Script Club project? Well, my friends and fellow academic overachievers, Topher, George, Tommy, and Holden had dubbed ourselves the Script Club when we moved into our craftsman-style home in Pasadena last summer. However, before then, we’d come up with an idea to broaden our horizons and experience something beyond our insular world of science labs and academics. We’d hoped to contribute our findings to a journal, but we’d been too busy with real life to implement our plan.
Except Topher fell in love with George’s older brother, Simon. They’d bought a fixer-upper in Old Town and were moving in together next month. And George was in a secret relationship with Simon’s best friend Aiden. We weren’t supposed to know about it, but his nocturnal squeaky bedsprings were a dead giveaway.
In the meantime, nothing had changed for Tommy, Holden, and me. Until a week ago, I would have said my life was comfortably snoozy. Now…not so much.
“How long has Holden been on the phone with his mother?” I asked, bending to tie my shoelaces.
“Five minutes.”
I groaned. “He won’t be ready for another twenty minutes…at least.”
“True.” Tommy agreed, moving into my room. “Any new data from the Rover today? I couldn’t believe the recent photos. The clarity is astounding.”
“Yes. I was on the team monitoring the penis around the perimeter.”
“Excuse me?”
I gave an embarrassed half laugh and stammered, “I meant progress. Not penis. I didn’t measure his penis. It was exciting, though.”
Tommy squinted in confusion. “The penis?”
“No, no. The progress,” I replied in a serious voice before inexplicably adding, “The penis was also exciting.”
Tommy grinned like a loon as he perched on the edge of my mattress. “Oh, really? Whose penis caused all this excitement, Ash?”
“I can’t say,” I bumbled, covering my mouth. What the heck was I thinking?
“Why not? We have a few minutes till Holden is ready, and you seem to have something you want to get off your chest. Go on,” he cajoled, circling his wrist meaningfully.
“Ha. It’s nothing,” I bluffed, pretending not to notice his scrutiny as I tied and untied my shoes twice.
“Really?” he prodded.
When I finally met his gaze, Tommy crossed his thin arms over his Space Nerds Rule T-shirt and flashed a wide smile that transformed him from attractive to downright handsome. Of all my friends, Tommy was probably the most unassuming and the least aware of his looks. Sure, he was a geek in the truest sense of the word…from the translucent piece of tape holding his glasses together to his ill-fitted khakis—but his short brown hair was offset by full lips, sculpted cheekbones, and pretty blue eyes behind his thick lenses. With just the teeniest bit of attention to detail, Tommy could be a model. No kidding.
Fun fact…I’d had a serious crush on him when we first met in grad school. But I was a bad flirt, and he was terrible at reading clues. Anything more than friendship would have required a bit too much work for both of us. Besides, I valued him as a friend. Tommy was good-natured, easygoing, and interesting. He was a TA at Caltech who volunteered at a sea lion sanctuary a couple of times a month, wrote Dr. Who fanfic in his spare time, and—he was staring at me.
No, he was carefully observing and waiting for me to crack. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Not this time. I’d change the subject back to the Mars expedition and—
“I had sex with Jake…whose real name is Blake,” I blurted in a rush, twitching my nose and fiddling with my glasses nervously.
“Huh?”
“Topher’s former booty call. The guy we all saw sucking face with a pretty blonde girl the weekend before we moved in here last August. Remember? We all said, ‘Oh, no. That gorgeous hunk of man is a beast. You can do better, Toph.’ ” I swiped my sweaty palms on my khakis. “That guy.”
Tommy furrowed his brow. “I vaguely remember him. Wasn’t he a football player?”
“Uh…no, he’s a lacrosse coach person. He lied about the football part…and his name. Well, Topher misheard him and he went with it, but still.”
“O-kay…and his real name is Blake?”
“Yes. He thinks his issues with truth are tied to his closeted status. And…he wants me to help him come out.”
“By having sex with his exciting penis?”
“Yes…no. The sex part happened before I recognized him.” I licked my lips and filled him in on my experiment with the hookup app. “The second time was…me making a bad decision. But I’m going to rectify it by helping him come out of the closet so he doesn’t have to lie anymore. And if I don’t engage in any further sexual activity with him, my good deed will erase my very bad deeds. Get it?”
Tommy’s eyes were as big as saucers. “I need a moment to process. I’m stuck on the part where you met him on a hookup app. Did I hear you correctly?”