SEX AND THE BOY ✓

ROY AND REECE IN A CAR, G.R.O.P.I.N.G.

STRIATIONS ON THE NECK OF his sweats' sleeves won't let him be and maybe it's his skin breathing in and out in anxiety or the former. The bubbles running up to the surface of the apple soda keep making this sparking sound forming an a capella with Leroi's fingers repeatedly cracked in more anxiety.

He's never been like this for a very long time. Fidgeting didn't exist in his impending autobiography's appendix, till he met Maurice Greene. Well, maybe he's had a lot of quite serious crushes in earlier days but this is something else. He feels this one just got doughed and carved to satisfaction, after many a stalking, shameless drooling, heartbreaks and embarrassments, now it's in the oven baking, into something hopefully Michelin-nice.

In all he's seen, romcoms, books, animations, there's always a "hot waiter" but this? In this restaurant, a scam. The stinkmeaner with mauna loa craters all over his oblong face grumbles the menu and Leroi just had to delay his order. What if ugly touches his food and gives him ugly? Maurice would be disappointed.

Drumming his sweaty fingers into the table to some dejectable Kanye beat, and stamping fingerprints of moisture with every stroke, the minute hand of the grandfather clock ten o'clock to him takes a step forward, reality accompanying it infinitesimally a cog engine behind. It's late and Leroi knows it. And Leroi dreads it.

Maybe he's been played? Could Maurice actually stoop that low--scratch that, they are infernally hormonal teenage boys anyways, nothing new--?

Leroi Slayberry, this century's lover boy thinks back to yesterday when he was sitting back to his headboard in his cozy room and teaching his parrot how to waltz. Maurice called back. Like, Maurice Greene fucking called back. On a norms, anyone would be weirded out waking up a nice early morning to see twenties of missed calls from a human being... The jock imploded and with his lungs closed asked Maurice out to a date. Maurice probably didn't blink before saying that beautiful three-lettered word.

With shaky hands, he picks the cup and leads it to his trembling lips. He can swear he's going to burst in hysterics before everybody if this turns out to be a joke.

His face is in the soda and the cracking sounds keep getting louder till another enters the group chat. This one cracks, a smile to his face.

"Hey sexy."

It is taking all in Leroi not to jump Maurice and eat him to the bone because he finally wore something other than sweats; a plain white tank top and baggy OffWhite shorts and fresh Airmaxes, and two, did he just call him sexy?!!

"You look like you just stepped out of my many wet dreams about your fine ass." Leroi crippingly stands up, takes Maurice's hand and places the corniest peck on it.

Maurice doesn't blush, surprisingly. "Slick boy, damn. Way to go being a gentleman." He's used to all this and he will be lying if he said he denied enjoying the incessant teases.

"Now would you like that, honey?"

"Depends," Maurice admits, chewing the insides of his mouth like in thought. The Lebanese-English stringbean props his head on the table with eyes glowing. Leroi thinks his lenses' refractive index is messed up because there's not even a Vaseline in hell that can make this sack of depressed potatoes shine like this.

"I thought you liked it rough."

That makes Maurice freeze over, his fingers pianoing on his chin skid to a terrifying halt and his pupils open wide like moonflowers to crescent. Leroi doesn't remember, does he? The restaurant suddenly feels cold, and the aura of Maurice a nitrogen cloud.

Leroi is watching all this unfold, Maurice breaking cold sweat already, that he had to backtrack to his last statement and for a while of staring at the words behind his eyes, he snaps into realization and almost clamps his mouth shut.