place? Do I get up? The struggle is real because both options are appealing in their own way. Getting up right this second is the correct option, obviously. It’s the right thing to do for my sanity, and most of all, it’s the decent thing to do.
There’s an unspoken protocol in place for dealing with unintended boners, and it’s very simple: you ignore it.
My body hasn’t gotten the memo. I stay in place, waiting. I don’t know what for, exactly. For Gray to freak out and the hardness pressing against my chest to disappear? But he doesn’t and it doesn’t, and we’ve been lying on ice for a really long time by now, and those damn athletic pants I’m wearing are not going to conceal anything. The only reason Gray isn’t getting a first-row seat to my cock poking at his shin is the fact that I’m lying between his thighs. That thought does absolutely squat to calm my body down. You’d think lying on cold ice would help, but no. My dick refuses to cooperate. It’s so hard that I could probably pound a hole in the ice should Gray and I feel like dipping our feet into ice fishing here. Even the ridiculousness of that doesn’t help. I’m doomed.
“My ass is getting wet,” Gray finally says in a scratchy voice.
That, at least, breaks the spell. I scramble away from him, executing the perfect roll of shame onto the ice next to Gray.
I manage to push myself into a sitting position, which is good because it lets me draw my knees up and hide the Viagra overdose-worthy erection that still refuses to quit. It takes another few forevers for my dick to catch up to the message that there is going to be no fucking on ice, and then it finally starts to calm down. Small mercies.
Gray pushes himself to his feet with far more finesse than I could ever pull off. I avoid looking at his… general lap area by every means possible.
“Do you need help getting up?” Gray asks. His voice is all weird. There’s tension in it that wasn’t there before. I feel like cursing. The freak-out has arrived. Maybe he even saw how my body reacted and that’s what is causing the pinched look on his face.
I let my head drop forward and close my eyes for a moment. Shit, shit, shit! This can’t become some sort of a thing that’ll make everything between us weird and awkward. It just can’t. I’ve worked so hard for years to make sure my feelings wouldn’t ruin us, so one accidental, misplaced, caused-by-friction erection will not ruin us. I refuse to let that happen.
The smile I paste on my face is anything but natural as I grab Gray’s outstretched arm and carefully get on my feet.
Commence operation Erection-What-Erection-I-Felt-Nothing. Code name EWEIFN, for short.
I force myself to laugh. “Dude, you should have seen your face when you went down.”
Gray cocks his head to the side, a puzzled expression on his face.
“Just…” I gesture in the air with my hand and contort my face into some kind of a grimace. “And then with the…” Another nonsensical hand gesture, courtesy of me. “Hilarious,” I finish with another bark of laughter that sounds about as genuine as the laugh I gave after Mon accidentally kneed me in the balls at her wedding, and I laughed because I didn’t want to upset her on her big day.
“Uh-huh,” Gray says slowly, still eyeing me like he’s hoping to find something, only I don’t know what he’s expecting to see.
“We should get going,” I announce loudly. “All this skating is making me hungry. Let’s go and grab a bite to eat. My treat. Hey! That rhymed. Let’s walk and see if we can find more rhymes. That sounds like prime fun. In fact starting now, nothing but rhymes are allowed. We’ll have our very own poetry night and don’t you dare fight. And go.”
Dear God, Kai, shut the fuck up!
I dutifully clamp my mouth shut. That’s better.
“Kai,” Gray calls after me, but I’ve already lumbered a few feet away toward the exit of the rink, so I pretend I don’t hear him. I just need a second, and then everything will be fine. I can fix this. I can turn us back into normal.
“Kai,” Gray calls once more.
I ignore him. But in the spirit of poetry night, the only answer in my head to Gray calling my name is a loud and decidedly desperate Why?
16
Gray
I’ve