I cleared my throat. “I usually don’t sleep very well in new places. I’m on high alert, or something, when I’m not in my own bed. But I had none of that last night.”
I lay back a little, shifting so that I was on my back. I glanced over at Brody, who was still on his side, smiling at me, his eyes still a little droopy.
“Did you know that you talk in your sleep?” he asked.
A tiny cloud of panic rose up inside me. “What?”
The smile on his face widened a little and his dimples appeared, which only served to make me feel even weaker looking at his beautiful face.
“You totally do,” Brody said. “And it’s adorable. You talk super quietly.”
“I’m afraid to even ask what I said.”
“You shouldn’t be. You mumbled something about a snowstorm, and then later you said something about how ‘football is really hot, actually,’ which made me pretty damn happy.”
“Oh, God,” I groaned, scrubbing my palms over my face. “That is embarrassing as hell.”
“It is not,” Brody protested, reaching out to grab me again and pressing a few kisses to the side of my head. “I’m flattered, Logan. Really. Your sleeping brain thinks that football is hot, and I’d like to think you were dreaming about me out there.”
He was right. I knew he was. Because over the past couple of weeks, I’d actually dreamed about Brody on the football field not once, but three times that I could remember. The dreams always started out fairly innocently, with me just watching him play or watching him on TV. But before long, the dreams would get out of hand.
In one of them, I actually found myself jerking off in front of a TV screen as I watched Brody play football. Never in a million years would I have thought I’d be jerking off to a goddamn football game, but in my dreams, apparently I did.
“Did you have any dreams?” I asked, trying to rapidly change the subject. Brody was still so close to the side of my head, giving me little kisses intermittently, and I felt like my whole body might unravel under his touch at any moment.
It felt so good. It felt criminally good. And I absolutely had to remind myself, over and over again, that I could not get used to this.
“The only dream I remember having was about popcorn. Fucking popcorn.”
I snorted. “What?”
He nodded. “I never get any interesting dreams. I literally had one about being at the DMV the other day.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, giggles escaping me uncontrolled, now. “Holy shit,” I said. “I didn’t even know dreams that boring were possible.”
“Oh, believe me, they are,” Brody said. “I’m thankful that I don’t get any nightmares, but I definitely have spent far too much time in dreams waiting in lines and filling out paperwork.”
“Brody Bryant, a man with innocuous, boring dreams,” I said. “Maybe it’s because your real life is already what a lot of people dream about.”
He shook his head. “A lot of people think they would want my life, but in reality, they wouldn’t actually want it.”
“I don’t know, it seems pretty ideal to me.”
“No way.”
“Yes,” I said. “You can get any guy you want. You’re incredibly strong and athletic. You’re charming. You could make an amazing conversation even with a socially inept person like me. You’ve got it made.”
“And yet,” he said, sitting up and looking all around his room. “I feel like I never, ever have my shit together. I have a sack of potatoes up in my head instead of brain cells.”
“You’re a lot smarter than you give yourself credit for, you know,” I said softly.
He glanced over at me, with something behind his eyes that I couldn’t quite read. “You know when you said I’m too nice to you? I think honestly, you’re too nice to me.”
I let out a breath of air. “Nonsense.”
He glanced around the room again. “But honestly, my sack-of-potatoes brain can’t even remember where the hell I put my phone. Welcome to the world of Brody. I can never find anything here.”
He tossed away the covers and started rooting around in his room. For a while I just watched him, fully naked, as he looked on his shelves, his desk, even under his sheets.
“You look so good even when you’re just looking around for your phone,” I said, barely realizing that I was saying it out loud. “How does it feel to have a body that good?”
He glanced up at me from across the room, giving me another small, dimpled smile. “I’m going to be honest with you, because I know you’ll understand. But the best part about having a strong body isn’t how I look. It’s how it feels.”
I nodded once. “I understand.”
“I really do feel better when I’m stronger,” he said. “I never worry about lifting heavy things. Going up ten flights of stairs doesn’t bug me. I like feeling capable of doing anything physical, you know? I can come over here and do this.”