Love, Hypothetically by Tenino Anne

Author:Tenino, Anne [Tenino, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Published: 2012-08-24T16:00:00+00:00

Sailing was a complete, unmitigated seduction.

They used the outboard to leave the marina, but then Trevor hoisted the mainsail while Paul was in charge of the jib, and they began to tack their way down the long reservoir, since the wind wasn’t being entirely cooperative. When they weren’t coming about, Trevor talked to him. Asked him questions about his family and what he’d done over the last nine years. Paul tried to resist, but somehow he found himself talking about his older sister’s wedding and his younger sister’s twin boyfriends and his mother’s brother, the late-blooming gay divorcee.

Trevor laughed a lot. He laughed when Paul called his older sister’s husband a banker aspiring to be a used car salesman, and when Paul described his younger sister’s serial bigamy. And he laughed extra hard along with Paul when he told Trevor about his uncle saying Paul had been an inspiration to him.

When Paul got pissed off at a speedboat cutting them off and stood up, shouting, “You kids get the hell off my lake!” Trevor yanked him down before they bounced in its wake and he got tossed overboard.

“Relax.” Trevor smiled. “It’s a beautiful day and you love sailing.”

Paul looked at the sunshine glinting off the water, nearly blinding him even though he had sunglasses, and felt the brisk wind that kept it from getting too hot, and he remembered he did love sailing.

He relaxed.

The wind on the water blew through him and hollowed him out, made him feel clean. Looking at Trevor, working in tandem with him, ducking the boom in unison, handling the lines, listening to him laugh, and watching the sun highlight the new-to-Paul lines next to Trevor’s eyes . . . that all made him yearn so much it filled up all the hollow places inside.

It turned out that he didn’t miss Trevor’s ass or his mouth or any other physical part of him the most; Paul missed Trevor the most. The way he steadily approached everything, from luffing sails to speedboat wakes to Paul’s resistance.

Not that there was anything wrong with the physical attributes.

Paul watched Trevor’s arms when he trimmed the main, and stared at his fingers when he fastened lines to cleats. When the boat heeled and Trevor braced his legs against the gunwale, straining them, Paul was transfixed by his cording calf muscles and the golden brown highlights in his leg hairs. “You aren’t as tan as you used to be,” he said absently.

“I haven’t been outside as much since I quit playing,” Trevor said. Paul looked up, and he could see in Trevor’s eyes that sense of knowing: he knew Paul had been admiring him. He didn’t appear smug, though. Instead, he had that air of hope again.

Paul took a deep breath, letting the wind blow into his lungs, and looked away. He didn’t know if it was excess oxygen or Trevor that made him dizzy.

They sailed all morning and maybe into the afternoon. Paul could feel his lips chapping, and the skin on his bare arms grew pink from either windburn or sunburn.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.