Page 14 of Him
Rainier is in it to win it. They’re playing aggressively, all offense, all the time. I don’t think Yale has taken more than a dozen shots on goal, and it’s already well into the third. Canning stopped all but one, and the one he let in was a total fluke of a shot, smacking off the pipe to provide Yale with a rebound the center slapped right back in. I could practically hear the hiss of the puck as it whizzed past Canning’s glove, just a nanosecond too fast for him to swallow it up.
The score’s tied now. 1-1, with five minutes to go. I find myself holding my breath, willing Rainier’s forwards to make something happen.
“Your man Canning is rock steady,” Cassel tells me, taking a dainty sip of his champagne like he’s the fucking Queen of England.
“Cool under pressure,” I agree, my gaze glued to the rink. Yale’s left wing just flicked a lazy wrist shot that Canning easily stops, his body language almost bored as he keeps possession of the puck before passing it to one of his wings.
The Rainier players tear past the blue line, going on the attack.
But my mind is still on the last goal attempt, the way Canning faced off with the Yale player. I can’t even count how many times I was in that exact position, flying toward my buddy, slapping bullets at him.
Except the last time we faced off, I was the one in the net. The last barrier standing between Jamie Canning and a blowjob.
I like to think I didn’t let him win on purpose. I’m a competitor, always have been. Didn’t matter how much I wanted Canning’s dick in my mouth. Didn’t matter that if I won, I knew I’d have to let him back out of the bet. I’d defended that net with everything I had. Maybe?
Because when that puck flew past me, I can’t deny a part of me had been thrilled.
“With that said, I wouldn’t bawl my eyes out if they lose,” Cassel says. He turns to grin at me. “I know he’s your BFF and all, but I’d feel better going up against Yale’s goalie than cool cucumber down there.”
Cassel’s right. Canning’s the bigger threat. Those weaknesses he’d had back in the day? Gone. He’s a fucking rock star now. No wonder he got the starting job back.
Even so, I don’t want him to lose. I want to see him in the finals. I want to see him, period. And I’ve experienced crushing defeat before—if his team chokes, I know he won’t be up for hanging out, catching up, reconnecting…
Sucking each other off?
I banish the thought. I don’t fucking learn, do I? The last time sucking entered the equation, I’d lost my best friend.
It’s funny—I’m sure everyone has something they regret saying. An insult they’d hurled someone’s way. A confession they wished they could take back. Maybe, I don’t know, an insensitive joke they wish they hadn’t told.
The one sentence I regret? “Let’s watch some porn.”
There was no turning back once I uttered those four words, and I can’t even fully blame the alcohol, because a few sips from a flask does not a drunken idiot make. I knew what I was doing. What I was coaxing Canning into. I was collecting on the damn bet, which is so fucking ironic, because he’d won. The prize was his, except it wasn’t. It was mine. Because I’d wanted to touch him more than I’d wanted my next breath.
I still remember the shock on his face when I loaded the porn site on my laptop. I chose a tame scene—tame for me, anyway. I set the laptop on the mattress, then sprawled on the bottom bunk as if I had no care in the world.
For a long moment Canning didn’t move. I waited, tense, while he decided whether or not he was going to sit next to me on my bed, or climb up to the top bunk. Without looking at him, I passed him the flask. I heard him gulp. He swallowed on a sigh, then parked his ass beside me.
I didn’t risk a look at him for several minutes. We lay on our backs, passing the flask back and forth as we watched two dudes double-team a busty blonde on the screen.
“How would you compare your technique to hers?” Canning cracked himself up with this quip, his stomach shaking even as he looked at the laptop.
To him, it was just the latest amusing result of our competitive shenanigans. He was going to lord it over me, the way we always did with each other.
But to me, it was no joke. I’d just spent the last year trying to accept my increasingly obvious attraction to men. The bumbling loss of my virginity to a chick during junior year had been a pretty big red flag. I hadn’t been attracted to her, but I’d needed to try it. To be certain. I’d barely been able to get it up, and even then, I’d managed only because I was thinking about…
Canning. I thought about Jamie Canning.
I’d been crushing on my straight best friend for a long time. But I couldn’t tell him that. My only move here was to play along.
“Well, I’ve always been good at stickhandling.”
Jamie snorted. “Only you could be cocky even about this.”
“I always tell you, Canning. No fear. No matter what.”
God, I was such a jackass. Because fear wasn’t even part of the equation. All I had was a pure, aching desire as I lay there beside Jamie. Last year I’d enjoyed a couple of drunken make-out sessions and a hand-job exchange with a guy from school. But even then, I hadn’t been one hundred percent sure.
Lying in bed next to Canning? I burned with certainty.
