The Tight End (Red's Tavern 6)

I slowed my pace, turning back to him and walking by his side. “You want to know something? The first real party I went to, back in high school, I ended up alone, plastered to the couch and petting two huskies.”

“The illustrious Brody Bryant wasn’t the life of the party?”

“Not on that night,” I said. “I had too much peach schnapps and felt like I was going to hurl.”

“But then you just got to hang out with huskies.”

“No, I puked,” I said. “Three times. Then I chugged water and hung out with the huskies.”

“Sounds peachy,” he said, a grin on his face.

“Ugh. No. Never mention peach-flavored anything to me again,” I said. “If I even smell peach schnapps I have a gut reaction, to this day.”

He reached up suddenly, brushing his fingers through my hair as we ambled along. I swear my heart skipped a beat, and I paused briefly on the sidewalk.

“Just a leaf,” he said, “Sorry.” He pulled the fallen leaf off of my hair and tossed it away, crunching his boot over it as he started to walk again.

I exhaled as I followed him.

What was with me? I had been convinced he was going to run his hand through my hair, pull me in, and kiss me. And in that split second, I’d basically lost my mind about it. Christ, I hadn’t felt like this since I was a teenager, when I’d just realized I was gay and any smile from a hot guy felt like a gift from above.

I’d forgotten how thrilling it could feel. And Logan, bless his heart, had no clue about the effect he had on me.

“I promise to stick to other drinks tonight,” he said. “No peach schnapps. As long as you promise not to let any frat boys get me into a keg stand, or anything.”

“I’ll stick by you the whole time, don’t even worry about it,” I said. I knew we’d have a good time, but I racked my brain, trying to think of things that would make Logan at least slightly comfortable at his first frat party. “Hey, maybe you can pretend this is some important night in history. Like, nerds a hundred years from now will be talking about tonight, wondering what normal people like us were up to.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked, turning to me. “What’s the amazing historical event that’s going to happen tonight?”

I shrugged a shoulder. “Who knows. Maybe tonight will be the first night aliens land on Earth, but they turn out to be really nice aliens, who just want to bake us cookies all the time.”

Logan laughed. A beautiful sound. “Bake us cookies?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Like nice, old grandmas.”

“Grandma aliens.”

“Now you’re getting it.”

“Meeting cookie aliens would definitely be a massive point in human history,” Logan said. “Maybe the most important historical event of all time, honestly.”

“Then that’s perfect,” I said. “If you’re feeling nervous about being at a big frat party, just pretend that there are aliens descending in spaceships all over the globe, ready to put on aprons and act like our loving grandmothers.”

“And 100 years from now, some guy in college will be studying, trying to remember that today’s date was when the cookie aliens first came,” he said.

“And he’ll imagine our drunk asses at a party, to help make it more relatable.”

“I told you, it’s the best way to study,” Logan said.

“Well, I think you’re going to have a ton of fun at this party,” I said.

He let out a sigh, his breath making a brief cloud in the air in front of us. “Sometimes I feel like a little kid who needs his friend to hold his hand as they walk up to a roller coaster, or something. It’s just a frat party. I feel like I should be better at this by now.”

I glanced behind me. We were well into college town by now, winding through the residential streets that led down to a row of frat houses. A canopy of trees hung overhead, with light from the streetlamps filtering down through the branches and thinning leaves. Groups of students occasionally walked by, but right now, we were alone.

I reached down, grabbing Logan’s hand, lacing my fingers through his.

“There you go,” I said, giving his hand a squeeze. “Better now?”

It was meant to just play into his joke about needing someone to hold his hand. But the moment my hand was on his, it felt much more real. We started walking slowly, hand in hand, and fuck.

It almost felt better than winning tonight’s game.

I pulled in a long breath of cold night air through my nose, trying to calm the quiet storm inside my chest.

I had to stay strong. There was a reason why I didn’t let myself fall for people, and I’d made a promise I wouldn’t as long as I was still in college. Maybe I wasn’t falling for Logan, anyway. It was refreshing to be around him, but even without my rules, he probably wouldn’t want a guy like me long term. No matter how kind I tried to be, at the end of the day, I was a sports junkie who could barely keep my life in order otherwise. Logan deserved to end up with a guy equally as smart and driven as he was. I could picture him marrying a rocket scientist or surgeon one day, the two of them vacationing in the Caribbean and reading academic papers next to each other in bed every night. Solving the problems of the world together.