Page 14 of Gross Misconduct

Jay Fuentes has the big smile and perfectly round brown eyes that makes people think he’s the wholesome boy next door, but they’ve never heard his locker room talk.

“Thanks for the commentary. Now move. I have to get ready.”

“Did I wake you up?” he asks as I rush past him to the bathroom. “Don’t you have work in fifteen minutes?”

“Yeah. It’s fine.”

“You’re going to stroll in late? Your dad isn’t going to like that.”

“What choice do I have?” I strip off my clothes and jump in the shower. The shock of bitingly cold water sends new crackles of pain across of skin, but it also wakes me the fuck up.

Fuentes sits on the toilet. We’ve showered and gotten dressed in front of each other in locker rooms for years, so there’s no weirdness.

“I have coffee and croissants in the car.”

The bathroom is so tiny he could rest his legs on the sink. A stray elbow in any direction could put a hole in the wall.

“Thanks.” My stomach growls at the mention of caffeine and sugar.

“When is your car going to get fixed?”

“It’s in the shop.” I wait for the water to warm up, but it’s taking its sweet time.

“It’s in your parking space downstairs.”

I curse to myself, grateful he can’t see my face through the curtain.

“Once I get my next paycheck, I’ll be able to take it to the mechanic. And did you know this water takes fucking forever to warm up? You need to get a plumber in here.”

“I put in a new water heater two years ago. It’s a cold morning. The other tenants are probably showering, too.” Without having to stand up, he flicks on the bathroom exhaust fan. “You need to run this fan whenever you shower so you don’t get mold.”

He pulls back the shower curtain to examine the ceiling and walls. Each of his apartments is like his child, and as a landlord, he can be a full-on helicopter parent at times. I put up with it since he cut me a very fair deal on rent here.

For as long as I’ve known him, Fuentes was adamant about not having to wear a tie as an adult. After graduating from high school, while I went pro, he lived at home and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to save up a down payment on a dilapidated house. He fixed it up and rented out the other bedrooms, then used that money to buy another house to rent out, then another, and then this apartment building. He has a mini empire in the Hudson Valley region. And I have yet to ever see him in a tie.

Fuentes holds his hand under the shower. “It’s warming up.”

The water goes from freezing cold to scorching hot in a second. I hop away from the spray, turning the dial to the center quickly without burning off my skin. Finally, the water finds a middle ground. It’s the first moment of peace since I’ve woken up.

“Did you have a wilder night than usual?” Fuentes rests his feet on the sink. “You never oversleep when you’re hungover.”

Fuentes is one of my oldest friends. He was one of the first people I came out to. If I can’t share this with him, then who can I?

“Have you ever met a guy—or a girl in your case—and you’re flirting, and things are going well, and they leave the bar with you, and they go with you to a rooftop, and…then they turn you down?” I scrub shampoo through my hair as I try to make sense of where the night derailed.

“They did all that and then they said no?” Fuentes gives me a double take.

“They pushed my head away from their crotch, which was very visibly tented with a boner.”

“Shit. Are you serious?”

“Oh, and then they said, ‘I appreciate it.’”

“That’s…huh. Never had a girl say that to me.”

My hands scrawl through my hair, water mixing with the foamy shampoo as anger rises inside me. “I’m all about consent. He said no, I backed off. But we were having a good night. Everything was going great. I took him to my rooftop.”

“Which rooftop?”

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