by A. Nybo
“Careful,” he warned with a wave of the knife. “That single-fin sparked an awful lot of questions about you.”
This didn’t sound good. I liked to keep a low profile. “What sort of questions?”
“Who you are, where you work, what color hair you have.”
“What color hair I have?”
“Yeah, he was trying to place which Josh you were. He’s one of those guys that’s got a ton of acquaintances.”
“Who is he? Maybe I know him.” I pinched a piece of carrot from the chopping board.
“Luke, the barista from Chino’s Café.”
I stopped midchew. Any kind of attention from that particular barista would be welcome. “The gorgeous guy with the curly hair, square shoulders, and slim hips?”
“Yes, he has curly hair. I suppose he’s good-looking, but I don’t really know about the rest. Oh wait. He has a set of abs that you could wash your clothes on. There, how’d I do?”
“You’re improving. I’ll make a man connoisseur of you yet.”
“I should have remembered to look at his arse.”
“If you’re having another lesson, you’ll have the opportunity to check it out then. Maybe you could make a joke about the thruster and see how he reacts, just in case he swings my way.”
“No way! He might think I’m trying to crack onto him.”
“Don’t knock what you’ve never tried.”
“C’mon,” he said. “You know if I was going to try guys, you would be my first choice.”
He was only teasing, but sometimes I wondered whether it was worth letting him know how torturous some of those comments could be. Just to stop him from doing it. “So you keep promising me.”
His dark gaze snapped to mine and then away. “I do?”
Reddening cheeks suggested I didn’t need to say anything more. They implied he was extremely aware that my feelings for him extended beyond mere friendship. Shit.
I needed to escape. “Okay.” I stood. “I’m off to shower.”
“Dinner should be ready in about twenty minutes.”
As I showered, I figured this was why I never pushed for more time with Dan. I could do short stints without getting too caught up with all those feelings of old, but the moment we fell back into routine, there they were again, waiting to slay me.
Bloody hell, I really thought I’d left all this behind in university. In a bid to get over my feelings for Dan, I’d picked up with a rower who had the body of Adonis and the popularity of a celebrity. By the time we broke up, Dan had moved in with Talia and they were talking about moving to Sydney. Dan and I visited each other when we got holidays, but whenever those old familiar feelings reared up again, I ran.
This time running could only get me as far as the next room, and with the renovations that had been done to the old farmhouse, unless it was a bedroom or the bathroom, there were no longer any walls to hide behind. What the hell had I been thinking inviting Dan to stay? Oh, that’s right, friendship. Hammer that into your head, fuck-knuckle.
After I’d showered, I returned to the lounge room to find Dan watching TV. I sprawled along the couch and watched some guy talking about winemakers in the Barossa Valley.
“What the hell are we watching this for? I get enough of this shit at work,” I complained.
As soon as I reached for the TV remote, Dan leaped from his chair and made a grab for it, but I snatched it from beneath his hand.
“I’m getting an education, wanker!” His seriousness was marred by the grin he was trying to suppress.
He grabbed my wrist, but I yanked it from his hold and held the remote on my other side, out of his reach.
With a full-on tackle, he knocked me to the couch, and we wrestled for the grand prize. Giggling like a couple of kids, I employed the age-old tickling torture. Dan rolled onto his front to protect his stomach, and was laughing so hard, he sounded like he was about to wet himself.
I still had hold of the remote, but he had my hand pinned and trapped beneath him, holding the remote to his stomach. Both his hands tried to open my viselike grip on the plastic box, while I used my body to hold him down, tickling with my free hand. The scent of the rosemary and garlic he’d used in the cooking was strong in my nostrils.
Dan wriggled beneath me, trying to throw me off. He turned his head as far as he could, looked at me from the corner of his eye, and grinned. His expression lit me up inside like a Christmas tree dressed in neon lights, and the power of it was heading straight to my dick.
Shit, shit, shit—this couldn’t be happening.
I dropped the remote like it had zapped me, and shoving Dan into the couch, I extricated myself. “You win.” I tried to flash a grin, but it probably just made me look like I had tasted caviar for the first time. My heart was pumping ten to the dozen, and I had to escape the lounge room before my hard-on became obvious.
By the time I reached the safety of the toilet, I had a hard-on from hell. Dan was going to announce dinner was ready at any moment, and I couldn’t go out there like this. I looked down at the bulge in my sweatpants and was transported right back to when we were teenagers and all the times I’d had to make quick exits for this very reason. Experience told me there was only one thing for it—I had to wear this sucker out. Pronto.
It must have been the pressure of time that caused the edge of frustration to ride me. Quick wanks had become an art form for me in my teenage years, thanks to Dan, but I was clearly out of practice. It didn’t help that my thoughts alternated between reminding myself never to wrestle with him again, kissing up the back of his neck, and telling myself off for thinking about Dan and sex in the same place.
“Dinner’s up,” yelled Dan.
This wasn’t going well. It felt like I was constantly about two strokes away from completion and now he would be fully aware of how long I was taking. The sensation of perspiration prickling my skin was enough to encourage me to give in to whatever would bring this exercise to fruition. Emerging from the toilet in a sweat wouldn’t leave anything to the imagination. I pictured Dan just as he had been, writhing beneath me, a grin on those full lips, a sparkle in his… and I came.
“Oi. Constipation boy. You need me to bring you some prune juice?” Dan shouted from the lounge room.
I flushed the toilet and opened the door. “Maybe next time,” I countered, as I left the bathroom. It was nice of him to supply me a reason for having taken so long—far better than the truth. No one wanted to know their friend was crushing on them when the feelings weren’t mutual; especially when it’d reached the point of using them as masturbation material in order to come.
If Dan was going to stay the whole three months, I needed to find a fuck buddy. Now.
Dan had already served up dinner and had left mine on the counter. He was sitting in front of the TV, plate in his lap. “How many people do you reckon dual-purpose those batik pens as mull pipes?”
I looked at the TV expecting a game show or something that would suggest which field that thought came from, but he was watching an Australian soap opera.
“Definitely no more than thirty-seven.” Giving him an answer to his bizarre questions seemed to mollify him, even though we both knew I had absolutely no facts on the subject. “What made you think of that?”
He shrugged and then waved his fork at the TV. “There was a guy in the background wearing one of those batik shirts from Bali.”
“Balinese batik is a bit full-on for a soapie isn’t it?”
Dan stared at me and then smirked. “Thinking of getting a job in wardrobe?”
“Don’t be fuckin’ stupid. Everyone at the winery chooses their own clothes.”
He laughed. “Just imagine if they had a wardrobe department at every place of employment.”
“Most places do. They call it a uniform.”
“How spectacularly boring.”
We fell into silence while we finished dinner, but I kept sneaking glances at him. Dan’s eyebrows were intensely expressi
ve, and every time I looked at him, they were cocked in a slightly different way. Although they may have hinted what he was feeling about something, it was never clear what that something might be.
The next time I looked at him, his eyebrows were steepled, hinting at emotional pain. He was guarded when it came to his emotions, and I knew he wouldn’t tell me if I asked what he was thinking, but I was fairly sure it was nothing related to the program we were ostensibly watching. More often than not, his gaze was merely cast in the direction of the TV.
Since I’d spent most of dinner watching Dan, the moment I finished, I busied myself with kitchen duties. I couldn’t allow myself to fall into this trap with its gaping maw. Being sucked into it when I was younger, I knew the pain all too well, and my heart might not survive a second go around.
“Okay,” I said to draw Dan’s attention. I finished wiping down the counter. “I’m going to crash.”
He looked at the clock over the TV, and frowned when he turned back to look at me. “Feeling a little ragged Sleeping Beauty?” He smirked. “Or are you just hoping to feel the pea under the mattress, Princess?”
“Both.” I grinned.
An early night could only work in my favor. I clung to the hope I was just feeling horny today, and my reaction to Dan this afternoon was a momentary aberration that would disappear overnight.
“Oh, and don’t forget to suss out Luke for me. Like I said, I wanna know if he swings my way.” If Dan thought Luke might be bi or gay, I would pay the man a visit at the café and check him out myself. I could do a lot worse than having Luke as a fuck buddy. Now there was an image to take to bed with me.
“Will do.”
Chapter 3
DAN
SWING HIS way? I didn’t want him to swing Josh’s way. I wanted to be the only one on Josh’s swing, but how did I go about getting on someone’s swing after that friend had watched me on an entirely different swing for a decade?
As Josh walked away, my eyes slid down the length of him. He was in good shape. A little taller than me, he had one of those wiry bodies with full muscles and veins that popped the moment he so much as thought about doing anything strenuous.
He stopped at the passageway, and when he did a caricature of a model’s turn, it was obvious he knew I was watching him. “Are you checking me out?”
I almost choked at his barefaced question, so I threw on my damage-control grin, then set about being obtuse enough to keep Josh from thinking I might have some interest in men—him in particular. I was scared to tell him how I felt, because ruining a friendship just for sex was not on my bucket list. “I’m practicing so I can check out Luke for you.”
Once when I had flown from Sydney to see Josh, we sat in Hay Street Mall for two hours people watching. I’m sure he thought he was being a smartarse pointing out the things to look for when checking out a guy. Little did he know I ogled him regularly.
“Your eyes are so heavy on me that if you check Luke out like that and he’s into guys, you’re gonna find yourself ravished on the beach. You need to lighten your gaze.”
I burst into hysterical laughter. “Ravished on the beach?”
“In general guys aren’t as restrained as girls. Give a guy an inch and he’ll either put it in his mouth or his fist.”
“Give a girl an inch and she’ll say, ‘okay, joker, what did you do with the rest?’” I retaliated.
He tilted his head to acknowledge the joke before returning to what he was trying to point out. “You’ve been warned.”
“Are you serious?”
Josh considered that for a moment. “Kind of. If a guy is aggressive about it, fuck yes. Some can be absolute arseholes. Most are okay, but it only takes one.” He grinned, showing his slightly crooked front tooth, which I found sexy as hell. “Okay, catchya in the morning.”
“Yeah, night.”
I had always wanted Josh to be the first and probably only guy I was with, but recently I had begun to question the wisdom of that decision. Perhaps being with a stranger first was a wiser move, so if I found I didn’t like it, there would be no harm done to our relationship—which was beyond precious to me. But Josh’s warning was exactly what concerned me about that plan. I almost laughed at the seemingly eternal friend-fuck question. Almost. But like most friends thinking of crossing that line, I didn’t find it a laughing matter because it was so close to home.
At some point several years ago, my response to Josh’s touch had gone from insignificant to oh, he’s touching me, to Oh God! He’s touching me! I had never been attracted to a guy before, but with his increasingly electric touch, my senses had become like fire alarms and he was the fire setting them all off. It had been my growing acceptance of my feelings for him that inevitably drove the final wedge between Talia and me. I was unaware how distant and emotionally unavailable I’d become until Talia pointed it out as she packed her bags.
For months after she left, I tried to sort out my feelings, but all I was doing was crawling around in my own skull making myself crazy. That was why I had come to Margaret River, to Josh—to see if that made a difference.
It had. His close proximity was fanning my feelings for him, and I was slowly working my way around to revealing how I felt. Every time he touched me, it sent ripples of excitement through me, and every time he looked at me, I never wanted him to look away. I was becoming increasingly sure of my feelings.
But then Luke had come along.
Luke’s touch threw me into confusion so deep I thought I might never resurface. It had that same sizzling quality as Josh’s. No one had ever made me feel that way, and now there were two people and they were both guys. Did that mean my real sexual identity was gay or bisexual, and everything I had experienced before had just been garden-variety pleasure? Jesus, was I that much of a late bloomer that at the age of twenty-seven my true sexuality was only now awakening?
Before Josh, I’d never had reason to question my sexuality. Although in hindsight I wonder if it was a factor in how I ended up with Talia. I cared about her, and she made me feel good, but I now wondered whether there wasn’t some fear involved; the fear of being infatuated with my best friend and trying to erase it with the love of a woman. What sort of cliché was I?
More at sea than ever with what I should do with this strange situation, I decided the first step was to find out if it was the same with other guys. But how could I go about getting other guys to touch me without being creepily weird?
I could go to the pub and maybe work it over a game or two of pool, but would alcohol interfere, even if the other guy was the only one drinking? Alcohol usually enhanced the likelihood of sex, not based on any real attraction but on the lowering of inhibitions. But I wasn’t after sex; I just wanted to know whether it was guys in general that made me feel that exhilaration when they touched me, or only Josh and Luke.
EARLY FRIDAY evening, before everyone had too much time to get five thousand beers under their belt, I went to test out my question. I tried to get Josh to go with me, but he declared he’d rather have a few beers at home than go into town to the pub. Normally I’d agree, but drinking was not the objective of this mission.
When I saw the crowd at the pub, I narrowed my attention to guys I liked the look of, and I challenged them to a game of pool. Who knew it was so hard to get a guy to touch you if you were male? Maybe it was an Australian thing. Australian men did have a reputation for being very blokey, aka macho. Then again, maybe it was a small mentality rearing its homophobic head.
I had to purposely position myself so the pool players had to squeeze past me to play shots that required them to be down at the end of the table. Even then, it wasn’t until the alcohol had kicked in that they stopped actively squeezing themselves through the gap untouched and just brushed against me.
After two hours I went home disappointed because I was none the wiser. I hadn’t been attracted to anyone, and no one’s touch had triggered that sense of exhilaration I’d felt with Josh and Luke. The on
ly thing the two hours had done was cement the knowledge that I hated hanging around drunks when I was sober—like I needed that confirmation.
Over the next week I surreptitiously checked out Luke—ostensibly for Josh—and I was becoming overly invested in my task. Luke was attractive, and the more I looked, the more I liked.
We were surfing Redgate, and as I caught a wave in, another surfer was heading out. Paddling back, as I neared the lineup, I could hear Luke and the guy talking and laughing. I was annoyed that the guy had come out to where we were rather than finding a wave a little farther along.
Luke introduced us, and we greeted each other before Luke turned to me. “Jerry was just saying some guy in a gopher scooter was ramming a cop car outside the supermarket.”
For a reason known only to my subconscious, I needed to say something spectacularly smart and funny, but it was like the need had shut my mind down completely. “Maybe it’s breeding season.” My nonsensical response completed my feelings of inadequacy when stacked up against Jerry, and I hated him for it.
“What, you think the gopher was trying to mount the cop car?” Luke asked with amusement.
“That’s as good an explanation as any.” I was a complete idiot. I had no idea why I had suggested it was breeding season and was surprised Luke had managed to misinterpret it with a modicum of rationality. I decided I would at least appear smarter if I kept my mouth shut. So I sat and seethed while Luke and Jerry had a sensible conversation.
A short time later I was done listening to them joke around, so I caught a wave in and got changed. I sat up near the car watching them out in the lineup, still talking. It was unlike me to take such an instant dislike to someone, but Jerry had managed to irk me. I couldn’t pinpoint anything he’d said or done—he seemed an affable guy.
On our way home, Luke told me things Jerry had been saying, and it irritated the hell out of me. “How long have you known him?” I asked.
“About three-and-a-half minutes longer than you’ve known him.”
