Lennon
He loves us! Elliot really loves us!
Elliot
Go back to jerking each other off while you watch Forrest run through the desert, you perverts.
I flop over the arm of my couch, throwing an arm over my face as I let out an exasperated breath. I should have known that Breaker and Lennon wouldn’t be mature enough to handle this situation.
Hell, I’m not mature enough to handle this situation.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Alex Kozlov Holmes is that just when I think he can’t surprise me anymore, he surprises the hell out of me again.
Ithink about you. I think about you. I think about you.
Those four words play like a broken record in my head, and I groan as my dick starts to thicken behind the zipper of my jeans once again. As if hitching a Lyft to my place across town with a boner to beat the band wasn’t embarrassing enough, I can’t stop thinking about Alex’s confession.
He isn’t straight. He isn’t repulsed by my attraction to him. He’s attracted to me too, and he wants me to touch him. Wants to touch me back. Wants more than just my good luck kisses…
“Fuck,” I grumble, pulling my phone back out of my pocket and dialing the number of a sure-fire erection killer. I can’t think if all the blood in my body is constantly pooled in my dick.
“Hey Elly Belly, what’s up?” Mom’s voice comesthrough the phone, and it's like an instant head clearer.
“Hey Mama. Not much. I just wanted to call and say hi.”
“Such a terrible little liar I raised. You called and said hi to me this morning, sweet boy. And you’ve got that “I need my mama” hitch in your voice. So tell me what’s wrong before I use your fancy credit card and book a flight to San Francisco just to kick your butt.”
I sigh and suppress a laugh. Using my credit card to visit me isn’t the threat Mom thinks it is. Having had me at seventeen and raising me on her own, my mom and I have always been close, but there was still a time when I thought I was too cool to hang out with her or too smart for her advice. As I get older, though, and the gap in our age starts to feel smaller and smaller, Mom has become both my mother and one of my best friends. And even through the phone, she can read me like a book.
“I kind of…sort of…maybe have a crush…” I grumble, then yank my phone away from my ear when Mom starts to shriek like a banshee.
She always screams when she thinks there’s a man in my life. It’s that inherent mom thing where she wants me to be “settled” and “happy”.
Whatever that means.
“Tell! Me! Everything!”
And so I do. I fill Mom in on everything that’s happened between Alex and I and all the things we talked about today.
Well, almost everything. I leave out the blatant sexual innuendos, for both of our sakes.
“So let me get this straight, since apparently neither you nor this goalie can get anything straight,” Mom says, giggling at her own stupid joke. One thing about Mom being only seventeen years old when she had me? Her humor sort of stalled out when she was in high school, too. I roll my eyes, but still, her amusement makes me smile. “The two of you meet. You kiss. He tells you he’s not into men, so you decide to be friends. You hang out a few times, talk on the phone, and then he tells you that he actually is into men. Not only is he into men, but he’s into you. Now you realize you both have crushes that you want to explore. What’s the problem?”
“Mooooom. The problem is that we’re friends. What happens if we…you know…and it doesn’t work out? Then what? I just lose Alex as a friend?”
“Elly Belly, you’ve known him for a month. It's not like you’ve got a lifetime’s worth of baggage between you to think about. You’re not entangled with each other yet. If it doesn’t work out, you try to go back to being friends. You’re both adults, you cangive friendship after fucking a shot. And if that doesn’t work out, you move on with your life and with the memory of being the hot hockey god’s gay awakening to keep you warm at night until you find the right guy for you. I don’t see the problem.”
Yet another problem with being in the same age-bracket as your mother. Her motherly instincts and woman’s intuition make her so much smarter than me, even if she’s still young enough to be hip to hookup culture and to gross me out with her advice.
“You haven’t met him though, Mom. He’s…perfect. He’s adorable and kind and thoughtful. He’s funny and he’s so unapologetically himself. He’s fucking adorable. He’s great with kids, he’s great with me. Have I mentioned how adorable he is? I just want to pinch his cheeks all the damn time.”
I also want to bend him over and bite his other cheeks, but Mom doesn’t need to hear that. She sighs on the other end of the phone.
“Got it. So the problem is that you don’tjusthave a crush on him. You like him. You’re falling for him.”
“Yup,” I answer, popping the “p”. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to let him go because my heart is already involved. That’s what I was trying to tell him earlier, but then he mentioned the whole ‘good luck kisses’ thing, and my brain went offline. I don’t know what to do, Mom.”
I can hear her forlorn sigh on the other end of the phone, and I know I’m not going to like whatever it is she has to say.
