1.

"There's no way, man."

"What are you talking about? It's barely fifteen feet!"

"No man, that's at least twenty feet. It can't be fucking done."

He huffs loudly and someone coughs out a cloud of smoke, smelling very much like Gorilla Glue but it could have just as easily been Girl Scout Cookies. It's so fucking hard to keep track of that shit anymore.

My heart's racing even though my body is slowly sinking into the couch - I've been on my feet all day and I've been aching for a verbal fight after dealing with shitty moviegoers all night. I did find a FitBit tonight that I'm gonna pawn for some cash but the levels of semen and vomit I have to clean up is too damn high.

Gus is suddenly putting on his sunglasses and heading for the door. I follow him, mostly because I'm curious what he could be up to now but partially because I'd follow him any fucking where.

Y'all, I've got it bad.

Gus is scaling the steps two at a time, curly black hair bouncing on the back of his pink neck - he went to the river earlier this week with his girlfriend of all people and forgot sunscreen. While she's now a frightening shade of maroon, he's only got a faint pinkness that ignites some fucking baby complex in my fucked up brain where i want to smear aloe on his cheeks while spoon feeding him fucking homemade chicken noodle soup.

I'm squinting up the stairs at him, holding my hand over my eyes to see him outlined in the sun. I never wear my baseball hat facing forward, even when it makes the most sense. It makes me look like a teenage fucking ballboy who's got the biggest crush on his tennis coach but he doesn't know and keeps giving me free lessons because he thinks I just really have a hard time figuring out the form on my backhand and, yes, I'm sure I need him to guide my body with his to learn.

For a brief moment, Gus and I make eye contact and I fucking swear, y'all, that is the moment I realized he was going to jump. I have no fucking idea what else I could have thought was going to happen. Why would Gus run up stairs on the side of our house - one that we all know lead to a locked door - in the middle of the day right after we were just talking about how high the jump is? I'm still kicking myself for not stopping him.

But, he jumped.

I could only watch with mouth wide open as he landed beautifully on both feet. It was only when he tried to put  pressure on one foot and had to hop away that i realized he was not okay. Sometimes you can limp that shit off, right? Like, when you're walking down the street late at night so you're trying to look busy as you pass drunk people sitting outside of a bar, trying to get home to cuddle your dog and watch Moana for the nineteenth time and you get so caught up in texting blah blahb lah 1 2 3 to yourself that you step off the curb and basically break your ankle but you gotta play it off for that blonde hunk in the salmon shorts who eyed you as you were passing so you can graefully limp away...if you're lucky.

Yeah, well, he wasn't able to do that. He literally had to hop to the door and immediately lay on the couch. "Are you okay?" I asked, stupidly, as soon as I followed him inside and came around to sit next to him.

"I fucked up the landing, I definitely should have rolled into it." I'm very familiar with Gus's face, I literally jerk off to him every night. But I can't read it now. Especially since the sunglasses someone miraculously stayed on in that travel. This motherfucker can jump nineteen feet (neither of us were right) and keep sunglasses on his face but I can't be standing in line at a fucking food truck and glance down at the half-eaten taco I seem to have accidentally stepped in without my sunglasses deciding to fucking garnish the taco, like some motherfucking flaccid ass cilantro? Incredible.

"You know that's not an answer, right?"

"Well, y'know, I don't feel great." Oops, there's definitely pain in his voice.  Maybe a little malice? Perhaps....LUST? Oh, no, that's just my imagination.

"...I should probably take you to the hospital."

"No, no, I'm fine. I just need to rest my eyes for a bit."

"No, you can't sleep!? That's...wait"

"I don't have a fucking concussion, ya dumbass. Why don't you roll us a blunt to forget our worries?"

I'm already breaking the weed out on the table, staring at his slowly swelling foot. "Yes, Daddy."

He's turning bright red and he jerks his head to look at me. "I told you to stop saying that." There's a shy smile that makes my heart do a weird flip thing. We're staring into each other's eyes just a little too long and I feel my eyes drift to his lips. He looks down too, as if he's just noticed that his dick would fit so perfectly between my lips.


"Aw fuck, what am I gonna tell Alice?"

I try to roll the blunt faster, but now my hands are shaking.