Page 57 of Passion and Payback

I covered my mouth to contain the laugh threatening to burst out of me. “Seriously?”

“You have a nice ass,” he muttered into his plate, and unbelievably, he was starting to turn red. “I was just…I saw it, and then I realized you had a nice ass. And then I realized I was realizing you had a nice ass, as a guy. And it was you. And then I…well, I had to take a minute.”

“Oh God, you were hard?”

“Jesus.”

I snorted, burying my face into my soft napkin and chuckling roughly. “Did you…did you beat their asses before or after the boner went down?”

“I regret ever starting this conversation,” he said with a heavy sigh. “And after. It would have been even weirder to beat their asses like that. Plus, they probably would have noticed, and that would have been weird.”

“Wait,” I said, cocking my head. “That was…right before you started getting a lot of attention from some of the girls in the school.”

He thought about it for a moment and then nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’m not sure what that was all about.”

I raised a brow. “You don’t?”

“No?”

“You have no idea why you might get attention from a bunch of women when you climbed out of the pool after you had a hard-on, and your swimsuit was most definitely sticking to your body like cling wrap? No shrinkage there.”

He stared at me, his face entirely still before he closed his eyes and sighed. “Wow, that makes so much sense now.”

I had to laugh at his surprise. “Did you think you were getting all those girls talking to you because you grew half a foot in a few months?”

“I didn’t think about it too hard,” he admitted with a frown. “Sheesh, the things you learn down the road.”

“Yeah,” I said dryly. “I just found out one of my most traumatic moments was a bi-awakening for you, which is…something.”

“And from here on out, I regret telling you about that,” he said with a wince. “If it’s worth anything, I am sorry. And I was sorry after I realized what had happened. Haven’t stopped being sorry about it.”

I chuckled, scooping up some of the salad and shaking my head. “There are far worse things in life than a bit of embarrassment from years ago. Plus, we both know that at that age, we can’t help when our dicks decide to take over our thinking. I had several moments growing up where I got turned on at the worst possible time. Pretty sure that’s a rite of passage for your average teenage boy.”

Despite his discomfort, I was genuinely amused by the story. Like I’d said, there wasn’t much that was going to deter a teenage boy’s hormones or the random boners, usually at the worst times. If anything, it was a way to find something positive in an awful memory.

I could remember the sheer embarrassment that had flooded through me at that moment when my shorts had hit the ground and disappeared before I could retrieve them. All I’d known was thateverythingwas on display, and anyone with any sense would know better than to expect anything impressive after I’d just got out of the chilly pool. At that moment, however, all I’dknown was that my naked body was on full display, andno onewanted to see that.

Except my best friend, apparently.

“At least someone was enjoying the view,” I said with a chuckle. “Took me a long time to realize my ass was a fantastic asset to have.”

To my growing amusement, I saw a flash of heat in his eyes before he ducked his head to conceal it by cutting off another bite of chicken. “Shoulda just asked me. I would’ve told you that.”

“Yes, because I was going to ask my devoted, very straight friend about my ass.”

“Not all that straight.”

“Well,Ididn’t know that, now did I?”

“Even if I was straight, I could have told you.”

“Well, there are some things you don’t ask your friends about.”

“Like the quality of your ass?”

“Like the quality of my ass. Your average friend will hype you up, straight guy or not. And I didn’t want to be hyped up.”

“You wanted to be wanted.”

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