Manties in a Twist (The Subs Club Book 3) (4 page)

“You liked that?” he asked.

I sat up most of the way, letting the panties fall to the floor. “Yeah. Did you?”

He nodded. “I did.”

I glanced at the panties. “It doesn’t mean we’re weird.”

“No. It doesn’t mean I wish you were a girl.”

Whoa.
That had never even occurred to me.

I scratched my neck. “Have you ever had sex with a girl?”

“No. Have you?”

I shook my head. “Maybe we should ask Gould.”

“Ask Gould what?”

“He has sex with girls. We should ask him how they like to do it. And then we can do it that way. If we want to keep doing stuff like this. With panties.”

Ryan frowned. “Girls probably like to do it a lot of different ways.”

“Yeah, but maybe there’s some special way a lot of them like doing it that we could learn about. And then I’d feel even more like a girl.”

He nodded again, more slowly. “So you’re, like—
into
this?”

“Dude, I jizzed in your face because of how much I like being called a girl.” I paused. “Also, I think we’re supposed to call them women, because of equality.”

His phone buzzed on the ottoman. He groaned as it buzzed twice more. “Ohhhh
fuck
.” He rolled his eyes toward the phone. Groped at the ottoman but couldn’t reach it. He let his arm fall and flopped back so that we were lying with our heads on opposite ends of the couch, his legs on top of mine.

I leaned over, got the phone, and handed it to him. Half watched Gollum climb Mount Doom in pursuit of the hobbits while Ryan swiped his screen. “Mmm. Amanda thinks that just because she gave us the painting, we’re at her beck and call.”

“Huh?”

“She wants us to dog sit Collingsworth. For a
month
.”

“Collingsworth!” I looked away from the TV. “The dog butler!” Amanda had this awesome English bulldog/Neapolitan mastiff mix whose head was seriously the size of a microwave. Not a tiny college-dorm microwave either, but one of those giant fuckers that you mount under your cabinets and that are the perfect height for if you were ever fighting a burglar and wanted to, like, open the microwave and shove the burglar’s head in and hit the Popcorn button and say, in an Arnold Schwarzenegger voice,
Looks like you’re about to become Orville Deadenbacher.
Which Dave told me wouldn’t work because microwaves don’t microwave if the door is open.

Anyway, Collingsworth was the greatest dog ever, and Amanda had trained him to bring her cans of beer, so he was totally a dog butler. “When?”

“Two weeks from now. Is a month too long?”

“No! The only thing that could make our life together more perfect is a dog.” I noticed him frowning at the phone. “Why do you look mad?”

“Oh—” He shook his head. “Whatever. My mom. They definitely can’t make it to the party Saturday. Which I figured. That’s a long drive, and my dad’s back starts freaking out if he’s in the car for more than thirty minutes, so—”

“Aww. Hey, we’ll go up there soon, okay?” Ryan was super close with his family, but they lived three hours away. I’d met his parents a couple of months ago when they’d come for a visit, and his dad’s back had been giving him all kinds of trouble. “And we’ll send them pictures of the well-dressed hare and the new curtains and stuff.”

Ryan nodded and set his phone back on the ottoman. “Wish they lived closer.”

“Me too. Your family’s the best.”

He looked at me. “My mom still talks about watching you eat all those croutons. She thought it was hilarious.”

“I do love ’tons.”

He stared at me for a moment, then smiled. “I love you tons.”

“Oh my God. You nerd. I love you even more tons. Like, as many tons as a megalodon weighs.”

“Shut up. That’s too much love.”

I glanced around. “We have a house.”

“We have a thing that cuts vegetables into spirals.”

“We’re gonna have a juicer.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“And a dog. We’re gonna have a dog.”

“And curtains.”

He nudged my thigh with his heel. “We’re champions.”

“There can be only one champion.” I hooked my legs around his, and we leg-battled for a few seconds, while on-screen Mount Doom erupted.

Our housewarming party was amazigasmitastic. People brought so much food, and gift cards, and also random nonstick cookware from Target. I’d made burgers and Ryan had baked brownies. The weather was perfect, and I basically was crushing it for the first half an hour. And then I started really
looking
at how many people were there, and it was like, whoa. All these people were celebrating that Ryan and I lived in this place together, and if it didn’t work out between Ryan and me, would these people be mad they’d given us nonstick cookware?

Which was dumb to even think, because things were definitely working out between Ryan and me. To a freakish extent.

I picked up an empty plate from the living room and headed for the kitchen. Ended up in the bathroom because for a second I’d gotten confused and thought I was in my old place. Dave was in the kitchen, picking sesame seeds off his burger bun. I rushed him and pretended to break the plate over his head.

“Heyyyy,” he said, swatting at me.

“What’s up?” I set the plate in the sink.

He flicked a sesame seed onto the counter. “Good party, except for your bun choice. Were sesame seeds Ryan’s idea?”

“Uhhh, we just bought whatever was cheapest.”

He took his plate and turned to me. “How’s it going? Feels like we haven’t seen you in forever.”

It didn’t really seem like that long to me, but maybe he was right. I’d had sex with Ryan instead of scouting kink fair locations, and I’d had to miss the last Subs Club meeting because it was Ryan’s and my four-month anniversary, and before that I’d had to say no to a couple of offers to do shit with the guys because of moving-related stuff.

“Yeah, dude, sorry. Ryan and I have been decorating like beasts.”

“It looks good in here. Nice curtains.”

“You seriously like it?”

He nodded. “It’s different. Not quite as ‘you’ as your old place.”

I stared at him for a sec. “Yeah, well, how do you know this isn’t, like, the new me?”

He snorted and shook his head.

“How is it not me?” I needed to know.

He laughed. “Chevron curtains? In teal and white? And what the hell is that?” He pointed to the ledge above the sink.

“A decorative vase.”

“Did you just pronounce it
vah-z
?”

“Ryan says that’s how you pronounce it.”

He shook his head again. “Your old place looked like a garage sale at a frat house. I kind of miss it.”

I figured it was subject-change time. “Did you find a place for the fair?”

He picked up the burger. “Maya and I looked at a community center the other day. It’s pricey, but nice. And in a good location—lots of foot traffic.” He took a bite. Chewed for a few seconds. “But the owners are like, ‘Don’t put anything too provocative on the sign out front.’ Like, we can’t call the event ‘Night of a Thousand Butt Plugs’ or anything.”

“What
are
you gonna call this thing?”

“Miles wants something boring, like ‘the Alternative Lifestyles Exposition.’ Gould suggested ‘Kinky Kollege’ with a K, but that’s already a thing somewhere—Chicago, maybe? So who knows?”

“I’ll try to think of some stuff.”

“Thanks, buddy.”

Dave had been calling me “buddy” since high school. I’d loved it even then, because there was this little gay kid calling me buddy and slapping me on the back like he was one of the jocks. Dave and I had lost touch after graduation, then had reconnected after seeing each other in a BDSM club two years later. We were both in school at the time—at different nearby universities—but I came home most weekends, and Dave came with me, since his parents had moved to Canada after he went to college. We’d met Miles and Gould and Hal through a munch, and we’d all become really good friends.

“Do you need me to do anything else to help with the fair? Gould told me you were gonna get people to do panels and stuff.”

He shook his head. “Nah. All you need to do is stand there and look pretty. It’s still a long time away, though, so I’ll let you know if anything comes up.”

“You guys doing good? I swear I’m coming to the next Subs Club meeting. And bringing all kinds of guac.”

“Well, the next one’s tomorrow.”

Shit. Yeah, tomorrow was Sunday. And I’d promised Ryan we’d go to the indoor climbing wall downtown.

Oh well. I could go hang with the guys for an hour or so, then go to the rock wall. No problem. “Cool. I’ll be there.”

He leaned against the counter. “Anyway, we’re good. Except Miles has become some cracked-out version of himself getting ready for Zac.”

It still blew my mind that Miles was about to be a father. He was gonna be awesome, for sure. But he worried all the time anyway about things being perfect, so you had to kind of figure the stress of adopting a kid might kill him. I’d had to give him a reality check a few months ago, because he’d been going into an OCD nosedive about how he wasn’t good enough to be anyone’s friend or boyfriend or father. I didn’t even know what he was so worried about, because he was ridonk smart and a really fun guy when he just
relaxed
.

Plus, total hard-core pain slut, which was hilarious.

I nodded. “I’ll bet.”

“You should talk to him.” Dave glanced across the room. “He’s always way calmer when he talks to you.”

“Pfff. Because he thinks he needs to break everything he says down so that I understand it, and it distracts him from being nuts.”

“Well, whatever it is, he listens better to you than the rest of us.”

I reached past Dave and tried to smack a fly that had landed on the counter. I looked at my palm, which was clean, then glanced up and saw the fly buzzing around on the wall. “I want to meet this kid. Miles keeps saying he’s indescribable, and I don’t know what the hell that means.”

“Right. Especially since Miles can describe pretty much anything. That man wants to hump the English language.” He took a giant bite of burger.

I laughed. “So is hair school going good for you?” It was weird to be talking to my best friend like I hadn’t seen him in years.

He bopped his head back and forth a little as he finished chewing. “Yep. About to finish the online classes.” He wiped his mouth with the side of his fist. “So this winter I have to start commuting to and from campus. Bleehhhh.”

“That’s awesome, though. I keep telling Ryan he needs to get a haircut from you. He goes to this, like, stupid-expensive barber downtown.”

“Tell him I’ll hook him up. I’m doing D’s hair regularly now. He still refuses to admit his sideburns were uneven when I met him.”

“But we all know the truth.”

He looked at me. “You noticed, right? The first time you saw him?”

“Oh, yeah,” I lied. “Yeah, they were like . . . painful to look at. I gotta get you to do my hair sometime.”

Sometime when I had three hours to spare. Dave was really good with hair. But he also took
forever
to get things the way he wanted. Plus he always felt the need to experiment with, like, feathering. But he’d be an awesome stylist once school trained him to be faster.

“Yup. Just say the word.” Dave whacked my arm and wandered off to find Gould. I went to the kitchen to get another beer, and D came up to me, his burger dripping juice onto his plate.

He stared at me for a moment, his blue eyes glinting, his mustache twitching slightly. “Your burgers are the victual equivalent of silence.”

D was Dave’s dom. He was this really awesome mountain man who loved meat more than anything in the world except Dave. He was also a big fan of silence. And monster movies, so he and I were always trying to think of creatures that could be combined into supermonsters. Like Trisharkatopses and Squidodactyls and shit. I grinned. “Thanks. I think.”

“You understand that beef
should
be pink on the inside.”

I laughed. “Yeah. Well-done is like eating cardboard.” I nodded to the stove. “There’s plenty more.”

He glanced at the skillet of burgers. Hesitated. “I am . . . attempting to cut back on meat in deference to David’s concerns about my cholesterol. But thank you.”

Awww. “So, what do you think of the place?”

He gazed around and nodded. “I admire your fortitude in attempting to live with another human being so soon after meeting him.”

That, like, smacked me around a little, but I’d gotten used to D being blunt, and I was more than used to my friends thinking I’d rushed into my relationship with Ryan. So I just turned it on him. “When are you and Dave shacking up?”

He looked scared as
shit
for a second. Then he did his badass grunt-sigh thing that I really wanted to learn how to do. “I find this prospect intimidating. Though it would be easier to keep an eye on him if we were under the same roof.”

“Has he been behaving himself lately?”

“Very well.”

D and Dave had a relationship I didn’t exactly get. Well, I got it more after Googling it. They did all this punishment role-play, which I understood, but then they also did domestic discipline. Which I guess was D spanking Dave for real-life stuff, like not getting his schoolwork done. And not just spanking him, but
caning
him. Which sounded fucking awful. But it had totally been Dave’s idea.