Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 437(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 437(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
I was starting to think there was something wrong with me. I was a grown man with an awesome teaching career, a house, a damn retirement fund—but I couldn’t make a relationship work.
At this point, I was used to being lonely.
“Yeah, I guess I never actually quit,” I said.
Mitch was silent. It was rare that he didn’t have anything to say.
“Hey, hookups are better than smoking, as far as bad habits go, right?” I joked.
He nodded, but I couldn’t read his expression. I wondered for a moment if maybe he was feeling sorry for me.
I didn’t want that. Mitch had always kind of looked up to me—I was good at math, good at teaching, I could always figure out the “right thing” to do. If Mitch was pitying me, I knew things must be bad.
“I’m glad you’re coming over tomorrow,” he finally said. “You’ll never believe it. I’m in that house on Birch Street where we always used to fuck around.”
“With the red door and the big tree?”
He nodded. “Old Man Jones’ house. Come over around three,” he said, pulling me into another hug and filling my world with his scent. “Fuck, I’ve missed you.”
It was like all of the chaotic tension that had been filling me all night just cascaded away. Being in Mitch’s arms felt like home, no matter how crazy the circumstances.
“I missed you so much, too,” I said, my face buried near his neck. I felt my cock stiffening a little under my pants again from the proximity. I wanted him so fucking badly, and I couldn’t make it go away.
“Well, your ass is mine, now,” he said as he pulled away, winking at me.
Christ. The man may as well have been controlling my cock. He was too innocent to know what those words did to me. I stiffened more, and I was glad for the dim lighting outside.
“Is that right?” I asked. “And what exactly are you planning on doing with it?”
He laughed as he opened the door to the Tavern, giving me one last wave goodbye. “You’re going to be sick of me within a week, Weirdo. Bet on it.”
He’d never been so wrong in his life.
4
Mitch
Coach used to talk about making The Magic happen. When you’re beat down, broken, and bone tired, and there’s no way your feet can take you to that endzone. But somehow, they do—you nab the touchdown, the crowd screams for you, and every cell in your body relaxes and dances all at once.
That’s how it felt seeing Evan again for the first time in so long. The Magic was back.
“Zach,” I said, in my best stern, dad-like tone.
He ignored me, eyes glued to his iPhone as he lay back on the couch. I continued tidying the living room, breaking down a few cardboard boxes that were still clustered in one corner. This morning we’d been cleaning up the house, hanging some framed photos, trying to make things feel cozy.
Well, I’d been doing that. Zach had been… being a teenager.
But my best friend in the fucking world was coming over soon, and thinking about Evan had me all fired up. I’d already taken three push-up breaks and one emergency jerk-off session in my bedroom that morning.
I hadn’t been thinking about Evan when I jerked off—that would be weird. But I needed to clear my head somehow. Now I was in full clean-up mode, my adrenaline racing.
“Never should have gotten you that thing,” I said, nodding at Zach’s iPhone. “I told your mom, flip phones until you’re eighteen, but I definitely lost that battle.”
“You were the one worried about me fitting in at my new school,” Zach said, still tapping away at the phone as he spoke. “You think if I showed up with a flip phone that would happen?”
“Some kids don’t have any phone at all,” I said.
I felt like such a dad cliche. Raising a teenage son wasn’t easy, though, and now that I was doing it as a single dad for the first time, it suddenly felt exponentially more complex. In some ways, I had to admit the single life was easier. Things were a whole hell of a lot calmer now that it was just me and Zach. If Jess were here right now, she would have been worried about the way I was breaking down the cardboard or commenting on the fact that I used Windex to clean the counters, which I was pretty sure wasn’t the right choice.
But she’d agreed that Zach might have a better time in high school outside of a big city, and miraculously, she’d understood when I said I wanted him to come with me to Amberfield. I had to prove that she’d made the right decision, even though it was one of the hardest ones both of us ever had to make.