Page 47 of Mr. Frosty Pants
Joel was beautiful. And Casey had made love to him. God, how amazing was that? He’d made love toJoel Vreeland! And it had been beyond his wildest dreams, better than any sex he’d ever had. And all they’d done was kiss and rut, grope and touch, and, there at the end, he’d watched Joel’s face avidly as he’d sucked him off. That’d beeneverything. Absolutely everything.
The texts he’d quickly exchanged with his mother in the parking garage downtown—when he’d let her know he wouldn’t be home all night—hadn’t been fun, though. She’d even tried to call, but he’d declined to answer and switched his phone off. Why she thought it was her business who he spent the night with, he didn’t know. He was a grown man, and he’d stay with anyone he wanted, and he’d love the man his heart chose. She’d have to suck it up.
“Mmfm,” Joel mumbled, rolling over to his back and flopping his arm over his eyes to block out the rising sun.
Casey shifted, moving so he could more easily see Joel’s face. His stomach fluttered, and joy pulsed inside him like a living thing.
Joel stiffened and his arm slowly lifted away, revealing his dark eyes staring wildly up at Casey. “Oh shit,” he whispered.
Casey frowned.
“It really happened. I mean, you’re here. Holy crap.”
Casey didn’t know if the nervous laughter pressing against his chest was safe to release or if he should actually be worried. He tilted his head, considering Joel’s sleep-lined, wide-eyed morning look. Swallowing, he settled for saying, “You’re cute in the mornings.”
Joel sat up, reached to the nightstand, and clutched his nearly empty pack of cigarettes, tugging out the last one with shaking fingers. Casey’s heart clenched, and he wanted to reach out and soothe him, but when he tried, Joel held up his hand to ward him off.
Watching as Joel grabbed a cheap, pink plastic lighter from the nightstand and lit up, Casey tried to radiate calm steadiness to combat Joel’s likely oncoming crabby freak-out. He’d seen this before when they were teenagers and the band had been written up in a local paper as promising and up-and-coming. Joel had lost his crap and nearly quit—some sort of self-sabotaging panic overwhelming his common sense until RJ and Becca had talked him down.
Joel let out a slow breath. The tobacco smoke swirled around them both, making Casey cough softly. He resolved to say nothing about Joel’s post-sex promise to quit. That would just piss him off now.
Joel’s eyes narrowed. “You’re still here.”
“You invited me to stay,” Casey reminded him. He shivered slightly. The room was chilly, having cooled down overnight after all the heat they’d generated together.
Bruno whimpered at the bedroom door, and Joel scratched at his dark eyebrow with his thumb, the cigarette burning perilously close to his unkempt, shaggy hair.
“Fuck,” he whispered, tossing aside the bed sheets and rising. The pale morning light highlighted his light skin and the dark thatch around the soft cock between his hairy thighs. He grabbed his underwear from the floor and pulled them on, sucking another drag from his cigarette before jerking open the door.
“C’mon, buddy,” he said roughly to Bruno, who bounced excitedly around Joel’s feet. “Let’s go outside.”
Casey climbed out of bed, but he didn’t dress entirely. If he did, then Joel would no doubt kick him out before they could even talk things through. With butterflies whirling in his gut, he carefully pulled on his boxer briefs and his shirt from the night before but left his pants pooled on the beige carpet. A train went by on the tracks near the trailer, and it shook slightly with the thunderous sound.
Exiting Joel’s bedroom, Casey got a better look around than he had the night before. The mobile home wasn’t particularly neat, but Joel had never kept his bedroom in Belmont Hills really clean either. In the kitchen, there were dishes in the sink with the remnants of some tomato-based meal on them. In the living room, there was a pile of folded clothes on the sofa next to a basket of what might have been clean clothes or possibly dirty.
Bruno’s dog bed sat in the hallway midway between the kitchen and the living room doors. There were drifts of dog hair around it and scattered down the hall. Joel must have left the door open, because a burst of cold air rushed through the trailer, knocking out any semblance of warmth.
Casey saw there was a closed door that led to what must be a second bedroom, though he didn’t know if it had a bed in it. The bathroom was on the right, and he ducked in to relieve his bladder so it wouldn’t distract him while he tried to talk Joel down from whatever ledge he’d climbed up on.
After washing his hands, he walked to the open door of the mobile home and stepped out onto the small porch. Joel was off by the bushes, pissing into them, cigarette in his mouth, while Bruno tromped through the woods at the back of the property.
Smoke curled around Joel’s head, and his naked shoulders shuddered in the cold air. Fog lifted from the lake and drifted low over the property, obscuring the edge of the water.
Joel turned around, spotted Casey, and narrowed his eyes as he took a final drag from his cigarette before stubbing it out on the closest tree. Tossing the extinguished stub into the woods, Joel stomped toward Casey with tight lines drawing down his mouth.
Where was the surprisingly sweet man Casey had made love to last night? In there somewhere, he had no doubt. He was just scared, that was all, and Casey resolved not to let Joel run him off before he reached him again.
“Pretty classy, right? Pissing in the bushes and littering?” Joel snapped.
“You wake up really grouchy. Did you know?” He aimed for merry and light. “Angel’s onto something with her nickname for you. You’re definitely a Mr. Frosty Pants.”
Joel glared at him and shivered, wrapping his arms around his chest. His black-lettered tattoos stood out against his white skin, and the dark hairs of his forearms shifted in the light breeze. He kept his expression hard, the crookedness of his nose and mouth highlighted by the twist of his lips.
“Speak soon. Stay lucky,” Casey said softly, inclining his head toward Joel’s bicep where the swirling words were inked into Joel’s skin alongside shading dots to make the statement pop. “What’s that about?”
Joel arched a brow at him but stayed silent.
“What? Is that not morning-after conversation? I get to make you come, but I don’t get to know about your tats?”
