“I snore pretty bad, sorry, Eli. Sometime it’s one of those snores that’s loud enough to wake me up and scare me, so I kind of yell a little bit too. Are you a light sleeper?”
I smiled, even though on the inside, I was dying a little bit. “I can play some white noise.”
“Oh, shit, that’s actually… Um, so I have this condition where I hear things really well. It’s called, eh, auditory megaphona…ly. Always forget. So white noise sounds like an active war zone to me. Bombs dropping and shit.”
“Gotcha,” I said. “I can use headphones.”
I noticed Gabe had decided to join Emmy and the coach at the front desk. He appeared to say “thank you” about something before turning around, a room key in his hand. I yanked my attention back in Dylan’s direction before I was caught ogling the handsome man with his perfect jawline and his bulging biceps in that black Nike shirt he was wearing and— “Here’s your key.”
A tap on my shoulder made me spin around. I hadn’t expected Gabe to be standing face-to-face with me. God, he moved fast.
“Thanks,” I said. “Where’s Dylan’s?”
“There was a change.”
“There was?”
“Yeah, you’re rooming with me now.”
Keep it cool. Keep it—fuck yessss.
“Ah, okay. Cool.”
Dylan leaned in. “So who am I rooming with?”
“Soren.”
“Seriously?” Soren said. “Shit. I’m never getting any sleep.”
“At least I’m alightsnorer and not a biological warfare guerrilla farter like you are.”
Soren looked up at the ceiling, exasperated. “It was a bad tuna melt that I had. Already told you.”
The boys continued bickering about whose bodily functions were worse. I tuned them out almost entirely.
Gabe and I were sharing a room. My pulse quickened, my jaw clenched.
This was a code “holy shit, I’m about to have my guts rearranged all night long and love every second of it.”
Good thing I packed my douche.
“Here areyour vodka shots with lime,” the waitress said as she expertly balanced the tray in one hand and placed the five shots down on the round table.
I grabbed a shot and took the slice of lime off the rim.
Emmy lifted his glass to the center of the group. “Cheers, boys. To a great season.”
“Cheers to that,” I said and clinked my glass against Gabe’s. He sat across from me and looked directly at me as he brought his shot glass up to his lips. Those icy blue eyes were otherworldly. He had the kind of attractiveness that bordered on intimidating. Like you couldn’t comfortably look at him too long without feeling like you were coming across as a creep.
It might as well have been witchcraft. And the fucker had me completely under his spell.
I took the shot, the top-shelf vodka tasting smooth, and chased it with a suck of the lime. The fire from the fire pit crackled between us. It had been my idea to spend some time out here before we all headed to bed. Mostly because I started getting irrationally nervous about being in a private room with four walls, two beds, and a possibly half-naked (or fully naked; I didn’t know how he slept) Gabe only a couple of feet away from me. What if I fucked it up somehow? What if I was reading this all wrong, and Gabe was just going to go straight to bed, leaving me extremelydisappointed and desperately horny? I was most definitely overthinking the entire thing, but still… my head was all kinds of messed up over Gabriel Sanderson.
So when Chris suggested a shot and Emmy agreed to it, I wholeheartedly jumped in. Anything to take some of the buzzing edge off.
We each sat in a rocking chair, out toward the rear of the property that pushed up against a quiet lake. There was a chill in the air, but nothing that a hoodie and some sweats couldn’t solve. “How are you liking Burlington, Eli?” Emmy asked, leaning back in the chair, his bulky figure taking up most of the seat.
“It’s been great to me so far. I was born and raised in Norfolk, so it’s nice. Feels kind of similar. I moved to Jacksonville with my parents when I was fourteen. I loved it there too, but there’s something about the Northeast that, I don’t know, it just can’t be beat.”
