Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 85682 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 343(@250wpm)___ 286(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85682 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 343(@250wpm)___ 286(@300wpm)
“How old are you?” Shit, was he even younger than I’d thought?
He chuckled. “A person has to be underage not to drink?” He was right, so I just put both bottles back. “You can have one. I don’t mind as long as you don’t get drunk.” There was an edge to his voice, hinting there was a story behind his request, but I didn’t ask him what it was.
Instead, I filled two glasses of lemonade.
“Twenty-five,” he said when I set them on the table. Knowing he was older than what I’d thought made me feel slightly better about this.
“Forty.” I sat across from him. “Queer?”
Sam took a bite of his food, chewed most of it up before saying, “’Bout as gay as a man can get, I’d imagine.”
“And you obviously figured out I am too.”
“I hoped.” I didn’t eat, but Sam continued to enjoy his food while we spoke. He wasn’t like the men I was used to. There was nothing refined about him, nothing proper or manufactured. He didn’t put on a show, didn’t pretend to be anyone he wasn’t. It was like the thought didn’t even occur to him. His cheeks did pinken when he added, “Thought I noticed ya lookin’ at me the way I wanted to look at you. It’s not somethin’ I see around here. It just felt different around you. Safe. I’m always real careful.”
What a shitty world we lived in that he had to be.
“That probably sounds stupid. I’m not normally like that. Don’t get a feelin’ about things and that kinda thing. My friend says she read queer people are sometimes drawn to each other for whatever reason. Not sure if I believe that, but I hoped it was true and you didn’t try to kick my ass if you thought I was flirtin’ with ya.”
I cocked a brow. “Try?”
“I’m a badass motherfucker, Mr. Fox.”
“I think, considering the situation, you can call me Emerson.” Damned if his gaze didn’t brighten, his irises the sky and somewhere in there was the sun. This was a mistake. Sam was so much fucking trouble, but I needed something to keep me from floating away. “Emerson,” he added. “Did you eat the chips?”
I had, damn him. I didn’t know why I bristled at the fact. “Yes. I couldn’t get takeout, so I had no choice.”
“You couldn’t get takeout because you’re stubborn and grumpy.”
A strange, unfamiliar tingle zipped beneath my skin. I was grumpy. Sam was right, but except for Charles, typically people didn’t call me out on it.
Sam popped some cold french fries into his mouth just as I asked, “What did you expect to get from me? From the flirting and trying to work out if I’m gay?”
“You’re not eatin’,” he said instead of answering. When he didn’t get a response, he added, “See? Grumpy and stubborn.”
“Optimistic and sunshiny,” I countered.
“Wow, you’re really bad at figurin’ out who I am.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m not.” He might not want to see that about himself, and hell, maybe there were some areas in his life where he wasn’t, but Sam was exactly what I’d just said. It was why that last video affected me so much, because that glow I’d sensed in him every time we met had been missing. “What do you want from me?” I asked again.
He groaned, leaning back in his chair. “I think you’re hot. I’m twenty-five, single, mostly closeted, and horny in a small town with no other queer men that I know of. What did you think I hoped to get out of it?”
I thought maybe he expected me to chuckle, but it was just sad—that the world was the way it was. That he had to be closeted. That it was so hard to find that connection he sought. But if I could give any of it to him depended on exactly what he was searching for. “So just sex?”
“Is it really just sex, though?” he teased, and that time, I couldn’t hold back my smile. “Sex, yes, but just…fuck, is it crazy that it’s amazin’ to me that a gay man other than me can exist in Ryland? That it’s possible? That I’m not just some abnormal case study for God or whatever it is that controls this world? Why are you here? How are you here? How am I not alone anymore?”
I closed my eyes and let out a breath. “Statistically, there must be other gay men in town.”
“Then they’re hidin’ and have been their whole life, which makes it even more devastatin’.”
Yeah, yeah it did. “If I offered you anything at all, it would just be sex. Not friendship. Not a relationship. All we would be is two people who fucked each other.” The harshness of my words grated on my skin, but they were true. It was all I had to give, and I needed to make sure Sam understood that.