Page 32 of By the Pint

P.S. this might be the most creeperish thing I’ve ever said or written, but you are so beautiful when you’re asleep.

P.P.S thank you for this morning

I turned the sheet of paper over, but the only thing it said wasTICKETand a few doodles drawn in the same scratchy hand as the note. What looked like a stick figure of a vampire with fangs and … heart eyes? A grid shape in the centre, every other square shaded in. I guessed the grid was meant to be a quilt. And another stick figure of a wingball player stood atop his wingball board, with his arms above his head in the front double biceps bodybuilder pose. Dima had sketched little bumps on his arms where the muscles should be. The tiny Casey also had heart eyes, and a speech bubble coming out of his forehead that said,I forgive you.

How did that make me both smile and feel more annoyed with him?

Gods, feelings were the worst.

I read the note twice more and tucked it into the front cover. Reading, for the first time, what Dima had written there. For some reason, my heart tripped over itself to see the same familiar scribbled handwriting.

“To Sean, right?”he’d said.

“Uh, yeah, thanks,”I’d replied.

But this note didn’t say Sean. I rubbed my thumb over the letters. New feelings swelled in my stomach. My irritation that he didn’t say something sooner rekindled, anger bubbled anew, and something else, deep inside my gut.

A … hunger. For him.

Casey,

I feel like I have been waiting for this moment.

Always yours,

Dima Black

10.

Dima

Hot tubs were amazing. I couldn’t fathom why humans didn’t just live in them. I’d been in the tub for two hours waiting for Casey and I was seriously considering never getting out. It was hot, obviously, and wet, and bubbly, and smelled … interesting, in a caustic chemicals kind of way.

Stars twinkled overhead. The three moons, fat and round and bright, hung low in the sky. The shadowy grounds yawned out all around me. Hotel buildings behind, gardens to the left, and rolling forests disappeared into the horizon on the other sides. What wasn’t to love?

I heard the angry slapping of his bare feet on the deck before he came into view.

“You’re telepathic!” he shouted.

“Aw, you came,” I said, crossing to the other side of the tub to get my visual fill of Casey. I made an involuntary squeaky noise. Damn, he got finer.

The last time I saw him was on the TV in our apartment. Blue jersey, sweaty, his boyishly handsome face contorted into a scowl as he yelled at people from the opposite team. And sometimes his own teammates. Sometimes the refs, or his coaches, or the crowd. He seemed to yell a lot when he wasn’t“dominating the fucking court”as Goldie put it.

Casey stood on the deck of the Constellations Manor Hotel and Spa’s outdoor ‘wellness’ area wearing tan chinos and a white polo-neck that stretched appetisingly over his pecs. His hair was perfectly ruffled. He held his brown leather trainers in his hands, and on his face, the same enraged scowl from the wingball videos.

“You found your ticket,” I said, making a passable attempt to keep my grin in check. I failed entirely. “Been looking at my nude again?”

His cheeks flushed, but I didn’t get a mental reaction from him.

“Why don’t you join me?” I held my arm aloft.

“I can’t fucking hear you with those bubbles on,” he yelled.

I stood, perched myself on the end, and hit the bubbles-off switch. Casey’s gaze flitted over my chest and stomach, his brow furrows firmly fixed in place, but his internally huffed,Damn,spoiled his stoic effect somewhat.

“I said, why don’t you join me?”

He looked at the water, and his lip curled in revulsion. “There’s no way I’m getting in there. It’s fucking skin soup.”

---