Page 37 of Shots on Net

He sounds breathless and he’s clenching his hands together in front of himself. I have to clench my own hands into fists to remind myself not to reach out and touch him. When I caught his shoulders just now, I could feel the heat of his skin through the thin shirt; my hands are still tingling with the contact. I am so utterly and completely fucked.

“I slept fine,” I lie, because of course I didn’t sleep at all. “I don’t know about breakfast; I think I might just go down and hop on the treadmill…”

“I’ll join you!” Zeke says frantically. His voice cracks like he’s close to tears, and my heart clenches like someone reached into my chest and squeezed.

“You want to go for a run?” I ask, incredulously, because I’ve never seen him partake in any sort of physical activity.

“Well, no, but I want to talk to you so if you’re going to be running, I’ll just come along.”

“Okay, fine, no running,” I admit defeat, stepping around him and into the kitchen. Flinging open the refrigerator door, I catch it with my foot before it can slam back into me. “How about omelets?”

“Sure, yeah, omelets. Why don’t you sit down? I’ll make it, and I’ll do all the talking, and you can just listen, okay?”

Sliding the egg carton onto the counter, I toss out some cheese and spinach as well. Peering around, I grab a jar of mushrooms and add that to the counter as well. These are going to be the most boring omelets in the history of omelets.

“I can make my own,” I tell him, and then jump when I feel Zeke touch my arm. I scowl at him; he can’t touch me if I’m going to have any hope of getting rid of these goddamn feelings.

“Please? Let me,” he says, and punctuates it with a swipe of his thumb on my arm. I step away immediately, and his hand falls to the counter.

“Okay. I’m going to go jump in the shower.” I turn my back and head toward the stairs.

“Carter.” Zeke’s voice stops me before I can put a foot on the bottom step, and I close my eyes. He sounds as awful as I feel. “Can we talk?”

“Do we have to?” I turn around and try to keep my tone friendly. “I don’t…I’m pretty fucking embarrassed and I’d rather just forget about it and try to go back to the way things were.”

“Can I just…I really think I need to explain,” he says, hands flat on the island in front of him and tone placating. “You’ll understand if I can just explain. And then…if you want to go back to the way things were before, we can do that. But please, just hear me out for a minute.”

Fuck it. I step forward and yank out one of the barstools; it scrapes across the hardwood floor, making Zeke flinch at the sound. Throwing myself down, I gesture for him to talk. “Alright. Go ahead.”

He takes a deep breath, like he’s getting ready to give a speech. The omelets have been forgotten. “Okay. Okay. So, first off, I didn’t realize it was a date. Not, like, a date date.”

I scoff, opening my mouth to argue, but he holds up a hand to silence me.

“I know, Carter. You said it was a date,” he says, wearily. “I don’t have a lot of experience though, and when you said that it never crossed my mind that you would mean it the way you did. Guys like you don’t ask guys like me out on dates. My grandma says ‘it’s a date!’ when we make Sunday dinner plans; I genuinely thought you meant it that way.”

I nod, the tightness in my chest lessening by a degree. That explains wanting to go to that party, then. “Okay. It’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

As though he knows I’m going to push back from the counter and stand, he reaches across the island and grabs my hand. I saw him coming, this time, so I don’t flinch. He’s across the counter from me and not close enough to get a good grip; he grasps my fingers with his as well as he is able. Thoughtlessly—as though my body unconsciously reaches for his—I move my hand toward him so that he won’t have to stretch so far across the island to reach me.

“No, it’s not fine,” he says, earnestly. “I wouldn’t have suggested we cancel your reservation and meet up with Jefferson, if I’d known. And if I’d been paying a little more attention, I might have figured it out. So, I’m sorry. I feel terrible that I…hurt your feelings, and that you feel embarrassed.”

Jesus, and now I’m more fucking embarrassed. “It’s fine. You just said you didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Yes, well, unintentionally hurting someone is still hurting them,” he says, huffing an exasperated breath. He’s still holding my hand over the counter; I flip mine so that our palms are pressed together. “So…I was wondering if you could reschedule that reservation you had and maybe we could try again.”

Zeke’s ears turn red when he says this, and his fingers tighten incrementally on my hand. The words make me want to yank him across the island and hug him.

“Are you sure? Because you don’t have—."

“I’m sure. But I do think I should explain…that is to say,” he clears his throat and looks away, eyes landing on our hands. “Okay, I’m just going to tell you that dating me isn’t going to be like dating anyone else. I’m not the kind of person who just hops into a sexual relationship with someone, so if that’s going to, uhm, be an issue…”

He trails off, losing the thread of where he wanted that sentence to go. I decide not to let him flounder. “That’s fine. I wasn’t expecting you to ‘hop into a sexual relationship’ with me. I just thought we’d have dinner.”

Zeke laughs, eyes brightening and a smile spreading across his face. It dims, slightly, after a moment. He bites his lip. “Right…but the thing is, Carter, I might not ever be ready for that kind of relationship, with you. Or…or it might take a long time, and that’s not fair to you. I don’t expect you to just wait around and—."

“Dude, chill. There isn’t exactly a line of people desperate to go out with me. I’m not going to be waiting around for you to suck my dick.”

“You have an impeccable way with words,” he mumbles, and I raise my voice to talk over him.

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