Page 80 of The Build-a-Boyfriend Project

Eli takes a few deep breaths, forcing his tense shoulders to relax. He doesn’t understand where all these feelings are coming from, and he doesn’t like them.

He refills the glass and searches the medicine cabinet for a bottle of Advil, trying his best to loosen up before he strolls into the bedroom, averting his gaze when he sees Peter nearly naked, dressed only in his underwear.

“Oh! God, I’m sorry.” Eli slaps his hand over his eyes.

“Hey, that’s my line,” Peter says hesitantly, pulling on a pair of gray sweatpants so quickly that he falls onto the edge of the bed.

“Here.” Eli hands Peter the Advil and the water, watching as he gulps it down. “Now get under the covers.”

“Thank you, again,” Peter mumbles.

“It’s okay.”

“Can you just . . . sit here?” Peter asks him. “Until I’m asleep.”

“Of course.” Eli climbs onto the bed, sitting next to Peter with his back against the wall. Peter turns so he can look at Eli one last time before his eyes close, a smile on his lips, hands tucked under his pillow as he buries half his face in it.

It strikes Eli just how gorgeous Peter is, and he can’t help himself from brushing a single lock of hair that escapes Peter’s head, tucking it back. Eli wonders if Peter knows that he’s beautiful. He hopes he does. Peter’s the kind of person who deserves to know how bright his smile makes a room, how effortless it is to love a person like him.

And the inside of Eli’s mouth turns sour.

He waits for Peter to wake up, but he’s out like a light. For a while he lingers, watching Peter sleep. But he knows he can’t hang around.

Eli feels his heart thudding in his chest as he slides off the bed, not realizing he left the Advil bottle right in his path.

“Shit,” he whispers, waiting for Peter to wake up from the clattering of the pills. He kneels on the hardwood floor, gathering as many as he can from under the bed. It’s when Eli pulls his hand free that he hits something and hears it topple over, something that sounds an awful lot like . . . books?

He yanks back the comforter carefully to peek under the bed. And just as he expects, he sees a floppy paperback. He carefully pulls it out and stares at it.

“The Duke’s Guide to Love and Lust?” he reads quietly off the cover of the book, adorned with an illustration depicting two men in period-style clothing embracing one another. Well, one of them is clothed; the other has his shirt split open, showing off a perfectly oiled chest. A romance novel?

Eli grabs another book. This one is titled Weather Man and appears to be a meteorology-themed romance. Others with titles like The Prince and His Pauper, Girlfriend Material, The Seven-Ten Split, and When Hairy Met Sally have been hidden underneath Peter’s bed for some odd reason.

Doing his best to hide the evidence that he snooped, even if it was accidental, Eli stacks the books back on top of each other and shoves them back under the bed, clueless about their order, hoping that Peter won’t notice.

He wishes that he could watch Peter all night, keep an eye on him, but that’d be so very Edward Cullen of him, and Eli’s not interested in being a stalker weirdo. So, instead, Eli slips his shoes back on, turning off most of the lights in the apartment before he steps back out into the garage, the gate automatically locking behind him.

He lingers there, in what little warmth the building entrance holds, before he walks to the bus stop, grateful that it’s late enough at night that no one else is on the bus. The apartment is dark when he gets home, no lights under Rose’s or Patricia’s doors, so he decides not to bother them.

For a moment he considers starting a movie, putting on his headphones so he doesn’t disturb his roommates, or grabbing his laptop to write about the night, but the former means he’d be going to bed far too late, and the latter just makes him feel guilty when he thinks about it. So, instead, Eli tiptoes to his bedroom, changing into sweatpants before he brushes his teeth then falls onto his bed, exhausted by the night.

He doesn’t mean to dream about Peter, about the sweet honeysuckle sound of his laughter, or that barest hint of Georgia accent in his voice. He doesn’t mean to dream about tracing his hand along that jawline, about feeling his hand in Peter’s.

And he doesn’t mean to dream about what it might be like to kiss him again, to taste his tongue, to feel his lips against Peter’s and the heat of his breath, his teeth on Eli’s throat, hands on his chest.

But he does.

And when he wakes up the next morning, he feels so much worse about himself.

Chapter Ten

Cruising, dir. by William Friedkin

“This is all you’ve got?” Michael asks, breezing through Eli’s more recent notes. “There’s nothing here.”

“Well, I’m still finding it . . .” Eli starts to say, but the excuse dies on his tongue.

The dating article isn’t nothing. He has a beginning, a good first chunk of writing that he’s actually very proud of; the rest of the piece is less fine-tuned, a little rougher around the edges because he hadn’t had the time to really string things together, make it cohesive.