Title: Getting Off
Author: J.R. Hart
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 02/08/2022
Length: 69300
Genre: Contemporary, LGBTQIA+, romance, contemporary, new adult, family-drama, gay, bisexual, demisexual, questioning, college, sports team
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Description
JJ is certain he’s got everything figured out. He’s straight, right? He’s just not into the hookup culture prevalent on his college soccer team. But he’s trying to hide that to avoid getting on his team captain’s bad side.
Kade is anything but straight. Out and proud, he’s curious about how the “other half” lives… even as his best friends remind him there’s more to the LGBTQ+ community than just the “G.” Curious, Kade texts JJ a simple question: do straight guys ever get off together?
When JJ’s reply leads to a head-spinning sexual spark, he starts questioning everything he knows about his sexuality, both in terms of who he’s attracted to, and also why hookups have never been his thing. But when JJ endures trauma that confuses him more, he starts pushing Kade away. Kade has to learn how to be a supportive friend, and more than that, a supportive partner, or risk losing JJ altogether. And JJ? He has to fight for his team to be team players, even when they suspect he’s “playing for the other team.”
Getting Off
J.R. Hart © 2022
All Rights Reserved
JJ
Spaghetti is straight. That’s the point of spaghetti. You can’t really get a straighter food than spaghetti. I stare at the ceiling in my dorm room, wondering what the fuck he means. Spaghetti. Straight. If he had been implying I’m not straight, he could have gone for macaroni, or rotini, or hell, even ramen. But spaghetti?
Literally any food on the planet, any pasta, is less straight than spaghetti.
Or maybe that’s the point. Maybe he’s saying he gets it, I’m straight. But it eats at me, the juxtaposition of his sentence. The way he acts implies I’m not straight. I want to corner him and ask him, straight-up, just…what do you mean by that? But he doesn’t text me back. And it’s ruining my nap. I came here after practice, set on lying down for an hour before dinner, chilling. I worked my ass off today and I want to rest, and now I can’t, because of a stupid text.
How did he go from talking about nachos to hookups anyway? My stomach growls. My brain mostly just groans. I pull out my phone and I consider texting someone else, trying to figure out if anyone else understands what he means by “straight like spaghetti,” but I don’t know who I could ask without making it clear what we did. And that’s the thing. I can’t tell anyone.
After he didn’t text me back, I made a resolution with myself: no more Kade, no more questions, no more…anything. I’m straight. I know I’m straight. And this was a one-time hiccup in an otherwise normal life. Not that being not-straight isn’t normal, but that being not-straight isn’t normal for me. I didn’t ask for this in my life. Or maybe I did, because I invited him over, but I didn’t ask for it to progress as far as it did. Or maybe I did, because I made the first move. Still, what happened happened, but that doesn’t mean it has to happen again.
No regrets, but no need for a repeat. That’s what I keep telling myself. One time doesn’t change who I am. One time doesn’t change anything about me.
But I still want it. And I wonder if that’s got something to do with him saying I’m straight like spaghetti.
And here’s the thing. I tried looking at other guys. For two days now, I’ve tried looking at other guys and thinking, “Would I?” and the answer is consistently no. But then I’ve also tried with girls, and…my answer is still kind of a no. I’m just not feeling it lately. Or rather, I’m feeling Kade, but I can’t let myself go down that road.
I know he’s offering a chance to hook up, and I know if that’s what I want, saying yes makes sense, but I don’t want to want him as much as I want him.
And I’m straight. Apparently like spaghetti. Which…still, what? I toss and I turn, and I don’t get a single bit of my nap in because I keep reading the texts over again. After an hour and a half, I even text him back with an I still don’t understand. I don’t get an answer. Is he in class? If he is, then why did he ask if I was busy and ask if I wanted to hook up? I want to say yes. But I don’t, because why bother texting him back a yes now, when he’s ghosting me? And then, of course, I start to blame myself for thinking he’s not talking to me because I turned him down.
I don’t think Kade’s that kind of guy. I think he’s genuine, and I want to believe he got busy, or his phone died, or something happened and it’s not actually about me turning him down. But without confirmation, I just stay locked into place in my head. When I pry myself out of bed and tug on sweatpants, I tell myself I’m done. If he’s ghosting, I’m ghosting, no do-overs. I told myself before there was no room for an outlier in my life, and I’m repeating it again.
Outliers cause problems with data sets. It would be so nice to exclude them, to get everything in line with what it should be, to make solutions for problems without the added issues of data that doesn’t quite match. And yeah, Kade doesn’t match. Not with the rest of my life.
Straight like spaghetti.
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J R Hart is a queer 30-something novelist passionate about telling romantic and erotic stories about LGBT+ characters. When J R isn’t writing, you can find her at the science museum with her son, cheering for her favorite soccer team, or at The Bean Coffee Co plotting her next work. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram as @jrhartauthor, or on her website at jrhartauthor.com.
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