“I thought it was good clean fun! Besides, you can tell how many drinks are in a bottle from a percentage.”
“Yeah, my special skill. Practice makes perfect.”
They smiled at one another, and Sal looked away. Curtis might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but those baby blues were no fucking joke. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t know metaphors. You make mega bank kicking balls around.”
“For now. We’ll see what happens in the next couple years.”
Sal had forgotten how short the shelf lives of footballers could be. Byron had bombed out of the league his first year from injuries, severing a lot of Sal’s connections to the game. “Do you, uh, have plans? For after?”
“Nothing concrete.”
“What would you be doing if you weren’t playing football?”
“Welding, probably.”
Sal tried and failed not to picture Curtis Ingram shirtless, a tool belt strapped to his tanned hips and sparks flying everywhere. “That’s cool.”
“It’s really not.”
“I dunno, people probably need stuff welded.”
“They do.” He smiled. “What about you? You wanna get bigger with the whole dancing thing?”
“I don’t think so; it’s more like a hobby.”
“You had an OnlyFans, yeah?”
Sal blanched. “Who told you?”
“Google.”
As Sal continued to stare, horrified, he explained. “There’s an expired page under your drag name. I’m man enough to admit I went looking.”
“It wasn’t porn,” Sal blurted out, and was instantly embarrassed. They weren’t supposed to be someone who got shy about this kind of shit.
Curtis didn’t bat an eye. “So, what was it?”
“Dominatrix stuff. A couple of topless pics.”
He grinned. “Any chance I can get ‘em off ya?”
Sal gave him a look.
“Can’t blame a guy for trying. I don’t care, by the way. About you doing OnlyFans. Just in case you were worried.”
You’re not worried because you don’t actually think we’ll be together, Sal thought.You don’t want this to be serious. You’re just fucking around.
But their own memories instantly contradicted them. Since they’d met Curtis, he’d been determined to make this romantic.Theywere the one who’d been trying to keep things surface level and sex related. Their drinks arrived and Sal took a massive gulp of beer, praying it would make their mind slow the fuck down. It was uncomfortable to bump up against their assumptions. To realise they didn’t really believe a guy like Curtis Ingram could be into them.
“Good?” Curtis asked, gesturing at Sal’s drink.
Sal had been too in their own head to taste anything. They took another sip, and the peppery cacao taste slapped them upside the head. “Oof.”
“Bad?”
“No, just strong.”
Curtis pushed his cocktail across the table. “We can share if you want?”
