I released his hand to open the gate to my private parking spot and swore under my breath at the new scene before me. I had forgotten about the press.
Though there were only five or six talking heads, between the cameramen and giant cameras, it was overwhelming when they converged on us like rats on a fallen crumb. Questions and microphones flew at us as we waded through to the Jag. Neither Peter nor I answered, until one question halted Peter at the driver’s side door. My irritation grew exponentially by the second.
“Changing teams, Austin?” Diane, a brunette with a pageant smile, had a hand propped on her hip and flecks of evil in her glossed lips.
I flashed her a look of surprise, then quickly masked it. “Helping the unfortunate,” I clarified. “Your mother still dating your ex-husband?” I tossed the keys to Peter and leaned on the top of the car. “She always did like your leftovers.” Her brown eyes narrowed in anger and I knew she’d forget to ask about Peter, which was exactly why I’d chosen that particular subject change.
She feigned casual laughter and shrugged. “Now both of us can talk about how much you suck in bed.”
“Sucking in bed is probably why he’s changing teams.” Peter smiled benignly at her and flicked the door open.
My eyes rolled to the afternoon sky and then closed, head hanging as I choked out laughingly, “That wasn’t the team she meant, Peter.” I didn’t have time to explain she meant associating with criminals, Peter was already behind the wheel with the door closed. “Give your mom my best.” I faked a smile and gingerly climbed into the car, slamming the door shut behind me just as she responded with, “Why? You never did.” Ouch.
“Sorry,” Peter muttered, starting the car and slowly backing out. I wanted to push his foot down on the pedal and run over a few of the reporters. Diane first. It was weighing on me how many enemies I had created in less than two weeks.
“I should create a list of ways to be unexpectedly outed: Partners discovering my obsession for a hustler, friends finding me half-naked with one, boyfriend announcing I suck cock to reporters.”
The car jolted to a stop. I grabbed the dashboard before my head thunked into the windshield. “Boyfriend?” Peter asked, brows lifting.
“I’m not backtracking.” I looked ahead, ignoring my jitterbugging heart, ignoring Peter and the reporters and the world; and my own inclination to, in fact, backtrack and say ‘boy and friend’; or sputter out some other kind of insincere denial.
“Okay.”
I eyed him sideways, searching for his reaction. Per usual, he showed me nothing but inscrutability. He shifted gears and pulled out of the alley.
He was a careful driver. Something I didn’t expect from his hard living. Did that come from being caretaker to everyone around him? Peter was a forty-year-old parent living in a twenty-year-old’s porn-star body. “At some point all of this is going to catch up with me,” I said.
“What is?”
“Gay, boyfriend, job loss, career in the toilet, gay, criminals in my house, criminals in my bed.”
“You said the gay thing twice.”
“It deserves double billing.”
“I like that best about you.”
“I should hope so. Hard to be a boyfriend without the gay thing.”
“Not the gay thing. The fact that you embrace every decision you make when you finally make one.”
Oh. “I like your cock best.”
“Liar.” He smiled. “You like my mouth.”
“I like everything about you.” I watched him swallow hard and heard his breathing speed up. “Except that I come third, behind Cai and Darryl.”
“You don’t,” he denied, pinching his brow.
“Everyone does. As your boy— Whatever-I-am—”
“I thought you said you were my boyfriend?”
“That sounds juvenile.”
“If the mentality fits…”
“As your boyfriend,” I continued with a growl, “I’d like to be bumped up on the list. At least to above Darryl.”
“There’s no list. There’s just,” he took a breath, “differences in interactions.”
“I’d like a few interactions changed, then. Specifically those with your dick in, or near, Darryl.” Or anyone else.
“Are you asking me for exclusivity?”
Was I? “Yes.”
“Because not too long ago—”
“Things have changed since then.”
“Since last night?”
“Yes.”
“What changed?”
“You saw my naked ass.”
“That was more significant than sucking your cock?”