You Complete Me - 8. Chapter 8 - An Arrangement

Meg ended up staying the night, using her usual cover story of a sleepover with a friend. Jake would rather have been left alone to think, but he didn’t feel right kicking her out after sex. She wouldn’t have taken it well, and it would have cemented his suspicion that he had used her.

They took her car to school, though Jake planned on catching a ride home with one of his teammates. Meg was practically skipping at his side as they walked across the parking lot to class, drawing a couple of curious looks their way that made Jake wonder if a good portion of the school thought they had broken up. He had initially thought Meg was being a little egotistical in thinking that people cared about their relationship, but it seemed she may have been onto something – Jake had unwittingly become half of a power-couple, and Meg was absolutely basking in this fact.

One of those curious looks come from Luke, who caught up with them just past the doors. Meg and Luke very openly disliked each other, so she finally detached herself from Jake to walk with some friends to her P.E. class early. Luke shook his head after her. “You guys are like a soap opera,” he said, once she was out of earshot.

Jake sighed. “I didn’t mean it to be.”

“What happened to calling it quits?”

“That was the plan, but she talked me into sticking it out—”

“Oh, Jake, no,” Luke interrupted, groaning. “Stick it out? For how long?”

“Until graduation.”

“That’s…” Luke counted silently. “…Ten months from now?”

Jake winced. “That sounds a lot longer when you say it out loud.” They had reached their classroom, joining the queue that typically formed as they waited for Mrs. Arthurs. He caught a glimpse of Nic passing by, and immediately looked away before their eyes could meet. “I feel like we’re due for a good house party,” he commented, suddenly wishing he were anywhere but here.

Luke, who had been texting – probably the same mystery girl he had been talking to lately – paused long enough to give Jake a raised eyebrow. “There’s the Lombardis’ thing next month, but I thought you were trying to give this ‘student’ thing a last-minute try.”

Jake wrinkled his nose. “I know, I’m just curious. When is it?”

David and Daniel, the Lombardi twins and lacrosse champions, were from the wealthiest family in town – probably the entire state – and they had a blowout party at least once a year. Jake had been to a few of them in his freshman and sophomore years, but he hadn’t wanted anything to do with the twins over the last year or so. Their older sister was Stella Lombardi, Ellie’s ex, which had quite a bit to do with Jake distancing himself from the family.

“I think in late September – the weekend of a teacher’s workday.”

Jake weighed the pros and cons, eventually deciding that it probably wasn’t a good idea. It would feel like a betrayal to Ellie, midterms would be a few weeks after, and he was probably doomed to go with Meg. Furthermore, Samwell would be back by then, along with the reinstatement of curfews. “Unless Meg pushes it, I don’t think so. You going with anyone special? Jane Doe, maybe?”

Luke grinned down at his phone. “We’ll see.”

“So, who is she?”

Jake had asked before, but Luke usually dodged the question. This time, he looked like he might actually spill. “It’s nothing serious. She’s not really the partying type anyway...”

“Come on, man. There’s nothing sadder than dating a girl you’re not into, so it’s not like I'm in a place to judge.”

He chuckled uncertainly. “I suppose so. It’s Jazzy.”

Jake mentally skimmed through a long catalogue of students. “Jazzy. As in, my tutor, Jazzy?” As soon as he said it, he remembered giving her Luke’s number at the start of the semester and it all made sense. That sneaky little bookworm.

“Yeah. You’re not pissed, are you?”

“No, why would I be?”

“She used to have a thing for you, so I thought you two might have...”

“Oh, no,” Jake laughed. “That rumor got to you, too? She’s just a friend. I’m happy for you, really.” At least someone’s love life was thriving. The two didn’t seem like each other’s most obvious choice, but the more Jake thought about it, the more he warmed up to the idea. He was definitely going to rib Jazzy about it later, though.

Luke gave him a relieved smile, and Jake realized that this must have been weighing on him for a bit. “Thanks, man.” He looked like he had more to say, but at that moment their teacher unlocked the door, initiating another dull day of classes.

Meg remained at Jake’s side between periods all day, something that Jake didn’t mind so much today. He felt pensive and uncharacteristically withdrawn, so he hid behind her as something of a social shield. The news about Luke and Jazzy made him look at their own relationship even more critically, and he found himself asking some uncomfortable questions: Can I really stick this out for a year? Just because I don’t have feelings doesn’t mean I don’t like her at all, right? What will she do if we do break up? What will I do?

He kept these traitorous thoughts to himself, obviously. By lunch time he was glued to his phone to avoid talking to anyone, texting off and on with his sister. Chatter clamored around him from a mixed group of Meg’s cheerleader friends and their athletic boyfriends. Luke was sitting with Nic, Shiv, and a few other people Jake didn’t know at a different table across the courtyard. It made Jake a little nervous, seeing them together like that, but he figured that if Nic said anything he’d be one of the first to hear about it.

Jake’s phone buzzed as he was in the middle of responding to something funny Ellie said about AA. He quickly finished the reply and checked Instagram: a follow request from some girl he vaguely remembered serving at the restaurant. She’d left her handle on the back of a receipt, but she’d apparently decided to find him instead. Jake dismissed it: he had enough to worry about without involving yet another person into his relationship. As he idly scrolled, having neglected his feed over the last few days, he was recommended to follow an unfamiliar page: @_artbynic. The only mutuals were Luke and, interestingly, a new guy on his team named Kenny. Jake only hesitated briefly.

As he’d guessed from the name, it was a page dedicated to Nic’s art. The description was straightforward: “Art page. DM for requests. Everything created by @hookohara.” Jake knew that Nic made some money from creating art, but he had never seen anything by him. There were only about a year’s worth of uploads, so it didn’t take him long to briefly flip through most of them, growing increasingly impressed. There were sketches and paintings, most of them featuring dark backgrounds with splashes of color, the subjects often urban settings with a twist of fantasy or horror. Glowing eyes peering from a gutter on a crowded street. Buildings with the silhouettes of gargoyles against an ethereal night sky. A serpentine dragon coiling around a modern skyscraper.

Jake scrolled back up to the description and lingered on the IG handle of Nic’s personal page for a moment. He didn’t think to follow Nic when he first moved here – when it would have been less awkward – but he was pretty tempted now. Unfortunately, the page was private, so he couldn’t even lurk anonymously.

“Whatcha up to?”

Jake flinched, startled, and fumbled with his phone before dropping it face-down on the table. He looked over at Meg, who was no longer gossiping with friends and leaning affectionately into his shoulder. He bit his tongue against the irritated reply he almost gave her, schooling his features into something less guilty. “Just talking to Ellie.”

She frowned ever so slightly. “Oh. How’s she doing?”

“She was just telling me about this guy she met in AA, actually,” Jake said, brightening a little. “She’s pretty sure he’s court-ordered to go there; he’s sleazy but in a funny way– ”

“That’s not really what I asked,” Meg interjected, with an airy, somewhat patronizing laugh. “You’ve been so out of it today. Are you off meds?”

Jake was usually unmedicated between exams, which Meg was aware of, but it was interesting how that wasn’t a problem for Meg when he needed to have an erection. He shrugged and kept his thoughts to himself, as he always did. “Ellie’s fine. Long story short, the guy crashed his ex-wife's car for insurance and he hits on everyone at the meetings.”

“Never a dull moment around your sister, huh?”

The way she said it sounded like it wasn’t a completely innocent observation, but she turned away from Jake before he could come up with an equally passive-aggressive response. His phone buzzed on the table, and he picked it up, expecting to read more regaling tales of the insurance-fraud-AA guy. What he saw instead made his heart skip a beat.

@hookohara has accepted your follow request.

What follow request? He inspected the notification, realizing with growing horror that he must have done it when he dropped his phone. Compulsively, Jake glanced up in the direction of Nic’s table. Nic was looking back at him with slightly bemused smile on his face, his phone in hand, before he turned to listen to something someone was saying next to him. Jake looked back down at his phone, heart thudding, as he considered the implications of this development. What if Nic took this as an invitation to come onto him again?

He went to Nic’s IG and started scrolling.

*** 

Jake was still scrolling by the time his free period rolled around an hour later.

Not consistently, of course, but since Meg sensed that she had annoyed him and left him alone for the rest of lunch, Jake took on an almost voyeuristic fascination in the snapshots of Nic’s personal life that he decided to share. It wasn’t much.

He wasn’t surprised to find that Nic didn’t seem to have many friends, just the same half-dozen or so recurring characters, some presumably from his old school. In most of those pictures, his vibe seemed slightly detached, aloof – even in the ones featuring Luke. There was an absence of boyfriends and the hard-partying culture that Luke had said his cousin was a part of, but Jake didn’t think much of it. He didn’t post most of his after-midnight life on IG either. The only exception to this was a picture from a little over a year ago, of Nic kissing a lanky, heavily tattooed guy. The framing of the shot – slightly unfocused and from across a dark, crowded room, probably at a house party – led Jake to believe that the couple didn’t know they were being photographed. Yet it still ended up on his page.

In Nic’s stories, Jake found a lot of selfies of Nic messing around with makeup and he was clearly skilled. In some of them he was almost unrecognizable, which was probably the intent, but Jake preferred the more subtle looks. He couldn’t identify a tube of mascara if his life depended on it, but he’d heard Meg roasting enough girls that “looked like clowns” to at least know when someone wasn’t good at it. He wondered why Nic never donned those looks at school; Jake undoubtedly found Nic attractive either way, but it was much easier to admit as much when he was wearing makeup.

He must have still looked a bit dreamy by the time he settled down to study with Jazzy, because she took one look at him and giggled. “I guess you and Meg are, um...doing well.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, she was just bragging about you last period.” Jazzy turned a little pink as she spoke, making Jake wonder what exactly was said, but she rushed on before he could ask. “And you looked kind of dazed, so I thought it had something to do with her. Must be nice, having someone that makes you happy like that.”

Jake wanted to vent to Jazzy about how “happy” he was, but she wasn’t here for that sort of guidance. They had more important things to talk about, and it certainly wasn’t chemistry. “From what I’ve heard, you do have someone.”

Jazzy immediately dropped her gaze, turning even redder. “I don't know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re so convincing right now. Luke told me that you two were talking.”

“And that’s all we’re doing.”

“How could you, Jazzy?” Jake continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “I thought we had something special.”

“Jake - ”

“The way you looked at me when I tried to define catheter -”

“Cathode.”

“ - cathode, and I knew that it was love at first sight. But you betrayed me, dragging me into your evil plot to get my innocent friend’s number, you liar.”

“Are you done?” Jazzy asked flatly, her lips twitching. “Because we have work to do.”

Jake shrugged, grinning. “Yeah, I guess I’m done. Why didn’t you just ask him if you liked him, though? He actually thought we had a thing.”

“It's not as easy for some of us, you know,” she said snippily. “Let me see your homework and we’ll go over what went wrong.”

He handed over his graded, most recent chemistry homework, which was riddled with red ink and had been turned in only about three-quarters done. “Might be easier to find what I did right,” he muttered wryly. As she looked over it, Jake’s eyes wandered to the assignment Jazzy had been working on just before he’d arrived. She was also taking AP Calc, but by a different teacher. “You missed a factor, by the way.”

Jazzy was still looking at chemistry. “Hmm?”

He tapped her homework. “That. When you factored out to find the limit you forgot to cancel out this out.” The area where she was to show her work was smudged with eraser marks.

Jazzy considered it for a moment. “You’re right. Good catch – I don’t know how I missed that.” Unlike most people, she didn’t express any surprise when Jake showed off his math skills. “You should consider tutoring math here. There are never enough people that can do Calc.”

Jake shook his head. “I’m no good at explaining things.”

“You’re captain of the rugby team.”

“Just half of it, and that’s different.”

Jazzy’s expression clearly showed she didn’t understand how, but she let it go. “Fine, then. On your homework – I don’t think drawing a cat will get you any credit.”

“I was stuck and had five minutes before class. And it’s a raccoon – see the little mask?”

“You could have just written down a random formula.”

“If I’m going to get a zero for the question, I may as well be creative. I thought Uzbeck would appreciate it, but I guess not.” His teacher had written a few red question marks next to his doodle.

Jazzy sighed. “Creativity is for art class. Now, we’re going to dissect this from the beginning...”

They spent the remainder of the hour painstakingly breaking down each problem. By the end of it, Jake understood the homework, surprised at how easily he could solve the problems independently after Jazzy explained it. She had a way of making the most complex of subjects seem effortless, and while that made her a great tutor, it also made him frustrated that he couldn’t simply see things the way she did on the first pass. Or even on the third or fourth. Sometimes it felt like this aspect of his ADHD bled into other aspects of his life outside of academics, too.

*** 

“Nic! Wake up!”

Joey’s voice was in a harsh whisper, but Nic sat bolt upright as if he had been doused with cold water. Chest heaving, he blearily squinted at the small silhouette of his brother in the doorway. “What?”

Joey was wringing his hands. “You were having a nightmare. Yelling.”

The last thing Nic remembered before being woken up was being chased by someone. Abstract fear. The details were slipping away with every second that he stared at Joey, which was probably a good thing. He could feel his hair sticking to the back of his neck and his shirt was soaked. Looking at his phone to check the time, Nic rubbed his face. Five-thirty. “Sorry. Is anyone else up?”

Joey shook his head. “Should I get Mom?”

“No, just try to get some rest.”

His brother was hesitant, chewing on his bottom lip. Out of obligation, he had recently appointed himself the guardian of Nic’s nightmares. Joey had had an uptick in them himself since Amos once told him that real men didn’t need nightlights, and as a result, Nic had periodically woken up to find Joey curled up in his bed over the past few months. The kid felt like he owed him.

“I’m not going back to sleep, anyway,” Nic assured him. He got out of bed and ushered Joey across the hallway, back into his own room.

Once his brother had been taken care of, it was still too early to do anything but kill time. Nic took a quick shower to rinse the sweat off, then wandered around an uncharacteristically silent apartment with his phone in hand. He sat in Amos’s favorite chair for a moment in a mild act of rebellion, but it smelled too strongly of cigarette smoke and machine oil for him. Fresh air would be better.

He didn’t have much luck finding any on their tiny balcony, which was slowly being taken over by his mother’s plants. It was a surprisingly cool, overcast morning that still managed to be almost as stuffy as it was inside. Even without the sun, the summer humidity made it feel like he was breathing through a wet blanket.

Nic fruitlessly dusted some pollen off the single, rusty folding chair to take a seat. It was during these rare, quiet moments that he felt an urge to just…leave. Not do something as dramatic as running away, per se, but just placidly exist somewhere else, as someone else. Someone that hadn’t experienced anything to have nightmares over or had a habit of making enemies wherever he went. Nic sighed. He didn’t really have anyone else to blame but himself, really.

The thing with Jake had been on his mind a lot lately. It had been almost a week since their locker room tryst, and each time Nic saw Jake, the jock seemed to be doing his very best to avoid him. It bothered Nic a little more than it should, but he was on the verge of taking a hint and forgetting about the whole thing until Jake randomly requested to follow him on IG yesterday. Judging by the way Jake stayed glued to his phone afterwards - to the point of ignoring his bitchy girlfriend at times - Nic had a feeling that he was going through his pictures.

Nic had sent him a friend request as well, and many hours later, as Nic was getting ready for bed the night before, it was approved. He was tempted to message Jake and ask why he had suddenly become a stalker, but he ended up curiously perusing his profile for a while instead. He expected a lot of self-indulgent shirtless selfies or uncomfortably personal couple photos with Meg, but Jake seemed to keep mostly to himself on social media. When he did update, the content seemed to be equal thirds partying with friends, stills and clips of him dominating the rugby field, and...cars, of all things. About a year ago he started documenting the process of fixing up an old BMW with his father, using terms in the captions that Nic wasn’t familiar with.

In short, they had little in common. Nic shouldn’t care about him reaching out or his weirdly enthralling BMW journey, but a small, nervous part of him did. He didn’t think Jake was planning anything nefarious, but Nic didn’t like not knowing what this standoff would lead to. At least a fight would make it clear where they stood.

Nic listened to music and brooded for only a few minutes more before he noticed that it was approaching the time he would usually wake up. He walked back into the apartment just as his mother rounded the corner into the kitchen, her hair still damp from the shower. Her eyes fluttered in surprise when she saw him.

“You’re just coming in?” she asked him, looking suspicious.

Nic rolled his eyes. “Yes, Mom, I was out all night in my pajamas and snuck in through the second-floor balcony. Makes perfect sense.”

Kathy blushed, covering her face. “That was a dumb question, wasn’t it? It’s early, Nic.”

“I couldn’t sleep, if you must know.”

She seemed to accept that as a plausible answer, brushing past him to get started on breakfast almost before Nic had finished speaking. “I’m sorry, hon. I might have some melatonin that you can take tonight.”

Xanax usually did the trick short-term, but they had a history. “It’s whatever. I’ll go make sure Joey’s up.”

“Nic, we can talk – ” But he was already gone.

As Nic expected, Joey had managed to get back into a sleep deep enough to miss his alarm. It was a regular enough occurrence that he had to be checked on once or twice every morning; if left to his own devices, the kid could easily sleep until noon. By the time Nic returned to the kitchen with a yawning Joey, he could hear Amos noisily stirring in the master bedroom.

Kathy was portioning out only slightly burnt eggs onto plates. She was an average cook on a good day, but she tried. Nic wordlessly started packing her and Amos’s lunches next to her and she shot him a grateful smile, their earlier awkward exchange already forgotten.

“You sure you don’t want to talk about it?” she asked him quietly.

“I’m sure.”

She seemed to accept that for a moment, but Nic could tell she was working up the courage to ask him something. “So, I saw something while I was doing your laundry yesterday...”

Nic flinched, knowing instantly what she was talking about. He’d tossed the jumpsuit in his clothes basket when he got home from the thrift store and hadn’t even noticed it had since been emptied. He usually did his own laundry, but Kathy sometimes took it upon herself if she was already heading downstairs to do it.

“Don’t worry, I checked the tag before I washed it. It’s quite lovely.”

“Oh...thanks, I guess. Shiv picked it out for me.” He shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “At a thrift store. We thought it would be funny – for a Halloween costume or something.”

She didn’t buy it for one second. “I see. Well, feel free to look through my closet for accessories for your ‘costume’ when the time comes.”

Nic scoffed. “Yeah, that would be perfect for a period piece.” He just barely dodged her playful cuff aimed at his arm.

Their moment ended quite abruptly when Amos slouched into the room. He was still in his boxers, probably only drawn out of bed by the smell of food. He grumbled a “morning” to room at large and dropped into a chair at the table next to Joey. Kathy joined him a moment later with two cups of coffee. Nic stayed in the kitchen, nibbling on a piece of toast, preferring to stay as far away from Amos as possible.

Not including screaming, Nic and Amos didn’t talk to each other much normally, but Nic hadn’t uttered a word to him since their last altercation. It still pissed him off to even think about it, and Kathy was finally starting to notice the tension. She looked back and forth between her husband and her son and patted the chair next to her. “Have a seat, Nic.”

“It’s just toast; I can stand.”

“You’ll drop crumbs.”

“The roaches need to eat, too.”

“Don’t sass your mother,” Amos growled.

Nic glared at him, but he knew he was outnumbered. He obediently took a seat, and breakfast resumed in tense silence. Kathy didn’t force them to talk out their issues at least, but Nic doubted it would do any good if they did. His issues with Amos started over seven years ago and Amos probably didn’t even remember what this latest fight was about. They were long past talking, and the thought of moving in with the Ensings’ was one Nic periodically returned to.

*** 

Several hours later, Nic’s day was still on a downward slope. Vince shoulder-checked him on his way to third period, causing him to drop his bag and spill some of its contents all over the floor. Nic shot his “ex” a disparaging look but didn’t bother retaliating. He hadn’t been perfectly nice about breaking things off; Vince had a right to be pouty for a little while. Since they still shared a P.E. class, he wasn’t interested in making things harder for himself.

A textbook had fallen open and littered Nic’s math notes everywhere. Most people that saw it jeered, except Kenny, who immediately kneeled to help.

“What pissed him off?”

“I’m just good at getting under people’s skin.”

Kenny scoffed. “You? No way.”

They straightened at about the same time, which was when Nic noticed a fresh, nasty-looking bruise near Kenny’s hairline. “Jeez, what happened to you?”

Kenny frowned, which turned into a slight wince as he touched the mark. “Oh - I decided to try out for rugby and apparently thought you were supposed to tackle headfirst. So did the other guy. I don’t recommend.”

Nic’s sympathy turned into skepticism. “You’re playing rugby now? Got a death wish?” Kenny had an athletic build, but he was one of the few guys in Nic’s year that he could literally see eye-to-eye with.

“I’m small but mighty.” He had the audacity to wiggle his eyebrows at Nic. “It doesn’t hurt much, and I had fun. I’m fast, so hopefully I won’t see too much contact anyway.”

“Aren’t you in, like, five different clubs already?”

“Just three. Soccer, the newspaper committee, and now rugby. I like staying busy. Speaking of – do you have anything for next week’s edition?”

“Yeah, meet me at my locker after class and I’ll run it by you.”

They met up just before the last period, which was P.E. Kenny let Nic into the printing room, where he scanned the drawing and made a few copies for Nic to put up for sale. The sketch Nic had done was in the spur of the moment, but Kenny acted as if he had been presented with something worthy of a gallery. He was an excitable type of guy, and though Nic was initially undecided, Kenny was starting to grow on him.

Nic took his time to get to class afterwards, not caring that he was running late. There were only three people in his new school that he wasn’t on the best of terms with, and they were all in this class. He could finally make a fist again with minimal pain, but he didn’t like his odds against any of them if he had to punch someone.

Luckily for Nic, he didn’t have much to worry about. Vince had made his point clear earlier and had now moved on to hitting on some girl. That seemed to be the strategy Jake had picked up again as well. Bryan Neumann was curiously absent. Coach Reynolds had the class do group flag football, and since Nic was still exempt from anything too intensive for another week, he enjoyed a peaceful walk on the track for the next hour.

Even though Bryan wasn't in class today, Nic still wasn’t a fan of locker rooms - he had too many combined bad experiences in them at both high schools he’d attended. Wrinkling his nose against the wall of musk he walked into, Nic found a corner to face before changing.

He recognized the distinctive smell of Jake’s body spray at the same time he felt eyes on his back. Still half-dressed, he glanced over his shoulder at Jake, who was standing a respectful few feet away. He was staring very hard at the wall of lockers to Nic’s right, but the reddening of his cheeks confirmed that he had been watching him.

Nic’s almost compulsive need to be a dick overtook his better judgement. “You know, you do a shitty job of pretending I don’t exist.”

A muscle worked in Jake’s jaw as he glared at a point over Nic’s shoulder. He was only wearing a towel, his glistening, tanned muscles on full display. “My locker’s right there, actually. I was waiting for you to move.”

Nic quickly threw on a shirt and tossed his bag over his shoulder. “That’s why you didn’t say anything, huh?” He left Jake to stew over that and marched out of the locker room.

Nic was almost to the parking lot on the other side of the school when he heard heavy footsteps pounding behind him. Jake was jogging after him, his rumpled clothing and frazzled appearance indicating that he had sprinted to catch up with him.

Instantly, Nic searched for escape routes, and his stomach dropped when he found none. There were few cars left and the buses were long gone. Nic’s car was too far away for him to get there before Jake caught up to him, even if he bolted right now. If he yelled for help, it would take minutes for a teacher to get to him. Could he hold Jake off that long? As he ran through his options, he felt his body instinctively shift into a defensive stance and let his bag slide off his shoulder. He could kick if Jake charged, he decided, maybe claw at him with his left hand while he held him back with his legs. Or just ball up and take it. Sometimes it hurt less if he didn’t fight back.

Jake must have noticed the change in Nic’s posture, because he stopped several feet away, far outside of striking distance. They had something of a silent standoff, Jake panting slightly from his run and Nic as still as a statue, his fists clenched at his sides. Finally: “I just wanted to ask you something.”

Nic wasn’t sure if this was some sort of trick. He gave a stiff nod.

“Why did you do that to me?”

Nic just gaped at him for a moment. “What did I do to you?”

Jake let out an exasperated sigh. “You know…last week.”

The tight ball of fear in Nic’s stomach finally relaxed. He let out a small sigh of relief, one that Jake didn’t seem to notice. “You mean when I sucked your dick? That’s what you chased me down for?”

Jake casted a panicked look around them, but as Nic had already established, there wasn’t anyone close enough to hear them. He walked up to him so they wouldn’t have to yell. “I didn’t ‘chase’ you; I was trying to catch up with you.” That muscle in his jaw was twitching again, something that seemed to happen a lot when he was talking to Nic. “Why did you do it?”

Now reasonably sure that he wasn’t about to get his ass kicked, Nic hoisted his bag back onto his shoulder. “Dunno. I owed you one, you’re hot, and you keep staring at me.” He shrugged. “My cousin says I have poor impulse control.”

“Funny, he says that about me, too,” Jake said absently as he glanced around them again. “Look, I’m not gay.”

“I never said you were.”

“And I have a girlfriend.”

“Does she know you follow me on IG?”

“That was an accident!”

Nic made a great show of looking pensive by tilting his head and fingering his chin. “See, I thought that at first, too. But then you accepted my friend request back.”

Jake’s shoulders slumped. “It…I just didn’t want it to be awkward. You know…since you took it there.”

“You outweigh me by at least fifty pounds. If you wanted me to stop, you could have pushed me off, said something. But if I recall correctly, you sounded like you had a good time. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Jake didn’t answer. Nic grinned, triumphant, and Jake answered it with a scowl. “You’re such a pain in the ass.”

“I’ve heard.” A pause stretched between them. “Is that all?”

“Um…I guess.” But he continued standing there, looking so conflicted it was almost painful to watch.

“Do you…want me to do it again?”

Jake stared at him blankly, as if a million opposing answers came to mind at once, but he uttered none of them. His gaze fell to Nic’s shoes.

Nic took a step closer, forcing Jake’s eyes to reluctantly return to him. There couldn’t have been more than a foot between them, close enough for Nic to notice how long Jake’s eyelashes were for the first time. “Or do you want more?”

“I – I don’t know what I want,” Jake admitted, quietly.

“Well, you know how to reach me. Hit me up on IG sometime – during school hours – and maybe we could figure it out together.”

Jake stiffened in surprise. “Why?”

“I guess I owe you one. For Bryan.”

“How did you know?”

Nic was confused. “Know what?”

“Nothing. Right, Bryan. I thought that’s what the blowjob was for?”

“You’ve got a point.” It was a fair question. Why was he offering to sleep with him? They had nothing in common, and Nic didn’t owe Jake anything at this point.

The answer was simple and came to Nic readily. He was offering for the same reason he did anything: because he wanted to. Jake’s cock had felt good in his hand, his mouth, and in the past week he had occasionally wondered what else Jake could do with it. From what he’d heard, there were a slew of girls out there that had no complaints. “It’s what I do,” he said with a shrug. “Think about it.”

With that, Nic started to walk away, but Jake spoke again. “I was just looking at your tattoo, by the way.”

“What?”

“In the locker room. I was looking at your tattoo.”

Nic smiled at him, genuinely amused. The way Jake blurted out things reminded him of Joey, and it was kind of cute. “Right.”

“What does it mean?”

“‘Stay away,’ but I guess you didn’t get the memo.”

Jake looked like he was trying not to laugh. “Guess not.”