Tell Me It's Real(10)

Or maybe he wasn’t even looking at me. Maybe he was grinning and winking at Charlie. Or the ceiling. Or maybe he wasn’t grinning and winking at all, and it was just a facial tic brought on by having a slightly chubby man practically ovulating right in front of him. Take my fictitious eggs! I wanted to bellow at him. I will carry all your babies to full term!

He wasn’t looking at you, I told myself. And even if he was, it meant nothing.

But then that heated sensation into the side of my head was back.

I refused to look.

For three seconds. Then in a performance that would have made Daniel Day-Lewis proud, I stretched, popping my back, yawning and all the while squinting my eyes partially shut. Once I was in mid-stretch/pop/yawn/squint, I looked down briefly and saw that Mr. Yes Please was watching me yet again. He’s probably just wondering how big my nipples are, I thought as I continued what undoubtedly had to be the longest stretch/pop/yawn/squint ever. He probably thinks that I’m quarantined up here because I’ve got the biggest nipples in the world. If he even can spell quarantined. He might be hot, but he’s probably dumber than a box of rocks covered in cocaine. Ha, ha! Crack rocks. I’m funny as shit. Why am I still stretching?

So I stopped stretching, but Charlie must have seen what was going on because he started making a weird chuffing/grumbling noise he made when he thought something was really funny. I glared at him. “Real smooth, boy,” he said as he chuffed/grumbled, somehow able to move the spotlight perfectly over Helena as she prowled the floor even though he was watching me. “Don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t have game.”

“Shut up, Daddy,” I groused.

I looked down again, and Mr. Yes Please was laughing silently up at me, but for some reason, I got the feeling he wasn’t laughing at me as much as he was laughing at my blatant disregard for subtlety. I blushed again and looked away, determined to watch Helena perform and not watch the hotness watching me for some damn reason.

It almost worked.

Of course I gave him a quick glance every now and then. Okay, it was more like every few seconds. With how much my head was going back and forth between him and Helena, you would have thought that I was trying to dance really awfully along with the music. Sometimes he was looking at me, other times he was laughing with his perfectly perfect friends. Once or twice, our gazes locked and clashed and my breath caught in my throat and I had to tear my gaze away before I jumped on him from the second floor and demanded that he take me right there.

Halfway through Helena’s set, one of the shirtless twinkie barbacks walked by him carrying a tray. Mr. Yes Please stopped him and spoke with him. The twinkie (Eric was his name, stupid perfect little twinkie Eric) started to put a little sex in his pose. His jeans hung low on his hips, so low that it was obvious he was circumcised. His tanned skin glittered wondrously in the strobe lights. Mr. Yes Please laughed at something Eric said, and Eric reached out and playfully gripped Mr. Yes Please’s large bicep.

It was about that time that I pulled out my phone and googled how much time you got in prison for premeditated murder in the state of Arizona, all the while watching Eric out of the corner of my eye getting so close that I’m sure his normal-sized nipples were rubbing up against Mr. Yes Please. Google told me it was twenty-five years to life, and I weighed my options. I knew if I ended up in prison I’d just need to find the biggest, baddest guy in there and immediately become his bitch so that I wouldn’t get shanked or shivved by some guy named Boisterous Frankie. But at least the twink would have felt my wrath.

On the other hand, I could avoid prison altogether instead of getting oddly jealous over Eric touching a guy who I hadn’t even known existed less than ten minutes ago.

I was still debating this when someone said, “Paul,” right next to my ear.

I jumped. I turned and saw Eric standing right next to me. “You bitch,” I hissed at him, unable to stop myself. I glanced down at the floor and saw Mr. Yes Please watching us. Did he send Eric up here to tell me to stop staring at him like a crazy person? Well, then, I will send Eric down with a message back saying that the only reason I was staring at him was because I was wondering where one bought steroids because muscles that big are gross. Sort of.

Eric didn’t seem to hear me slander him, or maybe he was just used to it and tuned it out. “Compliments of the guy downstairs,” he said, handing me a shot of something from his tray. “Who the hell is he?” You could tell what he really wanted to say was how the hell did you pull this off?

I stared at the shot glass, confused.

“You gonna take this, Paul?” Eric asked. “Seems like a waste, given how hot the guy is. If you don’t want it, I’ll take it.” He smiled an evil smile. “And then I’ll go back down and thank him properly, if you know what I mean.”