Chapter 21 #2
Ridiculous. Adorable. Like someone I want to kiss senseless. “Like a flamingo had a baby with a Vegas showgirl,” I say instead, snatching a purple boa for myself. “Work it, Jacky.”
Jackson strikes a pose, one hand on his hip, the other twirling the end of the boa.
The fluorescent lights catch the feathers, sending little pink wisps floating through the air.
His brown eyes are bright with mischief, and that crooked smile of his is doing things to my insides that should be studied.
“We need accessories,” he declares, already moving toward a spinning rack of sunglasses.
I follow, watching the way his shoulders move under his jacket as he reaches for a pair of star-shaped glasses in electric blue.
His fingers are long and elegant, built for precision and control.
I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about those fingers.
What they’d feel like tangled in my hair. Wrapped around my—
“Drew? You okay?”
I blink, realizing I’ve been staring at his hands like a creep. “Fine. Great. Just looking for the perfect eyewear.”
I grab the first pair I see—heart-shaped lenses in neon orange—and shove them on my face. Jackson bursts out laughing, the sound echoing through the empty store and mixing with the music’s frantic beat.
“You look like a reject from a Cyndi Lauper video,” he wheezes.
“Girls just wanna have fun, Jacky.” I strike a pose, holding up two fingers and pouting my lips. “And that’s all I really want.”
He’s still laughing as he puts on his star glasses, and something in my chest cracks open a little more. This is the Jackson I don’t get to see often—the one without the weight of expectations, without the careful quarterback composure. He’s loose and silly and so goddamn beautiful that it hurts.
We work our way through the store as though we’re on a mission from the fashion gods themselves. Jackson finds a pair of roller skate earrings and holds them up to his ears, waggling his eyebrows. I counter with a bedazzled headband that reads “Disco Queen” in rhinestones.
“You have to get that,” Jackson insists.
“Absolutely not.”
“Drew. Drew, look at me.” He grabs my shoulders, his face deadly serious despite the ridiculous star glasses. “You are a disco queen. Own it.”
His hands are warm through my jacket, and I can feel each finger pressing into my muscles. My brain short-circuits for a second, caught between wanting to lean into his touch and wanting to run screaming into the sub-zero cold.
“Fine,” I hear myself say. “But only if you wear these.”
I grab a pair of dangly lightning bolt earrings and hold them up. Jackson takes them, examines them with mock gravity, then clips them onto his ears.
“How do I look?” He tilts his head, and the lightning bolts swing against his jaw.
“Acceptable.”
The song hits its chorus, and Jackson starts doing this ridiculous shoulder shimmy that shouldn’t be attractive but absolutely is. His whole body moves with the music, loose and unselfconscious, and I watch the way his shirt rides up slightly when he raises his arms.
“Come on!” He grabs my hand and spins me. “Dance with me!”
I should say no. I should maintain some semblance of cool. Instead, I let him pull me into the aisle. We dance ironically between racks of vintage clothing while A-ha wails about taking on someone in a day or two.
Jackson’s laughter is infectious, and I realize that I’m laughing, too, the sound bubbling up from somewhere deep in my chest.
He pulls me close for a dramatic dip, and suddenly his face is inches from mine. The star glasses have slid down his nose, and his brown eyes are right there, crinkled at the corners with joy. His breath is warm on my lips.
Time stretches like taffy.
The song transitions into another throwback—Wham’s “I’m Your Man,” because apparently the universe has a sick sense of humor—and we’re frozen in this dip, staring at each other.
“Drew,” Jackson breathes.
“Yeah?”
His tongue darts out to wet his lips, and I track the movement, memorizing it for later. My entire body is on fire. I want to close the distance between us, to taste that crooked smile, to find out if this thing between us is as real as it feels.
But I can’t. Because this is fake. Because he’s straight. Because kissing him right now, in a thrift store with no audience, would tell him exactly how I feel.
I break the dip with a jerk, sending us both off-balance for a moment. “We should find actual outfits,” I say, my voice embarrassingly hoarse.
Jackson adjusts his star glasses, and is it my imagination, or does he look disappointed? “Right. Yeah. Outfits. The reason why we’re here.”
We separate, moving to different racks, and I take a moment to breathe. My heart is pounding like I just finished a shift on the ice. The ghost of his hand on my waist burns through my clothes.
“Hey, Drew?” Jackson calls from across the store. “What do you think about spandex?”
I turn to find him holding up a pair of purple spandex pants that were no doubt designed for a backup dancer in a Prince video.
“I think you’d look incredible in those,” I say honestly.
His ears turn pink. “There’s a matching pair over here. We could be twins.”
The image of Jackson in skin-tight purple spandex flashes through my mind, and I have to grip the clothing rack to steady myself. Those long legs. That ass. The way the fabric would cling to every single curve and line of his body.
“Let’s try them on,” I say, because I’m a glutton for punishment.
We grab our respective pairs and head for the fitting rooms in the back of the store. They’re old-school, just two curtained stalls side by side. The curtain rings squeak as I pull mine closed.
Is this honestly my life now? Trying on purple spandex pants in a thrift store fitting room while my fake boyfriend does the same in the stall next to me?
If someone had told freshman Drew that this would be his reality, I would have laughed in their face and then asked for whatever drugs they were on.
I kick off my sneakers first, the scuffed Nikes landing with a thud against the thin plywood wall. Then I unbutton my jeans and shimmy them down, which is when reality slaps me across the face with the force of a Gerard Gunnarson hip check.
There is absolutely no way I’m keeping my boxers on under these things. The spandex is paper-thin, and my boxers have that one hole near the waistband that I keep meaning to fix. If I try to wear both, I’ll look like I’m smuggling a family of hamsters in my crotch.
I bite back a disbelieving laugh. Modesty. Right. As if that was ever going to survive this experience. I’ve seen more of my teammates’ junk than any man should in a lifetime. What’s a little commando spandex between fake boyfriends?
The boxers hit the floor, and I grab the purple pants with the determination of a man facing his Waterloo.
The fabric catches on my ankle immediately.
“Son of a—” I hop on one socked foot, trying to shake the spandex loose while simultaneously not falling on my bare ass. The floor is slippery—probably waxed—and I slam shoulder-first into the wall with a bang that echoes through the entire store.
“You okay over there?” Jackson’s voice comes through the thin partition, followed by a suspicious thump and a muffled curse.
“Peachy,” I grunt, finally getting my foot through the leg hole. “You?”
“This fabric is possessed.”
I snort, working my second leg into the spandex. The material clings to my calf like a desperate ex, and I have to do this weird wiggling motion to inch it up past my knee. My thighs, however, present an entirely different challenge.
Hockey thighs are a blessing and a curse. They’re great for explosive skating, checking opponents into next week, and filling out jeans in a way that makes people stare. They are not great for getting into pants that were clearly designed for someone with the leg circumference of a pool noodle.
I wiggle. I shimmy. I do what can only be described as a vertical twerk against the fitting room wall.
Another thump from Jackson’s stall, followed by what sounds like him bouncing off all four walls in rapid succession. “Who designed these things? A sadist?”
“More like someone who’s never met a squat rack,” I say, finally getting the spandex up to mid-thigh.
Victory, however, is short-lived. Because now I’ve reached the final boss: my ass.
I catch my reflection in the fitting room mirror and immediately wish I hadn’t. My face is tomato-red, hair sticking up in seventeen directions, and the purple spandex is stretched across my thighs like a tourniquet, bunched up in a stubborn roll just below my hockey butt.
God, I look like a deranged grape trying to give birth to itself.
“Come on,” I mutter, grabbing the waistband with both hands. “Get. Over. The. Hump.”
I pull. The spandex doesn’t budge.
I pull harder. The fabric whines ominously but holds its ground.
From the next stall, I hear Jackson grunt with effort, followed by the distinctive sound of fabric snapping against skin. “Ow! Fuck!”
“You good?”
“These pants just assaulted me!”
I take a deep breath, plant my feet, and give three violent, desperate tugs that would make a CrossFit instructor proud.
The first tug: nothing.
The second tug: the fabric inches up a millimeter.
The third tug: sweet, sweet release.
The spandex finally surrenders, snapping over my ass and settling into place with a finality that should feel better than it does. Sweat trickles down my temple as I let out a triumphant exhale that fogs up the mirror.
“I’m in,” I announce, slightly breathless. “The pants have been conquered.”
“Same,” Jackson says, sounding equally winded. “But I think I pulled something in the process.”
I turn to examine myself in the mirror, and a shocked gasp escapes my lips as my hand flies to my mouth.
The spandex hides nothing. Absolutely nothing. Every curve, every line, every single thing I possess is on full display, wrapped in shiny purple like an extremely inappropriate Christmas present. The fabric clings to my thighs, cups my ass better than a jockstrap ever could, and the front?
Well. Let’s just say there’s no mystery left about what I’m working with.
“Ready?” Jackson asks, pulling me out of my narcissistic moment.
“No.”
“Me neither. On three?”
“This is a terrible idea.”
“One.”
“Jackson—”
“Two.”
“We don’t have to do this.”
“Three!”
I yank open my curtain at the same moment Jackson yanks open his.
Time stops. My brain flatlines.
And my heart kicks into overdrive.
Jackson stands there in identical purple spandex, and I forget how to breathe.
The fabric does for him what it does for me—namely, leaves nothing to the imagination.
His thighs are thick from years of football, the muscles clearly defined through the thin material.
His ass, which I’ve definitely never stared at, is perfectly showcased. And then I see it. His cock.
It’s hanging to the left. It’s circumcised. It’s resting over a pair of surprisingly large balls. And it looks…delicious.
“Well?” he asks. “Am I sexy human eggplant?”
I can’t form words. My mouth opens and closes while I try to stare anywhere except directly at his crotch. It’s impossible, though, because the purple makes it prominent.
“Drew?” He sounds uncertain now. “That bad?”
“No!” The word explodes out of me. “No, you look…you look…”
I force my eyes up to his face before I do something stupid like drool.
Jackson is staring at me with an expression I can’t quite read. His ears are pink, and there’s a flush creeping down his neck.
“Good,” I rasp out.
The changing room crackles with unspoken tension. Jackson’s tongue darts out to wet his lips, and I have to stop myself from stepping forward and crowding his space.
His gaze travels from my face down to my chest, then lower, his pupils dilating as they trace the contours of my spandex-wrapped body. The slight parting of his lips tells me everything his voice doesn’t.
I suddenly feel too on display, as if a spotlight is shining down on me.
But fuck if I don’t enjoy the blatant appreciation on Jackson’s face.
I know I have a nice body; I’ve caught loads of people checking me out over the years.
But no one has ever drunk me in how Jackson is.
“We should probably…” I gesture vaguely at the curtains.
“Yeah. Yes. Changing. Good idea.” But neither of us moves.
We stand there, two grown men in obscenely tight purple spandex, having what might be the most sexually charged staring contest in the history of thrift stores.
“These are definitely the ones,” Jackson finally says, not breaking eye contact.
“Absolutely. No question.”
The speaker system crackles, switching to Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” and I want to laugh at the absurdity of it all. Here I am, half-naked in public, wearing pants that should get me featured in Playgirl, staring at the man I’m in love with while he stares right back.
“We should probably change back,” I say again, this time more firmly.
“Probably,” Jackson agrees.
Still, neither of us moves.
His eyes flick down again—quick enough that I almost miss it—before snapping back up to my face. The pink on his ears deepens to red.
“I’ll just—” He gestures at his stall.
“Yeah, me too.”
We retreat into our respective fitting rooms, and I lean against the wall, trying to remember how to breathe normally. My reflection stares back at me, still red-faced, still wearing the world’s most revealing pants, but now with a growing erection.
“Drew?” Jackson’s voice comes through the wall.
“Yeah?”
“We’re going to win this competition.”
Despite everything, I smile. “Damn right we are.”
By the time we’re both dressed in our street clothes, I’m exhausted and reading for a very cold shower.
We head to the register with our purple prizes, and the cashier doesn’t even stop reading her book to ring us up. We pay, then escape into the afternoon sun with our bags. Jackson threads his fingers through mine.
“What are you doing?” I ask as my breath hitches from the gentle act.
“We’re out in the open,” he says simply. “Someone might see us. Gotta play the part, right?”
Play the part. If only this were a role. If only Jackson weren’t my best friend. At least then, doing this—walking around town and pretending I’m dating Jackson Monroe—would be a piece of cake.