Heat Stroke (Beach Kingdom 2)

It was the weakest admission in history and Marcus might as well have been ferried off into the sunset on a gondola. “I like you as a friend, too, Jamie Prince.”

“Okay.” Not looking at him, Jamie nodded. “Good.”

“Is that it?”

If so, they were so bringing it in for a hug.

“I wish that was it,” said Jamie, passing Marcus a sideways glance. “I was reminded earlier how hard it was for me when I realized I was gay and I didn’t have an example to learn from. So I just wanted to offer my help. You can take the offer now or in twenty years, okay? Your terms, Diesel. That’s how it should be.” He paused, maintaining eye contact with Marcus. “What I’m offering to you…it’s a serious thing. And I want to make it clear that I’m on your side with no ulterior motive, so last night can’t happen again. Sex convolutes everything.”

Marcus narrowed his eyes slowly. “And convolutes means…”

“Complicates.”

“Right.” Brow furrowed, Marcus turned to face the ocean and attempted to absorb everything Jamie said. He was offering to guide him. To help Marcus make sense of his new needs and feelings. As a friend, only, though. Why did that make him feel hollow? It’s what Marcus needed to happen so he could live the way he’d always lived. No major changes. Nothing that would label him as different. “What happened that day on the beach, Jamie? With the incident?”

Jamie’s look was searching. “Why are you asking me that now?”

Marcus didn’t even know how to answer that. Call it intuition. Maybe he was just more attuned to Jamie than…anyone he could think of. Or maybe he’d suspected since the day of Monster Jam that something more serious had taken place the day Jamie was assaulted. Bottom line, he wanted to know. Needed to know. “Please?”

Jamie’s jaw flexed and he went back to staring out over the dark beach for several moments. All that could be heard was the sound of waves rolling up onto the sand, wind traveling down the boardwalk. Until Jamie spoke, his voice cutting through the humid night air. “His name was Chris. I met him at Bed Bath and Beyond when I was buying a new toilet wand, which should be the most embarrassing part of the story, but it’s not.”

Already Marcus was being hit with regret for asking to hear the story. He didn’t want to think about Jamie in Bed Bath and Beyond with anyone unless it was Marcus. All those sheets and pillows and home fragrances. The scene was too intimate. He’d push through, but Jesus, he already hated Chris’s guts simply for getting to be around Jamie in that setting.

“I’m not sure why I asked him out. I shouldn’t have. He was staring at me, accidentally ending up in the same aisle as me at least five times—”

“That’s pretty aggressive,” Marcus muttered, crossing his arms.

“Says the guy who requests the chair beside mine every day.”

Marcus grunted.

Jamie eyeballed him for a second and kept going. “I was younger and not as exceptionally wise as I am now. So I asked him out in the candles section, just to throw him off. To let him know he was being obvious. I thought he’d say no and scurry off.” His shoulders lifted and fell. “But he said yes. So we went out and…one thing led to another.”

Misery was raining down on Marcus’s head. “Like it did for us last night?”

“No. It was nothing like last night.” Jamie coughed. “I could have taken or left him, to tell you the truth. Even though he was honest in telling me he’d never been with a man, I know now that he wasn’t being authentic. He was being someone else.” He glanced briefly at Marcus. “You’re never anything but authentic. Never anyone but you. At least to me.”

Marcus knew in that moment he was in love with Jamie Prince.

His heartbeat was being conducted like an orchestra and Jamie was holding the stick thing. Christ, he’d probably been in love with him since last summer. Or the one before. It was impossible to remember a time when he wasn’t trying to find a way to get into Jamie’s orbit. Jamie made him feel superhuman. Made him want to be responsible. To make the world a better place.

Jamie made him feel safe.

With his stomach in his mouth, Marcus made a choppy gesture for him to keep going.

“I didn’t hear from Chris for a while. Maybe a week?” Jamie continued. “I wasn’t anxious to go out with him again, either. It didn’t feel right. And maybe he was trying to come to terms with himself, you know? I wanted to respect that. But he showed up drunk at my chair at the end of a shift and…” Marcus held his breath, watching Jamie’s chest start to rise and fall, faster and faster. “A bunch of his friends were with him. He’d told them some story. That I’d come on to him and wouldn’t leave him alone…”