Head Above Water

by C.E. Ricci

“I don’t have any issues with you being gay. You know that, right?” All I can do is nod. Wordlessly. “Okay, good. I just don’t wanna come off as that tool who cares about that kinda thing. Who you wanna screw or whatever is your business, not mine.” I feel like if you knew it was you I wanna screw, that would definitely make it your business.

Sad, but true all the same. A sobering silence falls over us, but this time, it’s not awkward. It’s just silence. Peaceful, wordless silence. And I have the feeling, if given the chance, I could get used to this.

Fuck, what does that even mean? He’s happy to spend time with me? That we’re doing something together before he heads off to college in six weeks? Oh my God, I sound like a chick, and I hate it. I hate that, in the matter of a single day, he’s managed to turn me into a freaking idiot who can’t seem to think straight if I’m within a five-foot proximity of him.

“Why you?” I ask him suddenly, glancing over at Cannon while he takes a long pull from his beer bottle. He pauses with it halfway between his mouth and the table it was resting on before turning to look at me. “What’re you talking about, East?” I scoff and take another drink from the bottle of Jack, because, in for a penny, in for a pound. “Out of all the hot guys out there in the world, why’d I have to want you? The one person I can’t have.”

OH MY GOD AHHHHH- remind you im only 40 pages in.

“You’d be ninety-nine percent perfect if you liked cock too,” I tell him, and I feel the corner of my mouth lift into a smirk. “Maybe even a hundred. I could get over your dickish ways as long as I got to suck on yours in return.”

HAHAHAHA THIS HAS ME LAUGHING

But the second I see Cannon wrap his arm around Kole’s neck, all thought of oxygen is gone. “The fuck did you call him?” Cannon growls, his mouth directly next to Kole’s ear as he holds him in a headlock. Both pride and fear surge through me, warring inside like the battle I can feel building before my eyes, ready to explode into chaos at the drop of a hat. And it does.

My day had a surprising start with Cannon asking to catch some waves with me, and it went on to become even more bizarre when he extended the invite to the party afterward. But never, in my wildest damn dreams, did I expect to be handcuffed in the back of a squad car with him by the end of it.