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)
My cock throbbed against my shorts. I gave myself a rub before tucking my boner against the waistband of my shorts. With that business taken care of, I got back to finishing up our sandwiches, cutting up some onions, adding some salt and pepper, and throwing them on the panini press since I knew Jonah loved having his cheese melted.
I went back outside with the warm, pressed sandwiches on two small round plates. Jonah washed his hands and came back out. We sat on my front step and ate, laughing and chatting and having a gay old fucking time, my heart feeling as full as my belly by the end of our lunch break.
25 Jonah Brightly
My heart was beating hard in my chest, but it wasn’t for the reasons that had been causing that same reaction over the past few weeks. Tonight was different. I was facing something that had been coming for a long time, but I needed help first. I couldn’t do it alone. There were questions I needed to ask, answers I had to hear.
So a dinner with my brother was exactly what I needed.
He was currently enrolled at a veterinary school that was about a two-hour drive away from Miami. He offered to make the drive down when I asked him to meet, but I knew he was studying for some tests and didn’t want to take up more time than necessary. I got in my car after working all day outside with Fox, and I drove the two hours up to see my brother. The entire drive was filled with pop songs blasting on the radio and me singing along without a care in the damn world. I was nervous, yes, but I was also happy. I felt good. Something I hadn’t felt in a really long-ass time.
Yes, there were still things I had to sort out in my life, but these past three weeks had been a great time, the total opposite of what I felt was going to happen. I thought I’d be miserable as I hunted for an apartment and adjusted to a new job, but instead, I was quickly becoming the happiest I’d ever been. Every day felt bright and new. I loved getting to work at Stonewall Investigations every day, and the other detectives all seemed to feel the same way which only amplified the feeling.
And then, after a rewarding day of work, I secretly loved coming back hom—eh, coming back to Fox’s place, and getting to unwind with him, doing whatever the hell we wanted to do. Some nights we would walk the beach, others we’d sit and drink and watch dumb movies, laughing and joking all night. Other nights we’d stay up until the sun rose again, our bodies spent and our souls happy.
As I drove past a stretch of open farmland, I let myself get lost in daydreams about Fox. I still couldn’t believe he had gone out of his way to bring that old Mercedes to his place for me. No one had ever done something like that for me before, and it left a mark.
By the time I got to my brother’s place, I was still smiling.
I parked in one of the spots for guests and walked over to his building. He lived in an apartment complex with all the buildings sporting a fresh white-and-black paint job, making the community feel fresh and modern. Oliver lived on the third floor of his building, so I climbed up the steps, still smiling as I knocked on his dark blue door.
He opened, the smell of garlic and steak wafting out from behind him. “Hey, Jojo.”
I hugged my little brother, glad to be seeing him today but also nervous as fuck. When I had asked him to meet for dinner, it wasn’t because I thought he cooked some bomb steaks (which he did), but because I needed to have a heart-to-heart discussion with Oliver about how he knew he was gay, how he had come to accept that about himself, and how he had embraced it so openly and lovingly.
Oliver and I were very different, while at the same time being almost identical.
We had huge hearts, and we were both more fond of smiling than frowning. Neither of us were ever bullies, and neither of us were ever rocket scientists.
On the same token, Oliver was much smarter than I was, excelling at school from a young age and showing a strong passion for the sciences, while I was lousy with my grades and enjoyed after-school activities way more than any subject given to me. It’s not that I wasn’t smart—school just didn’t engage me as much as it did Oliver, and that had me jealous of him at some points.
Another difference was Oliver’s overflowing confidence and larger-than-life personality. He liked to dance in the rain when the rain was a broken sprinkler system. When he came out to me and our parents, he had choreographed an entire interpretive dance to come out to, culminating in him wrapping himself in a glittery rainbow flag while secretly placed confetti cannons shot out from behind the couch.