Another way (24 page)

There was a football game showing, and we sat down to watch it with several bags of chips and the intention of getting to know each other better. I knew it was the first time Will had introduced a partner to his friends, so I was determined to make them like me.

They accepted me immediately, filling me in on their history together first at school, then as they all moved in separate directions, some to college, some, like Will, going straight to work. I knew it was rare for friends to stay in contact like that once high school had ended—I, certainly, had never bothered to keep in contact with that part of my youth. But Will had. Which made this unusual collection of men important.

The next half hour was filled with talking shit about football and messing with each other. It didn’t take me long to figure out that these were really good guys, not just good friends of Will’s, but people who I wanted to get to know better, too, for me as much as for him.

“Will,” Kelvin said slowly, dumping his bottle on the coffee table.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t hit me.”

“Okay,” Will laughed.

“You said you were living with someone,” he said in the same measured tone.

“I am. This is Jesse. You’ve known him for a few hours now.”

“It’s just… I thought you were, you know,
living
with someone. Like, a partner.”

Will looked at me. I didn’t know how “out” he was to his friends. I’d only just met them. It made no difference to me. I shrugged and nodded.

“Jesse is my boyfriend, if that’s what you’re asking?” Will said.

“Oh. You two don’t exactly act as though you’re dating though, you know?”

I snickered and sat back with my beer, enjoying watching Will squirm. It didn’t happen very often; I was going to memorize it so I could attempt to replicate the results.

“Would you prefer for me to be making out with him in-between plays?” Will asked sarcastically.

“I wouldn’t,” I said quickly.

“Me either,” Chris agreed.

“Fucking hell,” Kelvin groaned. “You do enough for the common perception of gay men as it is. I was just expecting you to be more affectionate.”

“Will and I don’t have a very public relationship,” I said before Will got the chance to snap at his friend again. “We’re plenty affectionate. We just don’t do it in front of other people.”

“Because of homophobic assholes?” Brandon asked.

“No, just because it’s private,” I said, my mind going over it a hundred miles a minute. “When I was with Adele, we would hold hands sometimes, but we hardly ever kissed in public.”

“Wait, you used to be with a
girl?
” Kelvin asked.

“Yeah,” I laughed. “Until this asshole came along.”

“Thank you,” Will said, toasting me with his bottle of beer.

“Wow.”

“You’re doing a lot to burst the small-town bubble this boy has been living in,” Will said, ribbing on Kelvin again.

“We’ve been friends for a while,” I said carefully. “Things progressed naturally for us. I met him through my friend Laura about two years ago.”

I’d obviously said some kind of magic word. All four men groaned—Will in disappointment and the other three in evident lust.

“Oh, Laura,” Brandon groaned.

“What about her?” I laughed.

“She’s just….”

“Walking sex,” Chris supplied.

“An erotic goddess,” Kelvin added.

“The personification of a female orgasm,” Brandon said.

I cracked up. “Laura?”

“I should never have introduced them to her,” Will said. “They haven’t shut up about her since.”

“You know she just had twins, right?” I told the guys. “She’s probably still got loads of stretch marks and flabby thighs. And if you ever tell her I said that, I’ll kill you,” I added for Will’s benefit.

“She’s got twins? I bet her tits are enormous,” Brandon sighed.

“I’ll check next time I see her,” Will said dryly. “And I’ll pass on your kind regards for her health.”

“You can pass on my phone number,” Chris said with a wink.

“And a photo of my dick,” Brandon said. “I’ve got one on my phone, hang on and I’ll send it to you.”

“I really, really don’t want to see a picture of your dick,” Will groaned.

“But you’re gay,” Brandon said, sounding offended.

“I am,” Will agreed. “And I’m very choosy about whose dick I actually look at.”

“Thank you, darling,” I said sweetly.

“You’re welcome, sweetness,” he said back and blew me a kiss. I pretended to catch it and slap it against my cheek. Will looked offended. “It wasn’t supposed to go there.”

“It’s okay. You can kiss my ass later.”

O
NCE
the game was over, Will switched over to MTV, and for some reason we all ended up sitting on the floor while too many empty beer bottles to count littered the coffee table. I found a pack of cards under the couch and started shuffling them in my hands to keep them occupied; I had a tendency to fidget.

“Okay, deal it out,” Kelvin said, draining his bottle.

“Deal what?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged.

“Bullshit,” Will and Brandon said at the same time, with a knowing nod.

“Excellent choice,” I complimented them and started to deal the cards.

There was plenty of trash-talking as we slapped cards down on the pile. It hadn’t escaped my notice that Will had casually moved his arm around my shoulder, and was awkwardly juggling his cards in one hand. It was… nice.

“Two queens,” Brandon said, slapping his cards face down on the pile with a smirk at us.

“Bullshit,” I laughed. I had three queens in my hands.

“No, you really are two queens,” Brandon said.

“Fuck off,” Will told him. “I am not a queen. And neither is my boy.”

“And I’m still calling bullshit,” I told him. Brandon scooped up the cards with a weary sigh.

I was well on my way to being drunk. I drank often enough to recognize the signs, so I knew I was nearing the point where I needed to stop before I embarrassed myself. Will’s friends were fucking awesome, and I didn’t want to act like a dick in front of them.

After I’d slapped down my three queens, I’d cleared my hand and clambered unsteadily to my feet to start clearing some of the mess to the kitchen. The boys kept playing on the floor as I loaded up with empty bottles and dumped them in our recycling box in the kitchen.

Suddenly familiar arms tugged me back to a familiar chest and warm lips grazed my neck.

“Hmm. Brandon, you shouldn’t, Will could come in at any moment,” I said in a husky voice.

Will bit down hard on my shoulder. “Not funny.”

I turned and kissed the corner of his mouth, wrapping my arms around his neck. “It was, a little bit,” I argued.

“Maybe a little bit,” he murmured, backing me into a cabinet and deepening the kiss.

I let his tongue sweep into my mouth and tangled my fingers in his hair. Moaning lightly as he rocked his hips against mine, I smiled against his lips.

“I love you,” he whispered. The words were still unfamiliar.

“You too,” I agreed.

I forced myself to push him away before we actually started fucking in the kitchen with three of his friends in the next room. Will gave my ass one last quick squeeze and strode purposefully in to speak to the guys.

“Right, if you’re staying, go find someplace to put your head down. If you’re going, fucking go, because I wanna take my boy to bed.”

I laughed and put my head down, sideways on his shoulder.

“I need to go,” Brandon groaned, rubbing his forehead. “I can’t leave Carla overnight.”

“Need to call her, dude,” Will said to him. “You can’t drive.”

Brandon groaned again. “She’s gonna kill me….”

“I’ll call her,” Will offered. “Chris?”

“Yeah, I’m staying,” he said. “But I call the spare room.”

“Spare room is Jesse’s room now,” Will laughed.

“It’s okay, I don’t mind. The couch is comfortable,” I said with a smirk.

Kelvin said he’d stay, too, so I ran up to our linen closet to grab extra pillows and blankets. Brandon called out good-bye, and I heard the door slam behind him. I was brushing my teeth but called out of the window to him.

I knew we wouldn’t have sex with Will’s friends in the house; that’d be weird. But I wanted to hold him. It seemed that he was more drunk than me. I was laughing as I helped him out of his clothes and pulled him into my arms under the covers. He snuggled into my chest and wrapped his arm around me, and soon enough, he started snoring.

Chapter Eighteen

W
ILL
had arranged with Carla to meet for brunch the following morning. Once we’d dragged ourselves out of bed and into showers—and after I’d jerked off watching Will do the same in the shower—we got dressed in jeans and hoodies and headed out in my car. Chris and Kelvin followed in Kelvin’s truck, and I let Will be a grumpy, backseat driver, directing me to the diner.

I immediately recognized a bleary-eyed Brandon as we walked through the door of the diner. He was sitting with a very pretty olive-skinned girl with loose, dark hair, who was clearly, heavily pregnant.

“Hey, Brandon,” I said as we all scooted into the booth.

“Hey, Jesse. This is Carla,” he said.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, giving her a warm smile.

“You’re Will’s partner?” she asked.

“Don’t even think about it, Carla,” Will laughed. I raised an eyebrow at him in question. “She wants to grill you,” he explained.

“I want to make sure he’s good enough for you,” she corrected, but she was smiling.

The waitress came over with a round of coffees and menus for us. It was awesome that the feeling of acceptance from the night before had carried over to this morning. We fell into an easy conversation, the six of us, until the waitress interrupted us again and Carla put in an order for an obscene amount of food.

“It’s a pregnant woman’s prerogative,” she said argumentatively.

“You carry on, sweetheart,” Brandon said, smoothing her hair back and kissing her head.

“How much longer until the baby’s due?” I asked her.

“Um, seven weeks,” she said.

“Are you excited?”

“No, I’m fucking terrified,” Brandon answered for her.

“I’m excited,” Carla said, smacking Brandon on the arm.

I laughed and sipped at my rather excellent coffee. “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?” I asked.

“I do,” Carla said, looking sideways at Brandon with a loving, sort of exasperated expression.

“I don’t,” Brandon added. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Do you want kids?” Kelvin asked.

“What, me?” I laughed.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t have the right biology,” I told him, still laughing.

“Dude. Break into this century. Plenty of gay men have children, one way or another.”

I looked over to Will. His gentle stroking of my knee had stopped, his hand still on my leg now instead. In all the time we’d been together, the subject of children hadn’t ever come up. I didn’t have a definite answer for him, and I hoped it wouldn’t cause an argument.

Shrugging, I waited for him to answer first.

“I don’t know,” he said eventually. “My plans for the future have shifted somewhat recently.”

“Because of me?” I asked. The rest of the room had melted away.

He gave me a small, lopsided smile. “Yeah. Sort of.”

Chris imitating barfing into his coffee mug pulled me out of the little moment I was in.

“Aw,” Carla cooed, rubbing her belly. “You two are so adorable.”

Will leaned in and laid a soft kiss on my cheek. Somehow, being surrounded by our friends made being intimate in public a lot less scary.

“We’ve never really discussed children,” Will said.

“Maybe someday,” I added.

“The discussion or the child?” he teased me.

“The discussion is imminent. The child a maybe.”

On the table, my phone buzzed with a message. I apologized to the guys quickly and opened the message.

“It’s from Adele,” I said with a look to Will. His eyes narrowed.

“What does she want?” he asked.

Reading the message quickly, I relayed it to him. “She’s subletting the apartment. She wants me to go and pick up anything I’ve got left there.”

“Is there a lot?” he asked, carefully cutting up his French toast.

“I don’t know,” I sighed. “We lived together for a long time, you know? There’s a lot of stuff there that’s technically ‘our’ stuff.”

“Ask her if she’s emptied her stuff out,” Carla suggested. “And then when you go back, you know you can take whatever you want.”

“Good idea,” I said. I typed out a quick message back to her and sent it off, then silenced my phone and pocketed it. I didn’t want to deal with my ex over breakfast; she would just destroy my appetite.

Once we’d finished eating and paid the check, I checked my phone again. There were three messages from Adele.

“What?” Will demanded. I silently held my phone out to him. He read the messages and rolled his eyes. “Do you want to go over there now?” he asked.

“Yeah, might as well,” I said with a sigh.