“Hell, yeah. You deserve, like, three hours of cock worship for what you’ve gone through so far.”
Damon did not even pretend to disagree with me.
As soon as we got back into Grahame Cabin, Damon thew me on the couch—and I mean, threw me. “You know that big guy, Seth? He’s into Primal. You ever tried it?”
“No,” I said, still a little breathless. I pushed up onto my elbows, watching him shrug off his snow jacket. “You?”
“No. You want to?”
The nice thing about Damon was that he was really on my wavelength. But just as I opened my mouth to reply, there was a knock at the door.
We looked at each other. I pressed a finger to my lips.
From outside, came a voice. “Ty-Ty?”
Ah, shit. It was Jonny. Again.
With a sigh, I got myself upright and mouthed a Sorry at Damon as I moved by him to open the door.
“Jonny-boy,” I said with a smile. “What can I—”
“This whole thing is turning into a disaster,” Jon wailed, walking straight in and collapsing on the couch. The same couch that I had hoped, not sixty seconds ago, to get my ass pounded through.
Still, friendship was important, and Jon was under a lot of stress. “What are you talking about?” I said, coming to sit next to him. “We’ve really been enjoying it.”
“Then you’re the only ones,” Jon moaned, leaning into my embrace. “First off, Mama Kincaid is trying me. But it’s not just the Kincaid issue this time—my own family, Ty. My own family. Do you even know how annoying they are?”
“Well, yeah, because I know them,” I pointed out. “But you’ve also known them your whole life.”
“I forgot,” Jon said forlornly. “Haven’t had them all in one place for a long time.”
“You know what,” Damon said, pulling his coat back on, “I’m gonna take a walk around the place, let you two hash things out.”
“Oh, no,” Jon cried. “I just barged in here like an asshole, didn’t I? Please don’t go, Shane, I’ll—”
“You’re not an asshole, and you’re fine where you are,” Damon said firmly. “I want to check out the scenery, anyway. It’s spectacular around here.”
Maybe coming out of the concrete jungle made the idea of trees and snow more appealing to Damon, but I was willing to bet he was just being polite. Still, I appreciated it.
“Thank you so much, sir,” Jon sighed.
“Yes,” I added quickly. “Thank you, sir.”
Damon gave me a wink. “Later, gents.”
“That Shane is a real keeper,” Jon said after Damon had gone.
“Yeah.” Damon was a keeper. If the real Shane had been there, I doubted things would have gone down like that.
Shane hadn’t been so accommodating, from pressuring me to skip work so I’d have more time for him, to grumbling about me having to leave the clubs so early.
I let Jon ramble on about how terrible everything was for a while, and then I reminded him that this was supposed to be the lead up to the happiest day of his life so far—“Except the day you met me, of course.”
He shoulder-bumped me, a small smile peeking through at last. “True, Ty-Ty. Nothing could compete with that. Thanks for listening to me whine, and I’m sorry if I interrupted you and Shane.”
“It’s no biggie.” And it wasn’t. I knew Damon would be copacetic with the interruption in a way that Shane never would have been.
But I was starting to feel really sick about lying to my best friend.
