He slouches over to me, rubbing at his left eye, and flops down into the chair next to mine.
“It’s early,” he comments. I glance at the oven clock, which shows that it is not, in fact, early.
“Hungry?” I push my plate over to him, and stand up, putting a hand on his head to ruffle his hair. “You can finish mine, and I’ll make you something fresh.”
“Okay, thanks. Hi, Jack.”
“Morning,” Jack responds, before turning three separate shades of red. I smile to myself as I fire the stove back up and pull the bacon back out of the refrigerator. I guarantee he’s thinking about the fact that he and I are going to try and dip our toes into dating.
Which means, I suppose, that I’ll have to have the conversation with Parker sooner rather than later. Glad that my back is turned to them, I stare down at the pan and watch the food cook. Shit, what if he doesn’twantme to date Jack? He made the comment about us being boyfriends, but his mind changes with the bloody wind—it’s entirely possible that, when I tell him, he’ll decide he’s not super chuffed about sharing my attention with someone else.
And, thinking on the topic of disclosing the relationship, Nico will need to know as well. Even if Jack wants to play things close to the chest and not do a whole lot of public dating, he and I can’t have any sort of relationship beyond friendship unless Nico knows.That’ll be a fun conversation, Vicchimes in happily. I sigh, because it’ll probably be a lot of things, but “fun” is unlikely to be one of them.
17
Jack
Nate
Hey, Mickyyyyy. What are you doing? You at your dorm? Busy?
Jack
Stop asking questions until I answer the first one!
Nate
So sassy!
Jack
I’m reading. In my dorm. Busy depends on your definition and why you’re asking.
I don’t want to go to a party.
You said that one we went to a few weeks ago covered me for thesemester, remember?
Nate
Want to hang out? Marcos is at work, and Atlas said he’d rather die than spend a lot of time with me.
Jack
Oh my god.
Nate
He was joking! Probably.
Want to go to the library? I’ll pick you up.
Marcos told me about a used book store close to the public library, too. We could hit that up.
Jack
Are you serious right now?????
Nate
