Tags:
M/M romance, Love’s Landscapes, gay romance, contemporary, enemies to lovers, cinderfella, reunited, geeks/nerds, blue collar, businessman, bullying, escort, first time, high school crush
defiance of his family. But nothing like it ever happened. He never met anyone. He was never able to recognize who was gay and who wasn’t. Not to mention how badly it freaked him out that he might hit on a straight guy and end up being mocked to the end of his life. The anxiety was such a mood killer he couldn’t bear it. Before Mike knew it, he’d ended up at Vega’s gas station to make ends meet, and that was the death of his sex life. He sure as hell fantasized about things that he could do, things that could happen, but with no money, no car, not even a cell phone, fantasies were all he had.
Fantasies of ‘what if’. What if he’d gotten to fuck that ugly duckling gay boy at school? What if they’d managed to have a secret arrangement?
When the water filled the tub, he took off the clothes that didn’t suit him anyway, and folded them neatly before slipping into the water. The immersion got him all breathing hard again and trying not to cry. He wasn’t scum. It just never worked out for him in life. He should have stayed in the closet. It would have been so much better if he had just stayed a bachelor who flirted with girls in public but never married one.
He never had much luck, but this ‘chance’ James graciously offered him was turning out to be a mere power trip, a way a grown man could get back at a guy who teased him at school. How ridiculous was that? First, James offered Mike all those nice things, clothes that made him look good, and then it turned out it wasn’t enough to make Mike even remotely attractive to him. Maybe the fucker had planned this all along, who knew? What Mike despised the most was the way James looked at him when he was telling him what kind of scum Mike really was in his eyes. That gaze had been so cold but filled with satisfaction, as if James had just achieved something he had been waiting for his entire life. Mike could bet the sonofabitch would sleep like a baby tonight, and all that after Mike had gone beyond himself to prove how much he was worth.
He called him ‘baby’ and ‘Jamie’ all day. Gave James compliments, most of them real, and was as polite as he could get. It sickened Mike to think that James had probably been laughing at him all day. Mike took another deep breath and put his head under the hot water. A tiny part of him was embarrassed to have imagined being someone James could fall for. What a stupid fucking idea. They probably wouldn’t get along anyway, but when he’d seen James, standing by that Jag, in those shades and the white shirt, in the middle of nowhere, Mike had thought he’d seen a mirage, that was how much he was attracted to James. He was almost as tall as Mike, had that masculine figure, with wide shoulders and narrow hips… Mike wanted to touch him so bad, yet hated him so much at the same time. The shame of being gay never really left him, no matter how confident he claimed to be. It was all a wall he put up not to get hurt by the homophobic comments. When he thought about James’s body, about the strong stomach he’d touched, or about kissing his stubbly cheeks, the shame never left, but it did become easier to bear with the prize being so delicious.
He pulled his head from under the water with a gasp. He needed to finish off this weekend on a good note, find himself a boyfriend in Las Vegas so they could fuck like bunnies. He was so done with living like a monk.
He only left the tub when the water was turning cold, but he did all he could to stay in the bathroom a little bit longer. Looking into James’s eyes again was among the last things he wanted to do. On top of being mocked, getting sexually rejected as well was no fun at all.
He eventually wrapped the fluffy hotel towel around his hips and pressed on the door handle. He was surprised to see darkness in the bedroom, even more so when the ray of light from behind him fell on James’s legs that almost reached the edge of the bed. Mike leaned out of the bathroom and
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