Page 188 of Phobia
I’d had a lonely childhood growing up in Tennessee, the son of a successful lawyer and a career politician who were often out spewing their corruption and lies on anyone they were able to lure into their web, and the younger brother to someone who couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge my existence unless it was to play cruel pranks on me or beat the shit out of me. My parents were rarely around to see the bloody noses and the bruises. I doubted they would have cared anyway. They’d always preferred Alex; everything he said was gospel. When theywerearound, all I’d ever gotten from them was criticism and rejection.
Grandma Thorne took me in when I was fifteen, not long after Alex outed me as bisexual. Where we’d lived, that meant I was a political liability. In the eyes of Hatcher and Katherine Thorne, me being dead would have been preferable to having my sexuality leaked. They’d threatened to send me to Halston Academy, a private boarding school that charged twenty-seven grand a year to brainwash us “troubled youth” into becoming something respectable. I’d made a panicked call to my grandma, who lived in Ohio and was the only one ever in my corner. It was hard to believe someone as heartless as my father had come from her. My parents washed their hands of me, and I hadn’t spoken to them or my brother since.
This was my second year living off-campus, and in this house specifically. The guys I used to live with had all graduated last spring. That would have been me too, but I’d taken a gap year between high school graduation and freshman year. After my tumultuous childhood and young adult years, I’d needed the time to try to deal with my demons. I couldn’t say it had really helped much, but it was what it was.
Gage tossed a pillow at my face, and I swatted it away. “Relax, would ya? I was gonna come grab them on my way downstairs to throw a load of laundry in.” He picked up the pile and tossed each piece of clothing one at a time into the overly full laundry basket a few feet away near his desk. The last item to go was the damn jockstrap, and he jokingly taunted me by swinging it from one finger before he flung it sling-shot style into the basket. “He shoots, he scores!” He raised his arms overhead in a victory motion, and my traitorous lips twitched up on one side.
I forced the smile away. “Yeah, well, you didn’t, and now the bathroom stinks like your swampy ass.” It wasn’t really that bad, but we went back and forth like this all the time. “The smell is probably floating down the stairs and contaminating the entryway too. Blaine will be here in thirty minutes, and I’ll probably smell like your ball sweat even after showering.”
Blaine Colfield was my best friend. We’d met in high school when I moved in with Grandma. He had been the junior varsity football quarterback who’d already been tagged as the next big upcoming player for the varsity team, and I’d been the not great but not awful kicker who he’d taken under his wing almost as soon as we met. I’d always suspected it was because Grandma Thorne was loaded and lived in the same gated community as his family. I’d quickly come to realize that he had a reputation for being a bit of a prick, snobby, and an elitist, but people put up with it because money talks. And because he was gorgeous. As for me, he’d always treated me well, and I got to see a different side of him that not many others had access to.
“Ah, yes.” Gage rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t want to offend Blaine, your king and overlord, with my peasant smells. Wait a minute.” He held up his hands and feigned a look of shock. “I almost forgot that…I don’t give a flying fuck what Blaine thinks.” Gage stood and stepped near me, leaning down into my face. He gently flicked my ear with two fingers. “He and his stuck-up ass do not reign supreme here in this house.” He stretched up to his full height and propped his fists on his hips. Light from his open bedroom curtains streamed in and lit up his long, wavy blond hair from behind, giving him an angelic aura that didnotmatch his personality or the shit-eating grin usually plastered on his face. Right now, though, he was staring at me with suspicion narrowing his eyes into tiny slivers. “And I thought you and Kells were grabbing burgers and watching the game over at the pub tonight. Why are you going somewhere with Blaine instead of him?”
Kellen Williams, also a senior, was another one of my roommates. He was a transfer from one of the university’s satellite campuses a few cities over. I had a massive thing for him, so naturally I was often embarrassingly awkward around him. I had this weird personality glitch where I was way more confident around the women that I was attracted to than the men. Probably the remains of daddy issues that had never fully healed. Everything wrong with me seemed to stem from the part of my childhood that I’d lived under my father’s roof. Anyway, Kellen had asked me to join him and a couple of his friends for food and football at Strickland’s Pub, and I’d been over-the-moon excited about it.
Gage crossed his arms and looked down his nose at me. He was six-foot-three, so it wasn’t like it really took any effort to look down on my five-foot-nine, but still, it had my hackles raised, ready to throw down against whatever logic and reasoning he threw at me. We weren’t friends in our high school days, having traveled in different circles, but he’d taken up the position of resident older brother since he’d moved in, even though he was the youngest.
“Sometimes things come up that are unavoidable.” I shrugged and kept my tone neutral. It wasn’t a lie.
Gage’s brows wrinkled and he frowned. “He bailed on you? I’m surprised. He’d told me—well, never mind what he said. Shit happens, I suppose. You’ll have another chance.”
“Uh, yeah, hopefully.”
“Hopefully soon.” He gave me a not-so-subtle wink. “I don’t think your laundry basket can take another hit.”
My cheeks flamed. Gage had caught on quickly that I was crushing on Kellen the first time Kellen had walked around the house without a shirt on. He’d come strolling into the living room and plopped down on the couch. I’d been headed to the basement to do laundry, and distracted by the hotness, I’d walked basket-first into the basement door and kind of ricocheted backward. I’d managed to keep from falling on my ass, but Gage had been in the kitchen and was witness to my total humiliation. I was just thankful that Kellen had been wearing earbuds and missed both my graceless misstep and Gage’s cackling.
Now Gage was the annoying wingman that I’d never asked for, or maybe more like an obnoxious Cupid, trying to get us together. He was confident that Kellen was into me too, but we’d been flirting for a good month now and been on exactly zero dates. For all I knew, he was just a huge flirt. So, for now, I was testing the waters, trying to get a feel for things. What I really wanted to get a feel for was Kellen’s gym-fit body. I was working up to it. Baby steps.Maybe that’s what he was doing too by inviting you out with his friends, you idiot. Which made me having to cancel on him all the suckier. I’d been honest with him and told him I had to help Blaine with something last minute. Blaine wanted a second set of eyes on the Halloween decor he’d ordered for the party, and I was the only one whose opinion he trusted. Though I’d mentioned to him that I had plans with Kellen, apparently it needed to be donethis evening. Blaine was my best friend, so…of course I would help him.
Gage made a shooing motion in my direction. “Okay. Go on now. I’ve got to get ready for tonight.”
“I hope you thoroughly scrubbed away the crotch rot and shaved your balls,” I called over my shoulder as he pushed me toward the door. I turned around to face him once I was back in the hallway. “Otherwise, Lacey’s going to run screaming for the hills and Devon’ll never get near your ass again.”
He slammed the door in my face, chuckling behind it.
“Rude!” I shouted.
Gage was bi, vers, and had two people he had recurring no-strings-attached threesomes with, three facts that he’d willingly and voluntarily shared with me. Trust that I had not asked for that information. He was an open book with no filter, especially when he was a few beers deep. I’d heard about some creative ways they all got tangled up together. Again, details I’d never asked for, although I was impressed by their flexibility. But still, he was such a nice guy with a big heart. I’d lucked out in the roommate space, even if I sometimes wanted to gouge my eardrums out.
“Oh, wait.” I pounded on the door and then stuck my face up to the edge where it and the frame met. “I forgot to ask. Should I take it that you’re not coming to Blaine’s Halloween party next weekend?”
I almost fell forward when the door opened again. A now-shirtless Gage peered down at me. As he opened his mouth to speak, Nate ran up the creaky wooden stairs and rushed past us. He paused and backtracked a few steps.
“Uh, dude?” He gestured toward Gage, flicking his hand down and up his body. “You’re gonna scandalize young Graysin’s virginal eyes.”
Nate Jackson was my third and final roommate. He was another local, but a few years older so I hadn’t known him until he’d moved in. He was working on a master’s degree in teaching. I envied the students who’d someday have him as their teacher. Super cute, super smart, and super nice?Sign me up.
“I happen to be older than him,” I reminded Nate with exasperation creeping into my voice. He reached forward to pat my head, and I dodged around him, purposely knocking the ball cap off his head. He caught it and shoved it back on. Strands of his dark brown hair stuck out on all sides.
Cocking his head forward, Nate gave me a smirk as he locked his brown eyes on me. “Older, yes, but way naiver in all things sex. Who was it that walked into a door at seeing Kells without a shirt?”
I shot an annoyed glare at Gage. “You told him about that?” Gage’s mouth stretched into a grimace, and he had the decency to look chagrined. Slightly. “Jesus Christ,” I muttered. I bit down on my tongue to keep my mouth shut. I may have been as smooth as a pinecone around guys sometimes, but I was not naive. And these two would probably be shocked right out of their socks if they knew some of the things I liked, given that I was “more vanilla than a vanilla cupcake with vanilla frosting and vanilla sprinkles on top,” in Gage’s words. But, unlike Gage, I didn’t walk around blabbing about every single detail of my sex life. Not that it had been very active lately. I was no longer interested in random hookups. My last couple had been epic disasters.
The most recent one had been over the summer, a guy I’d met at our town’s Fourth of July carnival. We’d bonded over a hot pretzel after he’d somehow managed to fling mustard onto my white T-shirt. Call me desperate, but I’d given him a chance. Things had snowballed into a shitstorm avalanche from there. We’d gone to his apartment, and I’d had half a slice of lukewarm cheese pizza while he shoveled down the rest himself. Then he’d all but jumped me as I was coming out of the bathroom. After shoving his tongue down my throat and donating about a gallon of saliva, he’d handed me a packet of lube and then lay on his bed with his arms behind his head, waiting for me to hop on and get to it. I was all about teamwork but was far from a power bottom and preferred being dominated in bed. When I’d asked him to touch me, I’d gotten one tweak on my nipples and a halfhearted smack on not even my ass but my lower back. There was not a chance in hell that I’d be fucked into oblivion that night. In hindsight, I should have known that hopping into bed with a man named “Bradford, call me Brad” would end badly. I had not jumped back on a dick since then, but I was far from some innocent virgin.
I turned toward Gage. “As recompense for your appalling lack of boundaries, you definitely have to come with me.”
He reached up and propped his arms along the top of the doorframe. His impressive biceps, triceps, and deltoids flexed as he leaned forward. How the hell was even his armpit hair sexy? Lord, I’d never admit that out loud. It would inflate his ego even more, and he’d probably start calling me “armpit licker” or something equally stupid.
