CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

L uke

The sweatshirt lands neatly over Sebastian’s body. Maybe I should have gone into football.

The door opens and my super annoying roommate stands in front of me. I block the room as best as I can, and pretend my heart isn’t beating at a speed that would normally cause my athletic trainer to insist on strapping me to various heart monitoring devices if he caught me like that during practice.

I’m fine.

Sebastian is hidden.

He’s hidden and still.

I didn’t have to tell him, and he knew what I wanted. My eyes soften, and I stare misty-eyed at the bed, until I realize that probably Troy might think that’s strange.

I mean, I don’t generally stare sentimentally at unmade beds. It’s never been my thing. I’m more of a seize the morning and make your bed type of guy, army style.

I turn back to Troy. He’s definitely giving me a weird look.

Shit.

“Sorry, bro. I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I wanted to apologize for making the alarm too loud. I’ll, um, get out of your hair. Just going to yoga.”

“Have a good time,” I say.

“I’ll be extra bendy.” He chews his lips and backs away. “Sorry again.”

“You didn’t interrupt anything,” I say quickly. “Good time to wake up. Really awesome.”

He eyes me hesitantly.

“I didn’t mean in a sarcastic way,” I explain.

He grins. “You don’t do sarcastic.”

“You, um, want to talk?”

His eyebrows rise. “You want to talk?”

“I mean, because I have nothing to do. Absolutely nothing. I was sleeping. But um, now, I’m not!”

“Okay. Cool.” Troy sweeps the room with his all-seeing goalie eyes, the kind that sees disaster long before anyone else, who is the first to spot a small piece of black sliding toward him, who is quick with his body. “You know you can tell me anything, bro?”

I narrow my gaze. Troy is acting strangely. I mean, I guess I started first. Still, his demeanor is definitely unusual. “You don’t normally call me bro.”

Troy blinks, then nods, reassuring smile on his face, like he’s thinking about going into pet training or something and is testing out methods on me. “Well. I could. I mean we are close, right?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

Troy’s eyes dance. “You know these walls aren’t exactly soundproof.”

I swallow hard. “Yeah. I noticed that.”

His lips curl into a smile. “It sounded like you had a good time last night. Like a really good time.”

“Oh.” My eyes round. I stare at him. He so thinks I have someone in here. I can totally tell.

But I need to keep this quiet, and not just for me. This is Sebastian’s career. I can’t have people know the host of Seeking Mr. Right is sleeping with his male lead. I mean, I totally trust Troy. But that’s a hell of a secret to put on him, and a hell of a secret for Sebastian to know Troy has.

Sebastian is frightened of jocks. I know. I went to school with him. And I’ve seen him with my teammates.

I’m not going to spill all our secrets to Troy when Sebastian is tucked under the covers, being still, doing his job. No way.

I want to protect Sebastian. Make his burden lighter, not fill his mind with things to worry about.

“Dude?” Troy asks, his brow furrowing, like he’s an eleven-year-old pretending to be an old man in a school play. All he’s missing is the cotton balls taped to his face. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. I, um...”

My mind scrambles to think of a reason for me to be noisy in that way without someone in my room. Should I tell him I used a dating app or something? And had someone come to my room?

But that feels icky. I hate the thought of being with anyone besides Sebastian, even a pretend someone.

And so, I lie.

“I watched porn!” I blurt.

Troy’s mouth drops open, and his eyes bulge, Saturday morning cartoon style. “You what?”

I nod eagerly. “Yeah. Remember how everyone was talking about porn? And I said I thought it was just a conspiracy to get people to buy porn subscriptions?”

“Vaguely...”

“So I thought...Maybe there’s something to the porn subscriptions!” My voice rises, happy to have found a solution, and I nod some extra times, just to show Troy I’m being absolutely, totally serious.

“So you got a porn subscription...” Troy says carefully.

“Yes!” I practically squeal, probably because my blood flow remains unsteady from my earlier panic. There definitely doesn’t seem to be a lot going on in my head now.

Troy snorts. “Cool. Um, good for you.”

“Yeah.” I beam delightedly at my best friend. Today is turning out to be way more awesome than I planned. I was worried when I woke up, and super worried when Troy came to talk to me, but I figured out a way to protect Sebastian’s dignity.

Even if my dignity is not entirely intact, if Troy now thinks I’m a porn subscriber. Oh, well. Totally worth it.

“You seemed to be really hammering the bed,” Troy says, his eyes dancing. “Is that why it’s still unmade?”

“What?” I stiffen. “Dude. You shouldn’t be noticing if my bed is made or not. That’s like a total bro-violation.”

“Uh-huh?”

“I mean, that would be like rooming with one’s drill sergeant.”

“Don’t drill sergeants live with their soldiers?” Troy’s lips twitch. “I mean, we are in separate rooms.”

“I got a fleshlight!” I exclaim.

Troy’s jaw totally drops now, and he’s looking at me in a different, less teasing manner.

Different is good when he seemed to be onto me before. Definitely. Almost certainly.

“A fleshlight?”

“Yeah, one of those, um, sexual apparatus toys. Like a dildo but, um, opposite.”

His eyebrow raises. “You looking at dildos, Luke?”

“Well, I was more interested in the other experience,” I say, because I’ve got to make this lie convincing. “Not, obviously, that there’s anything wrong with people who buy, um, toys that offer the other experience. Like innies versus outies.”

“Maybe you’ll buy a dildo next.”

“Maybe.” I do my best casual shrug like it’s normal for me to discuss nonexistent sex toys with my super existent roommate.

Unfortunately, Troy’s eyes widen, well, super widely. I’m not sure I’m being convincing.

“It was an, um, super great fleshlight. Like, amazing.” I try to emote my voice in the way Aisha and Ella recommended when they said I needed a bit more passion when speaking about the women I’m dating.

Troy looks more puzzled than anything, and I won’t be one of those guys who leverages a sports career into a Hollywood career. OJ Simpson, I am not. Which is good for multiple reasons.

I refuse to look at my bed again, even though my gaze longs to drift that way. Not looking at Sebastian, even the blanket-and-sweatshirt shrouded version of him when he’s here feels wrong.

“Maybe I should get the name of that fleshlight,” Troy says, his smirk once again at his lips, and for a terrible moment I wonder if maybe I allowed my gaze to drift to the bed after all. Sebastian is magnetic.

“You want the name of the fleshlight?” I blink at him.

“Yeah. I mean, anything that would cause my staid, proper roommate to have multiple sex sessions during the night when he knows I’m in the next room must be super incredible.”

“Um...” My throat dries. I need water. I need this conversation to end. Now.

Troy leans forward, and his lips swerve upward. “I mean, you tell me which brand I should get for other things.”

I swallow hard. I suddenly wish I’d kept my shampoo recommendations secret from him. I have set precedent. I can’t deny that.

“Well...”

“Maybe you could show it to me,” Troy suggests, his eyes gleaming like a bad player who has been dealt an amazing hand.

“I threw it out!” I stammer.

“You did? Those things are supposed to last. You just need to clean it. It’s not a one-time use toy. We can fish it out of the trash.

I wonder if I should pretend I didn’t know that.

“I mean... I ruined it!”

“What?”

“It’s shredded now,” I explain.

“Shredded?” Troy’s mouth drops down. “You shredded your fleshlight?”

“Tiny pieces. So um I would show it to you if I could. But there’s, um, no way you could tell the model.”

“Gosh.” Troy still gives me the same strange look. “I have noticed you’re pretty big, but um...”

He swallows hard, then backs away, his cheeks redder. “Shredded, huh.”

“Shredded,” I repeat again, nodding some more, happy Troy is backing away.

I close the door. He’s gone. My heart leaps, and I wait for the covers to move and my sweatshirt to move and Sebastian to move from the bed, like the glistening, glowing angel he is.

Instead, there’s no movement on the bed.

I press my lips together, and something nudges at my chest, like maybe I haven’t handled that as well as I thought I did.

I move toward the bed, trepidation pounding my heart. I lift up the cover, but Sebastian’s face is pressed against the mattress, and I cannot see him.

Maybe he fell asleep. That warm feeling moves through me again. I don’t need Caribbean vacations when I can simply look at Sebastian, and I’m surrounded by heat.

Sebastian is St. Thomas and Aruba and Jamaica. He is the Florida Keys and Cancun.

He is...

I kneel by the bed and turn him over. His hands move to his face, which is weird, and when I look at him, he is lying still, his face burrowed in his hands.

Is he...

Worry moves through me.

No, not that.

I didn’t fuck things up much, did I? No...

But my heart pounds and maybe, maybe I did.

Maybe Sebastian is crying. My heart breaks, and I lower myself to the ground, kneeling on the centuries-old hardwood floor. “Baby. It’s okay. It’s fine.”

My voice is desperate and raw, but Sebastian doesn’t lower his hands, and everything inside me breaks.