“Calm down, shoot, Jimmy,” I grunt, peering out the window. “Wasn’t it the building back there? The hotel parking garage?”
“Which friggin’ one?? Boy, you ain’t helpin’.”
“Why do you sound twice as Texan when you’re angry?”
“Not now, Bobby!” A car honks. Jimmy pokes his head out the window. “Go toot at someone else! I ain’t from around these here parts! Hey!” He faces front and smacks his steering wheel. “Get out of the dang way! The light’s green! Move yer ass, move, move!”
I suffer about another forty-four minutes of Jimmy’s one-man circus act before we’re—at long last—dumping ourselves into our hotel room for the night.
A hotel room that smells like soggy wood and condoms.
“I am not settin’ my bag on that bed,” I state.
“Quit your whinin’. It isn’t that bad. You want mine instead?” Jimmy pats his, making the old springs squeak and squawk. “The hotel had a four-and-a-half-star rating.”
“That’s what you call ‘a rating bought and paid for’.” I set my bag on the desk instead, then wince as I notice a sticky spot under the lamp. I pray that’s a coffee ring or dried tea or something.
Jimmy’s suitcase is already open—yeah, he couldn’t just bring a bag; he needed to bring his whole wardrobe—and he’s fished out three shirts, which he slaps to his chest as he faces me. “Alright, bud. You gotta tell me what I should wear tonight. I’m thinkin’ the tapered black button-up.”
I laugh. “Really, dude?”
“Don’t give me that look. I have to look my best. You know I don’t half-ass nothin’!”
“Sure. You just want to steal all the attention for yourself.”
Jimmy snorts at that. “What’re you talkin’ about? It isn’t my fault if I get stared at everywhere I go. I got Strong genes.”
“And tight jeans,” I add with a roll of my eyes, then peel open my bag and fish around inside.
“Hey, they aren’t any tighter than I usually wear!”
“You realize every boy in the nightclub will be starin’ hard at that tight Wrangler-clad ass of yours, right?” I throw back at him as I keep looking through my bag. “You’re fishing with premium-grade bait in a sea of hungry, hungry fishes.”
“So? Isn’t that the point? Wait a sec.” He turns his ass my way and peers back at me over his shoulder, wiggling his booty in my direction. “Are you sayin’ you think my ass is—what’s that phrase you just used?—‘premium-grade’ …?”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“Are you tellin’ me I got a premium butt, Bobby?”
“Ugh, I’m goin’ in here to get ready.” I grab my bag right back up from the desk—which makes a noise akin to ripping a sticky old Band-Aid off a knee—and push my way into the tiny bathroom.
I start fussing with my hair in the mirror. After trying (and ultimately failing) to get a proper part happening, I resort to just tousling it every which way, going for a “whatever” look.
And that’s precisely how I feel right now: whatever.
I give up with a demonstrative sigh, slapping my hands to the counter as I lean toward my reflection and glare at my face. “Can you tell me why we are even doing this, Jimmy?”
“Aw, don’t start with that again,” he grunts from the room.
“Seriously,” I exclaim to the mirror and the crack in its corner and the shard of rust running down its frame. “I don’t need to find myself a boyfriend on some sticky dance floor.”
“You’re gettin’ nervous. That’s what this is.”
I roll my eyes at the mirror. “No, I’m not.”
“Yeah, you’re lookin’ for excuses to hightail it outta here. I bet you’re a minute away from griping about a sudden headache.”
I pull away from the mirror to give him a contemptuous look through the opened bathroom door.
Instead, I catch Jimmy facing the bed, his broad back to me, with both his shirt and his pants off.
My eyes drop to his ass in a pair of the tightest, tiniest, black low-rise bikini briefs I have ever seen. They’re so low-rise, I can see the tops of his smooth buns and a wink of his crack peeking out of them. His Venus dimples add the perfect punctuation to his exquisitely tapered lower back, tight and cinched and slender.
He’s fumbling with a shirt, I imagine unbuttoning it so as to put it on, but his effort takes long enough that he ends up just standing there in those tiny-ass things for ages as he figures out the buttons on whatever fancy shirt he finally went with.
I realize after a second that I’m holding my breath.
My eyes are not physically capable of pulling away from that model-boy butt of his. A guy shouldn’t have feelings like this for his best friend. A guy shouldn’t be ogling his best friend like this.
A guy shouldn’t be having fantasies of motor-boating his buddy’s bountiful butt cheeks.