Free Getting Him Back by K. A. Mitchell Page B

twinkle.
    He leaned so that our shoulders touched. “You’re a lot sexier-sounding in my good ear.”
    “Uh, thanks. But I think blow job is sexy no matter who says it.”
    He laughed again and bumped my shoulder.
    This late on the Sunday night before midterms we pretty much had the campus to ourselves on the walk back to Fisher. Even the El was deserted. We were halfway across before Wyatt said, “Aren’t you going to ask?”
    My body was humming, hot and tingling with the promise of sex—sex with Wyatt. The pulse in my balls was making me a little dizzy and I was trying to not let things get too hard to walk.
    I realized he’d stopped, and I stared back at him under the bluish fluorescent lights. I played back what he’d said.
    “Um—ask what?”
    “About my eyes, my hair, my face, my ear? My tattoo?”
    Was he saying those were related? His hoodie was tipped back, side bangs off his face to reveal both of his eyes. He held out his hand. There was a thin black cross on one of his knuckles, and five dots between his thumb and forefinger.
    I vaguely remembered the cross and dots from when we’d had our hands wrapped around our dicks. I hadn’t been super focused on body art at the time. Not to say Wyatt’s ink was body art. It looked like the sort of stuff someone would do to themselves. A jailhouse tat we’d have called it in high school
    “Do you want me to ask about it?”
    Wyatt dragged his hair over his face again. “Fuck if I know.” He started walking.
    I caught up to him in a step. “I have Dumbo ears, a nose like a knife, a billion freckles and a big red birthmark on the top of my left ass cheek.”
    “Yeah, that’s tragic.”
    I was getting pissed and my strides got longer, making him have to hurry to catch up.
    “Ethan,” he sounded exasperated. “You know you’re fucking hot so don’t, all right?”
    I was hot? Though Wyatt thinking that instead of thinking guy-not-too-hideous-who’s-willing-to-blow-me was nice.
    I slowed and shot him a look over my shoulder, waiting for him to go on.
    With an eye roll he said, “Blond curls, money to get it styled and those bedroom eyes.”
    I had to smile. “I think the word is actually brown.” I’d always been pissed not to get blue eyes to go along with the freckles and hair and skin that always got burned in the sun. And to have blue eyes as bright and perfect as that one of Wyatt’s? Man, I could have made that work for me.
    He shook his head. “And I’m a fucking freak.”
    “I think your eyes are cool. Like in the X-men. Heterochromia.”
    “I know what it’s called,” he snapped. “Try having it in Van, West Virginia. Population two hundred—if you add in the raccoons.” Then his dry tone was back. “I guess I am a mutant.”
    We reached the end of the El. The path ahead had pools of light from occasional lampposts, but after being under the fluorescents the darkness between them looked pits to fall into.
    Wyatt stepped off into the first abyss. “I have Waardenburg Syndrome.”
    Oh shit. God, was he dying ? It felt like I’d actually stepped into a hole. The jar, the shock ran up me, a sick vibration in my bones. I grabbed his arm. “I’m sorry. Is it—” I couldn’t say it.
    He slipped free. “It’s not fatal.” He made a disgusted sound, but whether that was for me or the syndrome I couldn’t tell. “The mildest form is weird pigmentation. Like my eyes and my hair. And it’s why my eyes are so far apart and my lips look weird. Worst case would be totally deaf—which I guess could still happen.” He paused in the first puddle of light and pulled on the white chunk of his hair. “I’ll probably go totally white by thirty. And if I don’t shave and pluck,” he tapped between his eyes, “unibrow.”
    I was so stupidly glad he wasn’t going to die, I made a lame joke. “A unibrow, huh? Well, that’s tragic.”
    “Fuck you.” His lower lip pouted, and he started walking again.
    “Was that the stuff you said