Captain: Sure you are.
I snap the phone shut just so I don’t have to look at it.
I make it until Wednesday.
Barely.
By morning conditioning, I’m a wound-up disaster pretending to be a functional human being. My dick hurts. My brain hurts. My pride hurts most of all. If anything, I should be able to hold out longer than I did last time, at the very least. Shouldn’t I?
Brody saunters into the gym wearing shorts that should be illegal on someone with thighs that thick and muscular. With no compression shorts under them. And then the bastard starts squatting.
Fucking squats.
Deep, slow squats that make his thighs flex obscenely, his ass tightening with each press.
I swear to God I might actually combust. It’s so hot in here. Why is it so hot? You’d think with the cost of tuition in this place, we’d have decent air conditioning.
My head swings around the room, looking anywhere but at Brody’s indecent shorts.
“Yo, Beck,” Fish calls. “You alright?.”
“Huh? What? Oh. Yeah. Just, um, looking for my water bottle.”
“It’s in your hand,” he says blankly, pointing at my silver and red Huntston Howler’s water bottle.
Shit. “Ha! Duh. I knew that,” I say, putting all of my attention on sucking down as much water as I possibly can.
“You coming tonight, Captain?.”
I choke on my water so hard some of it sprays out of my nose.
“What? I’m not?—”
“The dorm Halloween party,” Fish clarifies, eyebrows raised so high on his forehead they nearly disappear into his hairline. “You seem tense, Beck. Maybe you should visit the massage therapist before you leave. Or actually relax and have a drink tonight.”
I nod weakly, still sputtering.
Across the gym, Brody grins back at me through his reflection and chuckles lightly. I flip him the middle finger, and he winks.
Obviously, I have no choice other than to push harder through my workout. Because I hate myself, and I need the distraction.
This, of course, becomes a challenge. A competition breaks out, which turns into me and Brody shoving each other to fight to get to the next piece of equipment first, which turns into a playful bout of sparring like we’re flirting teenagers.
It takes too long to realize that it’s only me and Brody acting this way. No one else is competing or playing like we are. In fact, everyone else is watching us curiously. Jay Norman is staring like we’re a puzzle to solve. Fish has an amused, but equally confused, expression frozen on his face.
What the fuck am I doing?
I break apart from Brody so fast I nearly trip over my own feet.
“I, uh—I’m going to go ask about that massage. Or maybe an ice bath,” I tack on, because the bite of plunging myself into freezing water might help shock me back to my senses. At the very least, it should help with the boner that seems to get worse the more I embarrass myself.
I sink into the ice bath after practice, shivering violently as the cold seeps into my bones. It barely dulls the ache, and my head is still exactly where it’s been since the semester began. Worse.
Apparently determined to make sure he’s the only thing I can think about, Brody slips into the room like a shadow and perches on the edge of the tub. He’s still wearing those stupid shorts.
“Is it helping?”
It’s obvious what he’s asking about.
