So lunch occurred, and I barely remember what the food tasted like, much less what I ordered. Everything was too bright, too shiny, and I couldn’t focus on a damn thing. For what it’s worth, Dom seemed distracted, too, and though I wondered at it, I didn’t think it was my place to ask.

Conversation was stilted, the silences stretching too long, both of us starting to speak at the same time, then stopping, laughing nervously as we both motioned for each other to speak, only to have the silence return even longer than the time before.

And for the life of me, I couldn’t quite stop staring at his mouth.

Creepy, right? Seriously.

I watched as a noodle disappeared between his lips and thought, I really need to look somewhere else. But then he darted his tongue out to get a bit of butter sauce and apparently my body thought that was the most erotic thing to have ever have happened in human existence, and I spilled my water all over the table as my hand jerked into the glass, knocking it over. I’m pretty sure everyone in the restaurant turned and stared at me and wondered why the obviously mentally deficient child was babbling and trying to mop up the table with his shirt.

And then he asked it. The jerk.

“You and Corey, huh?” he said in an off-handed tone.

I gaped at him, suddenly and without warning unable to form any kind of coherent sentence. Instead, I said, “Gah?”

He nodded. “You guys look… nice… together.”

“Guh? Gah?”

“I’m happy for you, Tyson. I really am. I hope he treats you right.”

“We’re….” I stopped and cleared my throat. “He’s not… I don’t…. Guh?” I stopped before my eloquence could contribute any more to the human race than it already had.

“Not what?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I muttered.

“Oh,” Dominic said. “Fuck buddy, then?”

It’s probably good thing I wasn’t attempting to eat anymore, because I’m pretty sure I would have choked to death right at that moment. “You said ‘fuck’!”

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “I guess I did.”

“You never say ‘fuck’!”

“Could you not shout that, please? People are starting to stare. Again.”

“You can’t curse,” I hissed at him, barely lowering my voice.

“Why not? Last time I checked, I was of an age where I can say what I want.”

“You’re… you… you’re Dominic!”

“I suppose I should be relieved you can remember my name,” he said, eating more erotic butter noodles with that dirty, filthy mouth of his.

I couldn’t figure out the words to explain to him that in all the years I’d known him, I’d never heard him say the word “fuck,” and for some reason, it was making this whole situation that much worse because if he could eat erotic butter noodles and say the word “fuck,” what chance did I, a mere mortal, have of not thinking of him in any way other than wearing nothing but the pants of his police uniform and twirling a pair of handcuffs on his finger?