Page 33 of Pick Me
“Curiosity.” He waved a hand and tucked his shirt into his jeans, though a flush climbed high on his cheekbones. “And I saw nothing I haven’t seen before, since you waltz around with your abs on display constantly.”
“Constantly?Constantly?”
“Why, Jesus?” he demanded of the hotel’s popcorn ceiling. “Why, if I’m forced to spend time with this man-child, must he also have developed this tendency to repeat himself? Is it because I teased Webb yesterday? Is it payback for the sandwich rectangles?”
“Don’t try to be cute.” I sat up straighter and swung my feet onto the floor. “Here I was, attempting valiantly not to be a creeper—or, like, not anexcessivecreeper,” I corrected, “while I watched you changing, and meanwhile, you’ve been looking at pictures of me on Grindr!”
“I… you were watching me change?” He sounded bewildered.
“Of course! Jesus Christ. Your mouthwatering ass was perched there, two feet from my face, defying fucking gravity, and as you keep reminding me,I’m twenty-four. Do that math, Knox.” I shook my head. “But I was trying to play it cool, since you weren’t interested.” I paused, eyes narrowed. “Right?”
“What? No. Or… yes?” He looked exasperated. “Learn to structure a question, for God’s sake.” Knox ran one big hand through his hair. “You and I are… we’re colleagues, Goodman. Sort of. So this is not a discussion that we should even be having. And aside from all that—”
I coughed, “Bullshit.”
“Aside from all that,” he repeated—and he was right, people repeating themselveswasannoying—“there’s a significant age difference between us, and with that comes a significant gap in experience. Nothing will ever happen between us because I’d be taking advantage of your youth, and I—”
I burst out laughing. “Oh my God. You’re a walking, talking logical fallacy. Age does not equate to experience, Mr. High Standards, because I have plenty of experience. Like…plenty.”
Knox’s eyes flared, and his jaw worked from side to side for a minute. “I’m not having this conversation,” he said at length. “And I am not having sex with you.”
I made a squawking noise that would have been embarrassing if I hadn’t been too outraged to care. “Who asked you to?” I challenged. “I said I liked looking at your ass. I didn’t say I wanted to claim it.”
He huffed out a laugh. “No, because you want me to claimyours. Not happening.”
I put on my pity-face. “Your loss.” I jumped off the bed, whipped off my T-shirt, and grabbed my own suitcase from the floor so I could heave it onto the bed.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“Seducing you, obviously.” I rummaged through the bag until I found a polo shirt and yanked it on, then turned to the mirror and ran a hand through my wavy hair until the mess looked just-fucked instead of fucked-up. “Later.” I grabbed my phone and patted my ass pocket to make sure I still had my wallet before heading into the living room.
“You’re going out.” Knox made the words sound half-questioning and half-accusing.
“Ding ding ding. Don’t wait up. Oh!” I wrinkled my nose. “And don’t bring anyone back here to fuck, okay? It’d just be awkward with four of us here.”
“Where are you going?” he asked as I wrenched open the door.
“A bar first.” I grinned, quoting his own words back at him. “And then who knows?”
* * *
I realized pretty quickly that there were several problems with my plan for “I’ll show Knox how fuckable I am” vengeance sex.
For one thing, though the number of available Grindr gays in Boston was exponentially higher than anywhere I’d ever lived, that just made weeding out the weirdos that much more time-consuming. By the time I’d had my second drink in the hotel lobby—and, yes, watched Knox walk out the front door of the hotel, because I was a sap like that—I’d decided that Grindr was not for me. Not in this town. Not at this juncture. I was going to have to do things the old-fashioned way.
So, I’d googled “gay clubs Boston,” picked the top search choice, and called a ride share, but before we’d left the curb, my driver, Nazim, had taken one look at me and pronounced that I was “way, way underdressed, sweetie” for Club Giraffe. Instead, he’d suggested a gay bar in Dorchester called Bar-Z, which sounded far away—much further than Knox would have gone—which was about the time I realized that vengeance sex required Knox not only to know I was having the sex, but tocare, and neither of those things would be true.
“Yeah, sure, wherever,” I’d agreed half-heartedly.
And that was how I’d ended up at a place that was less of a raucous hookup spot and more like a laid-back Irish bar with a DJ—one who knew how to use a mic, thank God—who spun increasingly up-tempo songs for the folks on the nearly empty dance floor. I perched my ass on a stool next to a slightly heavyset, very drunk, bearded man named John, whose roommate Teagan had broken his heart by receiving love texts fromanotherguy named John, except first-John didn’t get how Teagan could have feelings for other-John when Teagan spent all his waking hours with first-John, and Teagan should know first-John loved him even if he’d never spoken the words and even if other-John was the one who’d written him love texts, and… well, by that point I’d been working on my fourth drink of the evening, and I probably looked like that meme of Zach Galifianakis counting cards, but I nodded along very seriously.
The best way to deal with the shit state of your own sex life was to worry about someone else’s, and I believed that sincerely.
“Have you tried talking to Teagan?” I suggested when he finally wound down. “I mean, I’m no expert on relationships since I’ve never had one, but I think I’d want someone to spell things out for me. Loudly. In tiny words that are impossible to misinterpret. Like, ‘I want to fuck you over the kitchen counter, Teagan, because you’re the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,’” I nearly yelled in demonstration, making heads swivel in my direction.
John snickered, then sighed. “Yeah, but… I was afraid of losing our friendship.”
More quietly, I continued. “But you kinda lost it anyway, if he’s with other-John now. And it’s better to be honest about what you’re feeling.”
