“Just a clue.”
“No.”
“Lex,” I whine.
“Always so impatient.”
“It’s in my nature, you should know that by now.” I bat my lashes at him, lips plumped together in a pout, and say, “As an early gift, may I get a clue?”
He sighs and holds himself back from rolling his eyes. “It involves two of your favorite things.”
“Including you?”
“Three of your favorite things,” he corrects himself.
I’m still giddy when we arrive at the restaurant. While we wait for them to arrange a large table, Lex gets Oli’s attention with a tap on the shoulder.
“Andrea told me what you did,” he says. “Thank you for it, Oliver. I owe you one.”
“I was only paying you back, so don’t worry about it, Lex.”
“You’ll have to come by one day for dinner. We can talk about it, and your father and… what I did.”
“I’d love that, yeah.”
I move slightly away, giving them some space so they can talk. Seeing these two men get along like this has all sorts of emotions rising within me. By coming into their lives, I accidentally created a rift between them. But it looks like it’s finally mending, and it was about damn time.
“Still can’t believe a man this fine can be so desperately heterosexual,” Mason complains, appearing next to me.
“I mean… His sexual orientation is really working out well for me.”
“Yeah, but that’s ’cause you’re a selfish hoe.”
“I’m sharing him with everybody right now,” I defend myself. “I could have had lunch with him and left you all behind.”
“Mh… Maybe you’re not that bad.”
I really am not. Especially since I’m also willing to share him with Kev and Shelly on Wednesday, for that dinner we’ve been trying to have for ages.
“Ithink that’s when I realized how much of a genius he really is,” Kevin says, concluding his story.
Andrea turns to me, still stunned by the anecdote. “You really learned Kev’s entire curriculum in three weeks, to help him with his exams?”
“Yes.”
“Do you realize how crazy that is?”
“I wanted us to start our company, so I wasn’t letting him fail.”
“Of course. So logical.”
She turns to Shelly, shaking her head like my reasoning is absurd, and Shell shrugs with a grin.
With a hand still on Andrea’s thigh, I pick up my glass of wine and bring it to my lips for a sip, its earthiness coating my tongue pleasantly. “All that matters is, it worked, and we got to start Kelex together,” I say. “Which ultimately led me to meet you in that elevator, so I definitely did the right thing back then.”
I only realize my mistake as I notice my friends practically gaping at me. They never knew me as the sentimental type, and while Andrea has grown used to it, they’re clearly shocked by this new side of me.
“What happened to my cold and aloof best friend, and what did you do to him?” Kevin asks with shocked amusement.
