He bumped my shoulder with his. “I love pancakes. But I’m not hungry after I ate my way through that hospitality suite.”
“Yeah. Those dogs are good. I can’t ever help myself when I’m there.” I sighed. “There’s just something about a hot dog and beer at a Cubs game.”
I could feel the inane nervous chatter coming on the closer we got to my apartment. It was a sign I was nervous about being alone with him which was weird because I freaking loved being alone with him. Being alone with Jack meant naked and orgasming. And I loved orgasming. With Jack. Naked.
I let out a little squeak by accident.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I was talking about dogs. And cats. You’re not allergic, are you? It’s only… I have two cats, and I should have asked first. Honestly, I should have reminded you about them, really. It was rude of me not to because I have… two cats.”
Jack stopped and stared at me. I looked at the side of the building, the chipped piece of broken curb, the weeds on the nearby front steps, and anything else except Jack’s eyes.
His finger lifted my chin up until I was forced to look at him. “I know about the cats. Take a breath. It’s just me. You know me.” His voice was low and soothing. “All I want to do is go into your place and meet your babies. Waffles used to be your neighbor’s and has a tortoiseshell coat while Socrates is black with one white sock. And that’s why people mistakenly call him Socks, and it drives you crazy since the real reason he was named Socrates was because you saw a stupid quote at a store and it made you laugh.”
“It might as well have said Live, Laugh, Love,” I said, throwing up my hands. “It was this giant parchment framed with like… shipwreck timber. And it said in bold script, ‘Happiness is unrepentant pleasure.’ It was a Socrates quote, and all I could think was if Socrates had been standing right there at Anthropologie Barn or whatever the fuck the name of the place was, he would have keeled over laughing.”
I led him up the stairs to my building and then looked back over my shoulder at him before unlocking the door. “The fact you remember that makes me feel… fizzy and light, like a can of fruity pop.” I felt my face heat, so I turned back around quickly and unlocked the door. Jack’s arms came around my front, and his deep voice slid into my ears.
“I feel like there’s a joke to be made about popping open a fruity can—”
“Oh my god stop,” I blurted with a laugh. “Gross.”
“Babe, you seriously handed that one to me on a silver platter. A fruit platter.”
I thought maybe my face was going to melt right off from embarrassment. “I’m not a poet, okay? I just…”
As soon as we stepped into the tiled entryway of the building, Jack turned me around and pressed his lips to mine.
He tasted so sweet, I forgot all about my nerves and just enjoyed the fruity fizz.
When we finally separated long enough to make it to my apartment, I opened the door to discover a giant mess. Somehow, a giant bag of popcorn I had safely put away in a closed kitchen cabinet had been retrieved and scattered all over the studio apartment. I groaned and looked for the culprit. Waffles was nowhere to be found. Meanwhile Socrates was curled up in a tight ball on my neatly made bed as if nothing had happened.
Typical.
“Crap, I’m so sorry,” I began, stooping to begin the cleanup. “She’s such a jackass sometimes. I don’t know how she does it, but Waffles is like… she’s like goddamn Houdini or something, but only with snacks and toilet paper rolls.”
Jack began picking up the spilled popcorn next to me, making a little tsk sound with his mouth periodically until Waffles, the jackass snacker, came slinking out from under my bed.
“C’mere, baby,” Jack murmured, holding out a hand toward Waffles. For a split second, my stomach did that little flippy thing it always did when he spoke to me in that tender voice. But he wasn’t talking to me, he was talking to the destroyer.
Waffles waddled her way over and sniffed Jack’s hand before prancing a figure eight through Jack’s legs and rubbing up against him like a slut.
I sighed. “Seriously? She’s a menace.” I continued cleaning while Jack sat down and made room for Waffles on his lap and continued to massage the cat like this was some kind of feline day spa.
After most of the popcorn was cleaned up, I realized I was staring at Jack’s hands as he stroked his long fingers through Waffles’s coat. Those hands had been all over my body. Those fingers had been inside of me. Just thinking about it ramped me up and made me want him again. In some ways, I felt like an adolescent who’d just discovered masturbation. Except… it was sex, and now I wanted it every minute of every day.
I wiggled my hips, trying to unkink my dick without making it obvious I needed to shift things around.
Jack’s eyes met mine, and the corner of his mouth ticked up. “Whatcha looking at, cutie?”
“Nothing,” I said stupidly. “Um, the cat.”
My face flooded with heat. Why hadn’t I just said, You, you sexy fucker. Want to bang?
Jack gently nudged Waffles out of his lap and stood up, reaching out a hand for me. “C’mere, baby.” This time the words were meant for me. A knowing glint in his eye told me he knew exactly what he was doing. “Now would be an excellent time for your first advanced sex lesson.”
“Um…”
“Take off your clothes, Teo.”
“But, ah…” I looked around, wondering if I was ready for advanced moves. I’d barely gotten my basic competency on the regular moves.
“Get naked, or the first advanced move you’re learning involves my palm leaving a nice pink mark on your ass.”
20
Jack
Maybe it was a mistake to continue sleeping with Teo when I was clearly beginning to have more feelings for him than a simple hookup. He’d made it clear to me from the very beginning that he was in love with his best friend. Hell, it was the only reason we were even together today, to fool Chris into thinking Teo was seeing someone.
And it had worked. The fake-boyfriend thing had pulled out Chris’s jealousy until he’d been forced to express his feelings for Teo. When I’d overheard Teo yelling at him in the hallway of the baseball complex, I’d lost it. All I’d wanted to do was get him out of there, get him away from the selfish prick who truly did want to have his cake and eat it too. The man was a user, and hearing Teo admit to still loving him had cracked something open in me. Envy, maybe. Perhaps I wanted to feel that way about someone too.
But now those feelings seemed to be directed at Teo, and that was the worst thing that could happen. I thought back to what Elaine Stickley had told me about wasting her life being in love with someone who was in love with someone else. At the time, I’d wondered why she hadn’t just cut her losses and moved on, but now I was beginning to catch a glimpse of how that might not be as easy as it sounded.
As I watched Teo shuck his clothes off like they were on fire, I realized it didn’t matter. For the next several hours, I was laying claim to the man regardless of whether or not he was mine. For the next several hours, he was mine, and I planned on taking advantage of every single second of our time together by licking, caressing, and teasing every single inch of his perfect body.