Page 22 of A Match Made In Evan
He sputters and chokes on his beer, spraying his mouthful down the front of his shirt. “What the fuck, Ev?” he coughs out.
“It was a serious question. You don’t need to be gay or even bi to enjoy anal.” Tilting my head to the side, I ask, “You ever fucked a girl in the arse before?”
Making him blush is my new favourite pastime.
“Ev…”
“I have,” I shrug. “Both things.”
“Jesus Christ…”
“I’m just saying, it’s not off the table if you wanna experiment with me.”
“Y-you’re saying—?”
“That you can play with my arse, yeah. No expectation for me to play with yours if you’re not comfortable with that.”
The amber liquid in James’ bottle sloshes around as he shakily puts it down on the coffee table next to the pizza box. “That’s…kind of intense, Ev.”
“Nah. It’d probably be in a bed.”
He blinks at me, then groans. “I’m being serious here!”
“So am I.”
“Youjustcracked a really dodgy dad joke!”
“I’m a stepdad now, mate. I’m getting my practice in.”
He gives a great big sigh and leans his head back, asking the ceiling, “How do I keep getting myself into these situations?”
The ceiling does not answer him. Or, if it does, I don’t hear it.
Reaching for his beer again, he finally drops onto the couch seat next to mine, leaving half a seat’s space between us. I take that as invitation to reopen the pizza box and I take another slice. It’s not quite as good now that the cheese has had time to congeal, but it’s still delicious.
After taking a couple of deep draws from the bottle, Jay asks, “Did…did you mention blow jobs before?”
“I did.” As if to punctuate how okay I am with them, I lewdly suck sauce and grease from my index finger and then my thumb. James’ cheeks turn a darker shade of pink, but his pupils dilate and he shifts in his seat.
He liked that.
“Do you…” his gaze drifts to my lips and his Adam’s apple bobs. “I mean, is that, um, something you want to do? A-as part of this” —he waves his hand in the air between us— “arrangement?”
“I’m game for getting each other off in every possible way we can,” I admit. “I mean, who better to try new things with than my best friend? We can laugh about it if it sucks or doesn’t go the way we think it should, and we’re comfortable enough with each other that we can ask questions or whatever as we go. It’s a no judgement zone. It’s just Ev and Jay having some fun.”
For the first time since we started this conversation, he seems to relax. A slow smile tugs at his lips, bringing out the dimple in his left cheek. “That does sound nice,” he says.
I nod and smile back at him, without a hint of playfulness. It feels like my expression is somehow both soft and serious when I tell him, “I mean it, Jay. You’re my best friend. There’s nobody else I’d trust with a friends-with-benefits deal like this.”
“I wouldn’t trust anyone else with this, either.” James’ confession is quiet and almost hesitant. He’s always been the more cautious one of the pair of us. (The irony that he’s the one who became a teen parent is not lost on me. Especially not now that we’re “engaged” for Mia’s sake. If there had been bets on it happening back then, both of us would have assumed it would be me.)
“So,” a grin starts to spread across my face, “you’re in? Friends with bennies?”
James being James, he just snorts and grabs his previously discarded piece of pizza. “Eat your dinner,” he answers after finally swallowing his first bite, “and we’ll see.”
Chapter Nine
James
