Read Shiny! for Free Online

you’re playing for the wrong team?”
    “I like playing for the Alliance. What does WOW have to do with it?”
    Kenny’s brain did such a quick track change that his eyes popped as he tried not to let it derail. “Never mind,” he said, patting Will’s shoulder. “But I like playing for the Alliance too.”
    “Really?” Will’s smile was so winsome, Kenny believed in Santa Claus all over again. “Maybe we can play!”
    Kenny sighed. “Yeah, why not? Now that Gif is gone—he thought it was bullshit, you know? But seriously, ten hours a week? What harm is there in that? It’s not like I watch sports!”
    Will huffed out a sigh. “I don’t get football at all ,” he agreed. He finished his first draft and looked at Kenny sympathetically. “So you didn’t have any warning?” he asked, and Kenny signaled the bartender for another draft. “Really? I wasn’t going to be the one who got drunk!”
    Kenny laughed and squeezed his arm again because he couldn’t help it. Muscly! “Too late, precious,” he said fondly. “No worries. You’ll have to sleep on my couch, but it’s comfy.”
    “Yeah,” Will said with a smile. “I like your house. It’s pretty. Mine has, like, a bed in one room and a couch in the other, and everything else is books and a computer desk. But you didn’t have any warning?”
    And oh snap! They were back on Kenny again. Kenny was annoyed at first, and then he was sort of flattered—Will actually cared. No blowing off Kenny’s sad story for his own—the fate of the guy with the sex toys in the road was actually important to him.
    Nice. Will was a genuinely nice guy. Go figure.
    “Probably,” Kenny said, forced into honesty by those guileless and concerned brown eyes. “I mean, I was taking a long lunch because I knew we needed time to connect, but it was more than that.”
    Will was sitting at the bar, his shoulders hunched and his hands in his lap. It was almost a hapless loser pose, and Kenny didn’t like to see him like that.
    “Sit up straight and put your elbows on the bar,” he advised, and Will complied without asking. There. Just like that, he looked like a sexy bruiser and not a sci-fi geek. He looked possessive over his beer and desirable, and Kenny got to live the illusion of being out with a big, succulent bear daddy who would take care of Kenny’s twink ass and keep him safe forever and ever.
    “Okay, I’m sitting all assertive-like,” Will said, smiling like he was not fooled for a minute. “Now tell me what you were going to say.”
    Kenny sighed and slouched over his empty cosmo glass. “Okay, I guess I was going to say that… I mean, he was hot, and he had a job, and the sex was great ”—Will made a suspicious noise that Kenny conveniently ignored—“but I just… I mean, I wanted that house to be real, you know? My parents may be Mr. and Mrs. Boring in Davis, but I sort of wanted that. And I thought I’d at least started on my way to that, right? To having a friend for life? A future?”
    “Mm.” It was an indeterminate sound, but Will was nodding like he got it. “No, I know what you mean. You weren’t sure if he was the love of your life, but you at least thought you’d started your life, right?”
    Kenny nodded, thinking that he was pretty perceptive for a drunken grade-school teacher. “Exactly!” he said, squeezing Will’s bicep again instead of slapping him on the back. God… that arm… just didn’t get squishier, did it?
    “I’m sorry about that,” Will said, sounding genuinely sorry. “That must have really hurt—especially when he was using your private things with a stranger.”
    Kenny’s breath caught and Will downed about a quarter of his beer. “Yeah,” he said, looking at Will like he’d suddenly shed his skin and come out on the other side looking like the love child of Tyler Hoechlin, Tyler Posey, and Dylan O’Brien. “That’s what hurt most, I guess. It was like, if he’d just been cheating on me, that