Bromosexual

What if there’s a page he keeps all to himself?

A page that I just got a brief, unprecedented glimpse of?

I bring my head around the corner of his doorway. The room is dark, but I see him on the bed on his stomach—and he’s wearing only a tight pair of black boxer briefs, having stripped out of the rest of his clothes. He’s also fast asleep and snoring lightly.

Here I am again, staring at Stefan Baker’s sexy butt while he sleeps under my roof.

I sink against the doorframe, staring at him, all my unasked questions and worries dying on my parted lips. Was it really just a straight-guy tease? Or was it a line he was throwing my way?—a line he hoped I would be daring enough to catch?

Is Stefan Baker, my lifelong buddy and crush, actually gay?

12

STEFAN

I wake up to the crackling sizzle and intoxicating aroma of bacon being cooked.

That’s about the best damned way to wake up, if you ask me. And there’s many ways. Like a blow job, for instance.

Bacon always beats a blow job wakeup, by far.

I’m out of the bed and tramping down the hall. In the kitchen, Ryan is hard at work making us a big breakfast all over again, just like last Saturday morning.

I could get used to this.

Better not get used to it. After how you acted and what you said last night, there’s no telling how soon you’ll have overstayed your welcome. Just a few days is what I told him—and it’s already been a week.

I watch him for a while, since he hasn’t noticed me yet. He moves his hips a bit while he cooks. It’s like he has a song with a decent beat going on in his head that no one can hear but him. I catch myself smirking as I watch him move, fighting an urge to go over there and scare the shit out of him by giving him a hard smack on his dancing ass.

See, now that I know he’s gay, everything’s different. All those times I’d tease him, or grab him, or play some silly joke on him, it meant something different to him. I’d get such a kick out of it, my heart racing as I would rush up behind him and lock him into a standing full-nelson, then feel as he struggled against me to break free, grunting and laughing and squirming. Maybe Ryan liked being trapped in that hold against me more than he let on.

I sure as hell enjoyed it every time.

And I’d enjoy it right now—or, at least, if he didn’t have our hot breakfast at his disposal in front of him. He’d probably fling burning-hot eggs at my face if I tried.

Whether it’s because I breathe too loud or Ryan’s sixth sense kicks in, he turns around suddenly, spots me, fumbles with his spatula, and a sausage patty takes a dive to the floor.

“Fuck,” he spits out, going for the sausage, then he tosses it into the trash with another muffled curse word. “Morning,” he calls out irritably over his shoulder as he returns to the counter.

Hmm. He doesn’t seem happy to see me.

And for that matter, he barely saw me. One tiny glance and a prickly greeting.

His fretfulness shoves me off the chipper path I was walking. Is he pissed about last night? Is he acting weird because I finally called him out on the gay thing?

So naturally I don’t give him any space and, instead, pry. “Morning there, Chef Caulfield,” I greet him, then drift up to the counter and lean back against it, arms folded, and watch him cook. “You got quite a breakfast feast in the works here.”

He glances back at me, then sighs as he returns his attention back to the eggs he’s scrambling, patties he’s flipping, and bacon sizzling on a griddle. “Are you always going to insist on wearing next to nothing whenever we eat?”

“Shit. You’re actually complaining?” I smirk. “You’re getting to see the goods for free.”

“So that’s a ‘yes’, then?” he throws over his shoulder.

“I like eating with my balls out. What can I say?”

“Remind me never to take you out to a restaurant.”

“Don’t pretend like you aren’t enjoying it,” I taunt him, eager to get a rise out of him.

He keeps flipping sausages and poking at the bacon on the griddle, ignoring me.

For some reason, I just can’t let all of my thoughts from last night go. I’m staring at the back of Ryan’s head and I’m still trying to picture all the little moments from our childhood fit into this new idea I have of him. It makes me wonder if certain things meant more to him than I realized.

Is it weird that it makes me even more protective of him?

The asshole kids who would try to bully him, or mock him, or say dumb shit … I want to kick all of their asses all over again, even if it would have landed me in three months of detention a year. It would have been worth it.