Chapter 8

A/N: Just to warn you, I've never been to a pride club before so I have no idea what the interactions in them are like. Also, since I'm kind of thinking about making another sequel in the distant future with some of the new characters, here are aesthetics or whatever they're called. By the way, I didn't give any POVs to Jax or Kai in the last book (or this book, but only Adrian and Derek have gotten POVs here) on purpose because to be honest I don't know what my plan with them is. I've been hinting at shit here and there, especially in the last book when Cam and Aaron kept talking about the fact that Kai and Jax share a brain and wouldn't be surprised if they were together.

Are they together? I don't know, maybe. I'll deal with that whole situation when I get there but I'm not there yet. I want Naomi (Jax's twin sister) involved in a book as a main character in a straight book, which I understand many of you might not read, but I feel like she needs her own book as well as DeShaun. You might recall that DeShaun has a girlfriend, in the chapter in the last book where he got hit by a car, but she has not shown up since then on purpose. That purpose being a complete lack of ideas for what to do past this book other than a book revolving around Frank (the guy that kissed Cam) and Jason (Aaron's ex) that will happen after this book or after another sequel. It's not my first priority basically.

Is it the best idea to make 90% of the characters gay? I don't know, I think it's fine. Some of them are bi, and I don't know what to do with Jax and Kai. Maybe Kai will end up with Naomi, maybe he'll end up with someone else. This is not a real story, so it doesn't matter if everyone happens to be gay. It's not like they're gonna have a giant orgy or something (unless y'all fuck with that but keep that to yourself bc ain't no way I'm writing that shit). I like writing and this whole universe can basically have unlimited books as long as I keep setting up storylines with new characters like Julian and Damian. It'll just get progressively further and further away from the main friend group.

Adrian's POV

Well, today I'm supposed to go to the pride club meeting with Julian. I hope it goes okay because to be honest, the only person I know there will be Julian. Cam and Aaron don't care enough to come to the meetings because they have each other and that's enough for both of them.

I don't know if I will really be able to talk to the other people in the club because I still have a straight wired brain. I obviously love sports and whatnot, and I don't like anime, Taylor Swift, or any of that shit that gay people like a lot. It just doesn't appeal to me. Sports are my life and I'm fine with that. I think Julian thinks like I do, and he does run the club, so that's a good sign. Maybe there will be some other athletes there, people I can talk to about sports and not gay shit which is terrible.

I ain't never gonna watch no Drag Race shit, anime, gay romance shows or movies, or any of that bullshit. I think some people in the community make the rest of us look bad. I don't want to put it that simply, but it's true. People going around taking advantage of the fact that they're a minority to get extra perks.

It's fine to be proud of your sexuality, but demanding special privileges because of it is not okay. If it's equality we're all trying to get then equality is what we should get, not special treatment. I think taking advantage of being gay is not okay, and that's why I don't really go around telling everyone I'm gay. People just know I'm gay because they've seen news articles or whatever. To the naked eye, or someone who has no idea who I am, I'm just another straight guy.

"Adrian are you gonna be done in the shower?" Devin asks through the door. The shower is so fucking nice I don't want to get out but I have a roommate that needs it.

"Yeah, I'll be out in a minute," I answer.

I turn off the shower, drying my hair off with a towel, just dry enough to get my clothes on without water dripping onto them. Coming back from football to take a shower in this shower is gonna be so nice. I love warm showers but if it's 90 degrees outside and I just finished playing football for a few hours, a cold shower is gonna be better.

I blow dry my hair into a preferred look and leave the bathroom.

"I'm done," I state and Devin looks up from his phone.

"Aight, thanks."

"No problem."

I jump onto my bed, checking the time. It's almost 9:30 already. I should start getting up earlier as we get closer and closer to the start of football season. I can't be getting out of bed at 8:30, I should be getting out of bed at 7:00-7:30. That way I can just be ready to do whatever throughout the day, maybe get some caffeine into my body, just we awake.

I hear a knock on my door, probably from Julian, who said he's gonna walk with me to the pride club meeting today. He's definitely into me, and I couldn't be more honored. The first guy in real life to give me any attention is also a guy I would give plenty of attention to. He's cute as fuck and he plays sports. That's kind of perfect.

I open the door and it's Julian, who's looking at the door waiting for me to open the door. His face lights up as he sees me and I smile at him back.

"Good morning Adrian," he says, smiling at me.

"Morning."

"You ready for pride club?" he asks me and I shrug.

"Yeah, I guess so. Are there weirdos in the club?"

"Yeah. There are, but I don't really sit near them. There are a couple more athletes in the club, and there will probably be new people showing up today as well. Basically, you won't be the only new person there, I'm sure plenty of incoming freshmen are gonna come."

"Alright. Let's go," I say and he nods.

We start walking to the stairs at the end of the hall, opting to not use the elevator. Again, this is a super nice dorm building because we get preferential treatment by being athletes. I'm not complaining, at least we actually worked for this preferential treatment.

"So, you like it here so far?" he asks and I nod.

"Yeah. It's only been a couple days but I enjoy it here already. It's a good thing that so many of my high school teammates are here so I know people already. I don't really like meeting new people. I'm not the most social person."

"I think you're a pretty social person. I mean, you're pretty cool and easy to talk to."

"Thanks. I'm not great at meeting new people, which could be an issue once I start meeting new teammates, but I feel like you've been really nice to me and that's why I've been quick to hang out with you," I state.

"Yeah, I mean, what you're doing is really brave, you're openly gay, and a football player in a Division 1 school. That's impressive. It takes a lot of guts to do that."

"I mean, you're openly gay too, and you play baseball."

"Yeah, but it doesn't get the same kind of coverage as football. Not as many people know that I'm gay than they know that you're gay," he says and I nod.

"Yeah. I don't really pay attention to the gay community online, but am I becoming an icon?" I ask. I hope I'm not. Not because of being gay, but I just don't want to be famous for something that is natural for me. I want to be famous because of the work I've put into the sport I love, not just for being gay.

"Yeah. You are. Everyone knows who you are. By the way, you probably already know, but people are super into you online," he tells me.

"I've been getting DM's on Instagram asking me out."

"Have you gone out with any of them?" he asks me.

"No, I don't really want to go on a date with someone I don't know at all, I'd rather go out with someone I already know a little about. From what I've heard from some of my friends, first dates with strangers are painfully awkward, and I just want to go out with someone that I already know well enough to be myself."

"I get that. My first date with a guy in high school, who was my boyfriend for a couple years, was so awkward until I brought up baseball. Then we hit it off and started dating," he states.

"Is he still with you?" I ask, regretting it immediately and grimacing at my words. I don't think I should just ask something like that.

"No. We broke up because he went out of state for college. I had my sights set on UCLA, I worked for it, got in, and he tried hard to get here as well, but he ended up going to Michigan instead because it was a better opportunity for him. It was undramatic, and I'm thankful for that."

"I'm sorry about that," I say to him.

"It's fine. I got over him pretty quickly. I'm sure I'll find love soon," he glances over at me and my heart kind of skips a beat before he points to the door next to me. "This is the building, let's go in."

"Aight," I answer. I'm still recovering from what I thought was a subliminal love confession. No one other than my parents have said they love me. Devin said that he and the rest of the team love me, but that's like a 'bro' kind of love, not a romantic kind of love.

We walk down a long hall. This building is definitely not as nice as the athletes' dorm building, but it seems like an easy place for a large group to assemble. It definitely has space enough, and I guess there's a big room for the pride club.

"Here's the room," Julian says, opening a door and holding it for me, letting me walk in.

There aren't that many people here yet, but I assume it's because it's only 9:45 and the start of it is at 10:00.

"So, how'd you become the leader of the pride club?" I ask, taking a seat near the back. Julian sits down next to me.

"I walked in on the first meeting, and the guy running it in my freshman year was a senior, and he had to hand it off to someone else and he just chose me basically. I don't know why he picked me, it was kind of random to choose a freshman."

"I mean, you're also an athlete, so not only can you represent the LGBT community, but you can represent the athletes and prove that not all of us are horrible people," I state.

"Yeah, you're right."

People begin to file into the room, and Julian tells me that I should sit in the front so I can introduce myself with the rest of the new members of the club. I look out of place, but so does Julian. We're both significantly bulkier and taller than everyone else, even though I'm only 5'10 I'm still taller than everyone else here except for a tall black guy in the back that I kind of recognize from somewhere.

Julian walks to the front of the room, waiting for everyone else to stop talking so he can talk. Everyone stops talking, probably because of the 10/10 standing in front of them.

"Alright everyone, welcome to the first pride club meeting of the 2024-2025 school year. Thank you for coming today, I hope you have a good time today. Before we do anything, do the new members mind introducing themselves?" Julian asks, looking at me and then glancing around the room.

One girl in the back of the room stands up. "My name is Olivia, I'm a freshman," she says before sitting back down.

The black guy in the back that I kind of recognized stands up after her and nods at the rest of the class sort of awkwardly. "My name is Damian, I'm a sophomore."

I know where I recognize him now, he's the guy that was driving the car that Derek got out of that one time I was sitting outside reading my DMs. I asked him about who it was, and Derek was kind of a dick for no reason.

I stand up after Damian sits down. "My name is Adrian, I'm a freshman," I say.

A few more people do the same as the first three of us and then the club starts. I don't really know what we're gonna do here, I've never been a part of a club like this so I don't know what to expect. I hope Julian has something interesting planned for us.

"Alright guys, since it's the first meeting of the school year, we are going to go bowling in about 15 minutes, until then, just get to know each other, be social," Julian says and then lets us talk amongst ourselves.

I stand up, awkwardly looking around for someone to talk to, and notice Damian is doing basically the same thing as me, looking around aimlessly and awkwardly. I walk over to him.

"Hi, I'm Damian," he smiles weakly.

I hold my hand out for him to shake and he shakes my hand. "I'm Adrian, great to meet you," I smile.

"I feel like I've seen you before. Do you stay at one of the athlete dorm buildings?" he asks and I nod.

"Yeah. I stay with the other football players and the baseball players."

"Oh. That's cool. I stay in the building with the rest of the hockey, basketball, and soccer players. My stepbrother plays on the football team by the way, you might know him."

"I might. What's his name?" I ask.

"Derek Peterson," he states and my eyes get wide.

"Oh, yeah, I know him. We went to high school together."

"Oh, so you're friends?" he asks and I don't really know how to answer that.

"I mean, we're kind of friends I guess. We don't really talk that much anymore compared to the end of high school. We were good friends in high school, I guess we just haven't had the best opportunities to talk since then."

"Nice. I barely know him. He seems cool or whatever, but I feel like he could be a dick," Damian states.

"Yeah. He's kind of been a dick to me since graduation. He hasn't talked to me because, uhh, I-uhh, never mind."

"Did you figure out that he's gay?" he whispers and I nod.

"Yeah. He told me when he was drunk but forgot telling me. I asked him one time when we were alone but he denied it. Until graduation. When I walked in on him having sex with a dude. Not something I want to see again." I still remember how horrified I was when I looked in there and saw him with another man sitting on him. Derek looked mortified when I walked in as well, he definitely immediately regretted doing that.

"That's pretty traumatizing. Is that why he's being a dick to you?"

"Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's why he's being an ass to me now. I haven't done anything that I meant to do, but he is still being an asshole to me. How'd you figure out that he's gay? Did he come out to you?" I ask.

"No. I just had a feeling and I was right."

"Wow. You have absolutely elite gaydar bro. So you play hockey?" I question and he nods. I've never seen a black person play hockey.

"Yeah. I know it's kind of weird. A gay black hockey player. Not stereotypical, but I enjoy the sport. I can take my anger out on people and the refs rarely get involved in the fights to try to break them up and shit, so it's basically a free pass to beat the shit out of someone."

"Have you?"

"Yeah. This one guy called me the f slur, I don't know how he knew that I'm gay, but he called me the f slur and I fought him so much that the next time we played he literally stayed on the other end of the rink from me. He was a pussy," he states.

"That's pretty cool," I say. I think it's pretty cool to beat up assholes. People don't have the right to just call people the f slur out of nowhere.

"Thanks."

Julian walks over to the two of us. "Hey, my name's Julian, nice to meet you," he smiles, holding his hand out for Damian to shake.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Damian."

"Yeah. I know who you are. You're on the hockey team, right? I went to a couple games last year, I was impressed. I never knew hockey was a sport I would be able to get into, but I had a great time there and it was entertaining," Julian states.

"Thanks. You play baseball, right? I remember your name from somewhere," Damian says.

"Yeah. I play baseball."

"Nice. I'm sorry, but baseball is not really a sport I see myself getting into. Nothing against you obviously, I'm sure you're a great player, but baseball is boring to me."

"I understand that. I agree, playing in the hot sun for hours is not fun. Luckily, they finally decided to put fans that spray water in the dugouts, so it won't be as bad at the end of the year."

"That's good," Damian states and Julian nods.

"Yeah."

"So, when are we going bowling?" I ask Julian and he checks his phone for the time.

"We can go right now if everyone else is ready to go," he says.

"Aight, cool."

Julian walks back to the front of the room, waiting for people to notice that he is about to say an announcement. I look at Damian, who is staring intently at Julian. I can kind of relate to that. Julian is a fucking fine ass motherfucker. His skin is so fucking perfect, his hair looks naturally curly, and his jaw is sharp as hell.

Once the room quiets down, Julian begins. "Alright, there's a bowling alley a couple blocks from here, if you wanna walk with us, you're welcome to, you can leave as well if you want, either way, but we're gonna have a good time there, so I would recommend coming."

Many people in the club leave do do something else other than bowling. There are only about 15 of us left, including me, Damian, and Julian.

Julian walks over to me and Damian again. "If you have any friends that wanna come over, they're welcome to come over," he tells both of us.

"Okay," I say, pulling out my phone and seeing another notification from that fucking asshole Josh. If anyone should be biting the curb, it's him.

We leave the building, going outside and walking to the bowling alley. It's cloudy today, and the weather is just in the 60's, which is perfect but also surprisingly cold for the end of the summer. It's usually still in the 90's now, but it's totally nice right now. In the winter is when it's consistently 50-70 degrees outside and much colder at night.

Once we get there, the entire place is empty outside of a couple lanes, one of them being occupied by Cam, Aaron, Devin, and Alicia. Cam tells me that the four of them go on double dates all the time and have a good time, so this is probably what they're doing right now. They all look so cute together.

"Here, let's take this lane. Damian, you wanna play with us?" Julian asks and Damian nods and we make our way to the center lane. I don't know why we didn't just take the one on the edge, that's farther than everyone else.

"Yo, Adrian, what's up?" Cam approaches the three of us, dapping me up, Devin, Aaron, and Alicia following suit and dapping me up as well.

"Not much," I reply.

"What are you doing here?" Cam asks.

"This is for the pride club," I say.

"That's cool. Should me and Aaron join?" Cam asks and I shrug.

"Sure, if you want to. You know Julian kind of, and he plays baseball, and this is Damian, he plays hockey, so we're not the only athletes here," I say and he nods.

"What day do they meet?" Aaron asks.

"Every Saturday, at the same time. 10:00 AM. Obviously, since it's just a club, you don't have to come every time," Julian answers and Aaron nods.

"We should join, Cam," Aaron says, looking at his boyfriend.

"Yeah, definitely. If Adrian's in the club we'll know someone else at least."

"Exactly."

"Cool, if you guys want to join, you can just join right now basically, come bowl with us," Julian says and Cam and Aaron nod.

"We'll take this lane next to you. Ali, Devin, you cool with this?" Aaron asks and the two of them nod. They have good self control, not just making out with each other the entire time.

We bowl for the next hour and a half before everyone gets tired of it. I like bowling, but if I were put in a bowling competition I would be royally cooked. I cannot consistently bowl well for my life. I might get a strike on one turn, and on the next, I'll get two gutter balls and embarrass myself. That kind of goes with basketball. I'm good sometimes, but other times I look like I don't know what's going on. In football, I always play well, and I'm excited for the season to start soon.

Hopefully Coach Nelson knows how to run a team. He's a new coach this year because they fired their coach at the end of their last season. They were terrible last year by the way, that's why they were so eager to have a bunch of freshmen come in and possibly start. I might start, I'm almost certain that Devin will start, and Cam, Aaron, and Derek could very easily start. I assume many of us will be starting by the end of the season.

"What day is practice starting again?" Cam asks me. "None of us know."

"You should know bro, you might start this year, you should know this. We're starting practice on Tuesday and we have a game on Saturday at Illinois," I state.

"Thanks bro. I just didn't know and neither did Devin or Aaron, they just elected me to be the one to embarrass myself."

I look over at Devin and Aaron, who are both purposely looking around the building, intentionally not looking at me. "All three of you might be starting, you should know when practices and games are by now, you had all summer to check the emails, and the schedules are literally available to the public before summer starts."

"You're right, we're sorry," Cam says sheepishly.

"It's fine, don't worry."

Cam, Aaron, Devin, and Alicia leave, as well as basically the rest of the pride club, leaving me, Damian, and Julian.

"I'm gonna head back to my dorm room, I need to get lunch, it was nice meeting you guy," Damian says.

"Yeah, nice meeting you bro," I say.

"Nice to meet you," Julian says before turning to me.

"Do you wanna go somewhere for lunch?" he asks and I think it over for a little. He is into me for sure, unless I'm terrible at reading signs, but I'm pretty sure he's into me.

"Uh, sure."

A/N: I'm gonna just have the lunch chapter happen next. The slow burn is happening just how I wanted it to happen, and the ideas I have for this book are really big. I know pretty loosely what is going to happen between now and when Derek and Adrian get together for the first time, and I hope you guys can just stick through the lack of smut. By the way, unless I change my mind, none of the spinoffs will have anywhere near as much smut as Teammates With Benefits, they will all be slow burn because smut takes a toll on my writing drive. That stretch of chapters in Teammates With Benefits where there was no smut for like 17 chapters was nice because whenever I am writing smut I just cringe at what I'm able to write. Thanks for reading!!!