Kyle Denver lay stretched out on his towel, arms folded behind his head, letting the heat sink into him. The Santa Monica sun was blazing down, turning the Pacific into hammered glass. The tan the 20-year-old had worked on since March like a religion made him look less like he’d put in the hours and more like the sun had simply claimed him as territory. A thin sheen of sweat made the leather cord at his chest glisten—a single dark bead resting in the hollow of his throat. Warm, dark eyes held a permanent, playful dare, and when he smiled, which was often, it was effortless and disarming. He looked like someone who’d never had to try for anything—which was the joke, because he’d had to try for everything.

Beside him, Derek Devenport lay sprawled like he’d been poured onto his towel—one knee cocked, an arm draped behind his head with the easy entitlement of someone who’d never been told to move. Dark, wavy hair fell across his forehead in an artful mess, and beneath sharp brows, icy-blue eyes scanned the shoreline like a landlord surveying his property. High cheekbones, a sculpted jaw—classic heartthrob architecture, the kind that belonged on a billboard. A delicate silver cross rested against his chest, glinting each time he shifted. The slightly crooked smirk tugging at his lips promised sweet, irresistible mischief—the kind that made you forgive him before he’d even done anything wrong.

These two fine specimens—because the universe had a sense of humor and a fondness for symmetry—had met six months ago. Kyle had spotted him on a choppy February swell—broad shoulders and a razor-cut back, moving on a wave like he’d been born in saltwater. They’d traded waves for an hour without speaking, that unspoken rhythm surfers have when they recognize someone who belongs in the lineup. When they finally paddled in, salt-crusted and spent, they’d ended up walking to the parking lot at the same time, boards tucked under their arms, and Kyle had said something about a sick cutback and Derek had grinned and said something back and that was it—same college, it turned out, same beach most mornings, an easy rhythm of surf and burritos and the unspoken agreement that neither of them would ask questions the other didn’t feel like answering. Derek was a sophomore Kinesiology major and a frat boy to the bone; Kyle was a junior in Business Admin who floated between circles without ever really landing in one. Different friends, different hangouts, but that’s exactly what worked. It was simple. Clean. About as close to friendship as either of them had had for a while.

“Tell me again why Marissa won’t do it,” Kyle said now, not bothering to open his eyes.

Derek snorted. “She says it’s degrading.”

“Degrading.” Kyle let the word hang there, tasting the shape of it. “Her mouth is degrading. What the fuck else is it even for?”

“That’s what I said.”

“And?”

“And she threw a shoe at me. Like, actually winged it at my head.”

Kyle laughed—that bright, effortless sound.

“On the other hand,” Derek added, a slow grin spreading across his face, “her friend Becky? Mouth like a fucking Dyson.”

Kyle cracked an eye open, amused. “No shit.”

“Deadass. Girl’s got zero gag reflex. Swear to God, it’s like she’s trying to set a world record.”

“Jesus.” Kyle’s grin sharpened into something wolfish.

“And she’ll literally suck off any dick in front of her face. Like, zero self-respect.” Derek shook his head, and they both chuckled.

Kyle tilted his head, considering. “Good to know.” Then the grin sharpened. “So Marissa won’t do it ‘cause it’s degrading, but her best friend’s out here auditioning for a trophy. That’s gotta sting.”

Derek just shrugged, still smiling lazy. “Marissa doesn’t know.”

“Of course she doesn’t.” Kyle let his head fall back again, eyes closing against the sun, the smirk still playing at the corner of his mouth. “Fucking women. They all want equality until it’s time to choke on a dick.”

The beach was packed for a Thursday. Volleyball nets, families huddled under umbrellas, girls in bikinis so small they were basically a suggestion. A couple of them kept glancing over at Kyle and Derek, whispering behind sunscreen-slick hands—lingering on the silver cross glinting against Derek’s chest, the artful mess of dark waves falling across his brow, the sharp, sculpted lines of his face. Kyle caught one of them looking and winked—a quick flash of those warm dark eyes, that playful dare flickering in them like an invitation. She turned away, giggling, immediately grabbing her friend’s arm.

Kyle watched them scurry off toward the water, all sun-flushed skin and badly concealed glances back over their shoulders. He could’ve gotten up, followed them down to the shore, had one of them laughing and touching his arm within five minutes. The thought barely registered. Too much effort for too little payoff. He let his head loll back against the towel instead, the sun pressing hot and red through his closed eyelids.

Beside him, Derek hadn’t really noticed. He was frowning at his phone, thumb scrolling in that slow, stubborn way people do when they’re looking at something they want and already know they can’t have. “Yo, check this out.” He tilted the screen toward Kyle. A surfboard—custom-shaped, swallowtail, resin tint the color of a bruise. “Seven hundred. Dude on Craigslist is selling it ‘cause his girlfriend’s knocked up. Seven hundred’s a steal for a board like that.”

“So buy it.”

Derek snorted, locking the phone and dropping it onto his towel. “Yeah, let me just pull seven hundred bucks out of my ass real quick.”

“Your parents won’t spot you?”

“For a surfboard?” Derek laughed—short, dismissive, the laugh of a guy whose parents were generous but not stupid. “Nah, man. They’re already covering tuition. Anything extra’s on me, and my bank account’s running on fumes till I find a summer job.”

It wasn’t a tragedy. It was just math. Derek had enough for the basics—gas, burritos, the occasional case of beer—and a seven-hundred-dollar impulse buy fell squarely outside that budget. The frustration on his face wasn’t desperation. It was the ordinary annoyance of a guy who knew exactly what he wanted and exactly how close it was, right there on a screen, taunting him.

Kyle watched him for a moment—the way Derek’s jaw tightened, the way his thumb kept twitching toward his phone like he was thinking about opening Craigslist again. Wanting something you couldn’t afford. Kyle knew that itch. He’d spent his entire childhood scratching at it with bloody fingernails until he’d figured out how to make it stop.

And now here was Derek, sun-bronzed and scowling, mad about a surfboard like it was the universe’s greatest injustice. It was almost cute.

A thought flickered through Kyle’s mind—cool and amused, the way a cat might regard a mouse that didn’t know it was being watched.

I could tell him. Right now. I could show him how easy it is.

The idea landed with a kind of private glee. Not malice, exactly. More like the anticipation of a really good prank—watching someone’s face as the floor dropped out from under everything they thought they knew about how the world worked. Derek had a good face for that. Expressive. Those icy-blue eyes went wide so easily.

And besides, Kyle was bored. The beach was boring. The girls were boring. The sun was boring. But this—letting Derek in on the secret, watching him grapple with it, seeing which way he’d land—this might actually be interesting.

Something slow and sharp pulled at the corner of Kyle’s mouth—the expression that usually meant something either brilliant or terrible was about to happen, and the best part was you wouldn’t know which until it was way too late.

He propped himself up on his elbows. Sand stuck to the sweat on his back.

“What if I told you,” he said, “you could have that board in like half an hour and not spend a single cent of your own money?”

Derek squinted at him, one eye closed against the glare, that crooked smirk flickering at the corner of his mouth. “I’d say you’re full of shit.”

“Am I, though?”

“You’re not, like. You’re not dealing drugs, are you? ‘Cause I am not about that.”

Kyle laughed—loud and genuine, his head tipping back, the thick chestnut waves falling away from his forehead. “Fuck no. Better. Cleaner.”

He sat all the way up, brushing sand from his sun-drenched shoulders with the casual ease of someone who knew exactly how good he looked doing it. A pair of seagulls were screeching over a French fry nearby, all feathers and greed. Kyle watched them for a second, and something passed behind those warm, dark eyes—something cold, something calculating, there and gone so fast you’d miss it if you blinked. Then he reached for his phone.

Derek had asked him once, back in March, how he afforded the Audi. They’d been loading their boards into the back after a dawn session, the parking lot still empty except for the two of them, the morning cold enough to see their breath. Kyle had shrugged and said investments—one word, flat, the verbal equivalent of a door slamming shut. Derek hadn’t pushed. That was one of the things Kyle appreciated about him: he knew when not to ask questions. Most people didn’t. Most people wanted to dig, to pry, to pull out your sad little origin story so they could feel better about their own. Derek just nodded and moved on, and they’d grabbed breakfast burritos and talked about swell forecasts instead.

But the surfboard was different. Not because Derek needed it—he had two perfectly good boards back at his apartment, one of them barely six months old. No, this was pure want. The kind of frivolous, dumb, lizard-brain want that made a guy look at something shiny and decide his current setup—which was fine, which was more than fine—somehow wasn’t enough anymore. Seven hundred dollars for a slightly different curve of fiberglass, a marginally better ride through a wave he could already surf perfectly well on what he had. That was it. That was the whole pitch. And Derek, who’d never really gone without anything that mattered, had decided this mattered.

Kyle could see it in the faint crease between Derek’s brows—not desperation, not even real frustration. Just the petty irritation of a guy who was used to things working out and didn’t enjoy being told no, even by his own bank account. A guy who genuinely had everything he needed and was pissed off that he couldn’t have more.

It was perfect.

Kyle had known a hungrier version of that dissatisfaction, once. He’d just decided, somewhere along the way, that he was done being the one who wanted and couldn’t have.

“You know how I pay for school?” he asked.

“Scholarship?”

“Nope.”

“Student loans?”

“Try again.”

Derek’s forehead creased beneath the artful mess of dark waves. You could practically see the gears turning—slow, clunky, unaccustomed to this kind of puzzle. “You drive an Audi. You live off-campus in a two-bedroom. I just figured you had, like. A trust fund. Or some shit.”

“I’m an orphan,” Kyle said, flat. No buildup, no warning. Just dropped it like a brick through a window. “No parents, no trust fund, no nothing. Aged out of foster care the day I turned eighteen.”

The words landed with a weight Kyle usually sidestepped. Derek got quiet for a second—that predictable silence people always did when Kyle mentioned it, like they were bracing for some emotional dam to break. Kyle never gave them the satisfaction. He’d developed this story into something closer to a party trick than a sob story—watch their faces, enjoy the discomfort, move on.

“So how the fuck—” Derek started, then stopped. His brow furrowed. He was trying to do the math in his head and coming up blank. “I mean. Either you’re dealing, or you robbed a bank, or you’ve got some long-lost rich uncle I don’t know about. Which one is it?”

“None of the above.”

“Then how? Bro, I’ve been trying to figure you out since we met.”

Kyle didn’t answer right away. He let the silence stretch—let Derek lean forward a little, those luminous, icy-blue eyes narrowing with genuine curiosity.

“You actually wanna know?”

“I asked, didn’t I?”

“Nah but like—” Kyle propped himself up on one elbow, his dark eyes glinting. “You actually wanna know? ‘Cause once I tell you, you can’t un-hear it. This ain’t some ‘oh I flip sneakers on the side’ type shit. This is different.”

Derek snorted. “What, like you’re in the mob? You’re a fucking hitman?”

“Nothing that respectable.”

“Bro.” Derek was half-laughing now, but there was an edge of impatience creeping in. “Just fucking tell me.”

Kyle held up his phone. The screen was dark, unlit, giving nothing away. He turned it over in his hand once, twice—a magician palming a coin before the trick.

“Faggots.”

The word landed flat. Derek blinked.

“What?”

“Faggots,” Kyle repeated. Louder, drawing the word out slow and savoring every letter. The corner of his mouth twitched upward. “You know. Cum-guzzling faggots. Ass-wrecked little dick-worshippers. Dudes who’d crawl through broken glass just to sniff a jockstrap. Those fucking freaks pay for everything.”

Derek stared at him. One second. Two. Three. His sculpted jaw went slack, then tight, then slack again—like his face couldn’t decide which expression to settle on. Those piercing blue eyes, the ones that usually held nothing but easy confidence, were suddenly unreadable.

“You’re fucking with me.”

“Am I?”

“You gotta be fucking with me. That’s not—” Derek shook his head, dark waves swaying. “The fuck does that even mean? Faggots pay for everything? What faggots? What are you talking about?”

Kyle just watched him. Patient. Amused. The way a cat watches a bird that hasn’t figured out it’s trapped yet.

“I’m talking about a system,” he said finally. “A brain-dead simple, brain-dead reliable system that’s bankrolled my entire fucking existence the last three years. Tuition, rent, whip, food, threads, boards, spring break in Cabo—every last dime. All of it. Paid for by goon-cave dick-suckers who know exactly where they belong.”

“That’s not possible.”

“You keep saying that.”

“‘Cause it’s not possible.” Derek’s voice pitched higher, caught between incredulity and something that might’ve been the first flicker of genuine intrigue. “You’re telling me, random gay dudes, just—what—hand you money? For nothing? Out of the goodness of their hearts?”

Kyle laughed—a short, sharp, genuinely ugly crack. “Oh, bro. Bro. The goodness of their hearts? These creatures don’t have hearts. They’ve got a hole where their dignity used to be before they sucked it out through some dude’s cock.” He shook his head, still grinning. “Nah. It’s not goodness. It’s sickness. A deep-down, rotten-to-the-core, can’t-fix-it-with-therapy sickness. And lucky for me, it’s profitable as fuck.”