Chapter 3

I was holding Brad’s jockstrap in my hand when he walked in, shaking a box of Pop-Tarts in the air like it was the most normal thing ever. “Yo,” he said casually, stepping through the doorway. “They had the strawberry kind this time. Score.”

He stopped. His eyes dropped to what I was holding. His brows lifted. “Uh, Cody ... what are you doing with that?”

I blinked, heart slamming against my ribs. “I was just cleaning,” I said way too fast.

Brad stepped into the room slowly, one hand still holding the box of PopTarts, the other resting on his hip just above the waistband of his stupidly low, stupidly tight black briefs. He looked like he belonged in a porn ad. Or a nightmare. Or both.

“So...” he said, his smirk creeping in, “are you gonna fold them and put them away, or keep sniffing them like you were?”

I nearly dropped the thing. “I wasn’t”

“You were definitely sniffing them,” he said, grinning now. “Not judging. Just observing.”

My face burned. I dropped the jock on the edge of the dresser like it was radioactive. “Shut up Brad.”

Brad laughed, walked past me, and tossed the Pop-Tarts down. “Relax, man. It’s just fabric.”

Fabric my dick was still hard over.

He stretched his arms overhead, abs stretching tight, briefs hugging everything, then turned toward the door. “I wore that for a thing, by the way,” he said, totally offhand.

“A ... thing?”

But he was already gone.

I tried to survive the rest of the day. Failed miserably.

The image of that red jockstrap burned in my skull. I kept zoning out. Kept remembering. The smell. (Yes, I might have taken a whiff). The way it felt. The way Brad looked when he caught me. My dick was on edge all day, half-hard for hours.

By midnight, I was wrecked. Couldn’t sleep. Could barely think.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that stupid red jockstrap dangling from my hand. I saw Brad’s smirk when he caught me with it. I heard his voice in my head, asking if I was gonna fold them or keep sniffing them. He had said it like a joke, like he didn’t care but the way he looked at me ... I don’t know. There was something behind it. Something cocky. Or curious. Or worse -knowing.

I shifted under the blanket again. My dick had been hard all night. I kept rolling onto my side, then onto my back, trying to find a position where I wasn’t hard as hell. It didn’t work. Nothing worked. My mind was fucked.

So I did the worst thing imaginable. I picked up my phone.

At first, it was innocent. I opened Instagram. I scrolled through some stories. A few gym memes, a couple shirtless thirst traps. Whatever. But of course, once again, Brad’s posts came up. One after the other. Like the algorithm wanted me to suffer. Him sweaty in the gym. Him shirtless in the mirror with his phone covering his face. Him flexing, his bulge visible in tiny shorts with the caption “Leg day wrecked me”.