Page 65 of The Quarterback
After the game, he bought cotton candy for them to share while they wandered the midway. He tore off long wisps of spun sugar and fed the ends to Nick, sometimes teasing him and tickling his nose instead of letting him take a bite. Nick wanted to try his luck at darts and ended up in competition against a five-year-old girl. He gave Colton a look of despair and then let her win. She jumped up and down and screamed like a banshee, then screamed again when the game attendant presented her with a four-foot teddy bear. He gave Nick a palm-size teddy bear holding a pink heart as a consolation prize.
Colton knocked down nine milk bottles with bean bags and chose a stuffed longhorn with a rose in its mouth as his prize. “Trade?” He held out the longhorn to Nick.
“That wouldn’t be fair. Yours is bigger than mine.”
“Well…” Colton grinned. “I mean…”
Nick elbowed him, then took his longhorn and kept his own bear, too. That’s all Colton had wanted, anyway: for Nick to have the stuffed animal he’d won. He wanted to throw his arm around Nick’s shoulders, too. Dig out his class ring and put it on a chain and let Nick wear it under his T-shirt. He bet Nick would look good in his letterman jacket.
They watched the wooden roller coaster rattle and clatter and the bumper boats thud and splash, then bought tickets for the Ferris wheel. Laughter followed them as they rode the neon glow toward the full August moon. As they neared the top, Colton scooted around to cuddle up to Nick. The sparkle and glitter from the fair caressed Nick’s cheeks, while the moonlight teased out the flecks of silver dotting his temples. Starlight slipped into the laugh lines around his eyes.
He was so beautiful. Every line on his face was a moment in his life, a million stories that had made Nick the man Colton had fallen hard for.
“Are you having fun?” He brushed his nose against Nick’s.
“I always do with you.”
“Awesome,” he whispered, capturing Nick’s lips in a gentle kiss as the Ferris wheel slowed and stopped.
He led Nick back to his truck, taking Nick’s hand when they reached the shadowed parking lot. When there was no one around, he drew Nick into his arms and kissed him until the laughter from a group of teens walking to their cars a few rows away made him pull back.
He drove Nick along a back road to an oak-strewn park and pulled off at an overlook by a lake. There were two other cars in the lot as he turned off his headlights and cracked the windows, then turned the radio on low.
Nick laughed. “Did you take me to the town make-out spot?”
“If Reddit is to be believed, yes. Or it’s the town pot-smoking park. Either way, I don’t want to get too close to anyone else.”
“Think you’re getting to second base, hotshot?”
Colton glanced at his back seat. “Well, there’s a reason I drove the truck…”
“And here I thought you were being a gentleman.”
“We could just hold hands and talk.”
Nick smirked. He wriggled into the back seat and patted the bench beside him. “Or we could do something else with our hands and our mouths.”
Colton scrambled after him, almost getting stuck between the two front seats before he managed to crawl beside Nick. Nick pushed him down to the leather and lay on top of him, covering him from his lips to his toes.
He lost track of time as they kissed, as he ran his hands up and down Nick’s broad back and slipped his palms beneath the hem of his T-shirt. They made out like they were in high school, thighs sliding together, hips grinding, hands tangled in hair and holding each other’s cheeks and chins. It would be so easy to pull Nick’s T-shirt off, reach his hands down Nick’s pants, stroke him off or even blow him, but that’s not how he wanted the night to go. Not yet, at least. They had a bed at home for that, where two guys over six foot could really get into each other. No, he wanted to keep this moment sweet, like the cotton candy he still tasted on Nick’s lips and the look in Nick’s eyes when he’d fingered the stuffed rose of the little longhorn that Colton had won for him.
He almost lost himself in the moment, almost forgot the one question he’d been waiting to ask. He cradled Nick’s face in his hands. This was harder than he’d thought, now that the time had arrived. All the days and nights and kisses they’d shared flickered within him like fireflies, memories that told him it would be all right. He could ask this. He could ask for this.
Nick looked more and more confused the longer Colton stared up at him and said nothing. He was balanced on his elbows, and he ran his fingers through Colton’s hair. His touch tickled Colton’s scalp, made him shiver.
“What is it?” Nick whispered. “What are you thinking?”
“Will you make love to me?” Days of imagining the moment, scripting his words, planning the perfect things to say, and he blurted it out like he always did.Smooth operator. What happened to telling him how much the idea of it meant to you?
“Don’t we already?” Nick frowned.
“I mean, more.” He ground his hips up into Nick’s. Hooked his ankles high around the back of Nick’s thighs and spread his legs as wide as they could go. He saw when what he meant, what he was trying to ask for, hit Nick.
Nick’s eyes went full-moon wide. “Colton… Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“That’s… a big step. Something like that, it means a lot. Are you sure you want—” Nick whispered.
