Page 54 of Gross Misconduct

“Dean, watch where you’re playing.” Tanner throws it back to him.

“Sorry.” He grabs the ball and races back to the kids.

Des swings the power drill around his finger, a confident smile on his lips. “You know, in my job, I’m involved in high-stakes negotiations. Millions of dollars on the line. It’s made me really good at reading the people across from me and deciphering when they’re holding back information.”

“What’s your point?” I grumble.

“You and Jack fucked.”

“Des!” Tanner shushes him, nods at the kids not too far away.

“My bad. You and Jack forked.”

“We didn’t…do that.” I think about denying, but my friends would never believe me. And when it comes to sex, Des is fucking clairvoyant. “We did things adjacent to that.”

“You finally kissed a boy, and you liked it?” Des asks.

I nod yes.

Des and Tanner hi-five each other, then surround me in a victory hug not unlike what happens when we win a game. They better not think about hoisting me up. I give them a minute to revel then push them back.

“What happened, Daddy?” Annabelle asks me.

“Your Daddy hit a very important, long overdue, milestone,” Des says. “He made a new friend.”

She gives me a thumbs up.

“Annabelle, why don’t you go back to playing? Have you shown the kids your new bracelet?”

She perks up with a fresh wave of excitement and skitters off. I sigh in relief when she’s out of earshot. I don’t need my dad life and sex life to ever intersect.

“How was it?” Tanner asks. “Everything you thought it would be?”

“Better,” I say without hesitation. Better can’t even describe how thoroughly reality outstripped expectations. I’d been so scared about hooking up with a guy because I didn’t think I’d know what to do. Nobody likes being a forty-four-year-old newbie with anything, much less sexual prowess. Jack pulled me out of my head, though. In that alley, I didn’t think. I just did. I let myself get taken over by the moment, let myself take what I wanted from Jack without a thought to the future. A flash to grabbing Jack by the hair and bobbing him on my dick comes to mind, sending a shiver of lust tearing through my chest.

“I’m really happy for you, man.” Des claps me on the back.

“How could you tell?” I ask.

“You seem different. A man with the answers to all the secrets in the universe.”

I know Des is kidding. He’s not that perceptive. But despite my nonstop thinking about Jack, I do feel a kind of invincibility that I can’t explain. Maybe this is why teens and twentysomethings can be cocky shits. They think having sex unlocks a new plane of being.

“So when are you seeing him again?” Tanner holds another piece of wood that Des drills in. Des blows the top of the drill when he’s done.

“Well, I’ll see him at the meeting tomorrow. And aside from that, probably never.”

Their shoulders slump at the news.

“It was one-time thing. We had to get it out of our systems.”

“No, you don’t. It’s not gonorrhea. He’s young, dumb, and obviously full of come. Carpe that diem. You need to make up for lost time,” Des says as his phone buzzes with another notification.

The thought of getting to hold Jack in my arms, to taste his lips, makes me dizzy with want all over again. But the way Jack left as soon as I blew my load down his throat clearly means it was a one-and-done thing for him.

“Just keep this between us. The last thing I need is this getting out, for multiple reasons.”

Tanner gives me a salute. Des revs the power drill, which I’m assuming is a yes from him.

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