriously, I can’t wait to feel that beard against my face, and maybe my balls…Jesus. The blood is already rushing south, and I’ve been home fifteen seconds.
And yet I’m just stuck there in the middle of the room for a moment, because even though it’s been eight months since Jamie and I started up together, I’m still a little stunned at my own good fortune. “Hi,” I say again, stupidly.
He walks forward, his easy gait so familiar that my heart breaks a little bit. He puts his hands on my traps and squeezes the muscle there. “Don’t go away for so long. If you do thatagain, I’m going to have to sneak into your hotel room on the road.”
“Promise?” I ask, and it comes out like gravel. He’s close enough now that I can smell the ocean scent of his shampoo and the beer he drank while he waited for me.
