Manties in a Twist (The Subs Club Book 3) (38 page)
Read Manties in a Twist (The Subs Club Book 3) Online
Authors: J.A. Rock
“At some point. Perhaps. Once he’s further along with school.”
“Oh. My. God.”
He turned back to me. “I don’t expect word of this to reach David.”
I hid a grin. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
He nodded again. “Good man.”
He left to go back to the grill. I took the opportunity to get out my phone and pull up a video. It was about the seven hundredth time I’d watched it today. And now I needed to share it with someone. I headed over to the kickball party and intercepted a kick from Gould to Ryan.
“No fair!” Ryan protested as I kicked the ball to Zac.
I put an arm around his shoulders. “I need you inside the house for a sec.”
He excused himself, then followed me through the side door into Miles’s laundry room.
“Hi,” I told him. “I really love you.”
“I really love you too. Are you okay? You have a maniacal grin.”
I nodded, not sure how to explain. I thought about how growing up meant more than just a laundry room to me. It meant I was alive and lucky. It meant I could grow old with my friends, and with this man, who made me want to do anything—not
for
him, but
with
him.
I showed him my phone.
He took it. “What’s th— Oh!”
“We have seventy views on YouTube and I only put it up yesterday. I thought at least sixty of those were me, but we have a lot of comments from people who aren’t me. Twelve likes. And zero dislikes.”
“Holy shit.” He hit Play, and “Snow Wanderer” came out of the phone’s speaker.
We watched the video together. Ricky had animated Ryan’s drawings so that the figure wavered a little and the snow swirled, and in one scene, a raisin fell off a snowman’s mouth and landed in the snow. He was still staring, slightly openmouthed, when the video ended.
“And it’s the drawings people are going nuts about.” I took the phone and scrolled slowly down. “Look at the comments. Okay, that one says I sing like a fag, which . . . fair enough. But most of these are about how amazing your drawings are.”
“Holy shit,” he said again.
Not that YouTube commenters were, like, a gold standard for determining talent, but the word “genius” came up in the comments several times in reference to Ryan’s art. Some people actually liked the song too. A few comments were along the lines of
This is so weird
and
Is this for real?
And several didn’t make sense because people don’t know how to spell.
I looked at Ryan. “Do you think we’re gonna go viral?”
“I don’t know. Maybe!”
“Maybe we’ll be famous.”
“Maybe we’ll be iTunes best sellers.”
“Maybe we’ll get to be on a talk show.”
He glanced up at me. “Thank you,” he said softly.
“Don’t thank me. You’re the artist.”
He slapped my arm. “Shut up.”
“Be nice to Pelletor unless you want a tickle offensive.”
“Don’t forget I have a riding whip at home.”
I bent to kiss him. He leaned against me awhile, staring out the window into the yard.
“We ought to get back out there,” he said.
I glanced down at him. “Can I carry you out?”
“Oh my fucking God. What is wrong with you?”
“Just once. You can get on my back. Pretend I’m Thunder Canyon.”
He rolled his eyes. “Okay.
Fine
. Just. Once.”
I crouched so he could mount up.
“I hate you,” he muttered, as I straightened. I held on to his leg with one arm and opened the door with the other.
“I love you,” I said.
“I guess I love you too.”
I hooked both arms under his knees. And waited.
He patted my shoulder. “All right, Thunder Canyon. Walk on.”
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Manties in a Twist
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Thank you so much for Reading the Rainbow!
Thank you, as always, to Del. To Brian, for the soundtrack. And to Ken, for Orville Deadenbacher and tales of Bed Bath & Beyond.
The Subs Club Series
24/7
(Coming June 2016)
By His Rules
Wacky Wednesday (Wacky Wednesday #1)
The Brat-tastic Jayk Parker (Wacky Wednesday #2)
Calling the Show
Take the Long Way Home
The Grand Ballast
Playing the Fool Series, with Lisa Henry
With Lisa Henry
The Good Boy (The Boy #1)
The Naughty Boy (The Boy #1.5)
The Boy Who Belonged (The Boy #2)
Mark Cooper Versus America (Prescott College #1)
Brandon Mills Versus the V-Card (Prescott College #2)
Another Man’s Treasure
Coming Soon
The Silvers
