Page 32 of Starfish and Coffee
Too bad they had to ruin it by pulling apart. Matt expected Alex to disappear to the bathroom to deal with the condom, but instead he rolled up to him and kissed his biceps.
“Are you okay, Tarrington?”
“Yeah,” Matt whispered as he stared past the open door to the stars hovering above the ocean. “I think so.”
Then he turned his head to look at Alex. His light hair was disheveled, strands of it clinging to his sweaty temples. His tan face was still flushed from the pleasure. His warm, brown eyes studied Matt as if looking for some clue to his mental well-being. He was so handsome right then it took Matt’s breath away.
“It was good,” Matt told him, wanting to erase the concern when it certainly wasn’t necessary. He probably wouldn’t be able to walk for a week, but it’d been worth it. “It was better than good—a lot better.”
Alex beamed, looking unabashedly pleased with himself. “You wanna take a shower with me?”
Matt smiled back, remembering Alex’s comment about the shower earlier. “I think I do.”
* * * *
Alex left in the early-morning hours. He told Matt it was because he needed time to get ready for work, but the truth was he didn’t want to be around when the buzz of alcohol and the high of sex wore off.
Matt was going to freak out. Alex was sure of it.
So he sneaked back into his house sometime past two, thanking the gods that Will was asleep and not still sitting at the kitchen table doing schoolwork. Alex couldn’t deal with a lecture right now.
He took another shower, because yeah, they’d done it twice.
Then he crawled into bed in a pair of old sweatpants despite it still being hot for late summer. Holly always kept the window air-conditioning unit cranked to ice-cold. He rolled up to her and wrapped his arms around soft, womanly curves, wishing he’d stayed in bed with Matt.
“Hey.” Holly’s was voice heavy with sleep. “Did you hit it?”
Alex was quiet for a long time, not knowing why hearing it put like that rubbed him the wrong way, even if they were his words. It cheapened it somehow, and he wasn’t sure how to deal with the rush of emotions making his chest tight.
“Yeah,” he finally said, because he couldn’t find another way to sum up his night.
“Good?” Holly asked, sounding unsurprised Alex had sealed the deal with Matt. “Everything you were hoping for?”
“It was better,” Alex admitted while still battling with the emotions surging through him. “Amazing.”
“That’s bad, Alex.” Holly sighed, voicing Alex’s thoughts out loud. “What happens if you fall in love with Matt Tarrington?”
Alex had no idea, but he knew it couldn’t end well.
* * * *
It was poor planning, fucking Matt for the first time when they both had to work the next day. If Alex didn’t need his job as badly as he did, he would’ve stayed home.
As it was Holly was shoving him out of bed when the alarm clock went off, and then doing most of the work to get him out of the house. Pulling clean clothes out of his drawers, making him coffee to get him moving. If it wasn’t for her, he might have just said fuck it and gotten a construction job when Frank fired him.
He really did not want to face the morning after.
Maybe Matt would be the one to quit. Not like he needed the job anyway. It was with that thought that Alex finally crawled onto his bike in defeat and headed to work. He deliberately tried to ignore the other thoughts, the ones that made his dick hard and his stomach flip with those butterflies Alex had heard about but never actually experienced.
When he pulled into the back parking lot and found Matt’s Porsche already there, he was at a loss. He’d honestly expected Matt to ditch the job—and him.
Those butterflies were starting to feel more like elephants stomping around in nervousness as he turned off his bike and made slow work of getting to the door. He dumped his helmet on the shelves in the back and then walked to the kitchen before he could change his mind.
What he found was surprising.
Matt had been working on prep for a while, and he wasn’t doing a half-bad job. Everything was chopped; the warmers were all filled, and now he stood at the sink washing all the dishes he’d used.
Alex studied Matt, admiring his big, broad back. The outline of hard muscles was clearly visible beneath the white T-shirt he was wearing. Matt’s black hair curled out from beneath his blue bandanna, and everything in Alex wanted to go to him and bury his face into the curve of that thick neck just to breathe him in.
