Free Anything For You by Sarah Mayberry Page A

in the bathroom caught his attention. Delaney was in the shower. He should probably go and talk to her. Deal with this head on, right now. Before a crazy one-off solidified into the death knell for their friendship.
    He took a step toward the bathroom, then another. Then he imagined walking in on Delaney in the shower, and stopped in his tracks. That was never going to happen. Just because they’d had sex with each other didn’t mean he had a free pass to walk in while she was showering. His penis twitched again as he thought of Delaney’s lean, sexy body all wet and soapy and slippery and naked. Another good reason not to go in. He didn’t relish the notion of trying to have a rational, mature discussion with an erection making a tepee in his jeans.
    Which left just one alternative. Feeling like the love-rat Delaney often accused him of being, Sam slunk out the door.
    He found no relief in the silence and space of his own apartment. He kept flashing back to those moments with Delaney—the look in her eyes as she lowered herself onto him, the way she’d thrown her head back as though having him inside her was the best, most fulfilling feeling in the world. Or the way she’d asked him if he knew what he was doing when he couldn’t help but touch her breast. She’d been quivering with passion, he realized. Quivering with wanting him. Just as he’d been agonizing over wanting her all night long.
    All of which got him nowhere except painfully erect and ready for a round two that was never going to eventuate. A cold shower—the age-old cure for unwanted activity down south—did nothing but leave him shivering and wet with a persistent, resilient hard-on. He stared down at himself—just his luck to at last find a cold-water-proof stimulant in the form of his best friend. Just damned dandy.
    As he was toweling himself dry, the phone rang, and he automatically crossed to answer it. He hesitated before picking up, however, his hand hovering over the receiver. What if it was Delaney? What was he going to say to her? The phone rang on and on as his better and lesser selves battled it out, and then the decision was taken out of his hands as the phone clicked over to the answering machine. There was a long pause, then finally Delaney spoke.
    “Sam, you chickenshit,” was all she said, then she slammed down the phone.
    Sam stared at the now-silent phone. She was right. He was a chickenshit.
    Suddenly filled with rage at himself and the world, Sam dragged on a pair of long skater shorts, grabbed a T-shirt and his beat-up Van street shoes, and snagged his skateboard as he headed out the door.
    The Prahran ramp was just a ten-minute drive away, and the moment he got there he launched into a series of hand-plants, shooting up the steep curve of one side of the ramp and planting one hand on the upper lip before flipping his body and board in the air, rotating 180 degrees, then coming back down and doing exactly the same thing on the opposite side. It took a few minutes for the knot of tension in his belly to loosen, but eventually the speed and discipline of managing balance and momentum did its work. When he’d pummeled his anger down to manageable proportions, he let up, allowing gravity to take him to the lowest point in the center of the U-shaped ramp. A group of kids watching from the sidelines gave him a small cheer as he used the hem of his T-shirt to wipe the sweat off his face.
    “Shouldn’t you kids be in school?” he asked them testily.
    One of the kids, a pint-sized little demon with his trucking cap on backwards, flipped Sam the finger. “Shouldn’t you be at work?” the kid asked smartly.
    Sam opened his mouth to give him a piece of his mind, but stopped when he realized the kid was right—he should be at work. It was probably around nine by now, despite his early start knocking on Delaney’s apartment door. He was no better than these kids, ditching school because they thought they had better things to do.