for him, beamed, took the beer, and then hollered up the stairs, “Wes! Your boyfriend is home!”
Ten heads appeared over the railing. Wes’s teammates waved down at Justin. It was weird to see them all without their helmets and their pads.
Wes came thundering down the stairs to take Justin’s duffel and lead him back up. The rest of the team was still there, hanging around and pretending to all be doing something on the suddenly-crowded landing. Wes introduced Justin to everyone officially, and he shook their hands as they scoped him out.
“Welcome to the house,” Orlando said. “We made Art clean up.”
“Pfft,” the big guy named Art said. Justin knew him as Ramirez, the center. “Nah, man, we made Patrick do his damn laundry. You had shit in there that hadn’t been washed since last season, bro.”
“Man…” Patrick, one of the linemen, shoved Art. “How are those holes in your wall?”
“Wes is gonna help me fix those. Aren’t you, Wes?”
“Yeah, I will.” Wes guided Justin into his bedroom. “But not tonight.”
That set everyone off, and the house filled with catcalls and wolf whistles, cries of Ooooo and Daaaamn. Wes shook his head and tried to salvage what he meant, but Justin grabbed him and hauled him into his bedroom. Orlando made a show of putting his earbuds in, and down the hall, someone turned on a stereo and turned up the volume.
Justin laid Wes belly-down on his bed and massaged his back and his shoulders, then his arms and legs, until Wes was boneless and then asleep. Justin laughed as he poked at Wes’s shoulder. Totally out, so unconscious he was drooling onto his pillow. So much for the wild sex the other guys were ribbing them about. But Wes was relaxed, so Justin counted that as a victory.
He washed the lotion off his hands in the bathroom down the hall, and as he did, he heard voices from downstairs, guys chatting in the kitchen about finals and the game. He headed down, grabbing a beer from the fridge and taking a seat at the kitchen island—and nobody blinked. Colton asked him about his finals, and he told them about his nursing clinical exams and his advanced pharmacology final coming up. He left out his and Wes’s French final.
They had to give a thirty-minute presentation to the class on a topic that was meaningful to them both, and they’d struggled to come up with one. Wes didn’t want to do football, because that wasn’t something they shared equally. He suggested ballet, but Justin vetoed that for the same reason. In the hospital, they’d finally decided on their topic: how they’d fallen in love, and what it had been like to have to hide all semester. It was an undeniably sentimental presentation, full of “mon amour” and “mon coeur.” It was probably going to end up on YouTube by the end of the week. Wes said he didn’t care, and he’d held Justin’s hand as they walked to the stadium together afterward.
Austin and Josh came in and said they were going to start dinner. Justin said he’d help, and he joined in with the linemen as they made spaghetti and meat sauce for twelve football players. Twelve pounds of ground beef, twelve full boxes of pasta. Justin made the chicken Caesar salad and garlic bread for the sides. The salad was over five pounds, and he used five loaves of French bread.
The team grabbed their dinner buffet-style and then spread out in the living room, huddled over the coffee tables or eating from their laps. Patrick and Art ate out of mixing bowls, spaghetti and salad all in one big pile. Justin sat on the floor next to Colton with his modest plate.
“I guess Wes didn’t work you up into a big ole appetite?” Orlando teased.
“Y’all were in there for about an hour.” Quinton shoveled pasta into his mouth and winked.
“Actually, Wes is the one who passed out,” Justin speared a bite of chicken and lettuce. “Guess I worked him out too hard.”
The guys lost it. Colton almost sprayed pasta across the room, and Patrick needed a back slap when his beer went down the wrong tube. Orlando gave Justin a fist bump and a nod, and Art said, “Respect, man. Respect.”
Everyone descended into giggles when Wes appeared, his hair sticking up in all directions, eyes still sleep-soft and pillow lines crisscrossing his cheek. “Any food left?” he asked, rubbing his belly.