Page 7 of The Jock
Wes tipped his head back and laughed.
* * *
In the morning,Justin rolled over in bed as Wes slid on his running shoes. He wasn’t trying to catch a peek at Wes changing, not really. He wanted Wes to know he was awake, though, so if he wanted to change in the bathroom or under the covers or out in the hallway, he could. The worst part of imploding friendships was always the accusations, the looks of betrayal. As if he’d been a predator all this time, fiending for a flash of hip or bare chest. Straight guys could be so Victorian when it came down to the nuts and bolts. As if any of his roommates had been his type, anyway.
Wes, though…
They weren’t friends, not yet, but there was potential there. Shockingly. He liked the guy. Wes was more than his cowboy hat and his bulging muscles. He had thatstill waters run so very, very deepvibe, which was so foreign to Justin’s life it was basically just a movie trope. Strong, silent cowboys didn’t actually exist, right? Apparently they did. And they played some football, too. And took French. And had a shy, killer smile that tied Justin’s intestines up into curly little bows.
“Did I wake you?” Wes whispered. He was sitting on the edge of his bed in his running shorts but no shirt. His muscles rippled, his biceps and triceps and trapezius all moving beneath his skin as he hiked up his foot to the mattress and tied his shoelaces.
“No,” Justin croaked. He shouldn’t have rolled over.
Wes stood, grabbed his shirt, and tugged it over his head. “I have to work out every day. I’m still in training, even though I’m here.”
“It’s fine.” Every morning, like this. He might not survive. He really should have gone out last night, tried to find a Parisian fling again, but… he was having too good of a time with Wes to end things. Dinner turned into wandering the streets, which turned into sharing a half bottle of wine as they people-watched at a sidewalk café until almost midnight. Damn it.
Wes fiddled with his phone. He didn’t look at Justin when he spoke. “You wanna come with? I can show you the park.”
Justin blinked. “Yeah, sure. Give me a minute to get dressed.”
“Take your time.” Wes went to stretch by the window as Justin pawed through his duffel, pulling out his running shorts and shoes, which he’d thrown in optimistically, laughing at himself as he did. Running in Paris was half romantic and half ridiculous. He’d hoped for a different type of cardio on this trip. A minute later, he was laced up and ready to go, and he did a few stretches as Wes tapped at his phone and plugged one earbud in his ear.
“Ready.”
* * *
They only hadthree days of classes a week, which left long, empty weekends for everyone to pack in the optional extra outings. Justin had flicked through the catalog of options before he left, dog-earing the pages on wine tasting in the countryside, short trips to Vienna and Prague and an overnight in Rome, a weekend in Marseille and Monaco. The first long weekend loomed before them, and if he was going to catch the shuttle to the airport for the short hop to the coast, he needed to leave soon.
But Wes, at lunch, fed the birds at the pond in the university’s quad, and when Justin wandered over to watch, he saw Wes smiling as he tossed food into the water for the ducks and ducklings and the few swans joining the feeding frenzy.
All his weekend plans screeched to a halt.
Wes was bathed in the French sunlight, his cowboy hat shadowing his face, his plain white T-shirt clinging to his thick chest and his cut biceps and his trim, slender waist. His jeans that were too tight for decency. Sure, Justin wore skinny jeans, but Wes wasn’t wearing them by choice. They just fit him like a second skin because he had the body of Adonis. Thick, tree-trunk thighs. What would they feel like if Justin had his own thighs wrapped around them? If he was perched on Wes’s lap, grinding their hips together? If he got his fingers on Wes’s jeans and ran his palms over them?
Wes smiled, that lopsided, shy grin, when Justin ambled across the lawn to join him. He’d thought Wes was throwing a baguette to the ducks, but no, he was throwing seed and nuts. There was a feed dispenser behind him, up on the trail that ran through the quad.
“If you feed ’em bread, it hurts the ducklings’ development,” Wes said. His voice rumbled through Justin, vibrating his bones. “Too many empty calories, not enough nutrients, gives them angel wing. They can’t fly.” He tossed another small handful of feed, scattering the ducklings across the pond.
“I never knew that.”
Wes squinted at the water. “I know a thing or two about animals.”
“What are you doing this weekend?”
Wes shrugged, looking down. His hat shielded his face, hiding his expression from Justin. “Exploring the city. It’s Paris. There’s a million things to see. I’ll try and scratch a few off the list.” He looked up, this time squinting at Justin as he tossed the last of his seed to the ducklings. “You going with the group to the coast?”
The French Riviera, sun-drenched beaches, golden sunshine. Perfect, tanned bodies lying on the sand. More gay clubs than he could count. Nightlife more famous than Vegas. His French lover might be down there, just waiting for his Texan summer fling. “No,” Justin said, shaking his head. He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. “I was going to explore the city, too. Want company?”
* * *
He was beingall kinds of stupid, sacrificing his plans to tag along with Wes, a straight cowboy from Texas. Straight cowboys were a dime a dozen back home, and football players? Every guy had a jersey in his closet, dreams of his glory days running on a loop in his mind. Wes wasn’t special. Justin knew the kind of guy Wes was. So what was he doing? He’d come half a world away to fall for the same guy he saw every day at home? What Texan came to Paris and fell for a cowboy? There was something Freudian in that. There had to be.
He berated himself in the bathroom mirror at the university, shaking his head at his foolishness.
But they walked home together again, a different route this time, wandering past the Palais Garnier, the home of the Paris Opera and, more importantly in Justin’s mind, the Paris Opera Ballet. He veered away from Wes, drawn to the playbills, the posters of this production and that.Swan Lake.Romeo and Juliet.La Bayadère. The opera house rose over him, its gothic opulence somehow a perfect contrast to the delicate illusion of ballet.
Wes hovered behind him, eyeing the posters of dancers, delicate ballerinasen pointeand danseurs hoisting them sky high, leaping across the stage in full extension, arms and legs thrown wide, muscles taut, heads tilted back. Pure focus. Pure ecstasy. “You like ballet?”
