Page 42 of The Quarterback
He does!Nick, defending him. Jesus, he needed to pull out his phone, get in on the conversation.Or, he does now. :)
OMG are you guys actually hanging out? Dad, are you playing PlayStation with Colton still?Justin sent three lines of laughing emojis, like it was the funniest thing he’d ever imagined, the two of them becoming friends.
Nick snorted. He bit his lip. Didn’t text back right away.
Colton knew what he wanted to text.We hang out all the time. I’m living with your dad. I dream about him every night. I imagine kissing him every hour of every day. Wes, can you teach me how to suck dick? I want to, but I’m afraid I’m going to suck at it. Excuse the pun. I’ve never wanted to before, and I don’t have any idea what to do.
Of course, he didn’t really need to learn how to suck a dick. Nick wasn’t going to let him suck his cock, and if it wasn’t Nick’s dick, he wasn’t interested. I’m not gay, but if the right guy comes along…
I’m level 5000 in Halo, Nick finally texted.Colton’s coaching me to join a pro team.I’m looking for a career change.
He wasn’t, and Colton wasn’t. Level five thousand didn’t even exist. But it was the right thing to say, and both Justin and Wes sent back laugh emojis.Hello midlife crisis, Justin teased. Nick texted three hearts, and then he slid his phone into his pocket.
Wes, is this what it felt like all those years?He watched Nick’s profile: the hard, straight line of his nose, the bow of his lips, the sharpness of his jaw. Watched his throat move as he sipped his wine. Watched his eyes flutter closed.Is this how it feels to want something so fucking badly you ache for it? But you can’t have it, and you can’t reach out, and you can’t even admit that you want what you want? That you’re dying inside with every heartbeat, but you can’t stop this yearning? Is this what it feels like?
Chapter Thirteen
They were setto go live on Monday at the first bunch of Kimbrough’s sites, ten drill rigs across the high plains in the north Permian Basin.
Nick had sold Kimbrough his own personal mobile network, built by Nick, managed by Kimbrough. Kimbrough Oil Mobile. Nick’s company had dropped cell towers around the remote rig sites, leased access on all the major carrier networks under the Kimbrough name, even bounced a signal off satellites—anything to get strong, reliable cell coverage to the most remote regions of Texas. Nick sold Kimbrough his own top-of-the-line phones, too, loaded with Kimbrough Oil corporate and safety features and tuned to the mobile network at all times. With the dedicated Kimbrough Oil Mobile network, they had strong, direct lines to the outside world, especially calls for aid and emergency assistance. If the worst were to happen, there would be no delay in summoning help due to a faulty or failing signal or a choked radio band or static interference in the transmissions.
Kimbrough was Nick’s biggest client by an order of magnitude. If this succeeded, Nick could approach other oil drillers and remote operators and share Kimbrough’s success story about how he improved the health and safety of his far-flung workforce while improving morale, too. Giving everyone a high-speed data connection and a free smartphone had a way of making employees happy. If it didn’t succeed, Nick said, he might look into that professionalHaloteam after all.
On the Thursday before the first off-site rollout, Nick and Colton drove to Houston to meet with Kimbrough. They wanted to go over the timeline and run through every step that would happen on Monday when the network went live. The towers and hardware had been installed a month before, and now it was time to turn everything on.
They would head home Friday, then turn around on Monday and fly out to the drill sites.
They were so busy during the week that Colton almost didn’t have time to think about how deeply he’d fallen for Nick. His days at the office were swept up in preparations for Kimbrough. He test-drove the mobile networks, turning the towers off and on and off again, simulating failures, simulating calls. Every evening he and Nick worked late before grabbing something to go on the walk home. They were too exhausted to do much more than eat on the patio together, talking softly about Justin and Wes’s new photos or something they’d seen on the news or online.
Nick had bought two cases of Colton’s favorite wine from the winery, the sweet summer red, and each night, he poured them a glass. With each sip, Colton tasted a mixture of joy and regret, success and failure. Nick had told him, more than once, that the winery visit was one of the best surprises of his life. That he’d had a great time—the best time he’d had in longer than he could remember. That he’d wanted to go so many times but never did, maybe because he was meant to go with Colton that day.
Touchdown, Colton thought.Nailed it. Damn, you did good. Helovedit.
And…Wimp.Wuss. He’d chickened out and hadn’t said a thing to Nick while they were there. Hadn’t reached for his hand or leaned in to kiss his lips or his wine-flushed cheek. Had that really been a flirty look in Nick’s eyes? Had his palm lingered, a fraction of a second too long, on Colton’s back? Had he seen anything there, or was that only his desperate imagination?
If a dizzy, wine-soaked summer afternoon hadn’t been a moment scripted for him to confess his crush, then he didn’t know what was. But he’d let it pass. He was too scared. What if what he thought he saw in Nick’s gaze wasn’t desire, but dust? The comfortable weight of his shoulder and his thigh against Colton’s nothing more than a heady pulse of cabernet in Nick’s veins? One thigh pressed against another was not a love story.
But it was fuel for his dreams. What-ifs and if-onlys played behind his eyelids as he slept. What if he’d laid his hand across Nick’s knee? What if he’d trailed his fingers up Nick’s inner thigh? Brushed the inner seam of his khakis, traced an arc over his quads?
Now he watched the trees fly by along the highway as they drove. The playlist he’d made for Nick was their soundtrack, along with the hum of the tires. Nick drummed his fingertips on the wheel in time with the beat.
He’d made this drive so many times in his dreams, always holding Nick’s hand, that it felt strange not to reach for Nick in real life. He ran nervous fingers up and down the inside seams of his shorts, but that made him imagine Nick’s hands on him, tracing a path up the curve of his thigh, and he squeezed the fabric in his hand and held his breath until he was sure he wouldn’t embarrass himself.
When they arrived, it was the same routine as before: check in, drop their bags, change. Colton had brought a football for Kimbrough this time, and Nick held it steady as he signed it with his left hand. His signature looked like a scribble, vertical lines and a single cross bar, but weren’t signatures supposed to be messy? “Kimbrough will be overjoyed,” Nick said.
The football had been Colton’s idea, not Nick’s. It would benefit Nick, though, and that’s what mattered.
Kimbrough was ecstatic. He loved the football, was beyond effusive in his thanks. He tossed the ball back and forth with Nick, then came across his office and pulled Colton into a surprisingly gentle one-armed bear hug. “When you get yourself back to throwing those touchdowns, you’ll have to come out to the Permian Basin with me. You can stand on one edge of my oil field and throw this ball so far you can watch it curl around the edge of the earth.”
They dove into business, and Kimbrough was patient with Colton when Nick turned the meeting over to him. The first time Colton had ever spoken in front of a client, and it was Nick’s biggest one. He walked Kimbrough through the testing he’d done, the simulations and trials of the mobile towers, the network operations, and different use cases. Minimal use, maximum use. As many variations of utilization as he could imagine. Testing the network had been like stepping up to the line and going under center. Reading the defense. What were they going to throw at him, and how would he respond? Now, what was the world going to throw at Nick’s network? How did Colton test that, and how should he respond so Nick could have his touchdown with Kimbrough?
He stumbled a bit at first but then hit his stride, and when he was done, Kimbrough was beaming.
Nick took Kimbrough through the rollout planned for Monday. Kimbrough had a thousand questions for Nick, and he was able to answer every one. Awe filled Colton as he watched. Was there nothing Nick didn’t know?
They went to dinner at Kimbrough’s steak house again—and it washissteak house. Colton had looked it up back at the office one afternoon, curious. Kimbrough owned the place, one of his many diversified ventures outside of oil and gas exploration. Colton must have been added to the list of notable guests, because his preferred beer and his choice cut of steak appeared without him having to order anything. He did make the server blink, though, when he asked her if she had any summer reds. Kimbrough, of course, noticed when they brought him his balloon glass of shimmering ruby wine, and that led into the story of Colton taking Nick to the winery the day his divorce was finalized. Colton blushed, Nick smiled at him—kind of like he did in Colton’s dreams, when Colton threw a touchdown and Nick’s was the only face in the stands he could see—and Kimbrough chuckled as he stared at his own whiskey glass.
“You hang on to this one, Nick,” Kimbrough rumbled. “He’s going to be a fine, fine man.”
