“It’s giving sexual assault,Craig,” I warned him.
He looked like he wanted to smart-mouth me, but the girls flipped him off, and I decided I’d just let them humiliate the kid a bit, and maybe he’d learn a lesson. My leg was aching, so I hobbled over to the bench and lowered down to take some of the pressure off.
The second my ass met the cheap wood, the coach office door creaked open and Mark stepped out. He raised his brows at the class, who were arguing over teams, then looked at me before sauntering over.
“You should have just put a movie on while you nursed your boner.”
I grimaced. “Seriously, they can hear you.”
“They can’t,” he said. Which was probably true. Even if they were capable, they were busy arguing over toxic patriarchy in professional sports, which I wasn’t about to stop. Mark sat and stretched his legs out beside me, leaning his elbows on the bench behind us. “He was hot.”
“Fuck. How obvious was I?”
“Just to the people who know you. He’s so your type,” Mark pointed out.
And that was…true and not true. I didn’t really have a type unless you counted completely unavailable. The guys I’d dated for longer than a few months were usually compromises. They were nice enough, but in the end, they didn’t do it for me.
“He’s the guy, right? The asshole PT guy?”
I rubbed my eyes tiredly. God, I just wanted to go home. Or, well, that wasn’t true. I wanted to get the hell out of there and head to the beach to get lost in the waves until I strained every muscle in my body and my nipples were on fire from all the salt water.
But that wasn’t going to happen today. Or for a long, long while.
My toes suddenly felt like they were on fire, and I tensed my stump, trying to ease the sensation.
“You okay?” Mark asked.
“Phantom pain,” I murmured.
He looked a little green the way he always did around the subject of amputation. “Uh…”
“Anyway,” I said, changing the subject, “that was him. Creek. He’s not actually that bad.”
“Because he wants to put his penis in your butthole?” Mark asked with a smirk.
“I hate you so goddamn much,” I hissed, then froze. “And also, no, he doesn’t. He doesn’t like men.”
“Men who don’t like other men do not look at you the way he does,” Mark said.
My throat felt suddenly hot and thick. “He wasn’t?—”
“I get it,” Mark interrupted. “You’re insecure, which…yeah. Makes sense. But there’s no way a guy like that is going to turn you down.”
My chest felt hot for a different reason. “Don’t be an asshole.”
“I’m just saying. If anyone gets it, he does.”
That was true. And it wasn’t. My injury and Creek’s might look the same on the outside, but on the inside, they happened in different worlds. We both lost a lot. We both struggled with what our lives would look like. But his entire world had been shattered. Mine had just been tipped slightly sideways while I waited to be strong enough to withstand a sports prosthetic.
He’d lost pieces of his identity that he’d never get back.
“Look, dude, I know I’m overstepping here,” Mark said, his voice uncharacteristically soft, “and I know I get, uh, weird about your leg.”
I scoffed but said nothing.
Mark had the grace to look at least a little ashamed. “I’m not trying to be, like, ableist or anything. I’m not saying thatdisabled dudes all need to date each other. I’m just saying that he gets how it feels to struggle with your body. And I’m serious about the way he was looking at you. Straight or not, the man is curious.”
I took a breath, then, against my better judgment, said, “Yeah. He kissed me.”
