Chapter 14 #2
I suck in a deep breath. “Okay. Okay. If I go to the bathroom with him, will you wait for me?”
“Of course. What are friends for?”
I point to a guy on the dance floor. “What about him?”
“Not him.” Lando gently pulls my hand back to my side. “He literally lives here. If you hit on him, chances are you’ll see him again, and it’ll be awkward as fuck.”
“Are you speaking from experience?”
He doesn’t answer, he simply pivots me by about forty-five degrees. “That guy’s cute. A good starter gay for you.”
Lando isn’t wrong. The new guy is pretty cute. He’s slim with olive skin and dark curly hair, not unlike my tutor’s, or indeed Lionel’s.
“Fine. Sure.”
“I’ll be monitoring your progress. There are prizes on the line if you win.”
I can’t tell whether he’s joking. “How do I know if I’ve won?”
“You get off with him.” Lando begins ticking things off on his fingers. “You swap numbers, or he gives you his. He lets you buy him a drink, or he buys you one. Or you leave together and make sweet, sweet music.”
“Oh, fuck off.” I slap his arm. “Okay, well, here goes nothing.”
I walk a few paces towards Random New Guy, and make sure I’m keeping my eyes trained on him.
He doesn’t look over at me. When I check over my shoulder, Lando flashes me a shooing gesture, waving his hands downwards.
I stop about two metres away from the new guy, and the friend he’d been chatting with leaves.
He looks up and catches my gaze, but shit .
. . I’ve totally forgotten what the next steps were.
Shit, shit, shit.
New Guy glances over his shoulder. There’s a concerned furrow to his brow, like he knows I know I’m fucking this up.
“Uh . . . hi,” I say. Fuck Lando’s nonverbal cues. “I’m Harry. Uh . . .”
The guy stares at me, but not in the lust-filled way Lando promised me he would. His shoulders are hunched, and honestly, it looks like he’s angling his body towards the fire escape ready to make a run for it.
Fuck, I’m so bad at this. “I . . . I think you’re cute.”
“Oh,” he says, his posture softening. His shoulders drop to where they should be. “I’m Olly.”
I don’t know where to go next, and although Olly is being less rabbit-in-the-headlights than he was a moment ago, he’s still inching backwards with every step closer I get.
Part of me wants to check over my shoulder to see if Lando has any advice, but another part of me prays there are no witnesses.
I scratch the back of my head. Should I even attempt the eye-fuck?
“Is that your boyfriend?” Olly says, pointing behind me.
Lando coolly leans against a pillar, his amaretto and Coke held in his long elegant fingers at hip height. He gives us a delicate wave. So effortlessly cool.
“No. No, we’re not . . . He’s not . . .”
“He’s fucking hot,” Olly says, without taking his eyes away from Lando.
Awesome, so not only am I playing second fiddle to Mathias and my siblings and everyone else I’ve ever met, but now I’m going to be second choice when trying to hook up with randomers.
“Yeah, he is,” I say, because as annoying as that is, it doesn’t stop it from being true.
“Is he a switch?”
“A what?”
Olly tilts his head to the side as though I’m the one speaking a different language to him. “Does he ever top?”
“Huh? I don’t know. No. I don’t think so.” I’m suddenly feeling defensive of Lando, and of my own terrible grasp on gay culture.
“Do you?” Olly places his hand on my forearm, and my nervous system floods itself with adrenaline.
This is it.
My fight-or-flight moment.
I just need to stay cool.
Need to channel Lando’s suaveness.
Fight, I’m gonna fight. I’m gonna—
I turn one hundred and eighty degrees and make a run for it.
“What the fuck happened there?” Lando kicks himself off from the pillar.
“I dunno,” I say, covering my face with my hands. “I can’t do this. I’m very, very terrible at it.”
“So what happened?” he says again.
“He asked me to top.”
“That little slut!” Lando says, laughing like he’s never been in Olly’s position. “Do you know what that means?”
“Yes, I know what that means. I’m not that naive.”
He holds up his hands in surrender.
“So, do I win?”
“Of course not. I said you needed to get off with a guy or get his number. You only win if you can do either of those things.”
“What’s the prize?”
“Pizza! From The Nice Slice just up the road.”
“Oh, I know that place. It’s right by my flat.” I think about it for half a second. “Fine, deal, but it has to be with someone else. I don’t want to go back over there.” Not after I made myself look like a right prat.
“Any guy. Kiss any guy or get any guy’s number and I’ll buy you pizza.” He holds out his hand, and I shake it.
And I pretend my entire body doesn’t erupt in goosebumps at his touch. “Let’s go onto the dance floor.”
“Tattoo” by Loreen is playing, and the lights are turned way down low. It’s crowded, probably too crowded to pull off Lando’s “look and look away” moves, but I try. I try my fucking hardest.
Three, four, five guys later and still nothing. Meanwhile, men are falling over themselves to get closer to my companion. Lando waves each guy away like he’s an emperor with endless options—which, to be fair, yeah, he is.
“You’re not trying hard enough.” He has to yell it right in my ear because of the noise levels. His damp body is pressed against mine.
“I am! I’m doing everything I can. I’m obviously just shit at this.”
“No!” he shouts. “You have to really mean it. You have to want it, like fucking yearn for it.” Lando grabs my jaw and angles my face up to his.
His eyes bore into mine. His brow furrows slightly in the centre.
His mouth pops open, and the tiniest flash of tongue wets the crease of his lips before slipping back into the darkness.
My body is already responding, my heart rate increasing, my palms growing moist, my cock thickening.
Holy fucking crumpets, he’s good at this.
I do the same to him, except instead of holding his chin, I place my hands on either side of his face, and I stare into his eyes. “Like this?”
My memory slips back to the other night, when we were on his bed, and I imagine what would have happened if I hadn’t suffered from stage fright.
I picture his knees up by his ears, and my cock buried deep inside his ass.
I’m breathing too heavily, and maybe Lando’s not breathing at all because everything else in the bar seems to disappear, and suddenly I realise there’s only a foot gap between our faces.
I swallow and wet my lips, and now I don’t care about kissing another random guy from the bar.
It has to be Lando or no one.
And then I have an excellent idea.
I lean in closer still, on tippy toes to move my mouth next to his ear, and I whisper, “Babygirl.” I move backwards by a step so I can see his reaction.
Lando smiles, comprehension flashing over his features. “You absolute fucker,” he says, and moves his lips down onto mine.
There and then I decide I love kissing Lando. I can taste the sweetness of his high-sugar cola, and the gentle warmth of the booze. His kiss is beyond soft. His lips are like air. My fingers slide into his curls, and he grips my collar at the back of my neck, pulling me closer.
We break for air, our foreheads touching, our mouths centimetres apart.
“You’re really good at that,” he says, his chest rising and falling against mine.
“Thanks,” I reply. I don’t tell him I have to be the best at whatever I put my hand to. “Pizza’s on you, yeah?”
“Worth it.”
He kisses me again. We stand in the centre of the dance floor as it slowly empties, and kiss until the lights get switched on at three a.m.
And the pizza from The Nice Slice is incredible.