25. Jack

"Can I come over tonight?" I ask quietly, wiping my mouth.

We"re eating lunch in Bryant"s office, with the door open, and we"re supposed to be going over footage from the last two games. I kicked ass in those games, though, so I"m less interested in watching the players run around, and more interested in getting in the coach"s pants.

"We have a job to do," he admonishes. "We"re getting too distracted."

Next, he"s going to tell me we need to pull back. Or that I need to start making the rounds at parties again, even though I think he hates the idea of me even pretending to be with someone else as much as I do. I"ve never been in a relationship serious enough to consider monogamy, and while I know this isn"t a relationship, I legitimately don"t want to be with anyone else.

No one else gets my dick up the way he does. No one else hurts and heals me at the same time. No one else can bring me to the fucking brink every time he touches me.

He won"t deny me. I wait for the nod, and the look that says, you know the drill. On the days he lets me come over, I make sure to wait until late enough that the neighbors aren"t likely to be outside. Considering they"re all teachers or staff members that live on campus during the school year, the last thing we need is someone noticing how often I come and go. Once or twice can be brushed off as a friendly meeting, but lately I"ve been over there more often than not.

I just don"t want to be in my cramped, empty dorm. I'd prefer to be sleeping with his warm, hard body pressed against mine, but as much as I like waking up in the morning with my dick in his mouth, or his fingers in my ass in the middle of the night, the last thing we need is the school counselor next door noticing how frequently his favorite player comes to visit him. So I dress in dark clothes and quietly slip in through the back door that he leaves unlocked for me.

"Can we focus now?" He asks, and I grin, because annoying him is high up on my list of favorite pastimes.

"Jackson needs to bend his knees," I say, pointing to the paused footage. "He needs to be ready before he needs to be ready, if you know what I mean. The rest of it is just being tired. Defensive line doesn"t have enough stamina."

"Tuck!" Bryant calls out to the defensive coach as he's walking by.

Coach Sanders sticks his head in the office. "What"s up?"

"We"re going over game footage. Perry says you need to beef up their workout routine."

I narrow my eyes at him for throwing me under the bus, but we"re all here for the same thing. To get better. To win. Hopefully, Coach Sanders doesn"t mind hearing a constructive criticism about his defensive line from a student.

"Specifically running, sprints, that sort of thing. And agility drills. They lift enough. Jackson"s a fucking tank, but if he could run and move with any flexibility, he"d be unstoppable."

To his credit, Sanders doesn"t balk at the recommendation at all. "I agree," he says. "I"ve been letting them focus on lifting when it comes to workouts, but we could definitely mix it up. I"ll push it. Thanks," he says jovially, shooting a grin at Bryant before making his way back to his office.

"What was that look about?" I ask.

"He likes being right."

"Didn"t seem to mind the suggestion, although it would have sounded better coming from you."

"I knew he wouldn"t mind."

My nose scrunches. I"m confused.

"He was right about you. Tuck was the one that found you and suggested I bring you on the team. We"re having our best season yet, you"re getting along great in class, and now you"re in here helping me try to improve the team as a whole."

I squirm under the praise. "Yeah, well, you have a good incentive plan."

He knows what I"m talking about, but he enjoys pretending to be a hardass. "Two hours of workouts every day, even after practice?"

I smirk and look him in right in the eye. "A good workout never hurt anyone."

Bryant actually bites his lip and rakes his hand over his face. I know he"s thinking about my new favorite game. The one where I wear the remote-control butt plug during workouts, and he torments me while I see how many reps I can get in before I"m trembling putty in his hands. The last time ended with him bending me over the bench press and fucking me hard and fast, right there where anyone could find us.

"Go somewhere else for a while."

"Why?"

"Because I want to bend you over this desk and fuck you until you cry."

"Do it." I"m not embarrassed about the sounds I make when he"s lighting my body up, because I know how much he likes it.

"Jack…"

"Bryant," I say, mimicking his tone.

"You can"t call me that at work."

"Yes, Coach," I say, winking, because I know that"s almost worse for him.

"Don"t you have a tutoring session or something?"

Fuck, I almost forgot.

"Yeah, that"s what I thought," he says, getting up to usher me out. My eyes flash down to the half-chub he"s sporting. "Stop looking," he says, exasperated.

"It misses me," I say, making an exaggerated sad face.

"It"ll see you later, and it"ll make you wish you didn"t fucking test me."

"Yeah, yeah." There"s no one in the hall, so I get bold. Pushing him back against the open door and pressing my lips against his in a short, passionate kiss, nipping his lip as I rush out of his office. He all but growls, which makes me giddy.

Movement behind me has me turning around to see Aniyah, stepping out of the gym just as I"m stepping out of the coach"s office. My first thought is whether she saw us, but she keeps her head down and runs off the other way. She is definitely not supposed to be in the football gym or near the locker room. I wonder what she was up to, but she seemed too preoccupied to see anything on her rush out the door. I"ll try to follow up with her later.

I race all the way to the library, arriving three minutes late. The pretty librarian waves at me, but I notice she looks troubled. I don"t know her well enough to ask her how she"s doing or what"s going on with her, so I give her a wave back and keep walking to the study table we have reserved.

"Sorry, Luke, I got caught up. But," I say, before he can chastise me for wasting his time, "I have this to show you." I pass him my most recent American Lit exam, that I got an eighty-nine on.

"No shit?"

"No shit. I didn"t cheat or anything," I add, because I know he wants to ask. I"m not offended by it, it"s a fair question.

"You"re doing really well, Jack. I wasn"t sure about you the first couple of times we met, but you"re doing the damn thing. I honestly don"t even know what to work on, since Thanksgiving break is coming up."

I nod, knowing we didn"t really need this session, but I also know he gets paid for the time spent tutoring, and I wanted to show him the test. I"ve also been trying to get comfortable around him because I have questions, but I"m too much of a fucking pussy to come right out and ask them. Maybe this will be my opportunity.

"Are you going home for the break?" He nods. "You live far?"

"I"m from Austin, so it"s just like three and a half hours."

"Oh, easy drive then," I say dumbly.

He nods again, and the silence is awkward.

"What about you?" He asks, throwing me a proverbial bone.

"Nah, too far, and my mom"s going to be working, anyway. I"m going to stay around here, I think."

"I heard the big cafeteria in the Student Union does a Thanksgiving dinner; with a turkey and everything, whole shebang."

"Good to know," I say, looking at my feet.

"Whatever it is, just ask," Luke says, perceptive as ever.

His new darker rimmed glasses make him look like even more of a nerd than his vintage Nintendo t-shirt, but it works for him. He"s a decent-looking dude. My eyes roam over his body, wondering if he"s as skinny as he looks. Even when I was on the thinner side, I still had definition. I bet he does, too. But nothing about him interests me, or calls to me the way Bryant does.

I"ve been… experimenting. Not trying anything with anyone, just looking at other men, their bodies, trying to gauge if they were attractive to me. There"s a lot of free-swinging dicks in the locker room, but not once have I caught sight of one and had my mouth water the way it does when I see him. I tried to watch gay porn, and while it did get me hard, I think it"s only because it was giving me ideas for things to try with Bryant, not because it was two dudes going at each other. It was the same when I watched straight porn and lesbian porn.

"Did you have a question, or are you trying to read my mind?" Luke asks pointedly.

I huff out a breath, shaking my head. I don"t even know how to start, and it"s too awkward.

"Uh… Is your boyfriend going home with you?"

"What?"

"You know, for Thanksgiving? Is your boyfriend going?"

"Oh. No, he"s going back home to see his own family. We"re going to meet up after, though."

"Oh. Cool."

The silence is agony. I shuffle in my seat.

"Listen, we can just tell them we stayed the whole time?—"

"Jack," Luke levels me with a glare. "Just fucking ask. You"ve had something to say to me for months. Just come out with it. I promise I won"t get offended, and if it crosses a line, I"ll say so. Just get it off your chest already."

I swallow, suddenly feeling sweaty. My voice shakes, and I stutter, barely getting out, "I, uh, I?—"

"Fuck, Jack." He leans forward. "Are you trying to come out right now?" he whispers, kind concern etched on his features.

"What? No! Of course not. Why would you—" I stop myself. Protesting this much is way too fucking obvious, and I don"t want him to think I"m a homophobe. "Not that there"s anything wrong with being gay?—"

"You"re just not."

"Right."

"Right."

"But…" I hesitate again, unsure how to ask what I want. "Can you, you know, be gay for just one person? But not anyone else?"

Luke"s eyebrow raises, and he looks at me pensively. "Yeah, I guess."

"What do you mean, you guess?"

"I just mean that, well, sexuality is a spectrum, a wide array, really. There"s no one way to be. It"s not as black and white as that. Some people are only attracted to one gender, or people who present as one gender. Others are maybe attracted to everyone under the sun. And for some it"s not about the parts they carry, it"s more about who the person is."

"What"s that called?"

"You mean like a label?"

"Yeah—what do you call it when you like the person, despite the parts?"

"Despite the parts is a funny way to put it," he says, scrunching his brow. "And I"m not one hundred percent sure, because there are a lot of nuances. It could be pansexual, where gender or identity isn"t a factor. Or maybe demisexual, which is where you only feel sexual attraction to someone that you form a close emotional relationship with."

I shake my head. "That"s not it."

I definitely felt some attraction, some magnetic pull, towards Bryant Nicks that first night I saw him standing in the shadows of the warehouse I was working at. Then, that first day I arrived at the sports complex, I didn"t even know it was him I was looking at, but I couldn"t help but admire the body of the man I was watching. If I"m being honest, it"s only been in the last month or so that I"ve really felt an emotional connection. Before that, it was easier to deny that I might be some form of gay, because it was only physical. I can"t deny how happy I feel in his presence, and I find myself wanting to do even the most mundane activities with him. Like sitting at the table in the morning, eating fucking cardboard for breakfast, watching him read the paper with his goddamned reading glasses perched on his nose. It's something more now.

"What about… heteroflexible?"

Luke laughs, which annoys me. I"m being perfectly fucking serious right now. "What the hell is that?"

"I don"t know. I found it on Google," I say defensively.

"You"ve thought a lot about this, yeah?" He frames it as a question, but it"s more of a statement, so I don"t reply. I only sit there, frozen. Wishing I hadn"t said anything because he"s not being very fucking helpful and I feel like I"ve exposed myself, like everything could come crashing down because I opened my fat mouth in a moment of insecurity. "Look, I"m gay. I like dudes. Not all of them necessarily, but I don"t think of women that way at all. But that doesn"t make me an expert. And honestly, if you ask me, all these labels do nothing but separate us from what we all are—human. It doesn"t really matter if you"re gay or maybe just not entirely straight. What matters is that you find someone that makes you happy."

I want to tell him that I wasn't talking about me, that this was all rhetorical, or that I was asking for a friend. But I know he"ll know the truth, whether he calls me on it or just smiles and nods.

"Jack," he says, and I pull my eyes away from the lines in the wood grain of the table. "I"m here if you ever want to talk it out, and I promise I"d never say anything to anyone. Your secret is safe with me."

"Thanks," I mutter, but I don"t look at him or try to talk anymore. Instead, I grab my books and make a hasty exit.