“Yeah.”
“That must be it.” The tension left Owen’s face and he smiled. “I work there too. Or, rather, at the sandwich cart out front.”
“I love that place,” Thomas said, the tightness from his own body visibly unwinding. Ben also let out a breath, and Lara dumped all of the takeout onto the coffee table.
“So, what do you do there?” Owen asked, and Ben left them to the conversation, instead joining Lara by the couch.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“It’s nice. It’s unexpected.”
“I feel like a lot of shit has been unexpected lately,” he said.
She snorted, rolling her eyes. “Tell me about it.”
When he’d found out Cody was Thomas’s son, Lara was the first person he called and the only person he’d confided in. She thought him walking away from Thomas was stupid, but he didn’t expect her to understand the complicated web that Cody had wrapped around his brain during their relationship. Even though he was mostly better and back with Thomas, even though things were better than they’d been before, there were still dark memories that lingered in the corners of his mind that he hadn’t been able to fully clear out yet.
“But things are better now,” he said.
Lara threw a quick look toward Thomas and Owen, who were laughing and leaning in close while they talked.
“Good.” Lara flipped her wrist dismissively toward the dining room. “Come eat.”
“There’s a table?” Owen pointed beside him to the dining room table.
“Coffee table is new,” Thomas told him.
“So don’t spill,” Lara said.
Ben slid down onto his ass, sticking his legs beneath the table and resting his back against the couch. Thomas joined him, making a pained noise in the back of his throat while he situated himself and crossed his legs.
“You good?” he asked.
“I’ll survive,” Thomas said, leaning close and lowering his voice. “But you night not.”
“That’s what I was hoping to hear.”
That answer drew a sharp turn of Thomas’s head, his eyes locking on Ben’s and searching his face for the answer to a question that neither of them had actually asked. It was a new thing—again—and a big thing, and something they would have to talk more about when they were alone. And hopefully after Ben had been fucked through the mattress.
“Enough sex eyes,” Lara admonished.
Thomas’s cheeks turned pink, but he hesitated before looking away. “What’s for dinner?”
“Chinese,” she answered. “Because you can’t go wrong with four kinds of protein.”
From the far side of the table, Owen snorted and Lara rolled her eyes again, flinging a pair of chopsticks at his face. He smacked them away with a laugh, and Thomas finally looked elsewhere.
Lara said something that he didn’t hear and Owen laughed again. Containers of food were opened and they ate together on the floor of Ben’s apartment, his life still coming together, but feeling authentically his for the first time in years. Beside him, Thomas ate, chopsticks in one hand, the other resting firmly and possessively on Ben’s thigh. The heat burned through his jeans, and while he was happy to have his friends around, he wanted them gone in the same breath. He wanted the things he and Thomas had begun to build, not just earlier that night, but in the weeks and months they’d been together too.
It blew his mind to think that the first time Thomas stepped through the door, Ben had told him no feelings. That he’d treated this man, this handsome and giving and tolerant and brave man, as nothing more than a rebound fuck. Even then, Thomas had deserved more from him.
“Excuse me.” Ben jumped up, Thomas’s hand falling onto the carpet. He ran into the bedroom and pulled open the top drawer of the nightstand on the side of the bed that Thomas favored. He knew exactly what he was looking for and it was right there on top as he’d left it. A brand new key beside a well-used bottle of lube. He’d put it there on purpose, for Thomas to discover on his own, but there was no way Ben could wait another minute longer to give it to him.
“Everything okay?” Thomas’s figure appeared in the doorway, his body silhouetted by the hall light behind him.
“Yes.” Ben came around the foot of the bed, key in his hand. “Yes. Everything is good.”
He went to Thomas and grabbed his hand, pressing the key against his palm with a nod.
