Chapter 35
RYAN
Elvis Presley has been dead for nearly half a century, and he’s still the sexiest man in this room—which says a lot about the company I’m keeping.
Oliver’s bedroom is a disaster zone of hockey gear, tangled charger cables, and approximately seventeen half-empty water bottles arranged in no discernible pattern across every flat surface.
We’re propped against his headboard, his laptop balanced on a pillow between us, watching Jailhouse Rock because Oliver made the mistake of admitting he’d never seen it, and I made the mistake of acting like this was a personal offense.
“He’s not even singing that well,” Oliver says, gesturing at the screen with a cheese puff. Orange dust coats his fingertips. “His hips are doing all the work.”
“His hips changed Western civilization.”
“That seems like a stretch.”
“There are academic papers written about what his hips have done for the world.”
“You’ve read academic papers about Elvis’s hips?”
“I’ve read academic papers about everything, Oliver. That’s who I am as a person.”
He grins, popping another cheese puff into his mouth, and I try very hard not to stare at the way his jaw works as he chews.
We’ve been dating for eleven days. Eleven days of hand-holding and goodnight kisses.
Of texting until two a.m. about nothing and everything.
Eleven days of being Oliver Jacoby’s boyfriend, a title I still can’t think about without my stomach flipping around like Flubber.
Elvis launches into the title number, all swagger and snarl, and I settle deeper against the headboard.
Oliver’s room smells like him—deodorant and laundry detergent and something warm underneath that I can’t identify but want to bury my face in.
His bed is unmade, the sheets twisted into a nest that suggests a restless sleeper, and there’s a framed photo on the nightstand of a younger Oliver with his arm around his mom. She has the same vivid green eyes.
“Pause,” Oliver says suddenly, reaching across me for the spacebar. His forearm brushes my chest, and I momentarily forget how to breathe. “Bathroom break. Don’t let Elvis do anything important without me.”
“He’s about to punch a guy.”
“Then definitely pause it. I love a good punch.”
Oliver rolls off the bed with athleticism and disappears through the door. His footsteps thud down the hallway, and I’m suddenly aware that I’m alone in Oliver Jacoby’s bedroom.
The realization comes with a curiosity I can’t quite suppress. I’ve been in this room a handful of times now, but always with Oliver present, always focused on him. Now, with Elvis frozen mid-sneer on the laptop screen and the hallway quiet, I let my eyes wander and take in more of the room.
The room is larger than I expected for a house that holds an entire hockey team.
A full-size bed dominates the center, flanked by the nightstand and a wooden desk that’s buried under textbooks, loose papers, and a coffee mug with the BSU Barracudas logo.
The walls are mostly bare, save for a poster of Wayne Gretzky that’s been taped up with athletic tape, and a small corkboard near the door pinned with ticket stubs, receipts, and—my heart stutters—a photo of the two of us.
It’s from the fair, taken by Nathan. Oliver’s arm is around my shoulder, and I’m looking up at him with an expression so transparently lovesick that I want to crawl into the floorboards.
I swing my legs off the bed, my loafers touching down on the carpet.
The desk draws me first. I don’t open drawers—I’m nosy, not invasive—but I study the surface.
A sports management textbook, dog-eared and highlighted in three different colors.
A spiral notebook with Oliver’s handwriting, which is still as atrocious as it was when he wrote our names on cardboard boxes turned space helmets.
A small jade plant in a terra-cotta pot that’s somehow still alive despite what I suspect is an irregular watering schedule.
The bookshelf next to the desk holds a modest collection: a few hockey biographies, a dog-eared copy of The Shining, a book on cooking techniques, and—I pull this one out—a field guide to North American constellations.
I flip it open. On the inside cover, in Oliver’s terrible handwriting: So I can keep up with Ryan.
My chest aches.
I slide the book back into place and move toward the closet. It’s a standard dorm-style closet with folding doors, partially open, revealing a row of hanging shirts—mostly polos and flannels—and a jumble of shoes on the floor. Hockey skates sit in the corner, their blades gleaming dully.
I’m about to turn away when something catches my eye. Tucked behind the skates, half-hidden by a fallen hoodie, is a small cardboard box. It’s plain, unmarked, the kind of box that could hold anything from old photos to spare phone chargers.
I should leave it alone. This is Oliver’s private space, and whatever’s in that box is none of my business.
I pick it up.
It’s light. I lift the lid.
Inside, nestled in what appears to be a clean washcloth, is a dildo. It’s a bright green, made of silicone, smooth and curved, with a flared base. It’s not enormous, but it’s not small either. Somewhere in the range of five inches, maybe six. My size, I note.
My brain short-circuits.
I’m standing in my boyfriend’s closet holding his dildo.
His green dildo that he purchased, brought into this room, and used on himself.
I try to imagine Oliver—my Oliver, the guy who holds my hand during walks and kisses my forehead—lying on this bed, legs spread, working this thing inside himself.
The image hits me so hard my knees almost buckle.
“Hey, so the toilet is making that noise again. I swear if Gerard flushed another—”
Oliver stops in the doorway. His eyes drop from my face to my hands to the unmistakable green silicone object resting on my palm. The color drains from his face, then rushes back in a violent flood of red that starts at his neck and climbs all the way to the tips of his ears.
“That’s, um.” He swallows. “That’s not a—I mean, it is, but—”
“It’s a dildo, Oliver.”
“Yeah.” He closes the door behind him with exaggerated care, as though the latch might detonate if mishandled. “Yeah, it is.”
I should be embarrassed. I’m standing in his closet holding his sex toy, and every social convention I’ve ever internalized is screaming at me to put it down, apologize, and change the subject to something safe. The weather. Elvis. Literally anything.
Instead, what comes out of my mouth is: “When’s the last time you used it?”
Oliver’s eyes widen. His mouth opens, closes, opens again. He looks at the dildo, then at me, then at the ceiling, as though divine intervention might save him from this conversation.
“Ryan—” He scrubs both hands over his face, the blush even more prominent. It’s cute, if I’m being honest. “Last night,” he mutters into his palms.
“Last night.”
“Yes.”
“While I was texting you about the moons of Jupiter.”
“…yes.”
My pulse is doing something erratic. Something that has nothing to do with embarrassment and everything to do with the mental image that’s crystallizing with alarming clarity: Oliver, in this bed, sheets twisted around his legs, phone propped on the pillow with my messages glowing on the screen, his hand between his thighs guiding this exact piece of green silicone into his body.
“Were you thinking about me?”
Oliver drops his hands from his face. His green eyes lock onto mine, and the embarrassment is still there, but underneath it is something rawer. Something honest.
“I only ever think about you when I use it,” he says. “It’s only ever been you, Ryan. Before we started dating, during, every single time. You’re the only person in my head.”
The room feels smaller. The air feels thicker. I look down at the dildo in my hand, turning it over once, feeling the weight and the smooth give of the silicone. Then I set it carefully back in the box, replace the lid, and place the box on the closet floor.
“So you’re a bottom,” I say.
Oliver lets out a breath that sounds like it’s been trapped in his lungs for a decade.
He moves to sit on the edge of the bed, his hands gripping his knees.
“I’ve topped a few times. Guys I hooked up with during my freshman and sophomore years.
It was fine. Good, even.” He pauses, choosing his words. “But it’s not what I prefer.”
The frankness of his words sends a jolt through my entire nervous system. Oliver Jacoby—six feet of muscle, captain of the hockey team, the guy who carries himself with confidence—likes to be on the receiving end.
“I didn’t expect that,” I admit.
“Most people don’t.” A self-conscious laugh escapes him. “Big guy, hockey player—everyone assumes I’m a top. And I can be. But when I close my eyes and think about you?” His voice drops. “I think about you on top of me. Inside me. Every time.”
I cross the room and sit beside him on the bed. Our knees touch. “I don’t know which I prefer yet,” I say. “I don’t even have a frame of reference.”
Oliver’s hand finds mine, and his thumb traces familiar circles on the back of my knuckles.
“That’s okay. We have all the time in the world for you to figure out what you like.
What feels good. What doesn’t. There’s no rush, and there’s no wrong answer.
” He squeezes my hand. “We’ll try things.
You’ll tell me what works. I’ll tell you what works.
And whatever we end up being—whether you’re a top, a bottom, both, neither, whatever—it’ll be perfect because it’s us. ”
The earnestness in his voice cracks something open inside me. This giant, beautiful man is sitting here telling me he wants me to fuck him, and simultaneously assuring me that there’s no pressure to do anything I’m not ready for. The tenderness and the desire coexist in him without contradiction.
I want to give him something. Right now. Tonight.
“Lie back,” I say.
Oliver blinks. “What?”