Page 40 of Flagrant Foul
I watch Teddy.
I watch his lips. My arm tingles and burns, and I rub the spot he kissed over and over.
It does nothing to take the feeling of it away.
The problem is, he might have the most perfect lips I’ve ever seen. They’re not too plump and not too thin. They’re the perfect in between. They’re darker than most people’s lips. Permanently stained, though I have no idea why. Probably to torment me. He has a deep Cupid’s bow. A sharpVcut into pink flesh. The vertical groove that runs from his nose to his Cupid’s bow is deep too, carving a crisp, clear shadow into his face, one that’s perfectly balanced by the cleft in his chin.
In profile, he’s perfect too. His top lip rests lightly on his bottom. Something about it incites me. Provokes me. Leaves me unable to tell if I’m horny or angry. Unable to tell if I want to force his lips open with my tongue, or kiss him so softly that his head spins the same way he’s been making me spin since that night in the club years ago.
Eventually, he gets up and goes to his room to take a shower. His absence sucks the heavy air out of the room and leaves it thin. It’s easier to breathe, but I can’t get as much oxygen as I do when he’s with me.
My phone pings. It’s Nate.
Spoke to Tee today. He sounded good. Said Samir might not be as bad as he thought he was. Can you believe that?
He seems happier, Sev.
Thank you.
I read the message twice as guilt and panic slam into me. Hard, lethal punches that make my blood run cold. Direct hits to my kidneys and ribs that crack bone and wind me.
Love you, bro.
I type quickly, chest tight, throat burning.
Love you too.
I follow my message with a GIF I made of Lockie falling. It happened during one of his first games for the Blackeyes, and it was one of those falls that almost didn’t happen. He got hit and tried to correct, almost did, and then lost his balance after a prolonged, graceless wobble. I found the clip on the internet, applied a slow-motion effect, and set it to awomp, womp, wompsoundbite.
Nate and I have been sending it back and forth to each other ever since, no context needed. Nate loves the GIF. It kills him because slow falls are his Achilles heel. He’s a thoroughly decent guy, so deeply kind that he doesn’t usually laugh at others’ misfortune even when it’s funny as hell.
Slow falls are the one exception to that rule.
Nate replies with an idiotic homemade emoji we made years ago in high school. It’s Nate, lying on the floor of his room, with a ridiculously big smile and laughing-tears drawn onto his face with a blue Sharpie.
I reply with one of me posed in the same way.
It’s silly, but it’s one of those things that’s only gotten funnier with time. Nate’s skin is blotchy in his emoji thanks to the fact that he’d recently started shaving and his pores didn’t like it. In mine, my hair had been cutway too short, showing a clear tan line where my sideburns had been trimmed. We both look like what we were—two dumb kids who thought we were way cooler than we were.
Teddy reappears, standing in the hallway with the passage light illuminating him from behind. A black silhouette throws a long, sultry shadow in my direction. I don’t need to look closely to know he’s wearing nothing but boxer briefs.
He sidles over and takes a seat on my side of the couch. He folds his legs under himself and crowds me, kneeling so close to me I can feel the warmth from the shower radiating off him.
Christ, it’s a lot of skin.
“Are you messaging Nate?” he asks.
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
He makes a face. “I can always tell because you have this specific stupid smile you only use when you’re messaging him.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“It’s fine. I’m used to it because Nate smiles almost the same way when you message him.” Tiny ice crystals form in his larynx. Cutting into his voice, leaving it barbed with traces of jealousy.
“It’s not liketha—”
“I know. So you both always say.” He sniffs and sits back on his heels, leaving his nose a little higher in the air than it needs to be. “What were you messaging about anyway? Were you talking about me?”
