Caelyx
AFTER OUR LAST class of the day, Aspen rushed off to start his work shift on time, but I had nothing to do.
Wandering somewhat aimlessly, I found myself in BBU’s huge cafeteria.
I sat at a table with some friendly acquaintances, but didn’t buy any food.
I’d been eating nearly all of my meals at home, to save money.
Cyprian and Maddox had picked up a lot of the slack there, teaching me the bare minimum basics in terms of grocery shopping.
I was basically a lost cause in terms of cooking, taking the idea of culinary ineptitude to an extreme.
But I could make toast and boil eggs and microwave ramen.
And pour salad into a bowl. I could keep myself alive without going broke.
When an attractive dark-haired guy in an oversized sweater sat directly across from me, it took me a few seconds for his identity to register in my brain.
“Oh! Lazaro,” I remembered. “Hey.”
He was a cute and confident senior, totally extroverted and fun. When I’d hooked up with him the year before, I hadn’t known it at the time, but he was evidently the right hand man to Preston Beaumont, and second in command at the GSA club.
I wondered if Preston had ever reached out to Aspen after that rave party, or if I’d shot enough imaginary daggers into him from my eyeballs to give him the hint to back off. Either way, it wasn’t Lazaro’s fault.
“How are you feeling?” I asked. I’d sent him a get well soon text after finding out he’d been in the hospital for the appendicitis thing, which he’d thanked me for, but we hadn’t spoken since.
“Living the dream,” he responded, but he was grinning. “I haven’t seen you around much.”
“Ah, I’ve pretty much just been studying and working. You know how it is.”
“Mhm,” he agreed. “But I’m all set for finals. I want to have some fun before I go home for winter break.”
Winter break would start in only a few days, and just hearing the words shot a beam of unhappiness through me.
Maddox had delayed going home for a week of break the year before, but this year I’d be completely alone the entire time.
I’d be miserable, probably pining over Aspen all day and night until I couldn’t stand it.
But he needed to spend time with his mom without feeling guilty over me, so I’d stifled any complaints I had.
We hadn’t even discussed it, and part of me was sure he hadn’t even considered what I’d done for break last year or what I’d be doing for it this year.
Stifling the urge to grimace, I popped up my eyebrows to feign an expression of excitement for Lazaro.
“You missed out on a pretty fun party,” I commented, and he sighed.
“Yeah, Preston and I are going to plan something else for spring and I should actually be able to participate,” he said. “The club made a fuck ton of money from that rave, you know.”
“I saw two guys fucking on the hood of a car that night,” I said, snorting when he groaned melodramatically, an exaggerated look of anguish on his face.
“That should have been me!” When I laughed in response to his assertion, he leaned forward a bit, staring into my eyes with a little more intent. “Do you have any more classes today?”
“Nope. I’m all done.”
“You should come back to my dorm room,” he offered, his sculpted mouth twisting up into a flirtatious grin. “We can… Catch up.”
He was hot. Very hot. I thought about how simple it’d been when I’d hooked up with him, the easy chemistry and how compatible we’d been in bed.
No awkward morning after, no insecure ramblings, and no complicated discussions.
It was exactly the kind of offer I would have jumped at, before all my feelings had started tangling up around Aspen.
“Uh, yeah, I would, but…” I hesitated, and he tilted his head, cocking up an eyebrow. “I kind of… Have a thing with somebody right now.”
“You’re dating somebody?”
“Uh, not exactly,” I admitted. “It’s complicated.”
“Who is it?” He wondered. I thought about it for a second, but I didn’t think there was any reason to hide it. He hadn’t been hiding it either.
“Aspen.”
“Aspen Davis?” Lazaro asked, and I nodded. He scoffed. “Yeah. I bet it is complicated.”
Oh, right. Aspen had said that he and Lazaro had messed around before too, so they knew each other. His tone was kind of… Bitter. Or something. I couldn’t exactly place it.
“You don’t like Aspen?” I asked, and he shook his head.
“I like Aspen,” he corrected me. “I liked Aspen. A lot, actually. Back when we were hooking up last year.”
“Oh,” I said, realizing now why his tone had shifted.
It was a little awkward. “You guys had, like… A weird breakup or something?” I guessed, even though I wasn’t exactly sure I wanted to hear more.
But I was too excited by the idea of learning more about what Aspen had been like back when he’d refused to even give me the time of day.
“We would have had to have actually been together to break up,” Lazaro pointed out, that slightly bitter tone again clearly evident in his voice.
“It wasn’t bad, it was just… I mean, you know how Aspen is,” he said.
“All of his strict rules. As soon as I started liking him and trying to get closer, he completely backed off.”
“Ah, yeah,” I conceded. “He’s weird about feelings.”
“Feelings and everything else,” Lazaro stated.
My eyebrows furrowed together, and I guessed he could tell I was confused by his statement, because he went on.
“I mean, you’re with him now, so… You know.
How weird he is about body stuff and doesn’t want to be touched and all that,” he said.
“I mean, you know, I get it, I think? If it’s about dysphoria or whatever, but it didn’t bother me that he’s trans. ”
“Right,” I said, still not exactly understanding what he meant. Aspen was weird about body stuff? Since when?
“I mean, like I said, I liked him a lot and I would have dealt with it, but it makes it really hard when the guy you like won’t, you know, let you go down on him or touch him or whatever. It was hard for me, anyway,” he tacked on.
“… Yeah,” I answered, trying not to make it obvious on my face that I’d spent so much time between Aspen’s legs that he could have been charging me rent. “That’s tough.”
“Well, anyway,” he said quickly, waving a hand dismissively. “If it works for you, it works for you.”
“It works for me,” I confirmed. But the whole conversation was confusing, and had wheels turning in my head.
“If you change your mind, text me. Or bring him,” he suggested. “If you guys are into that, I mean.”
“Oh,” I said. “You mean, like…”
“Yeah,” he said, shrugging a shoulder. But his brown eyes were sparkling with amusement at my response. “Preston and I do that sometimes, bring a third over to hook up with. I could invite him too, actually. I’m pretty sure he’s into Aspen.”
I had to bite down into the tip of my tongue to halt my immediate instinctive answer, but forced my mouth to carve into a friendly, casual smile. I wouldn’t be sharing Aspen with a single other human being on earth, especially not golden boy Preston.
“Yeah, I’ll ask,” I lied. “But I doubt it. You know how he is.”
“Totally,” Lazaro responded neutrally. “Let me know.”
BACK AT HOME, my brain played the conversation over and over until I could have recited it like a speech.
The way Aspen had casually mentioned hooking up with Lazaro at the party hadn’t made it seem like it’d been some awful relationship, or so out of the ordinary from any other hookups.
But according to Lazaro, Aspen hadn’t wanted to be touched or anything.
Was that… Normal for him? It couldn’t be.
He’d let me jerk him off at the party and he’d barely even liked me at that point.
I was pretty sure about that, anyway. It was only after that particular event that he’d slowly started actually warming up to me.
Or at least, that was how it had seemed from my perspective.
I’d convinced Aspen to come over after work to spend the night in my bigger, more comfortable bed for once, and he’d be off work in a few minutes, so I didn’t have too long to wait before I could get my answers.
Still, I didn’t know how he’d feel about being interrogated about former hookups.
I needed to be careful with how I phrased everything.
Considering, I pushed open my bedroom door to head into the kitchen and grab a drink.
To my surprise, I found Arie and Che in our living room.
They’d pulled the cushions and pillows off the couch and were piling and arranging them on the giant blanket they’d spread out on the living room floor.
Our coffee table had been pushed aside, out of the way.
And they were wearing matching sets of pajamas.
Pajamas that were kind of… Slutty. Short shorts with tight tops and white cotton socks that came up to mid-thigh.
The accents on Arie’s outfit were pink, while the ones on Che’s were blue.
Blinking, I tilted my head as I tried to process the scene.
It wasn’t Friday, and there was no planned hangout as far as I was aware.
And also, they didn’t live or sleep here.
I opened my mouth to ask if they were finally getting around to trying that idea I’d given them, since they were definitely dressed for it, but Arie cut me off.
“Can it, Caelyx. You are not invited to this sleepover. Get whatever you need and get out.”
“I pay rent here,” I reminded him. He smirked, flicking up an eyebrow.
“Don’t you mean your daddy pays rent here?”
“That word sounded very natural coming out of your mouth,” I observed. “Say it again.”
He snorted, rolling his eyes. “Why don’t you ask Aspen to say it for you?”
“Because I don’t want to get my ass kicked,” I responded, blinking my lashes at him.
“What makes you think I won’t?” He wondered, blinking right back at me. “Run along, perv.”