Page 20 of Sass in the Grass

“Coach, Dixon or Dix. Mr. Dixon was my dad.”

He laughed a little too much for the lame joke it had been, and Dix set his eyes on Jovian again. “That wasn’t funny.”

“Maybe it was the way you said it. Next time you have some free time, maybe you can show me that water thing again.”

Setting a hand on his hip, Dixon turned to him fully. Shivering, Jovian watched those eyes lock with his and it was physical. What he felt was like his whole body was being jarred. “You mean the lecture you didn’t hear a word of?”

“Sorry, I got…distracted,” he said seductively, smiling his cutest smile and running his fingertips over his lips before he bit the bottom one.

“You will wish you hadn’t got distracted if you’re ever lost in the woods. Now, go off that way and do a few turns like the others.”

Dixon turned from him and walked off to find the others, but Jovian’s hands dropped to his sides in momentary defeat.

But, if he did get a little lost, Dixon would be the one that would find him. Alone. In the woods. Jovian headed up a little slope and into the trees. The smell of pine already annoyed him.

The crunching of the debris on the floor of the woods made it sound like he was as big as a house, and try as he might, he couldn’t walk more quietly. Jovian mostly tried to ignore that walking into the forest meant yet another pair of his shoes were ruined.

“Don’t these people get how expensive shoes can be? How hard it is to maintain an above average shoe collection?”

He found a spot way up the hill, learning that climbing was a lot harder for real than on the treadmill at the gym. There were rocks and sometimes when he set his foot down, it pushed right into the earth, nearly burying his once-white sneaker.

“I swear, his dick better be a foot long and a hydro flask in girth, or I’m getting a damn refund!”

Sitting, Jovian waited for the rescuing. Sure, he knew it was just down the hill, but once he got to the top, everything below looked the same. The trees were tall, blocking sight of the camp, and even the big lake. Glancing over his shoulder, Jovian saw a rock wall at his back. And farther down, there looked to be a little trail, but he also thought Dixon had said something about hunting trails, and they were trails animals used while hunting prey and making it to water.

Or did he?

Staring at the man took almost all Jovian’s attention, so he could have heard wrong, but if he was right, and there was a hunting trail so close…

Suddenly, he didn’t want to be there anymore. He felt like bears and mountain lion were around every trunk of every tree. His heart started pounding so loudly that Jovian worried predators would hear it and pounce.

He got up and a dizzy spell hit him, and he started down the hill again, straight down, seeing the same tree pass by repeatedly, and his breathing was so shallow, he knew he’d pass out before he’d reach the bottom.

When the terrain flattened out some, he ran straight ahead, hollering out for help. It took forever, the path he thought he’d taken stretching on and on while he screamed for help.

Then, suddenly, he emerged right behind the latrines. He recognized them certain enough, but seeing them, it made no sense. Jovian had run straight ahead. Straight! He was sure of it.

Walking from the back to the side of the latrines, he saw the others walking in a group back to the camp, with Dixon leading the way. They were all smiling, talking amongst themselves, and Dixon was next to Alan…laughing.

He turned his head, and those eyes caught Jovian’s, and immediately he lost his grin. He stopped while the rest of them kept heading toward the camp, like they were afraid of what wasabout to happen. “If you had to take a piss, you could have told us.”

Angrier than he’d ever been, he hollered, “You were going to leave me out there?”

“If I didn’t see you back here, I would have gone after you, but I had a feeling you came back here.”

“I didn’t! I was up in the trees, and I came down and got scared and ran! I got lost!”

Dixon looked around and held up his hands. “Lost?”

“I was lost! I was scared!”

“You ran. What was the first thing I told you all about navigating the woods when you get lost?”

Jovian’s defenses rose. “I…I forgot!”

“Exactly.” Dixon closed some of the space between them and caught Jovian’s eyes again. Those chills that went through him took all the anger and fear from him, just leaving him in a weird mixture of freezing and being heated right through.

Dixon smelled of pine and campfire. His heat was radiating from his perfect body, and all Jovian could do was stand there, his mouth hanging open. Why was it he seemed to be his least cute around the man?

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