“Seriously, quit being a dick,” Daniel scolded him. “He’s trying to be nice. It’s not like he’s asking if you want him to suck your cock.”
Zach spluttered, his face turning an adorable shade of red. “Well, no, but at least that’s something I can’t give myself.”
He was cute when he was too flustered to put on the grumpy front. I couldn’t help but tease him just a little. “I mean, I figured it was too soon to offer sexual favors, but if it would help you chill, I’m down.”
Daniel cackled, nearly dropping the pizza he’d just collected from the lobby. Zach caught it, setting it on the table. He flipped off his roommate and disappeared into their room.
“Shit, I probably shouldn’t have said that, huh?” Now things were going to bereallyuncomfortable.
“It’s fine.” Daniel shrugged. He inhaled deeply as he opened the first pizza box and tossed a couple pieces on each plate. “I don’t want to seem like a gossip, but people being openly gay isn’t something he’s used to. I promise, he’s not a homophobe, but maybe it’d be best to lay low until he gets to know you a little better.”
“Lay low as in…?” I let the question trail off.
Daniel jerked his head toward the couch, furthest from our bedrooms. He sat at one end and I took the chair across from him. Pizza night had been a stupid idea. I’d let my guard down. For the first time, I hadn’t worried about holding back a snarky retort and it had bitten me in the ass. “Zach spends a lot of time trying to prove how masculine he is. Right now, he’s probably feeling a bit insecure. He did this when your brother and Jayden got together, and again when Matt and Brandon admitted they were a couple. He’s convinced himself people will think he’s gay if too many of his roommates are.”
“That’s such a load of shit.” I stuffed half a slice of pizza into my mouth to keep from rambling about how much that reeked of internalized homophobia. I’d seen the way his eyes lit up momentarily when I’d teased about blow jobs. That was a man who needed something he wasn’t brave enough to ask for. And so far, he’d kept everybody else off his trail with his shitty attitude.
“I’m not saying I disagree.” Our conversation was cut short when Zach sulked back into the room. Daniel pointed to the table. “Dished you up. I was going to bring it in if you didn’t get out of your snit.”
“It wasn’t a snit,” Zach argued.
“Okay, whatever you say.” Daniel chuckled and rolled his eyes. “Get your head out of your ass and sit with us.”
“Yeah, okay.” Zach eyed me warily as he sat at the opposite end of the couch from Daniel. They asked questions about Chase and me, Daniel told me about his family, and Zach wasn’t at all subtle about changing the subject before we could talk about him. “Matt and Brandon are going to be here tomorrow. I’m assuming someone else is coming to fill the empty bed in your room?”
I shrugged, hiding my satisfaction that he’d directly addressed me instead of trying to talk to me through Daniel. “I guess. No clue who it would be then. Maybe I’ll get lucky and have a room to myself.”
“Yeah, fat chance of that,” Zach scoffed. “They get to charge the big bucks on the suites so there’s never an open bed. Hopefully whoever they send us is cool.”
He stared at me and I wondered if that was a subtle jab that he wasn’t happy about me being here. Well, he’d just have to suck it the fuck up and get used to having me around. I wasn’t going anywhere, so he was stuck with me until he graduated next spring.
3
Zach
I hatedit when my dad was right. Him saying he didn’t want me to get a job only lit a fire under my ass to work as many hours as I could. It only took me a couple of days to get hired on at the pizza joint as a delivery driver, and by the time I cashed out at the end of the night, came home, showered off the stink and grease, and did my homework, I passed the fuck out. Sometimes, I was even lucky enough to make it to my bed. Most of the time, Daniel shook me awake at some point in the night and guided me toward our room.
Those were the nights I slept the best. There was something about the warm and fuzzies it gave me when Daniel pulled the covers up to my chin. If I was stronger, I’d snap at him to stop and remind him I wasn’t his boy to take care of. Just because our roommates had odd relationships where that shit was totally normal, didn’t mean I was looking for anything like that.
But I could at least admit to myself that I was such a dick to Chase, because what he had with Jayden was so fucking sweet it hurt.
But thinking about Chase conjured up Colin in my mind. The universe was a cruel fucking place, so of course it sent me someone who had those same droopy, whiskey-colored eyes, made him unapologetically gay,andstrong enough I couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to have him throw my ass on the bed and drill my hole.
Because, yeah, I was fucked up like that.
Too bad I couldn’t do a fucking thing about it.
While I waited for the dinner rush to start, I clocked out and huddled in one of the corner booths, trying to make some headway on a Modern History assignment. I’d fucked up hardcore by putting off some of the classes that I knew were going to bore me to tears, and now I was paying the price. The professor was so dry he should have come with a warning label against drowsiness, and the rest of the students were freshmen. Sure, it was only a few years’ age difference, but they were babies, barely kicked out of their parents’ nests. And not a single one of them understood that as much as group projects sucked donkey balls, they were a fact of life.
So here I was, trying to pick up the slack for a bunch of assholes caught up in the freedom frenzy because I’d be damned if I was going to prove my dad right.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled as I heard someone approaching the front counter. I shook off my discomfort, telling myself I was being paranoid.
“I have an interview with Gavin.” Fuck. Even though we hadn’t spent much time together, I knew that voice. I kept my head down as I glanced to the side, a pit forming in my stomach.
I’d obviously done something horrible in a past life; that was the only explanation for Colin standing there in tight-fitting jeans and a crisp white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to accentuate his sculpted forearms.
I was going to lose my shit if he wound up getting a job here. And, honestly, chances were high I’d wind up with chafing on my dick from having to sneak into the bathroom to rub one out if I had to be near him all the damned time.
