Lucky for them, Spencer already knew what was what. When this resolved, Ash and Ryder were gonna be boyfriends, and Spencer was gonna be … Spencer.
Which was, of course, totally cool. Totally chill. Just as it should be.
Spencer’s phone dinged, and he dug it out of his back pocket without pulling away from Noah.
It was a message from Ash, although Ryder’s name was up there too. Apparently the three of them now had a group chat going.
Ash: Meet us at the rec center pool tomorrow. 10 am.
So, not a heat emergency. Some of Spencer’s tension eased. Leaving the roomie hang with zero warning would have been hard to manage.
Noah looked over Spencer’s shoulder at his phone. “That your booty call?”
Spencer cleared his throat. It didn’t work the first time, so he coughed and tried again. “It’s, um, Ash. He and Ryder wanna swim tomorrow morning.”
“Oh. Chill.” Noah rubbed his chin over Spencer’s hair. “It’s cute that you guys are hanging out. He must have caught a case of, like, hero worship or something.”
Hah. As if Spencer was anyone’s hero.
But Spencer nodded and tucked his phone away, then started tossing out his three top choices for pizza toppings. If he focusedon the present, there was less likelihood of the guilt eating him alive.
Less chance of him remembering that this was so. Fucking. Bad.
The rec centerpool on campus was massive. It was sort of L-shaped, with one part sectioned off for lap swimming and a big open area where they sometimes held weird classes like paddleboard yoga. This morning the area was open for free swim, with the loungers all around mostly filled up with students already.
Spencer spotted Ash and Ryder immediately, his gaze drawn to them like a freaking homing device. They were both shirtless and in trunks, same as Spencer. He hadn’t bothered putting his shirt back on after his postworkout shower, not when he was pool-bound.
Luckily, lifting some weights and sprinting on the treadmill until he’d felt like he was dying had worked to mostly settle Spencer down after the panic of the night before.
Yeah, the situation was a little weird, and Spencer hated lying to Noah and Chase like he hated anything, but everyone involved was still good people in the end, right? No one was going to chase Spencer out of town with a pitchfork or anything.
It would be chill. Everything would be fine.
Spencer shrugged off what remained of his nerves and approached the loungers with a beaming smile. Whatever else was going on, he was happy to hang. “My dudes!”
Ash and Ryder each gave him a nod, which with the sunglasses they were both wearing, kind of made them look like super in-sync secret agents. Spencer dropped his bag andchecked his options. The two of them were each on their own lounger, and all the ones surrounding them were occupied.
Ash patted his. “You’re with me.”
“Cool, cool.” Spencer perched on the end, stretching his back out while he was at it.
He tried to keep his eyes off Ryder’s legs while he did, but it was a hard-won battle. They were, like,rightnext to him. And maybe Spencer should have been immune to the thigh tats after twelve straight hours of watching a naked Ryder fuck like a machine, but some things had staying power.
On top of that, it was already hot as hell, and it was taking an equally monstrous effort not to watch the beads of sweat drip down Ash’s lean chest.
Like, where was a horndog supposed to catch a break? Staring straight at the fucking sun?
Spencer gestured to the sparkling blue pool. “We going in?”
Ash and Ryder exchanged a glance. “In a minute,” Ash told Spencer. “We thought we should set some ground rules first.”
Ah. Chill. Cool, cool, cool. This was it, the moment they were going to be like,Hey, Spencer, don’t get stupid and catch feelings, okay? We’re in major love, and you’re just a convenient, sexy knot on a stick.
He prepared himself for the gut punch of it all—it was all about tensing the stomach muscles properly. Luckily, Spencer had very well-trained abs.
“So we’ve got the group chat,” Ash began. He had those kind of orange-tinted sunglasses that were still see-through enough to show off his eyes, and Spencer could see that he was lazily eyeing Spencer up and down. “If something heat related happens while I’m on my own, I’ll text SOS, and whoever’s closest comes to get me. Then we rendezvous at the apartment, assuming we’re able to make it. Campus Health also has heat rooms if we can’t get that far.”
Spencer nodded with each step. Texts. Apartment. Heat rooms. “Yep, sounds good. What else?”
