Love Me Like A Rock by Amy Jo Cousins Read Free Book Online Page B

God, this is my least favorite trait you picked up from us,” he snapped at Rafi, who grinned back. “Yes, I am sleeping with him. No, it’s not serious. And no, I don’t want Vinnie to know about it.”
    “Why not? Might make him get his head out of his ass.”
    “Trust me. I know from experience that is not the case.”
    He’d tried the jealousy thing with Vinnie twice now. Once in high school, once last year, when their on-again, off-again hookups had seemed to settle into a more regular pattern and he’d hoped that a burst of jealousy might encourage Vinnie to make things official.
    The worst thing about trying to make Vinnie jealous was that he didn’t notice.
    If Austin wasn’t available for Vinnie’s once-a-month stress-meltdown-slash-boozy hookup, Vinnie would just do without. A spring coiled too tight, Vinnie veered between total denial of any such urges and random wild fucking that damn near straightened Austin’s curls with the electricity of it. Always after drinking, which meant Austin was having sober sex himself for the first time since high school.
    He liked it.
    Bob was the next roommate to drag him into a conversation about Sean, although in Bob’s case it was really more Austin hinting around until Bob gave in and asked him what was going on with the geologist.
    After several nights during which they never managed to make it out of Sean’s dorm room, Austin had finally met up with Sean and some of his department friends at the Chinese dive on the far side of the open-air shopping center bordering the west side of campus.
    Sean had given him a peculiar look when Austin had asked why they weren’t eating at the way nicer Chinese restaurant across town where the tables weren’t sticky and the servers actually paid attention to their tables.
    “Because we’re all broke. It’s dives and holes-in-the-wall all around. Nobody’s got fifty bucks to blow on dinner.”
    A year of living with Rafi, whose reaction to this kind of thing was way less subtle than Sean’s, had mostly cured Austin of acting as if everyone had his family’s kind of money. Slipping up with Sean was embarrassing as hell, and apologizing felt like making an even bigger deal about it, but Austin did it anyway.
    Sean just shook his head and laughed, saying he envied Austin his illusions.
    Strange as it was to sit at a table with a couple of assistant professors, two TAs and some grad students, he had enjoyed himself. Seeing Sean with his friends had been an eye-opening experience. It hadn’t been until the meal was almost over, Sean’s hand resting on his thigh for half the time, that Austin realized none of the other men or women were gay.
    He couldn’t remember the last time he’d hung out with a big group of straight people. Thinking about it back in their suite while Bob finished some homework on the couch, he realized his one straight roommate lived the opposite scenario all the time. How curious.
    “Is it ever weird? You know, living and hanging out with a bunch of gay guys?” he asked after pondering the matter for a while.
    Bob shrugged, which was about as expressive as Bob got outside of a race. “Not really.”
    “I feel like most straight guys would feel weird,” Austin said, thinking of Sean’s buddies from the department. If he’d been asked before meeting Sean, Austin would have said he had all kinds of friends, straight, gay, undecided, whatever.
    But since he’d started hanging out with Sean—although admittedly they didn’t get past the bed four times out of five—he’d noticed a definite difference in their social crowds.
    Austin pictured himself with a wide variety of friends because he did know a whole lot of people who crossed the social spectrum. But between crew and his general obsession with his own artwork, he really only spent time by himself or with his suitemates or his team.
    Everyone else was basically an acquaintance. Austin’s core group? Gay boys.
    And Bob.
    Who was staring at