I could tell by Kyle's smirk that he had caught me checking out our waiter. I had been staring at him all evening, from the moment his smooth, toned arm had reached across my shoulder to set a glass of water in front of me.
"I think our waiter is kind of, you know, the same as you," Kyle said, his lips pulling back to form the dimples in his cheeks.
"I think Kyle's calling you a fag, Sean," Anthony said from the other side of the table.
"Either way, he's cute," I answered.
I watched the waiter as he punched the cash register. His black polo shirt hugged his molded torso, tapering from his shoulders to his waist. His black jeans were taut across his ass, and the thread seemed to be stretching thin by his crotch.
I liked seeing the play of his arm muscles as he tried to cash out one of his tables. One vein snaked its way down his bicep, and another reached from his elbow to his wrist, where it shattered into smaller pathways.
For just a second, he looked up, and I caught his bright blue eyes that shined below his short, curly brown crew cut. He seemed about my age and his face looked like it hadn't seen a day of work in its lifeβhis smooth, soft-looking skin flowed from his forehead down to his bare and flawless cheeks before finally meeting at his chin.
Of course, my housemates had caught me looking again.
"Why don't you try talking to him or something?" Kyle asked as he poked at what was left of his food.
"Yeah, come on, Sean. Fuck him in the ass," Anthony said.
"I can't do that," I said to my plate. "I don't even know if he's gay and if he is, I'm sure he already has a boyfriend or something."
I was actually a little scared. At 21 years old, I was only a few months into accepting my homosexuality and I hadn't even experienced another guy yet. I had fooled around with women when I considered myself straight, but that hadn't exactly gone too well.
"He's got to be gay," Anthony said. "Just look at that bracelet he's wearing."
I kind of liked the bracelet, a simple silver chain fastened tight around his smooth wrist.
"How about I just leave him a note on the check?" Kyle said. "Something like, 'Thanks for the great service, cutie'?"
I laughed.
"Yeah," I said. "Go for it."
We paid our check, Kyle scribbled the note and we trekked through the parking lot to the car. I was already beginning to feel the pangs of regret that I hadn't said anything to the waiter, and I felt even worse that I didn't even have a name to give him in the fantasy that would surely flood my mind later that night when I kicked the covers off my bed and unbuttoned the fly on my boxers.
My pants started vibrating then. Someone was calling my cell phone.
"Hello?" I said.
"Oh, uh, hi. This is Chris."
"Chris? Chris who?" I didn't know anyone named Chris. I tried to look at my housemates to see if they knew, but they had gotten ahead of me.
"This is Chris, your waiter. From the restaurant. Is this Sean?"
That bastard Kyle. He had probably written a raunchy note on that check and signed it with my phone number. I hated him so much that I could have kissed him, if he didn't have an extremely hot girlfriend.