Page 34 of Rat Park
“No problem. I know you have a sweet tooth,” Flor said as if it were no big deal to know this about Dominic and use the knowledge for good. “But don’t go cheating on my desserts with that bakery too often!”
“Yours are better. They are!” Dominic insisted as Flor snorted.
“Is there any sweet thing youdon’tlike?” Flor said.
“Yes.” Dominic had tried a Twinkie the other day and it had been way too sweet.
Flor shook his head, smiling. “I don’t even know how you manage to eat so much sugar and still look all…” Flor made a vague gesture at Dominic’s body. Dominic looked down at himself before looking back at Flor.
“What?”
“You know.Muscly.”
“Muscly?” Dominic repeated, amused and confused. Dominic kept fit, but he didn’t think he looked particularly muscly.
Flor rolled his eyes. “Sorry, what’s the official term, gym rat?”
“I don’t go to the gym.” It was too expensive.
“So you just look like that? Bullshit.”
“I do stuff at home.”
“Like…?”
“Weights. Push ups, sit ups, burpees. It’s not rocket science.”
“Burpees?”
“Yeah. They’re a series of movement.” Dominic and Flor had reached the car and stopped behind it, Flor looking at Dominic with his hands on his hips.
“Let’s see it, then,” Flor said in the imperious way he had sometimes, confident and teasing. Dominic huffed a smiling breath, shaking his head, but Flor had just treated him to what he was sure was an expensive treat.
With a sigh, he took a step back and then went through two cycles of the movement quickly. He bent down and kicked his feet back, landing into a push-up, lunging up as he unbent his elbows and onto his feet, leaping into the air with his arms stretched over his head before falling into another push-up. Dominic pulled the edge of his shirt down when he was done, which had ridden up during the exercise.
Flor was staring at him, hands limply by his sides now. Dominic arched his eyebrows.
“You interested?” Dominic asked and watched with confused fascination as Flor’s cheeks tinged with a blush, his freckles standing out.
“Interested in,” he cleared his throat, “what?”
“Exercising.”
“Hey!” Flor said, snapping out of whatever daze the day’s warmth had put him in. “I do track!”
“With those legs, I’m not surprised,” Dominic said, regretting the words as soon as they left his mouth.
He turned away, moving to unlock the car. Dominic shouldn’t make reference to any part of Flor’s body, much less his long legs. He shouldn’t think of the way his stomach sparked, sometimes, when Flor was close, how his chest became small and tight, how the skin on his fingertips would tingle. Flor was only eighteen and the son of the people who had practically taken him in as one of their own. He was bright and happy and had a whole future filled with a potential that Dominic couldn’t ruin by touching. He refused to want Flor and the way his beautiful spirit had grown into a beautiful body.
Wanting had never lead Dominic anywhere good.
“You like my legs?” Flor said teasingly like he often did, pushing buttons he didn’t even know were there.
“I have no feelings about your legs,” Dominic lied. “I’m just saying they’re good for track.”
“I can’t believe you like my legs,” Flor said. Dominic kept his expression flat even as Flor smirked at him from the other side of the car.
“I don’t like your legs.”
