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"I never realized you were hot," Tish remarks while she fastens her seatbelt. "Boaz."
"Don't be hatin'," he says absently, twisting in his seat to guide the car into a parking space. It's freaking bizarre to hear Priestly's voice coming from this sweet-faced guy in a button-down shirt and painfully neat khakis. Without the beard and the piercings and the hair spiked up like a shark's fin he's not just hot, he's pretty, model-pretty, even, all soft lips and big eyes and smooth cheeks. The exact kind of guy she used to eat alive.
"Only you could take that as an insult," she tells him, exasperated. He grins. It's Priestly's crooked, knowing grin on Boaz's pretty mouth, and for some reason it makes her feel a lot better.
***
He drives her home afterward, walks her up the steps and holds the front door for her. Oddly, it isn't unusual. Priestly's always had an incongruous streak of chivalry.
He starts to kiss her cheek, but doesn't protest when she cups his jaw and kisses him on the lips, soft and wet and slow and holy shit is he good with his mouth. It sends a slow tendril of heat winding down from the pit of her belly, and she drops her hands from his face to slide them up under his shirt. He's wearing a tank top under it, but she can feel the heat of his skin, hands skimming up his flat belly, his muscular chest. She's always suspected he had a great body under those fantastically lame neon t-shirts, and she can't wait to get a better look.
And then he pulls back a little, rests his forehead against hers, and catches her wrists gently in his hands. Grins, wickedly. "Good night, Platisha."
"You could come in," she tells him. God. It's not like he's never been in her apartment before; hell, he's passed out drunk on her living room floor before. She and Jen drew cat whiskers on his face in permanent marker. It's Priestly; she's known him for years. She knows that he sings Elvis surprisingly on-key when he thinks nobody's listening, knows that the scar on his shoulder is from a nasty car accident when he was in high school, knows about the tattoo of a rose on his ass (even though she's never seen it). Knows him way better than any of the other guys she's brought home, and yet here he is backing off, still with that infuriating grin.
"I wouldn't want you to think I'm easy," he says, and kisses her again. "Thanks for coming out with me."
And then he's gone.
***
"Seriously?" Jen says. She looks flushed and smug, and damn it, there's something seriously wrong when Jen is getting laid more than Tish. "Wow. What a gentleman."
"It's Priestly," Tish points out. It seems like she's been saying that a lot lately.
"Well, yeah," Jen says in a slow, patient tone of voice that makes Tish want to bang her head against the counter.
***
"I think it's sweet," Piper says when Tish starts complaining three days later. Priestly--no, Boaz--oh, hell, Priestly, is in the back getting ice, but she's almost positive she can hear him snort.
"My vibrator's out of batteries," Tish says darkly.
Priestly chooses that moment to come back into the kitchen. It's been a week, and Tish still does a double-take when she sees him like this. He's not wearing a button-down today, but his plain white t-shirt and jeans still make the list of the most normal clothing she's ever seen him in. There's still chipped black polish on his fingernails, though. It's oddly endearing, despite the way she's kind of torn between strangling him and jumping him right there on the counter.
Of course he doesn't even pretend he wasn't listening. "Didn't anybody ever tell you anything worth having is worth waiting for?"
Tish glares at him. "In my experience, very few men are worth waiting for."
"That's because very few men are me," Priestly says with a blinding grin, and turns his attention back to loading the soda machine with ice.
Tish flips the bird at the back of his head, and Piper laughs.
***
He takes her to the pier that night, and they ride the roller-coasters until they're dizzy, pool their tip money for pizza and a six-pack of beer and make out for almost an hour under the boardwalk with the ocean rolling in around them.
It's like no date she's ever been on before. Especially because he stops her before she can start undoing his fly.
"You know, I'm not doing this because I think I have to," she mutters, grinding against him in frustration. His cheeks are flushed and he's hard, she can feel it through two layers of jeans, but he just smiles.
He slides her bra strap aside to kiss her collarbone. Soft lips, feather-light kisses, fingers sliding slow and gentle from the crook of her elbow to the middle of her palm and then back up again, almost ticklish. Tish squirms, blushing like a virgin and more turned on than she can explain by anything they've been doing, and she can feel the shape of Priestly's grin against her neck. "Maybe I just like torturing you," he murmurs.
Tish thinks that probably has a lot to do with it, and the hell of it is that he's damn good at it. Who would have thought?
***
"It's good for you to find yourself thwarted on occasion," Trucker says. Tish is getting no sympathy around here.
"I'm celibate," she groans.
He pats her shoulder consolingly, but before he can say anything else the door chimes open. It's the usual blond-streaked beach-bum type, and Tish hands over his order with a distracted smile, slams the cash drawer shut, and turns around to start bitching again.
Then stops. Trucker and Piper are beaming, and even Jen has a reluctant little smile on her face.
"Okay," she says to Piper, digging a five dollar bill out of her pocket and handing it over. "You win."
"What?" Tish asks. "What?"
"Tish," Piper says, "you just let six feet of shirtless hottie walk out of here because you were busy emoting over Boaz Priestly."
Tish spins around and looks out the front window, where Surfer Boy is climbing into a red convertible. He is hot, tall and tan and he drives a nice car and she can't manage even a small stirring of regret. "Damn it," she mutters.
"You're hooked, angel," Trucker tells her gently.
"Damn it."
***
"So, I saw Tad," Priestly says the next night when they're closing down. He's wiping down the tables, and Tish keeps getting distracted by his ass and having recount the stack of bills in her hands. This is getting ridiculous.
His tone of voice is the same one he's been using on Tad since the first time that asshole walked into the shop, but Tish doesn't mind it at all now. "Yeah?"
"He was making out with that buddy of his behind Trotter's. Almost blew a fuse when he saw me."
"You didn't get into another fight with him, did you?" Tish asks. She's now sure what she wants the answer to be. On the one hand, if anyone deserves to get his ass kicked, Tad does. On the other hand, the last time Priestly tried that, it didn't end well for him.
"Nah. He didn't recognize me."
Duh. Well, she'd recognize Priestly anywhere, but Tad was a superficial dick who probably never took a second look at the face under the six-inch-tall multicolored mohawk and sculpted beard. "I guess I'm glad he figured his shit out," Tish says slowly. "Or I would be if he wasn't such a douche."
"If anybody deserves an epic gay crisis, it's him," Priestly agrees, flipping the bar rag over his shoulder. He's wearing jeans again, a polo shirt, and his old army boots. The last part makes Tish want to giggle, for some crazy reason. She never realized he even kept normal clothing in his closet along with the baggy cut-offs and kilts.
Honestly, maybe she isn't much better than Tad when it comes to noticing what's right under her nose.
"I should have just listened to you," Tish admits.
"Yes, you should have."
"About him being gay," she clarifies.
He's smirking. It was a cute smirk with the lip ring and the beard, and it's downright devastating now. "Well, yeah."
"How was I supposed to know you'd have decent gaydar?"
"Because I'm fabulous," he says, batting his lashes at her. Weirdly, it's an expression that works on him; even without the makeup, his eyes are prettier than most girls'.
And that makes her wonder. "Priestly. Boaz."
He pauses in the middle of locking the door, raises his eyebrows. "Yeah?"
"Are you gay?" It would certainly explain a lot of things. Like the fact that they've been more or less dating for two weeks and she still hasn't gotten in his pants.
"Yes, Tish, I'm gay. That's why I did the yuppie makeover." His voice is sarcastic, but she's almost positive there's a blush rising in his cheeks. "Because I love the cock. Getting you to go out with me was all an elaborate hoax."
"Bi?"
"Tish! Come on."
"That wasn't an answer," she says around a grin.
Priestly throws up his hands. "Okay, okay, fine, maybe I've explored some different facets of my sexuality. It's not a big deal."
"Seriously? Anybody I know?"
He shifts his weight, rocking on the balls of his booted feet, but he looks more smug than embarrassed and it doesn't take long for him to crack. "Okay, yeah," he says after a few moments. "Remember that Zach dude who used to come in on Spring Break last year? I took him home a few times."
She does remember Zach, actually. He was a tall, tan, dark-haired engineering student, and he was so flaming that even Tish didn't bother hitting on him. Cute, though. Really cute, actually.
Crap. Now she's picturing it. Priestly's broad, freckled shoulders, Zach's sinewy arms, lean, hard, male bodies sliding together, naked, kissing--it didn't get her hot when it was Tad and Brad, but now, maybe just because she's going through her longest dry spell since the braces came off in high school--
"Yeah, it was fun," Priestly is saying. Tish blinks and looks at him; he folds his arms and grins knowingly, leaning back against the door. "Oh, so that's how it is."
"How what is?" Tish asks, trying to look sarcastic instead of turned on. From the way Priestly's grin gets impossibly wider, she doesn't think she succeeds.
"I saw that."
She lifts her chin defiantly. "Saw what?"
"That--" he flutters his eyes again and mimes swooning, ridiculously. "You have the libido of a rabbit in heat. You know that, right?"
If any other guy talked to her like that, she'd be out the door. But it's Priestly. He always talks to her like that, and anyway he looks really good propped up against the door-frame with his ankles crossed and his cocky grin, so she just crosses the room in three long strides, puts two hands on his shoulders and pushes him back against the wooden frame. He's way too solid for her to actually move him if he doesn't want to be moved, but he goes willingly, laughing a little when she drags his mouth down to hers for a ferocious kiss.
When she finally pulls back her knees are actually shaky, but Priestly is sagging against the door, mouth pink and wet, pupils blown. "Huh," he says intelligently.
"It's your fault I haven't been laid in so long," Tish tells him. "So unless you're planning to do something about it, you don't get to pick on me."
His smile turns startled and shy, and the realization is like getting hit with a bolt of lightning: he really didn't know she hasn't been fucking anyone else.
"You asshole," she says. "You think I'd do that to you?"
"You do it to everybody else," he mutters sheepishly.
"You're not everybody else." She smacks his shoulder. "Dick."
He rubs the back of his neck. "Sorry."
"Oh, whatever," Tish says, leaning up to kiss him again, quick and hard. He cups her cheek when they pull apart, palm warm against the curve of her jaw, and he's smiling.
"We should finish closing up," he says, and it feels like a promise.
***
Priestly's apartment is a four-floor walk-up, and it takes them longer than it should to get up the stairs because they keep stopping to make out. Tish bumps her hip hard against the corner of the stair rail and Priestly pulls her back up, laughing and fumbling for his keys. "You're such a klutz."
"You're such an asshole."
He grins and unlocks the door. "Come on in."
It's small, dark, and cool inside, posters on the walls and the faint smell of incense. The bed is a box-spring and mattress on the floor in a corner, and Tish trips Priestly neatly and tumbles them both onto it. She ends up straddling him, and his hands land on her hips like they belong there. He's laughing, but there's something warm and unfamiliar in his face that makes her breath catch.
She gets her fingers under his t-shirt and shoves it up, baring his flat stomach and the strong expanse of his chest, skin winter-pale in the dim light through the window. There's another tattoo there, something abstract and looping, and he hisses when she leans down to trace it with her mouth, biting a little at warm skin. He's breathing hard, flushed enough that she can see it even in this light, but when their eyes meet he composes his face into a very serious expression. "Tish, I just want you to know, I would never expect you to do anything you're not comfortable--"
"Oh, my God, would you shut up already?" Tish rolls her eyes, sits back on her heels. Priestly's hands drop to her hips, run light and ticklish down her thighs as she arches back to pull her shirt and bra off in one smooth motion.
They stop talking for a while after that.
***
Priestly's loft has floor-to-ceiling windows. There are shades in the living room but none in the kitchen, so Tish steals one of his shirts to go get a glass of water. The green cotton hangs to below her hips, and it smells like cheap laundry soap and Priestly's cologne. Tish tucks her face into it, breathes in deep, and the smile she can feel curving her lips is so sappy that she's really kind of glad Priestly's still dozing. He's sprawled out in a boneless heap on top of the sheets, face buried in the pillow, angled so that she can see the lines of muscle in his back and the pale curve of his ass. And that tattoo. It is a rose, but it doesn't look like the kind of thing people get done on drunken dares; the design is precise and beautiful, the long winding stem forming delicate loops of black ink over the bone of his hip.
He makes a fucking pretty picture, and Tish has to resist the impulse to pull out her phone and snap a photo, just for posterity.
She finds a water glass and a bag of chips in the kitchen cupboard, eats a handful before padding into the bathroom to wash her face. It's about the size of a closet, so tiny that there isn't even a full tub, just a shower stall; neater than she would have expected. The sink is lined with Manic Panic bottles and jars of hair glue. Eyeliner. She hasn't seen him wearing it in weeks, but he hasn't thrown any of that stuff away.
When Tish looks in the mirror, she realizes that the shirt she's wearing is printed with 'ORGASM DONOR' in square white letters, and she has to swallow down something that isn't quite a laugh.
***
Priestly's on his back when she comes out, one arm flung out to the side. Tish sets the water glass down on the floor and settles cross-legged onto the mattress beside him.
The first brush wakes him up, but she stops him before he can move with a hand curving over his cheek. "Shh," she whispers. "Keep your eyes closed."
"If that's permanent marker, I'm never inviting you over again," Priestly murmurs, but he's smiling a little, and he doesn't open his eyes or try to pull away.
"Shh," Tish says again, smudging the dark lines deftly with the tips of her fingers. She sits back on her heels. "Okay."
His eyes squeeze shut, then flutter open, long-lashed green and smudged black liner, both familiar and strange beneath his new church-boy haircut.
"It suits you," Tish says, and hopes he can read everything else she's not saying--all the sappy shit she's no good at saying--in her tone.
His smile curls into a grin, sweet and crooked. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," she says, and leans down for a kiss.