Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 117408 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117408 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
I understood that very well, actually. This entire situation started to remind me of my parents, and of how their relationship soured until the point of no return. When a gallon of milk goes bad, no one tries to save it. They grab it and toss it in the trash, and that’s exactly what had happened with my parents’ relationship.
It’s what was happening to Jonah and Wendy. A reminder of why I lived my life alone, and why I had been okay with that for a very long time.
Of course… things change. They always do.
Jonah was focused on emptying out a sock drawer. He had no idea my gaze was turned to him, no idea my thoughts had been swirling around him since the moment we shook hands. He was changing me, in the speed of light. He was fundamentally altering the way I thought about others, about myself. I had opened up to him faster than I’d opened up to anyone before, and that scared me. Why was I putty in this man’s hands? Was it that glowing aura of his that drew me in? He had an irresistible way about him, and I’d never met someone like that. Someone who made me forget about all the pain in my past, forget about the lessons I had thought I learned from that pain.
Someone who made me forget they weren’t even gay. There wasn’t a chance between us… maybe that was why I was so drawn to him? Because deep down, I knew, really knew, that this was all only window-shopping. As perfect as Jonah and I could be, it just… well, it couldn’t.
I peeled my eyes off him, already feeling myself getting lost in the curve of his back, his ass, his thighs.
We were throwing in the last of Jonah’s shirts into a cardboard box when the bathroom door opened.
“Wendy, we’ll be out— Oh.”
I turned from my spot next to the closet. Steam was spilling out of the bathroom, creating a soft cloud in the air, hovering over Wendy and the man who stood next to her. Wendy had a towel wrapped around her chest, a look of shock on her sharp, pointed features. The man had his hands over his junk, water falling off his fingers, pooling on the carpet underneath him. He was an older guy with a belly that looked to be full of beer.
“Jonah!” Wendy screeched first. “What are you doing?”
“We talked about me coming over to pack up my shit, Wendy.” Jonah looked from the man to Wendy, then back to the man. His blue eyes looked torrential. “You’re already with Hector?”
“What did you want me to do, Jonah? Sit here and cry over you for the rest of my life?”
“No, but getting with our downstairs neighbor? How long has he been coming over?”
Wendy crossed her arms, pale face turning cherry red. “Don’t insinuate I cheated on you. I’d never.”
“Wen—”
“Not now, Hector.”
“Right.” Hector turned and disappeared back into the bathroom, his bare ass jiggling away through the cloud of steam.
Wendy’s attention turned to me. She lifted a hand in the air, water drops flying across the room. “And who the hell is this? What are you doing in my room?”
I wanted to give her a piece of my mind. She deserved to know how much her apathy had hurt Jonah. How she had deprived him of the love I could see he was crying out for. It was cruel and unfair. If Wendy knew there wasn’t a spark there, she should have done something about it sooner. I had a feeling that if Jonah never broke up with her, Wendy would have continued on with her apathy and kept Jonah locked into an empty relationship.
I wanted to tell her all of that, but Jonah took some steps forward and stopped right next to my side.
“You mean Fox?” Jonah looked to me, and his crystal-blue eyes told me what he was about to do before his lips did.
“This is my fucking boyfriend.”
He grabbed my face in his hands and kissed me, hard and wet and holy fuck was I blown away.
21 Jonah Brightly
“I’m so sorry. I still can’t believe it.” I wanted to bury my head in the dirt and suffocate myself. I grabbed a taped-up cardboard box from my back seat and started the short way back into Fox’s house, Fox right behind me with another box.
“Stop apologizing, Jonah, for real. I don’t care. You could have dropped my pants and sucked me off right there in front of her and I would have understood.”
I managed to scrounge up a laugh for that. “Maybe a little excessive, but thanks for letting me know my plan B was viable.”
“Always have a plan B.” Fox, with a heavy-looking box in his arms, looked to me and smiled. “Well, that sounds more like a plan D if you ask me.”