Chapter 22
Except of course that every time Andy looked at Scooter, now, he couldn’t help thinking about it. Couldn’t help wanting. Couldn’t help feeling the press of Scooter’s arm around his shoulders, which seemed to be happening more and more often, now that he knew Andy wouldn’t shake him off. When Scooter had put a hand on Andy’s hip to steady him, earlier, Andy had damn near popped a stiffie for all the world to see. Well, the part of the world that had been standing on the beach watching, anyhow: a gaggle of kids and his co-workers, which somehow made it worse
So now Scooter was just on the other side of a flimsy, slightly warped door, naked and wet and…touchinghimself (Not that way. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully.) and Andy…Yeah, Andy was so, soscrewed.
And not in the good way. He groaned and flopped onto the couch next to Trick, then pulled a towel over his lap, as if he’d just dropped it carelessly and not that he was trying to hide anything. He rearranged it a few times, aiming for maximum casual.
The water turned off. Metal curtain rings slid back. Andy tried not to visualize naked, dripping wet Scooter stepping out of the shower, running his fingers through that mop of dark hair, slicking it away from his face and—
“Aw, FUCK!”
That was definitely not part of the fantasy. Andy hadn’t heard anything like a crash or a thump that would have resulted in injury, but…”You okay?” he called.
The sound that came out of Scooter’s throat might have given a grizzly bear pause, a low, fervent growl. “I’m an idiot,” he said, after a moment. “Might have a problem, though.”
I’m having a problem out here, too, Andy didn’t say. “Anything I can do?” he tried, and winced at how much it sounded like a line from a terrible porno. Or maybe that was just his overactive imagination.
Scooter opened the bathroom door in a swirl of steam, one of Jeff’s hunter-orange towels around his waist. “Didn’t get the curtain quite closed. There’s water all over your floor. And…I don’t have any other clothes over here.” In one hand, he held his jeans, sopping wet, out away from his body. It wasn’t like Andy was seeing anything new, between the shirtless morning coffee and the surfing, but…The towel was wrapped tightly enough to outline the curve of Scooter’s ass, the split of the wrap teasing with a hint of pale, well-muscled thigh. His hair was dripping, covering his chest and shoulders with rivulets of water that Andy desperately wanted to lick away…
Fuck. This was not getting any lesslike a cheesy porno. Andy squashed that thought before it could tell him the next lines in the script. “Okay, we can…Um…” He looked around, somewhat wildly. “Oh, here!” He snatched up a pair of sweatpants from the back of the chair and tossed them toward Scooter. “You can wear those until the dog and pony show have cleared out of your place.”
“I am not going to ask who’s the dog and who’s the pony in that scenario,” Scooter said. He tossed his soaked jeans on the bathroom sink.
Andy laughed, and was proud of himself for making it sound natural and easy. “No, probably best not to. I’ll just sop up some of this water.” And now he had an excuse to keep holding the towel, strategically placed, as he made his way to the bathroom. He gave himself a high-five.
The bathroom floor had become a lake, water spreading from the shower stall lip all the way past the toilet. One towel was not going to do the trick, here. Shit. Well, Jeff had bought out an entire store’s worth of ugly orange towels, so there were plenty. Andy dropped his towel next to the door and turned to grab another one—
—just in time to get a perfect, clear view of Scooter’s ass as he pulled on the sweatpants.
Andy’s knees nearly gave out. He leaned against the doorframe, and barely managed to drag his eyes away and snatch up another towel as Scooter turned around.
Oh, God. Those were his sleep-pants. The other sweats Kat had brought him weren’t nearly as worn and comfortable. Which meant Andy was going to be sleeping in the same pants that Scooter had worn. Sans underwear.
Fuuuuuuuck. Not now, boner.
It didn’t listen, of course.
Scooter made a grouchy, disgusted sort of noise. “Why don’t you ever complain, Andy?”
Andy paused in the midst of scattering towels on the bathroom floor and twisted his head around to try to read Scooter’s expression “What?”
“I told you weeks ago,” Scooter said, gesturing around to the boxes and bags of Jeff’s stuff that Andy had been stepping around since he got to Sandbridge, “that I’d get a storage unit and get this junk out of your way. I forgot.” He chewed his lip and pushed his fingers through his hair, slicking it back, giving him the appearance of a 1920s gangster. If mob hitmen wore too-tight sweatpants. “You shoulda said something.”
Jeff’s stuff did, in fact, take up at least a quarter of the available space in what was already a crowded floor plan. Andy had sort of tuned it out after a few days; it was just static, really, like the constant rhythm of the surf or the outdated, ugly wallpaper. He didn’t spend a lot of his waking time in the apartment anyway. “It’s not a big deal,” he said, toeing the towels around on the floor to soak up the water. “You’ve already done so much. I wouldn’t want to be ungrateful.”
That was a fairly constant refrain in his life, anyway. His father, telling him he should be grateful for their privileged station and comfortable lifestyle. Nick, telling him he should be grateful for having escaped his father, for the way Nick took care of him.