Page 5 of Stand By Me

And instead he turned back into a starry-eyed seventeen-year-old, only now with even more X-rated ideas.

Hopefully he wasn't being as obvious about it now as he'd been back then, when Ben had to bodily remove him from a room whenever Clay was there. Clay had never said anything or avoided him on purpose, but he'd had to know.

Mario cringed at the memories of his poor attempts at flirting.

"You okay?" Clay's voice pulled him back to the present.

"Yes, sorry, I drifted." He stood up straight from where he was leaning against the wall. "Are you ready to continue? There's one more room on this level, and then a few places upstairs that your brief indicated you wanted to see."

Diego checked his watch and exchanged glances with Clay.

"How about we check that one last room here, and then set up another meeting for tomorrow to go over the upper level?"

"Sure." Nobody had told Mario this would be an ongoing thing, but there was no way he was backing out now. His teenage self would never forgive him.

His adult self wouldn't, either, if he was honest with himself.

"Great," Clay said, grinning at Mario, and,oh.

Oh, boy.

He was in big trouble.

* * *

Andie almost choked on her mojito as Carina did her interpretation of Mario's stunned face hours later on their usual Monday night out.

"I did not look like that," he protested weakly, covering his eyes.

Carina chuckled. "Honey, you went from a grumpy old man, ready to throw somebody out of his lawn, to a young boy, standing in front of another boy, asking him to love him."

Mario swallowed down his drink, telling himself that his face heating up was because of the alcohol.

"Aww, that's cute." Andie threw her arm around his shoulders. "Your first crush, coming in, older and gorgeous, to sweep you off your feet. Who doesn't want that?"

"He wasn't doing any sweeping, though," Mario said as he slumped against her.

"Well, he was definitely sweeping his gaze over you," Carina told him.

He lifted his head. "Are you sure? I thought I caught something, but—"

"I'm sure." Carina pointed at him with her glass. "He liked what he saw, too. Can't say it's going to lead anywhere," she warned, ever the cruel realist. "But he did look."

"See?" Andie jostled him in enthusiastic shake. "He looked."

Andie, on top of being a never-ending well of optimism that highly exceeded his own, was also quick to get sloshed. Mario glanced towards the three glasses of water on the far end of their table before sighing.

"Even if he did, it doesn't mean anything."

"It means you have a shot." Carina handed him a shot glass and smirked, clearly amused by her own joke. "Question is, are you going to take it?"

"Of course he is!" Andie said, indignant on his behalf. Then she turned to him. "Right? You have to take it."

Mario shrugged, staring at the blue liquor in his hand.

"I'm tired of taking chances," he admitted, more serious than he would've liked.

It was still true, though. Making the first move got harder after a while, when all he ended up with was another failure to add to the list.

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