This is my first full length story, so I hope you enjoy it! Please email me ([email protected]) any feedback. Enjoy!
All characters are entirely fictional besides Byron, whom has given me his express permission to include later in the book. Please follow him on Instagram (@byronrosekelly)!
The Morning After
Jase groaned as consciousness crept in with unwelcome persistence, his head throbbing with the unmistakable vengeance of a night thoroughly overdone. His body felt impossibly heavy, each limb weighed down as though gravity had chosen to single him out for particular punishment. For several disorienting moments, he couldn't determine whether he was still drunk or merely catastrophically hungover, the line between the two states blurred by the relentless pounding in his temples. He cracked one eye open and immediately regretted the decision—the room tilted violently around him, the dim morning light filtering through unfamiliar curtains seeming to slice through his skull with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel.
With a pained grunt that originated somewhere deep in his chest, he swung his legs off the bed, but something felt fundamentally wrong about the movement. His feet connected with the floor as expected, but the usual layout of his bedroom seemed altered, rearranged in a way his alcohol-fogged brain couldn't immediately process. He frowned, rubbing a hand over his face in a futile attempt to scrub away the nausea that rolled through him in sickening waves. The urgent pressure in his bladder demanded immediate attention, driving him to stand despite his body's vehement protests.
He stumbled toward where his bedroom door should logically be, muscle memory guiding him across what felt like unexplored territory, only to stop short when his outstretched fingertips met the hard, unyielding surface of what was unmistakably a wardrobe. His stomach lurched violently—not just from the alcohol still circulating in his system, but from the creeping realization that he had absolutely no idea where he was.
Heart suddenly pounding with an anxiety that cut through the hungover haze, he spun around, the motion causing the room to tilt alarmingly. His eyes darted across the unfamiliar space, trying to assemble coherent thought from fragments of observation. Clothes lay scattered across the floor in haphazard abandon, the lingering scent of sweat, beer, and something indefinably masculine permeating the air. Various unfamiliar objects occupied shelves and surfaces—protein supplements, a collection of weights in one corner, fitness magazines stacked in precarious piles. His gaze finally settled on the bed he'd just vacated, the sheets tangled and rumpled from a night of restless sleep.
And then he saw it—a sight that sent a jolt of recognition through his system like an electric current.
Two massive mounds rose from the mattress, squeezed into a too-tight turquoise fabric that strained to contain their impressive volume. They stood proud and unashamed, barely shifting with each slow, deep breath of their unconscious owner. Jase's throat went instantly dry, his pulse hammering against his ribs with sudden, panicked force.
Harry's ass.
Harry's impossibly huge, perfectly sculpted, world-class glutes—currently presented to him with the unintentional provocation of someone deeply asleep and completely unaware of the crisis they were causing.
The realization hit Jase with the force of a physical blow, the fragmented memories of the previous night suddenly coalescing into one inescapable fact:
He had spent the night in bed with Harry.
His best mate.
His very straight, muscle-obsessed, cocky-as-hell best mate.
Jase's breath caught painfully in his chest, panic wrapping around his lungs like a vise, constricting his ability to draw sufficient air. What the fuck had happened last night? The question screamed through his mind with urgent intensity, demanding answers his memory refused to provide.
He searched desperately through the fog of alcohol-impaired recollection, but where the events of the night should have been, he found nothing but an unsettling void. He could remember the bar, the drinks flowing with increasing abundance, the teasing banter that had characterized the early part of their evening. He recalled Harry flexing—of course the bastard had flexed, he never missed an opportunity—and then... nothing. Just a gaping emptiness where the remainder of the night should have been.
He swallowed hard, his mouth dry as sand and tasting faintly of mortality. Had they...? The unfinished question hung in his thoughts, too terrifying to complete even in the privacy of his own mind.
No. No way. Harry wouldn't. Would he?
The Harry he knew was aggressively, almost performatively heterosexual, despite his comfort with Jase's orientation and his willing participation in their often flirtatious banter. But alcohol did strange things to people's boundaries, and Jase had a vague, unsettling recollection of saying something particularly forward, something about Harry's dad that had shifted the dynamic between them...
Jase staggered backward until his calves hit a small seating area, his heart slamming against his ribs with such force he half-expected Harry to wake from the sound alone. His eyes remained locked on the monumental display of muscle before him, a sight he had admired countless times from a safe, platonic distance, but which now carried the terrifying implications of potential intimacy.
He needed answers. Fast. Before the panic overwhelmed his ability to think rationally. Before Harry woke and they had to face whatever had or hadn't happened between them. Before his bladder made good on its increasingly urgent threats.
But first, he needed to pull himself together, to gather whatever scraps of dignity might have survived the night. He straightened his shoulders, took a deep, centering breath, and tried to assemble his features into something resembling casual nonchalance rather than existential terror.
Whatever had happened, he would face it with as much composure as he could muster. After all, if anyone had made a drunken mistake last night, it was far more likely to have been him than Harry "Women Throw Themselves At Me Daily" Schett.
With that uncomfortable but steadying thought, Jase carefully navigated around the bed, giving Harry's sleeping form a wide berth, and continued his quest for the bathroom—this time with the proper bearings and somewhat clearer purpose, if not any less anxiety about what revelations the day might bring.
