However, while I have been actively avoiding him physically, I haven’t been able to avoid him mentally. There have been lots of stolen glances of Brooks everywhere around here as I study him. There have been lots of cigarettes chain-smoked in the little hidey hole that Sully carved out in the back of the parking lot, where my mind has been circling around our near-kiss. And finally, there have been a fuck ton of cold showers, all with the vision of him wearing that underwearfor me.
He turns in the waist-deep water, ready to launch back in, but I stop and spin him back to face me.
“What?!” he yells at me again.
You need to stop feeling like you need to do everything on your own, I want to say to him.
You need to stop sacrificing yourself for the sake of everything and everyone else, I should tell him.
Instead, I point to a trio of three that have started getting pummeled against boulders on shore a few hundred yards away. “Let’s get those ones,” I say.
If he’s going to be a stubborn idiot, I won’t let him be a stubborn idiot alone.
And just as the lightning threads itself across the sky, sending branches of blinding light outwards in all directions, he dives back in and powers over in the direction of the boats. The man makes it over there in half the time it takes me to huff and puff my way to him. He’s juggling the three boats, so I take two off his hands and head for the camp’s boat landing, racking them up quickly.
We repeat this process a few more times, before we’re down to one final boat. The storm is moving away from us now, the span of time between a flash and a rumble is getting wider. Rain still comes in torrents, droplets hitting the choppy surface almost like pellets. I wadeout to my hips and slip the boat off his hands. He stays put while I deposit the craft on shore, sucking in breaths and scanning the lake.
“Pretty fuckin’ reckless,” I scold him as I head back out to meet him. I run a hand through my hair, slicking back what’s being cast in front of my eyes.
Between inhaling in through his nose, out through his mouth, he comes back with a sarcastic, “Mhm. That’s what they call me. Reckless. Totally not ‘doormat’ or anything like that.”
I snort. “You sure about that?” I shout over the pelting rain.
“Of course. I mean, obviously,” he gestures at himself in a ‘look at me’ way.
I do look at him. I recall his lithe body moving through the water with speed and accuracy. I picture it writhing beside me in a sea of bedsheets and torn off clothing. I watch as his chest rises and falls before me. I picture my own body pressed against his. He’s breathless, but for a totally different reason.
That’s wrong. You’re wrong. Stop thinking like that!
“You some sort of human-dolphin hybrid or something?” I ask him, trying to ignore the fact that my thirty-four-year-old dick currently has the mindset of a horny teenager.
He gives me a weak grin, one that looks full of regret. “I used to swim competitively. Middle school clear through college. Wore a Speed-o and everything,” he says, then follows it up with a self-deprecating chuckle. “You didn’t get that show tonight, apparently. Lucky you.” He wets his lips and flips his hair back out of his face, before looking down at the water’s surface between us.
With the pad of my thumb, I tilt his chin back up. Cupping his cheek, running my thumb along his jaw, I whisper, “Please don’t talk down about yourself like that.”
The gesture, that sentiment, that all came out of me so suddenly, that I didn’t even have time to process it. It felt… almost instinctual.
No. Wrong. Wrong is how it felt. It was intimate.Toointimate.
His eyes dart between mine, like he’s trying to decipher the meaning behind it as well. His hand reaches up and his delicate fingers wrap around my wrist, stilling me from tracing his jaw. His tongue darts between his lips again, and the lump in his throat bobs when he gulps.
“W-what are you doing, Evan?” he whispers back, breathlessly. His chest rises and falls quicker.
“Not real sure,” I tell him honestly, my voice now hoarse and low.
Get a hold of yourself! Stop this. Now!
His body inches incrementally towards me, and I notice that he’s not resisting me tilting his head up even more. Angling his lips towards mine. Feeling the sharp puffs of breath he’s letting out. My eyes are glued on the way his moistened lips part, his eyelids getting heavier.
I can do it this time… I can kiss him.
What the hell are you even doing right now?! Think of your ring. Your vows. Your values, Waters. Be a man!
“W-we shouldn’t… I’m your b-boss,” he stammers, delivering a whispered reminder, droplets of water dripping off his lower lip.
Despite his own warning, I can tell he’s just as much at war with his mind right now as I am. He’s leaning in rather than pulling away. His breathing is choppy.
And also, despite his warning, I want to taste those lips more than I’ve wanted anything else ever. Just one taste. Just enough to see if—if… if what I’m feeling is just an urge I need to fulfill, just so I can stop wondering all the damn time.
