Page 5 of Muscle Cub

I huffed. For years, I’d resisted coming to the campground for the same reason I wouldn’t be found on any dating apps. I didn’t want to run into one of my students. “Thankfully, no.”

“See? You were being paranoid.”

“I honestly haven’t seen anyone that young here.” The youngest person I’d encountered so far had to have been Wheelbarrow Boy. “I thought you guys started coming when you were barely old enough to drink?”

“Ah, yes.” Eric nodded with the graveness of the inebriated. “We were adventurous. Early adopters. The guy who owned the place back then didn’t give a shit either. He liked twinks.” Eric turned suddenly and grabbed both Ben and me by the shoulder, shaking us. “You guys! Take this moment in.” He looked back and forth between us, and then he leaned back and yelled at the top of his lungs. “Paul’s at fucking Bear Camp!”

Ben spoke for the first time. “Finally.”

“Ta-da!” I attempted a single jazz-hand while raising my cheap beer with the other.

I toasted their birthday, we all drank, and they made out right in front of me, which was… new. I’d always envied their connection. It wasn’t that I necessarily wanted a serious relationship again, but if I could have one, I’d want it to be like theirs.

I looked away, my eyes straying to the door at the exact moment Wheelbarrow Boy arrived.

Maybe it was another one of those synchronicities.

3

I almost didn’t recognize him, but even dressed in an elaborate devil costume with a solid stripe of black makeup across his eyes, an irrepressible twinkle shone through.

He wore a black horned headdress, a pair of black shorts small enough to qualify as underwear in the outside world, and black leather thigh-high platform boots. He towered over everyone in the room. From horn to toe he was easily over seven feet tall.

Holy Son of Maleficent.

Beside me, Eric cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Austin!” Wheelbarrow Boy turned, and Eric waved him over, unnecessarily hissing the name close to my ear. “This is Austin.”

Austin’s linebacker build had been intimidating in his work uniform, but now, in a costume that exaggerated his size and with his glorious hairy chest on full display, he was a beast on another level.

I bet he knew it too.

Austin’s eyes never left mine even as Eric went up on tiptoe to share what I presumed was the other side of our introduction. I couldn’t read Eric’s lips, but I could definitely tell he was using a lot more words than This is our friend Paul. There was no telling what he might be saying about me. Eric had been notoriously heavy-handed and misguided with his matchmaking attempts a few times in the recent past.

Of course, I recognized Austin from earlier, and he surely recognized me. When he offered his hand—I didn’t know what possessed me—I blurted out my snarky nickname for him. “Wheelbarrow Boy.”

For a moment, I was lost in the feel of the smooth hard calluses on his palm. A weightlifter; no surprise there.

Austin squeezed my hand and smirked. “Cursed Campsite Dad. Nice to officially meet you.”

Record scratch. “Wait. What?”

Austin chuckled at my confounded expression. “Nothing.”

“What does that even mean? Why is my campsite cursed?”

He looked away and shrugged off my question. “Nothing. I’m just fucking with you.” He moved closer to stand shoulder to shoulder with me against the wall. “So you’re the professor?” His voice was loud enough for me to hear him over the music but intimate in the proximity it required. “I had the hugest crush on one of my professors sophomore year.” Eric, Ben, and some of the crew who had arrived with Austin were watching us, but I couldn’t tell if they could make out what was being said. “Care if I call you Prof?”

Surprised by Austin’s forwardness, my protest came out sounding like a question. “Um, I’d rather you didn’t?”

Austin laughed at my glare, crinkles forming at the corners of his eyes. One day, those lines would make him even more gorgeous. “Yeah, my professor hated it every time I called him that.”

Oh God. He was probably one of those students—the bros who treated a lecture hall like an open mic night at a comedy club.

Eric obviously heard our conversation because he leaned past me to interrupt. “Paul is also a famous author.”

I could have killed him. For a number of reasons.

“Really?” Austin turned toward me, only one shoulder against the wall now. The bulge in his shorts was perilously close to my elbow. The latex material made the hairs on my forearm rise. “What do you write?” He looked as seriously interested as a devil in a disco could look.