Page 56 of Game Night: Truth or Dare

Ben cocked his head a little, his brown eyes narrowing. “What do you mean?”

“Sorry. I was being crude, and I may have gotten lost in that metaphor. I just meant that his dick size wasn’t that important, since he…you know. Since he’s a bottom.”

“Dude,” said Ben, his eyes still squinty, his mouth still curled in a grin, “he bottomed with you?”

“Yeah. Of course.” Fifty lightbulbs went off over my head. “Wait! You’re saying he…”

“All the time. From the get-go. He just…took charge, sort of…the first time we hooked up, and we never questioned it after that.” He shrugged. “Not that I wanted to. I was happy with the arrangement.”

“You’re a bottom?” I didn’t mean to yell it like that. I was surprised, is all.

He laughed hard. “You don’t have to say it like that…like your mind is blown.”

“It’s a little blown, Ben. You’re like this…this big, butch army guy.”

“I promise you, Ol, lots of big, butch army guys take it up the ass.”

My imagination briefly went wild, conjuring up a vision: row on row of tattooed slabs like Ben, laid out and waiting. I might have gotten completely lost in the fantasy if the name he used hadn’t stuck with me. Ol. I was Ollie sometimes, and Oliver mostly. Only my close friends called me “Ol,” though. Bianca used it sometimes, and Elliot had, too. That must’ve been where Ben had heard it. But it sounded easy coming out of his mouth. I didn’t mind it.

“Well, you learn something every day.”

“I guess you do,” he said, eyes twinkling.

“I guess.” I felt weird now, with the conversation turning the way it had, and it was that sort of weirdness that you have to explain away, even at the risk of sounding even more like a dork. “It feels funny to admit this? But…I haven’t been with a bunch of guys. Just a couple of hookups before Elliot, and then an ill-fated rebound after. Maybe I need to get out more, shake off these stereotypes I’ve gotten from a lifetime of watching porn.”

“Maybe you should.” Ben’s smile grew a little sharper, though it remained playful. “I mean…is a big, butch army-man-bottom any weirder than a scrawny, floppy-haired theatre-major-top.”

“Hey! I’m not scrawny! I’m lean.’”

“With painted nails!” he said, pointing at my hands, and we were both laughing again. I looked down at the chipped black varnish on my fingers and realized that, yeah, it was pretty ridiculous for me, of all people, to be judging who was and wasn’t butch.

“Sorry,” I said, after I’d caught my breath. “Sorry. I’ll do better.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Give people a chance.”

“Exactly.”

We stood there again, just for a moment, not speaking. It was nice this time, though. Comfortable. Maybe we could be friends, I thought out of nowhere.

“Anyway,” he said, finally, “it was good to…clear the air. Or whatever.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’m gonna get home. I’m not usually up this late.”

“Right,” I said, hiding my disappointment. Laughing with him was the most fun I’d had since the semester began. Maybe it was just the relief of letting go of some of my residual Elliot crap. But also…he was a nice guy. And funny. “Cool. Okay.”

“I guess you’d better get back to the game.”

I shrugged. “Like you said earlier, I don’t think the night’s going to get any more exciting.”

“So…sucking on my neck was the highlight?”

I grinned. “I guess so.”

“If I had a nickel…” he said, and sort of slapped me on the bicep. Except it wasn’t really a slap? He did it with a broad, cupped hand, and let it rest on my arm a little longer than he had to. It was the sort of gesture I’d seem big, butch army guys give each other in the movies, I guess, but no one had ever done it to me before. And then he walked past me. As he did, I got one last good look at the hickey I’d given him.

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