“You good?” I asked.
“Yeah. Yeah. Just…” He sighed. Then he picked up his joint, pulled in a lungful of smoke, and like me, he held it for a moment. I was way too enthralled with watching his lips part and the thin stream of smoke escaping. It brought back a lot of very pleasant memories of things that mouth could do, and I fought the urge to squirm as goose bumps sprang up along my spine.
Unaware of me drifting back to those sexy memories, Jesse said, “It wasn’t just a potshot to make me think she was using me and make you feel inadequate.”
It took my hazy brain a few seconds to cut through the smoke and catch up with what he’d said. When I did, I furrowed my brow. “What do you mean?”
Gaze still fixed on the lake, he swallowed. “The thing is, it’s something I’ve confided in her about. One of those things she knew was a tender spot.”
I studied him, trying like hell to follow. I didn’t even think it was just the weed keeping me from connecting the wires, either. Laying my joint in the ashtray, I asked, “A tender spot? How so?”
“The whole thing about…” He chewed his lip. For a solid thirty seconds, he stared out at the lake. Then he twisted toward me, his expression full of uneasiness and… was that embarrassment? “Listen, I know how this sounds. Most guys, they’ll just break out the world’s smallest violin and tell me I sound like someone crying about how lonely it is being rich and famous. But… honestly? The whole well-endowed thing…” He gestured at his lap. “It’s really not all it’s cracked up to be.”
I raised my eyebrows. Admittedly, my reaction normally would’ve been exactly how he described. I mean, dude, I could only imagine how awful it must be, packing something the rest of us lesser mortals would’ve sold our souls to have. But the way he said it gave me pause. And I felt a bit like an asshole for even thinking about rolling my eyes and saying“cry me a river”to anyone who complained about having a big dick, because he really did seem sincere.
I turned to face him more fully. “How so? If, uh… If you don’t mind me asking.”
“It’s fine,” he whispered, laying his own joint beside mine. “I brought it up, so…”
“Still. If you don’t want to, that’s cool.” I paused. “I’m just curious.” Like really, really curious, but I didn’t say that out loud.
Jesse fidgeted a little. “I mean, for starters, what Selena said. About how she was just using me? She might’ve been lashing out just because she was mad and she knew that would hurt, but the thing is—if she did mean it, she wouldn’t be the first. Not by a mile.”
“Really?”
He nodded, avoiding my gaze. “One of my exes stuck around for a good three months after she stopped liking me at all just because she liked…” He made another downward gesture. “And then the flipside is people who are afraid to take it. Or they really like to get fucked hard, but they’re afraid to take it hard from me, so then they’re not satisfied, and…” He sighed and waved a hand. “I’m probably the last person on earth who will ever send someone a dick pic, even if they ask for it. They’ll either pursue me just for that, or they’ll think, nope, that’s gonna hurt, and they bail.”
I exhaled. “Wow. I… never thought about any of those things.” With a bitter laugh, I added, “Never really had to, obviously.”
Jesse studied me. “People really make you feel that shitty about it?”
“Are you surprised?” I rubbed the back of my neck. “They’re assholes to someone packing what you have. Those of us whodon’tmeasure up?” I grimaced. “It’s fucking brutal.”
He winced, dropping his gaze again. “I just don’t get why it’s such a big deal. I really don’t. And like, every cis guy I’ve ever been with thinks I’m insincere or just trying to make them feel better when I say they have plenty. But I’ve blown plenty of guys. I’ve bottomed for plenty of guys. None of them haveeverbeen—well, to be blunt, I’vealwaysbeen the bigger one. Every time.”He looked at me through his lashes and shook his head. “But no one’s ever left me unsatisfied because of their size.”
I swallowed. “Really?”
“Really. Like it’s literallyneverbeen an issue.”
I had no idea what to say to that.
“Mysize, though,” he went on, “has definitely been why me or my partners walk away unsatisfied.” He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “I always get them off, and penetration isn’t a requirement, but sometimes… I mean, sometimes you want what you want. And there have been more times than I’d like to admit where me or my partner couldn’t have what we wantedspecificallybecause of my size.”
“Wow,” I whispered. “That’s… That sounds…”
“Embarrassing? Frustrating?” He laughed bitterly. “Just a bit, yeah. And that doesn’t end in the bedroom.”
“Really?”
Jesse nodded. “I have to think about what I’m wearing. Going swimming can be a little…” He grimaced and shrugged. “School when I was a teenager—that was a nightmare, because God help me if I got a hard-on at an inopportune moment.”
“Whoa,” I whispered. I remembered the Thunderdomes that were middle school and high school. Like a lot of guys, I’d had some moments that could’ve been catastrophically embarrassing, but I’d always been able to hide it well enough. Knowing what Jesse was packing… “Holy shit. That must’ve been awful.”
“It wasn’t fun.” He rolled his shoulders as if the conversation was making him tense. Then he looked right in my eyes. “I’m not blowing smoke up your ass here, okay? I don’t know who convinced you that you’re small, or that what you have isn’t enough, but you’re not, and it is. I’ve—” He laughed softly, blushing as he dropped his gaze. “Okay, I’m probably going to make myself sound like an absolute whore here, but I’ve been inthe presence of alotof dicks, okay? And you are quite firmly and perfectlyaverage.” He met my eyes again. “I’ve been with dicks bigger than yours and smaller than yours. There wasn’t anything wrong with any of them, and there isn’t a damn thing wrong with yours.”
I chewed my lip, wanting to believe what he was saying, but it was clashing hard with years of hearing quite the opposite.
Jesse exhaled. “I’m serious.” He paused. “All right. The night we all hooked up—you remember when I was blowing you?”
