Shiny! (6 page)

Ashley kissed Nina on the cheek. “I want to dance with Aunt Cara before she gets tired.”

“Deal,” Nina said.

Ashley skipped away and Nina leaned forward. “Okay, guys. I give. Where’d you go next?”

Will mumbled into his hands, and she flicked his forehead. “Say it out loud,” she prompted.

And he did.

Wank Off and Keep it Secret

W
ILL
WOKE
up on Kenny’s couch in his boxer shorts and undershirt, wondering if his mom’s evil hairless cat had crapped in his mouth. And then dropped a car on his head.

Then he wondered where he was.

Then he wondered
who
was shaking his arm and trying to talk to him.

“Will? Will—baby, I’m sorry. I know you don’t have anywhere to be right now, and it’s Saturday, but I left stuff on my desk I’ve got to finish at work.”

“Kenny?” he mumbled. Slowly he sat up, shedding the light blanket he’d been huddled under.

“Here,” Kenny said, looking insufferably perky in a pair of bright-red pants and a red-and-white fitted polo. He handed Will two Tylenol and a glass of water. “This will help.”

Will took the Tylenol without question. God… his
head
. “So this is what I was missing through college?” he asked philosophically. “All things considered, I think actually doing my homework was the way to go.”

Kenny laughed. “Speak for yourself, precious. I’m pretty sure the best times I had in college were the times I’ve
forgotten
,
before I woke up like this.”

Will nodded, then gulped some water. “Good for you. Let me know if those come back to you.”

He felt a decidedly tender hand tousling his hair. “Look, I’ve got to go—I just didn’t want you to wake up in an empty house. Take your time—”

Will shook his head and set the empty glass on the coffee table. “No—that’s nice of you, but I should go home. I’ve got a deadline for a web client—I need to take that income while I can.”

“Web client?”

“It’s my other job. You don’t think I can afford my tiny apartment and hand-me-down car on what I make as a teacher, do you?”

“Wow. No wonder you have no social life. Well, it’s a good thing I woke you up, then—I was going to let you sleep!”

Will sighed and stood, stretching, his entire big body just arcing up toward the ceiling as he yawned and tried to clear his head. “Nope! No rest for the fired. I should probably call my mom too and see if Denise is still talking to me.”

Kenny made a sound—Will wasn’t sure what kind—and he realized that his stretch had let his boxers drop below the danger line. He pulled them up and blushed, feeling suddenly exposed. To cover his embarrassment for his tummy—and exposing his treasure trail and almost the treasure—he reached for his clothes from the day before, which were folded at the foot of the couch, and tried to think of something, anything, that would let Kenny know he didn’t want last night’s camaraderie to end. Embarrassment or not, it was almost a compulsion. He
must
see Kenny again.

“So, you want to hang out tonight?” he asked as he was pulling up his pants. Suddenly he felt foolish. “I mean, you probably have other friends. Never—”

“Actually,” Kenny said, looking sort of excited, “bring a thumb drive or—better yet, here, give me your phone.”

Will fished it out of his pocket and unlocked it. Kenny took it and started entering his information under Will’s People, talking while he texted.

“Name—Kenny Scalia. Occupation—Graphic Designer. Relationship—Will’s New Bestie.”

Will grinned and pulled his shirt on. “Bestie, huh?”

“Absolutely,” Kenny said, still texting. “Camera?”

Will showed him how to work it, and Kenny took a selfie, then added that to his profile. “We’re besties? Not that I’m arguing or anything.” Most of the people in the credential program had been married. They’d all sort of scattered to the four winds as soon as the nongraduation graduation ceremony had occurred.

“Yeah,” Kenny said, finishing up and handing the phone back to Will. “Gif and I settled down, and all of my party friends from college sort of kept partying. Besides—we picked up dildos together. I think that establishes a bond.”

Will tucked the phone back in his pocket and chuckled. “Okay, bestie, why was I supposed to bring a thumb drive?”

“Oh yeah! What I meant to say was e-mail me your story arcs and character bibles and stuff. I can work up some sketches and some ideas.”

“Really?” Oh wow! “That’s awesome—you’d do that?”

Kenny nodded, looking excited. “Yeah—I mean, it sounded like a great project, and I was going to be working a little less anyway.” He looked around the little house, which was probably starting to seem empty. “And it’ll feel productive,” he said at last, simply. “It’ll give us a chance to… to get normal, to—”

“Get our lives back on track,” Will agreed. “Yeah, I hear you.” He sighed. “I’m not going to find anything but sub work until August, and even that will run out in the next three weeks.”

“Mm….” Kenny sighed, then brightened. “You know, give me a business card. I’ve got some friends who might give you some website business.”

Will pulled up a corner of his mouth. “Business cards are for real professionals. I’m a ‘find me on the Internet’ kind of guy.”

Kenny grunted and pulled out his own phone, which he shoved imperiously in Will’s hands. He was close enough for Will to smell his body soap, which was something surprisingly dark and herbal—sandalwood? Whatever it was, it made Will wish he had a change of clothes so he could shower. It smelled
really
good.

“Well,” Kenny said impatiently, “fill in your info!”

“Okay, okay!” Will snapped out of his cologne-smelling stupor and started punching his info into Kenny’s phone.

“Name: William Charles Lafferty—”

“Wow.”

“Very white.”

“You’re saying.”

Will raised an eyebrow at him. “You’ve seen my stomach. Lizard bellies have better tans.”

Kenny started to laugh, and Will punched in the rest of his info and pressed Save. He handed Kenny’s phone back and started searching for his shoes. “By the doorway,” Kenny supplied. “Your keys are hanging on the little peg.” He checked his own pockets with a jingle and suddenly seemed in an all-fired hurry to get out of there. “There’s a clean toothbrush by the sink, and I
really
need to run. Don’t forget to lock up when you’re done.” He took a few steps toward the door, opened it, and said, “The package on your shoes is yours. In case you forgot.”

And then he disappeared, closing the door a little harder than Will expected.

Package?

Will made use of the toothbrush and splashed a little water on his face. This was the guest bathroom, and he liked it. White tile, frost-green walls, little seashells. The hand soap smelled like spring rain. He was tempted to venture into Kenny’s inner sanctum just so he could smell whatever it was Kenny had been wearing on his skin, because that smell… it sort of surrounded Will, even through the hangover. It was sweet, earthy, exotic—it had been all Will could do not to hold Kenny still, stick his nose into the hollow of Kenny’s neck, and just breathe deep to see if it was even better when warmed by Kenny’s body heat.

He shivered, set his toothbrush down in the little holder, and rinsed his mouth, feeling better. That would be sort of a violation, he thought firmly, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to see Kenny’s bedroom. Just… well… to wonder where all those things in the road had gone. And to imagine how they got there.

He shook his head and winced. It was just, well, he didn’t remember much after they’d left the bar. They’d gone driving somewhere, and Will had kept talking, and Kenny had kept talking, and the things they’d talked about—well, Will couldn’t remember. But he did remember what he’d
thought
about when they’d been talking, and what he’d
thought
about was Kenny, naked, with that stretchy rubber thing around his cock and balls and the glittery thing up his ass.

That sounded simple, and
really
nasty, but the picture in his head? Kenny, his pointed face lax with happiness, his quirky grin softened and sly, and his trim little body stretched out, wanton, naked….

Thinking about it now was making Will tingle with embarrassment.

Right? That
was
embarrassment, wasn’t it?

Did embarrassment give you a semi?

Or full-on wood?

Because right now, leaning against Kenny’s counter, he was fully, painfully erect, for maybe the first time in months.

He backed away and tried to think about something else—
anything
else. Losing his job, his mother’s cat, Denise—oh, there you go. Limp as a politician’s moral code.

Will took a step back from the counter and looked at himself in the mirror, wondering why his image didn’t change. Same dorky hair, same fat, pink mouth, same big nose. Shouldn’t he look different? Look smarter? Skinnier? More hip? Kenny looked hip—cute and perky and hip. Didn’t that come with the….

Will shied away from the thought and ran away from the mirror as though it would be that easy to run away from his thoughts.

His shoes were in the hallway, right under the small tiger-striped boutique bag with a short note on a series of green Post-its.

If the interest was just the beer, feel free to throw this away and forget it ever happened. If not, I’ll field any questions—Kenny

Will looked inside the bag, wary of the high-gloss crinkle.

And almost died.

T
HE
BAG
sat next to him in the car, and by the time he’d made it through Saturday morning traffic, he could swear it was talking to him. (
Holy crap!
It was wall-to-wall old people. Did
any
of them drive over the speed limit?)

He wasn’t sure what to do to shut the bag up.

Heya, remember that big phallic thing? I’m its oddly shaped little brother. And I’ve got a book! Sure, it’s
billed
as porn, but it’s got
instructions
!

Instructions with both male and female models.

William stopped at the first McDonald’s he came to and ordered a large Dr Pepper and an Egg McMuffin. He’d finished them both by the time he got to his tiny Carmichael apartment, and only the thought of the twelve-pack of Dr Pepper he stocked in his refrigerator kept him from collapsing and weeping before he got through the doorway.

He needed a shower.

And that entire half case of soda.

And some quiet time with that book and that little toy and the little bottle of lubricant.

And
then
he’d look himself in the mirror and figure out what he saw.

He visited the potty for a long time before the shower. When he got out, he wrapped a towel around his waist and grabbed a soda from the tiny fridge in the tinier kitchenette, then downed it in three gulps. The apartment wasn’t very big—the kitchen/dinette nook was about one step across, and the couch was three steps from that. The living/dining room was taken up with the computer table, several towers, various laptops, shelves of books, CDs, DVDs, textbooks, and action figures. Everything was shelved neatly and even organized in its own way, but it was, well,
everything.
There were so many shelves, there wasn’t any room for posters, and the couch and the small television were like islands of civilization in a sea of nerd-dom.

But, well, it sure was private.

In fact, his biggest worry in terms of privacy was that the sliding glass door to the patio was on the other end of the apartment from the bedroom, but he’d already pulled the heavy drapes.

He heard his phone buzz, and he pulled it out of his pants and plugged it into the charger after setting it on silent. It was his mom. His mom could wait. There were also six messages from Denise, and he had the feeling he had something
really
important to do before he took those calls.

He was tingling all over his body, and just the
thought
of opening that little tiger-striped bag ramped that tingling up higher.

Kiss and Tell
,
he read from the side of the bag. Vaguely he remembered the place, a little marital aids store on the corner of Fair Oaks and Winding Way, with bright neon signs against the darkness. He remembered sitting in the front seat when Kenny had stopped the car, and when he’d come to, Kenny was getting back
in
the car, so he must have bought this then.

Jesus, what had Will said?

Apparently more about stuff that went in his bottom, he thought practically, brazening out the blush. His hands were sweating and he was practically
shaking
with urgency as he pulled out the contents of the bag.

Will lay on the bed, propping himself up with his arms, and the towel fell open at the back. Well, he thought, spreading his legs a little in the air and feeling decidedly naughty, nobody was here. Nobody could look inside his bedroom—
or
his brain—and this moment here? This was just for him. Via a very nice man who’d had a very bad day.

With that, he grabbed the book from the bag and opened it up to page one.

Oral and Penetrative Sex—The Illustrated Guide.

The title alone made him hard, and he really hadn’t even looked at any pictures.

It was a coed book—women and men, in all combinations, demonstrating pretty much every technique under the sun. It must have cost a
fortune
,
but… well, damn.

Will had never really
looked
at erotica—in fact, had never considered himself particularly sexual at all. He was very conscious of the fact that he was a big guy, sort of doofy—and, if his recent job situation was anything to gauge by, a
very
poor judge of any social situation.

Who really wanted to get with that?