Charming Like Us (Like Us 7)

His smile is gone. “Yeah?” He’s nodding a lot, too much, and my muscles constrict. Didn’t mean to hurt him. But fucking ugh, I can’t lie, and I don’t want to rush into sex with Jack.

The bed seems like a danger zone.

I nod back. “You know I can take the couch and you can take the—”

“The couch is perfect,” Jack says, hunching again. He winces as he tries to straighten up, and he explains before I ask, “My back is so tight, dude. I should’ve stretched this morning before handling equipment.”

His choice of words drops my eyes.

Drops his eyes.

I recall the feeling of his erection brushing against mine in the elevator. “You handle equipment often?” I joke.

Jack wears a forty-watt, tired smile. “Yeah. When can I handle yours?” He knows the double-meaning of all his words as he says them, and it makes me think all the times he’s joked with me, like about “top” and “bottom” Jenga pieces at Farrow’s bachelor party—he wasn’t that innocent.

“When you aren’t falling over.”

He stretches his arms behind his back.

“You still feeling strain?”

“Mmmh, yeah. Right here.” He taps his upper back.

“You want me to crack it?” I ask.

“You know how?”

I nod. “I studied Kinesiology. Sports medicine. It’s actually how I met Farrow. We had some classes together at Yale since the sciences overlap.”

Jack quickly agrees to let me help him out, and I tell him to rotate. His back to me, he faces the kitchen, and I come behind his lopsided stance. “Stand straight. Cross your arms over your chest,” I instruct.

He crosses them.

I never considered cracking someone’s back an intimate affair. But as I press my chest up against his shoulder blades, my jaw teasingly near his jaw—I’m distinctly in tune with how my breath warms his skin and how I can hear and feel the beat of our hearts. Heavy, loud.

Proud.

His smile is going to ruin me. Frat bro. Repeating that isn’t making my cock soft like I thought it would, so at this point, I doubt anything about him will.

I wrap my arms around Jack, holding each of his sculpted biceps. Like I’m hugging him from behind. “Breathe in,” I tell him.

He inhales.

“And out.” I lean back with him in my grip as he exhales. The cracking sound comes, then his sigh of relief.

When I draw away, my arm skates against his bicep, and his gaze descends my muscular build from head…to toe.

My chest rises, blood sweltering. I can feel myself resisting the pull towards Jack. I’m just afraid of where this ends.

It has short-term fling written all over it.

Normally I wouldn’t even give a shit. But I just wanted more for myself.

I detach from his attractive sphere and start to chuck off leather sofa cushions.

Jack stops me. “Don’t pull out the sofa bed. I can just sleep on it.”

I hesitate because he clearly has muscle aches. But he’s yawning again, too tired to have a full-on debate.

Fine.

I toss them back on the couch, and Jack takes a slouching seat with another sigh. “This is a good place to be stuck, I guess.”

“You guess?” I give him a look. “You fail Geometry in high school, Long Beach? Your place is half the size of mine.”

“Mmmhmm, true.” His eyelids weigh heavy. They close, then open. He’s even more exhausted than I realized. Evidence: he’s still wearing Allbirds. I don’t remember a time Jack has ever kept his shoes on past the doormat.

I kneel in front of the couch. My fingers gingerly unlace the sneakers. When I shift off his left shoe, he glances down at me.

I meet his eyes as I untie the right laces. “You know you don’t have to follow Charlie the whole time. You can grab a couple hours of footage and call it a night.”

“I want to make sure I have everything,” Jack replies softly. “I haven’t figured out the narrative structure of the pilot yet…and I figure…more footage will make that easier on me in the long-run.”

I know next to nothing about filming a documentary. And Jack only has one person to rely on. His seventeen-year-old brother.

I feel badly I’ve made it harder on him by requesting a small crew. But then I remember how annoying it is to have five people shoving around me with cameras and booms and I’m less upset by this outcome.

I pull off Jack’s right shoe. “You should get some sleep—”

“Wait,” he cuts in. “Just…” He sits up more on the couch, legs spread open. “Can we talk?”

About the kiss.

I ask, “Yeah, we can talk if you don’t fall asleep on me.”

His lip quirks. “I won’t. I’m really stoked—” He tries to catch another yawn.

I decide not to point it out. “Not shocked you’re stoked. You are Mr. McCheerful.”

He laughs quietly. “You’re Mr. McDreamy then?”

“Oh no, I’m Mr. McSnacky.” I grin. “And you’ve been eating my heart out.” My friends would be giving me such shit for that line, but I’m too confident to care.