Chapter 2
“Everything all right?” Derrick asked.
“Rainbows and unicorns,” the younger man said, still apparently riveted by his phone. “You have a good night.”
Dang. Derrick had been blown off before, but this kid heaved Fuck off like a cinderblockthrough the window of a jewelry store. There was nothing inviting in his body language or his tone, and Derrick surprised himself as much as T.S. when he sat down next to him. “It’s just, did I overhear you have no place to stay?”
“Oh, did I not get around to telling you myself?” the kid snarled. “Where are my manners?”
“You’re right,” Derrick said. “It’s none of my business. I have a room, is all.”
“That the best line you got?”
“Unless you like, ‘I was gonna invite you up and share my pizza but now I’d kind of rather find your frozen corpse in the parking lot in the morning.’ better,” Derrick said, hoisting himself up from the couch. “Sorry to bother you.” He headed back to the gift shop to gather up his snacks.
“No, wait,” T.S. said, himself standing and looking at Derrick for the first time. Seeing handsome, seeing gay—and seeing pizza—he dug deep and proffered what Derrick figured he thought was a smile. “Sorry, that was rude. I don’t have a place to stay tonight; I gotta say it’s kind of stressing me out.” He gave Derrick a rather thorough once-over. “You were on my flight, huh? Going to Minneapolis?”
“St. Paul,” Derrick said by way of a Yes. “See my mom, all that.”
“How’d you swing a room?”
Derrick shrugged. “Timing,” he posited. “Who knows? Got lucky, I guess.”
T.S. lifted the side of his mouth. “If you mean it about sharing your room, we might both get lucky tonight.”
The blood rushed from Derrick’s one head to the other so fast he reached out to steady himself against the counter. His mouth was suddenly bone dry, but he managed to croak out, “I’m Derrick.”
“I’m Lee.”
“Look, no strings…”
Lee smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I appreciate the offer. Of the bed and the pizza, not gonna lie. How’d you know to get two?” he teased with a wink.
Derrick blushed the littlest bit. “It’s just…no, see…well, I…” he stammered.
Lee laughed and clapped Derrick on the shoulder. “I’m teasin’ ya, Meat Ball,” he said. “Just let me make sure you got two spoons for the ice cream, then I’ll follow you.”
* * * *
Derrick winked at his naked, grinning reflection in the bathroom mirror. Darn right you got lucky, he told himself. For the sex had been nothing short of fantastic. Lee turned out to be the kind of skinny-boy lover that Derrick had always hoped, but never actually expected, to find. The kind that saw the extra forty pounds of middle as a bonus and not an embarrassment. The kind that actually used his love handles as love handles. The kind that nibbled on the cushion of his belly fat and called him Meat Ball. Best of all, the kind that went insane over a nice big ass because he had a nice big cock and leapt at the opportunity to unfurl it and use it to its full potential. While new and potent aphrodisiac properties of ice cream had been discovered, the pizzas had gone cold atop the flimsy chest of drawers; although ESPN droned on in the background, not even the Play of the Week rivaled the level of athleticism that Lee brought to bear on the unexpectedly resilient hotel bed. Derrick surprised himself and delighted his top with the number and variety of positions he’d worked himself into, but his hockey-jock days were farther behind him than he sometimes cared to admit, and when, after ninety minutes of uninterrupted union, Lee collapsed in celebratory spasms across his back, Derrick excused himself as much to catch his breath as to make use of the porcelain facilities.
Shortly, refreshed and newly available for further exploration, he gave the curvy Scandinavian playground in the mirror a final wink of approval, sucked his gut in reflexively, and walked out of the bathroom. Right in on Lee looting his wallet.
Lee stammered and stuttered and clearly racked his brain for something un-guilty-sounding to say, but hunching furtively over the pile of Derrick’s clothes on the chair in the corner of the room with Derrick’s wallet in one hand and a wad of cash—albeit a small one—in the other, he had few innocent explanations available to him.
Not that that stopped Derrick from asking, “What are you doing?”
“Um…” A long pause ensued, that Lee eventually opted not to fill.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought you were doing.”
“It’s just…”
“God, please don’t try and justify it,” Derrick counseled. “So what, you’re some kind of hustler? I hope there’s enough there to cover it,” he spat. “Is eating ice cream out of your ass extra? You need me to write you a check for the difference?”
“Dude, please. It’s not like that,” Lee said. “I mean, I know this looks bad…”
“It doesn’t look great,” Derrick confirmed. “'Cuz it kind of looks like you’re robbing me.”
“More like ‘borrowing’ from you.”
“Ah, I see. Because you’re planning on paying me back when exactly?”
“It’s just…look, I wasn’t planning on getting stuck here, right? I was just gonna go to my brother’s house, see if he could help me out. I’m not trying to rob anybody, but I got nothing.”
“You got a lot of nerve,” Derrick pointed out.