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“What happened, Cal?” Mikey asked, rolling onto his stomach and reaching out to brush my hair off my forehead, rubbing the crease on my brow with his thumb.

My body went instantly still, and I held my breath. We’d been trading handjobs every night this week, and he’d just had my dick in his mouth. But Mikey and I didn’t touch each other like this. We weren’t tender. That was for boyfriends—for people who were in a relationship—and we’d been clear from the start that was not what this was.

I blew out the breath I’d been holding and made myself start talking.

“Brooks and I had an … arrangement. Kind of like ours,” I said, and Mikey snorted.

“Brooks? How the hell did you let yourself fall for a fucking douche named Brooks? God, Cally. I’m so disappointed in you,” he said, laughter in his voice.

Then, to be sure that I knew he was teasing me he whispered, “I’m not really disappointed in you. You know that, right?”

I nodded, a small smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. “I know. But thanks for making that clear.”

“Seriously though,” he pressed. “Why him?”

For all of Brooks’s flaws—which, to be clear, I was fully aware of—his interest in me had felt like a minor miracle, even if that interest only extended as far as my mouth.

“Does it make sense if I say he had Michael Phelps’s body with Zac Efron’s face?”

Mikey collapsed onto my chest, burying his face against my shoulder and groaning. “No, Cal.”

I twisted a lock of his hair loosely around my finger. “He was also the first guy who ever let me suck his dick, so … you know.” I slid my finger free of the coil and watched it spring back into shape. “Horny teenagers don’t really make the best decisions.”

Mikey pushed onto his forearms and shifted onto his side, snuggling down into the pillow, his curls forming a honey-colored halo around his head. “You know I wouldn’t consciously do anything to hurt you, right?”

I rolled to face him. “I know that.”

“Do you? Because you just said you guys had the same arrangement we have, but given how you freaked out on me earlier, I just need to confirm that you understand I’m not him.”

I slid my hands under my pillow, resting them beneath my cheek. “It wasn’t really about you,” I started, hating the way my voice shook.

This was so fucking embarrassing. But Mikey deserved to know the truth precisely because of the way I’d freaked out on him.

I swallowed and forced myself to continue.

“One night, I stopped by his room to pick up a book I needed.” I blew out a breath, my memories pulling me right back to that fucking dorm room. “He answered the door, holding his pants up and sort of out of breath. At first, I figured I caught him with another guy. We weren’t … exclusive or anything, but I was pissed. I’d started to lay into him when I saw a magazine open on his bed. I lunged for it, teasing him about buying gay porn.”

Mikey’s expression fell. I wouldn’t describe the look on his face as pity necessarily, but from the downward tilt of his mouth, I knew he’d already guessed what an idiot I was.

“Stupid of me to assume that because I was gay, and we were doing gay shit together, he must be gay, too.”

“I take it the magazine was naked women instead?”

My stomach dropped out from under me, the same way it had that night. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the image was already there—her freckled face, her fake breasts.

I made myself breathe through the nausea until it passed, then pried open my eyes and looked at him.

“Yeah. The one with mom.”

Mikey’s face went instantly pale, the color leeching right out of it. His eyes were wide and fixed on me like he was waiting for me to tell him I was joking.

If only.

“Oh my god,” he finally whispered. “Tell me he didn’t know.”

“Oh, he knew.”

“Fuck,” he breathed out, his head falling forward.