Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 437(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 437(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
“Head-in-the-clouds Frankie,” I said.
Evan bit the inside of his cheek, breaking eye contact with me. “I’m pretty sure he also asked me on a date.”
I furrowed my brow. “What? Frankie? He isn’t gay.”
He also definitely wasn’t good enough for Evan. Hearing that Evan was considering going out with a guy like Frankie made me clench a little.
“It’s weird,” Evan said. “He came out as gay a few years ago, but I never thought about him in that way. Then today, he said he liked my shirt, I said thanks, and he immediately asked me out after.”
“Do you want to go out with him?”
“I definitely don’t. Last time I was in the store he judged me for using cash instead of a credit card. He said it was dirty.”
“What?” I asked. “The guy always was kind of rude, wasn’t he?”
“He told me I was the best he could get in Amberfield. That is pretty rude. But…” Evan trailed off.
My nostrils flared. “But what? Nobody should talk to you that way.”
He shrugged, lifting an eyebrow. “I don’t tend to say no to dates these days.”
“Why not?”
“Not exactly a lot of guys to choose from.”
I set my jaw, looking at the plant. “You could do better than him.”
Evan didn’t respond to that. “Well, he made me get this gargantuan fucking thing. Now this plant is your problem.”
“Right. It’s huge,” I said, suddenly unable to speak in anything other than single syllables.
“It’s apparently called a weeping fig,” Evan said. “He said it was unkillable, and that it makes a house feel like a home. Thought maybe you could use a little bit of that right now.”
“You being here makes this house feel like a home,” I said.
He looked up at me with shock in his eyes.
Fuck. I’d been gone so long that Ev was shocked when I said I needed him. Of course I fucking needed him. I had so many years to make up for, and I knew Evan had never fully gotten over me moving away so abruptly.
He shifted awkwardly. “Well… I’m glad I can provide the same comfort a houseplant does—”
I laughed. “Get the hell over here, Ev.”
I closed the distance between us, wrapping my arms around his smaller frame.
I could feel his breath against the crook near my collarbone. Even back when we were teenagers, sometimes we’d gone on mini camping trips out in the sticks, and I’d always loved how his body fit against mine in the big clunky sleeping bag. I was six foot three and he was five foot eleven, so when I hugged him I felt like I was wrapping him up like a blanket. Like I was protecting him.
We’d never told anyone that we would sleep like that together on the camping trips. And it would have been so weird to sleep like that with any of my other guy friends. I was always wigged out by even seeing their dicks in the locker room. But with Evan it never bothered me. Sometimes when I woke up before him, I’d find him snoozing next to me, accidentally pushed up against my thigh with morning wood.
I always froze in place when it had happened. But I usually was just as hard when I woke up, so I couldn’t blame him.
And fuck. Thinking about the stupid morning wood was making my cock start to harden now, as I was hugging Evan close. I let go, hoping he hadn’t felt my obvious erection.
The thing about me and Evan, though, was that things were never awkward for longer than a second. Every time he visited me in Chicago, there had been a few minutes at the beginning where we had to remember our groove.
But it always quickly melted into feeling like us.
Us was always a good thing.
“So how did your job interview go last night?” Evan asked, shrugging off his jacket and plopping down on my couch.
“You’re looking at the newest bartender at Red’s Tavern,” I said.
“No way.”
I nodded. “They even let me have a trial run last night. I shadowed a nice woman named Grace and she taught me how to pull from the tap. Apparently I’ve been pouring beers wrong my entire life.”
“Grace is the best,” Evan said.
“You know her?” I went and grabbed each of us a beer from the fridge and sat down next to him.
“Of course I know Grace,” Evan said. “She’s seen me through so many failed hookups and boyfriends. She’s been working there since Red opened the place.”
“She told me to never put the song Pour Some Sugar on Me on the jukebox. Do you have any idea why?”
He snorted. “She’s right. Don’t ever do that.”
“Why? Does Red hate it or something?”
“Red definitely doesn’t hate it,” he said. “But... bad things happen if you put that song on. There’s a reason it’s the only song on the jukebox that costs ten dollars.”