HotCraic97:Like it better here? xox
Merde.
It’s him.
The smoking hot firefighter, every pun intended.
Has to be.
But itcan’tbe. That’s too fucking weird—forme, not him. There’s no way I spent all nightawakeand fantasising that he messaged me on the shiny new app he directed me to and then itactually fucking happened.
I shut my phone off and place it face down on the floor. Step over it and move to the bathroom. Take a shower without a two-year old banging on the screen. It should be the first chill morning I’ve had in weeks, but even without fretting over what time Esme had Tam up, my mind spins a mile a minute.
What if it isn’t him?
The hot firefighter.
What if it is?
The water runs cold for two solid minutes before I notice.
Shivering, I clamber out of the tub I installed for Esme, wet feet on the fluffy pink rug she loves. My phone feels like a homing beacon—like the North Pole to a fucking reindeer, and I’m standing over it again before I make the conscious decision to be there.
Water drips from my skin onto the dented phone case, pooling on the distorted baby Jesus sticker Tam slapped on there as a joke present last year. Myonlypresent until he’d given me a photo album with handwritten messages that had made me cry into my pineau.
Love that bastard.
Miss him too. He’s the best brother in the world, and he’smarriedto a literal man. There’s no tangible reason why I can’t talk to him about the angsty mess my sexuality has become, but I just…can’t.
Putain…quel abruti.
Me. I’m the idiot. Not Tam.
I reach for my phone and turn it over, activating the screen again. I’ve set the app to hide itself. Like TikTok when I found myself watching hours of angry cat videos when Esme was in bed. Out of sight, out of mind. It worked for the clock app, but there’s no chance with this.
The firefighter was right. This appisbetter. I’ve had my entire brain buried in it since it landed on my phone last night. And since that message, my dick hasn’t withered past a semi, a fact I can’t escape as I take my phone back to my bed and lie down, opening FlingIt to stare at the message again.
HotCraic97:Like it better here? xox
Not exactly a proposition, but heat floods my veins all the same, adding to the pole tenting my towel. The fuckingachein my groin and somewhere deeper I haven’t had the nerve to contemplate. One that makes my hand shake as I tap the profileattached to the message and Disneyland for this baby queer lights up the screen.
I—
Fuck.
My mouth goes dry.
There are no face pics on the profile. Just skin and muscles. Careful, angled shots of a strong chest,thickthighs dusted with copper hair, and below?—
A fist, broad-knuckled and masculine, wrapped tight around a thick column that has me reaching for my own cock, shoving the towel aside.
The contact rolls my eyes.
Thepressure.
But I don’t lean into it.
Can’t.
