Page 19 of Give Me What You Will

Frankie released an audible breath through his nostrils, eyes darkening and jaw clenching.

“But I didn’t just come here for you,” Sam admitted, glancing around the bar and the people in it. “I love this place on the Fourth. So, c’mon, let’s move this fuckin’ thing.”

The lines around Frankie’s lips soften, and he joined him at the keg. Their hands were close, nearly touching, their shoulders brushing against each other, and he couldn’t help but notice how much Frankie wasn’t looking at him at this close proximity.

The two men muscled the keg through the crowded bar and back outside.

Barbeque smoke from the grill, hot July sunshine, and laughter wafted over them.

“Joel and Brendon are gonna be here soon,” Frankie informed him.

Sam smiled. Joel and Brendon went to community college with them. They had become their own little tight-knit gang of late-blooming men who started later in community college after high school, deciding to work or play before returning to boring academia. Adulthood eventually won out, and Joel was swept into a corporate job in the city, while Brendon got married and moved to the suburbs, becoming a dentist.

“Good,” Sam huffed out as they made it to the last leg with the keg, dropping it heavily behind the folding table with the beer jockey box. “I texted Mikey and told him I was here, too.”

“Mikey?” Frankie scoffed, stretching his knee out a little, pain tensing his expression for only a brief second. “Why the fuck did you invite Blue-Balls?”

Sam, distracting himself by hooking up the lines to the keg, wanted to ask about how Frankie’s knee was, but he resisted. Frankie was already on edge, and asking him about a sensitive topic wasn’t a good idea. He made quick work of detaching the hose from the empty half-barrel keg and connecting it to the fresh keg. If they were lucky, it might last the whole night with this crew.

“Probably because I’ll be around temptation all night and will need a distraction,” Sam replied casually, honestly.

“You don’t mean Blue-Balls?” he asked incredulously.

“No. I mean you.”

Frankie frowned and opened his mouth, his cheeks reddening, and then cursed. “Fuckin’ knock it off.”

He glanced up from the keg, noting the telling flush in Frankie’s neck.

Was he blushing because he liked it? Or was he embarrassed? Or worse, was he ashamed of how their last encounter had gone and was too uncomfortable to say anything? Sam tapped the keg, grabbed a plastic cup from the side of the box, and poured himself a beer.

He took a long drink and sighed, letting the foam roll on his tongue, lips slipping into a smile. “Make me.”

Frankie stepped forward, unable to resist the bait. He was hot-headed that way, and he briefly wondered if Frankie might actually hit him. He flicked his gaze steadily over Frankie, challenging him. It felt strangely good to fuck with him a bit. Sam had spent 15 years curbing his tongue for the sake of their friendship. In his eyes, their friendship was over, and if Frankie insisted on maintaining the way things used to be, then Sam would make it painfully clear that he wasn’t interested in friendship.

He wanted him.

His body.

His moans, his whimpers, his hot, breathy kisses.

Kisses that Frankie hadn’t returned, but he hadn’t run from, either. Sam had clung to that moment in the alleyway, playing it over and over in his mind. The hard feel of Frankie’s cock against his palm, and how it was now permanently imprinted on him somehow. How hard and big and fuck…

That had always been a boundary for him when they worked out together at the gym. He never, ever went into the locker room or the showers at the same time as Frankie. He kept far away from the temptation, knowing he wouldn’t be able to handle seeing him naked. He had kept and held to that sacred line of friendship for all those years.

But that line was gone now.

It had been obliterated the moment Sam had kissed him.

“Is this how today’s gonna go?” Frankie demanded testily.

“You were the one wanting to make this friendship work,” Sam bit back.

“And you don’t?”

“No, I don’t.”

Frankie sneered, “Then why the fuck are you here?”