Page 77 of Dire Straights

“Okay. Cool.”

“Cool,” he repeated. We both stared at each other for a few seconds after that, trying not to laugh, but it didn’t work.

“So since we’re official, and you outed yourself and everything, does that mean we can do PDA and stuff?”

“Um, yeah,” I responded with aduhkind of tone in my voice. “How else am I supposed to make sure no one else flirts with you?”

He smiled, closing the distance between us to press his forehead to mine and hook his fingers into the belt loops of my jeans. “I’m pretty sure that’s not the more realistic scenario we’d be facing in a public setting.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but I’ve been told I give more of afuck off and dievibe than the kind of vibe that invites people to talk to me, so you might be surprised.”

“Um, yeah, I might have noticed that a little,” he admitted. His grin was so cute. I’d gone about it in probably the worst way possible in the world, but I knew I definitely couldn’t have any regrets about the whole publicly coming out thing. “But I don’t mind it.”

“You are definitely the main person who I don’t want to fuck off and die,” I said.

“Wow,” he replied, eyes wide. “I know I said I want PDA and stuff, but you don’t have to getthatmushy and lovey-dovey, Maddy.”

Snorting, I tried to summon a frown in response to his sarcasm, but failed miserably. “Dweeb.”

“Your dweeb,” he reminded me.

Slipping my hands up over his shoulders to hook behind his neck, I pulled him the rest of the way against me, purring against his mouth as he kissed me. The bright lights of the parking lot and the sound of traffic passing by on the nearby road faded out as my lips parted to let his tongue in so he could melt my brain functions. He was really, really good at kissing, which reminded me that he was also really, really good at fucking. Which is probably what I’d be thinking about the whole eveningwhile we were sitting at some booth at Olive Garden or wherever my parents would drag us to so they could grill us about our relationship.

“Not bad for a first official boyfriend kiss,” I commented, when we broke apart to breathe.

“Yeah, it was pretty good,” he agreed, injecting a comical amount of sarcasm into his voice. “But we could probably do better on the second one.”

“Hmm.” I pretended to think about his offer, before curling my fingers into his shirt collar and pulling him back into me.

“Oh my god, Ren, put that thing away. There could be children walking by,” Arie remarked, pointing inconspicuously at Ren’s crotch as he walked up to us, Che and Aspen on either side of him. Grimacing, Ren turned away from us to adjust himself. “Someone’s been genetically blessed.”

“Watch it, Twinkie,” I warned him lightly. “Nobody gets to ogle my boyfriend’s giant dick but me.”

“Hey, not all of us want to be impaled like we’re a Mortal Kombat character,” he retorted, raising his palms up, but he was grinning. Che just shook his head, looking slightly exasperated by Arie’s antics. But I was sure he probably found them endearing. Somehow.

“I see we’re throwing around the B word pretty casually now,” Aspen commented. “That’s pretty nice to hear.”

“Thanks,” I said, leaning into Ren’s side when he returned from trying to wrangle his dick into a not so obvious position.

“Where’s Cyprian and Caelyx?” Ren asked.

“They’re right behind us,” Aspen said. “They had to pee and there was a little bit of a line.”

“So how does it feel having the best coming out story out of all of us?” Arie asked.

“The best?” I repeated, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” he confirmed, sounding enthusiastic. “You were totally cool. You were like,I have a boyfriend and I suck dick and always swallowor, you know, whatever you said.”

Rolling my eyes to the sky when Ren snorted, covering his face with his palms, I shook my head. “Actually, can we never bring this up again? Like, ever?”

“Were your parents upset?” Che asked softly, his dark, round eyes sparkling with genuine concern. I was pretty sure the guy was incapable of saying or doing anything that wasn’t diabetes levels of sweet and innocent. Then again, Arie was kind of a horndog so I had to imagine there had to be some pretty not-so-innocent stuff going on behind closed doors.

“Nah, they were cool about it,” I answered. “Actually, we’re going to dinner with them. We just wanted to say bye before we head out.”

Unfortunately, when I heard footsteps approaching from behind and turned, expecting to see Cyprian and Caelyx, I was greeted by the unwelcome sight of O’Conner and Garrison striding up to us.

“You made our team look retarded,” O’Conner griped at me. “No one’s going to want to scout any of us now.”

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