Down by Contact (The Barons 2)

He stopped ranting after his voice rose three levels too high, but no one was paying attention or even facing us. After taking a deep breath, he rested his hands loosely on the table.

“Anyways, I’m not homophobic.”

“Way to circle back to the only thing you actually give a fuck about.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.

“It means you care more about being called a homophobe than figuring out why you do shit that codes as homophobic,” I said flatly. “Which is why I brought this up in the first damn place. Every couple of minutes I catch myself actually enjoying your company now that we’re away from the competition and the adrenaline and the game, but then I remember you making gay jokes on Fox News, and I feel like a fucking idiot.”

He flinched, but there was no way to know whether he just hated being labeled as someone who hates gays or if he was regretful about his actions. There was no way to tell, which was the exact reason why I couldn’t let it go.

“If I was homophobic, I wouldn’t be trying to goad you into talking about your sex life. I wouldn’t be playing that game with you to begin with,” he said. “And—”

“And what?”

Adrián shrugged, frowning. “Nothing. I’m just not a homophobe. My beef with you just makes me do ill-advised things.”

“Why do we even have beef?” I asked incredulously. “We were cool back in the Predators.”

Adrián remained stubbornly silent, but the side of his mouth twitched. It was a tell if I’d ever seen one, but I didn’t know him well enough to know what it translated to. Eventually, I told myself. Adrián talked way too much to keep a secret, even though I had no idea why the seeds of Adrián’s dislike required a top-secret clearance.

“Fine. Subject change.” I mirrored his pose, leaning towards him with my elbows on the table. “Forget the realizing-who-you-want-to-fuck thing. When’d you lose your card?”

Relief swamped the table like the funky sweat of fifty-two dudes in a locker room. This was familiar territory for him. Trading sex stories and bragging about conquests, even teenaged ones.

“I was seventeen,” he said.

“Wow. I had you pegged for a fourteen-year-old stud.”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“Because you’re fine as fuck, and you even looked good back in high school when most people are awkward.”

Adrián poked at his pancakes again but didn’t take a bite. I wondered if he was fidgeting with his syrup-covered fork to distract from the flush rising up his neck. One compliment from a guy, and he didn’t know how to act. It was adorable.

“How do you know?”

“The Internet, smart guy. There’s pics of you and your dad at an MLB All-Star game from a decade ago. You were a good-looking kid.”

“I know, right?” Adrián settled back into his cocky shtick and pretended to preen. “I had a lot of girlfriends, but I wasn’t allowed to date until I was seventeen. And I was too chicken to fuck anyone at school and get in trouble.”

“You’re messing with me.”

“Nope. I was a goody-goody. My parents had me on serious lock. All my dad cared about was me going pro in whatever sport I chose, and my mom—well, my mom didn’t think teenage boys should date.”

“’Cause hetero boys are scum?”

Adrián laughed. “Yeah, pretty much. She didn’t want to inflict me on someone until I was more mature, I guess. Gave me a ton of speeches about cousins of mine who turned out real shitty with kids by different women and didn’t do right by none of them. She wanted me to be, like, a paragon.”

“Huh.” His mom sounded a lot like my mom. Maybe we were secretly related. “So, who’d you give your laminated and protected-by-mama V-card to?”

“This girl Daniella. Total cliché, but she was a cheerleader. We did it in the back of her dad’s truck, and I hurt my back.”

I snorted out a laugh. “Sexy story.”

“I’m not trying to impress you.” Adrián flipped me off, but he was snickering at himself. “How about you? Lemme guess—fourteen?”

“Yup.”

“Man, I’m basically Dionne Warwick over here. All I need is a headband and a hotline.”

Damn, this dude was making me laugh at his ridiculous jokes. The more I tried to stifle my guffaws, the louder they got, until we were both cracking up together like a couple of dorks.

“Anyway, it was an older guy. He was in high school but didn’t make the football team, so we both did the Pop Warner league together. I was better, and he was salty about it, so at first we just talked shit to each other, even though he was a few years older.”

Adrián nodded slowly. He squinted at me as if visualizing the scene. “Okay, okay, I can see where this is going. He was creeping on you.”

“Nah. I was creeping on him. He should have told me to step off since he was sixteen, but he didn’t, and shit happened.”