Without saying another word, Jordy got out of his chair and walked over to the scroll-top writing desk pushed up against a far wall. He started rummaging around in the top drawer, moving aside papers and envelopes and a roll of stamps. Palladino couldn’t stop staring at his ass inside the tight shorts. The shirt had crept up again, exposing the two dimples just above the curve. It was an exceptional ass, and Palladino considered himself to be a connoisseur of the male ass. He pictured what it must look like naked. He imagined it was white and smooth, the untanned skin contrasting with the deeply tanned torso and legs above and below.

I knew I was gay when I saw an amazing ass, he remembered.

It was in high school, at Polk West. He’d been a freshman and gone out for the freshman football team. He hadn’t wanted to, but his father had played football in high school and so had his older brothers. There wasn’t any real pressure put on him, it was just expected. And on the first day of practice, bruised and exhausted, he’d stripped down to shower. He’d carried his towel over his shoulder, and when he reached the communal shower area he’d stopped dead in his tracks. Right in front of him, another player was standing with his head under the stream of water coming out of the showerhead. His broad tanned back rippled with muscle, and it tapered down to the biggest, hardest, roundest ass he’d ever seen. He just stood there for a moment, gawking at it, before someone flicked him with a towel and startled him out of his frozen state. He got under his own shower but kept stealing glances over at Jim Delevan’s extraordinary ass. He wondered what it would feel like to put his dick in there, or what it would taste like. And later that night, at home, he jacked off remembering Jim Delevan’s magnificent ass, with the hot water cascading down over it.

For the next four years, his crush on Jim Delevan never abated. He took every opportunity he had to stare at Jim’s naked body in the locker room. Whenever he ran into Jim in the halls, he couldn’t help but watch that mighty ass encased in jeans. He never had the nerve to talk to Jim, but he fantasized about him every night before he went to sleep, using Vaseline on his cock as he stroked himself and dreamed about what it would be like to be Jim’s boyfriend.

Jim got a football scholarship to San Diego State, and Joe never saw him again.

But this kid’s ass rivaled Jim’s, and that was saying something.

Jordy found what he was looking for and shut the drawer, standing up and walking back across the room. “Here,” he said, holding out a photograph. “This is what I used to look like.”

Startled out of his reverie, Palladino took the picture and stared at it. “This is you?”

“From a car wash we did as pledges to raise money to buy the class gift.” Jordy stood there, his arms crossed and his legs spread, his left eyebrow slightly raised as he waited for Joe to look at the picture and agree with him.

Palladino struggled to keep from smiling as he looked at the picture. Granted, Jordy now had an absolutely amazing body, but he was hardly the fat, unattractive loser he’d been describing. “Jordy, there was nothing wrong with you.” He looked up and met his eyes.

Joe wasn’t lying. The picture was actually quite adorable. Jordy was soaking wet, because someone out of the picture had trained a hose on him. The water glistened as it soaked him. He was wearing a white T-shirt that clung to his body, and his soaked jeans shorts were sliding off his hips. Sure, he wasn’t in as good physical condition then as he was now, but he wasn’t disgusting to look at.

“Are you blind?” Jordy’s eyes widened, his lip curled in scorn. “Look at those spaghetti thin arms! Can’t you see the belly and the saggy boobs?” He shook his head, curls bouncing. “It was no wonder no one wanted me then.”

“What I see is a really cute young man,” Palladino said, putting the picture down on the coffee table, “who had absolutely no reason to be down on himself.”

“That’s nice of you to say,” Jordy replied. “But it isn’t true.”

Joe shrugged. “Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there for others to see.” He smiled to himself. Someone had told him that once, a long time ago, back when he was Jordy’s age. “We are all our own worst critics, Jordy. Sometimes we need to give ourselves a bit of a break, you know?”

Jordy’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. After a moment, he said, “Well, that’s very sweet of you to say, Detective, but I wouldn’t have wanted me, either. I can’t blame Chad for not wanting me—but I did then.” His smile was brittle. “Besides, if you don’t find yourself attractive, how can anyone else?” He shrugged. “And I was used to people looking right through me whenever I went to Fusions. I’m not making that up, Detective.” He shook his head again. “There was this one guy—I really thought he was cute. Chad introduced me to him three times. I was so repulsive he forgot about me every time. Each Wednesday it was like meeting him for the first time. You know how soul-destroying that is? And if I wasn’t with Chad, the guy wouldn’t even say hello.” He made a face. “And Chad found me repulsive. He’d told me so. It was the only reason we couldn’t be together. So, I needed to change. I made up my mind.” His face tightened. “No one was ever going to make me feel like that again, Detective. No one was ever going to make me feel like a worthless loser ever again.”

Joe stared at the pretty young man. It’s what’s inside that matters, was what he wanted to say, but he didn’t. It might be true, but it wasn’t always. Hadn’t he himself complained regularly about the shallowness of the gay community, how muscles and bodies and handsome faces were the only currency that mattered, while personality and intelligence ran a far second? Didn’t he go to the gym himself regularly, to keep his own body fit and trim? It would be hypocritical to argue about the value of inner beauty with this kid. It wasn’t his inner beauty that had drawn Sean to him, after all. Sean thought he was a hot daddy. But deep pockets had proven more desirable to Sean than a hot body.

“This was all, what, six months ago?” Joe glanced down at the picture again. The boy in the picture was adorable, with his big smile and water dripping off of him. But the physical transformation was extraordinary. Sure, his face wasn’t quite as fleshed out as it had been—there were no dimples in that face, or visible cheekbones, but it was quite obviously the same person. The warm eyes, the shape of the jaw, and the full lips hadn’t changed. “That’s pretty amazing.” The arms in the picture were not “spaghetti arms” by any stretch of the imagination, but they weren’t tanned or developed, either. He glanced back at Jordy.

“Thank you.” Jordy inclined his head slightly. “But like I said, the morning after Hell Night I went to work. I came back here and cleaned myself up, and I took a good, long look at myself in a full-length mirror. Naked. Clothes can hide flaws, but nudity is the great equalizer.” He laughed. “I took notes on all of my physical flaws and started doing research. I joined a gym and hired a trainer. Two hours a day, five days a week. I hired a nutritionist, and she designed a bodybuilding diet for me, designed to build muscle and burn fat. And I kept doing research—supplements, workout programs.” He smiled faintly. “When I put my mind to something, I can become a bit obsessed. I wanted to know about the latest developments in muscle-building technology, whether it was exercise programs or supplements. I read everything I could, and of course my trainer was the best that money could buy here in Polk.” He laughed. “While everyone else was studying for finals I was working on myself. Finals were just a slight distraction for me.”

“You didn’t have to study?”

“Of course not.” He gave Joe a strange look. “I had so many points in some of my classes I didn’t even need to take the final to get an A. I knew my coursework inside and out. I just reviewed everything an hour or so before the tests, and I knew I could ace them. And I did. I made the dean’s list that semester—and I will again this semester.” He shrugged. “This isn’t a hard school, Detective. Anyway, I also had the five-week Christmas break to get myself into shape. So I had almost two full months before the next semester started to transform myself into a new person.”