Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91864 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91864 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
“Yes.”
“Well, I saw her tonight. She looked at me…” I rubbed my hand over my heart, remembered what it was like to see her, wondered if my mom would have looked like that at her age. “…she couldn’t be bothered with me though.”
“Maybe she didn’t see you.”
No, she never really saw me, did she? Only not in the way Sean meant. “Our eyes met, Ninja. She turned like I was nothing…fuck.” I shook my head. “I shouldn’t care.” I couldn’t believe I’d said that to him. Hell, Sadie had been with me and I hadn’t told her who it was. But there was something about Sean. We got each other.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Was she mean to you growing up?”
“She wasn’t abusive if that’s what you’re asking. She just hated me.”
“I find that hard to believe,” he replied.
“Right? I’m incredibly fucking likable. But I assure you, she does.” Just like she hated my father. The poor kid with the fucked-up life who took her precious daughter away and then got her killed, even though it hadn’t been his fault. It was more mine than his.
“What makes you think she hated you?”
“Hate is a strong word. It wasn’t as if she hurt me. She just…didn’t have time for me. She didn’t want to be bothered with me.” She hadn’t loved me. I was her grandson and she hadn’t loved me.
“Ethan…” Sean started.
“I don’t want to talk about her. I shouldn’t have told you I saw her.”
“Would you have told someone else?” he asked. “If they had been on the phone?”
I paused. My pulse sped up. My heart thundered…and I admitted, “Probably not.”
“That’s what I thought,” he replied, but there was no cockiness to his voice. Just honesty, like he got it, like he felt the same but he was just as confused by it as I was. “Well, I saw my parents today and they teased me about marrying some guy I played air hockey with.”
“You told your parents I fucked you?” I asked.
“No, asshole. The real air hockey.”
“I’m kidding.”
“I know.”
“I’ll also pretend I didn’t hear the married word,” I said. “And maybe that your parents know we played air hockey. Are you close?”
“We are,” Sean replied.
“Tell me about them,” slipped past my lips before I could stop it.
So he did. He talked to me about his parents, and about growing up. He told me more about his brother. I mostly listened, asking questions here and there. He didn’t ask me anything about my life and for that I was thankful.
We learned our birthdays were only a couple of days apart—me being older, which was a funny coincidence. “I stayed in the hospital for over a week after being born because I came by emergency C-section due to fetal distress. Where were you born?” I asked.
He told me and…“Holy shit. Our mothers were in the hospital at the same time. That’s fucking crazy,” he said.
“It’s weird,” I said as I continued to lie there in the dark.
“Yeah…it is. I want to know more about you, Straighty.”
I paused. Thought. “Yeah, you’ve got me curious as hell too, Ninja. You free tomorrow night?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“Okay. I’ll text you tomorrow and we can make plans.”
The only sound on the line was his breathing. He had to hear the same and suddenly the moment felt too heavy, too different, too everything so I said the first thing that came to mind, “So…I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the magic orgasm button.”
Sean sucked in a quick, deep breath and then coughed like he choked on the air. It was just the reaction I wanted. “Excuse me?”
For some reason, I wasn’t quite ready to tell him I’d had my finger up my ass right before he called, so I improvised. “The way you were screaming my name the other night? I mean, I know I’m good, but damn. I’m thinking about letting you play around back there with me.”
He groaned hungrily.
“And on that note, I’ll let you go. Have fun trying to go to sleep thinking about that.”
When I ended the call, my cheeks hurt, I smiled so big.
Tonight’s score:
Ethan: One
Sean: Zero
14
Sean
“What we’re seeing here is a range from eight hundred to one thousand percent increase in sales from the products that we’ve rebranded in the past five years.”
I stood in a boardroom before six corporate execs, giving a presentation on the success of my company’s recent campaigns, trying to convince them to choose our firm over a competitor that had been trying to win them over for the past few weeks.
My job was to convince them of my competence in marketing…and my company’s stellar record at repackaging for my client.
But the package I was thinking about right then was my own…because since Ethan had mentioned bottoming last night, I couldn’t stop imagining us in the act with me dominating Ethan and him loving every second of it. Only problem was, the more those thoughts raced through my brain, the more trouble I had concealing what was going on in my pants.