17
Grocery shopping so close to Christmas was always a nightmare, and Mike already felt like he needed a nap by the time he’d parked the car and walked into the supermarket. The mile-long list his mom had given him didn’t exactly fill him with confidence, either. Half the county seemed to be in this store right now, and he’d have to navigate his way around them—and their kids—on his quest to pick everything up.
He was exhausted by the time he’d wrestled one of the last five carts free and taken the list out of his pocket, heading for the dry goods first so he wouldn’t have anything frozen or refrigerated out for too long. The way the place was packed, everything would have been defrosted by the time he was done.
Pasta and rice proved easy enough to get to, even if Mike ultimately had to lean over a little old lady who apparently couldn’t decide on whatkindof rice she wanted. Mike wasn’t entirely sure it mattered all that much.
If it did, he’d probably grabbed the wrong one, but the list just saidrice.
Mike never even wrote himself a list. He just bought whatever was on sale and seemed foolproof.
He was just about to squeeze his way past a mom with three kids hovering around her cart when he looked down to the other end of the aisle and his stomach dropped.
Rachel.
Shit.
Shouldn’t she have gone home already? He’d thought he’d be safe after the wedding.
Turning as fast as he could without making a spectacle of himself, Mike made a beeline for the next clear aisle, hoping against hope that Rachel wouldn’t spot him.
The realization that he was hiding in a supermarket like an idiot wasn’t quite enough to make him feel comfortable going back about his day. He’d give Rachel a solid few minutes to finish up—her cart had been pretty full—and then he could go back to what he was doing. It wasn’t as though he had anythingbetterto do.
It wasn’t until Mike looked up that he realized he was standing in front of a whole shelf full of lube.
“Mike!”
Oh shit.
Mike turned to see Rachel coming toward him, smiling brightly.
Great. If it was physically possible for this to be a more awkward situation, Mike couldn’t exactly imaginehowright now.
“Rachel,” he said, forcing himself to at least attempt a half-smile. “Thought you would’ve headed back home by now.”
“We’re staying with my parents over Christmas,” she said, and her tone told Mike nothing had changed.
That was what they’d bonded over in the first place. Crappy parents. Rachel’s had, in Mike’s opinion, been worse than his own.
“Yeah, I know,” she said, clearly reacting to the look on his face. “Rick wants to get to know them better. He’s just kinda realizing why I never wanted to come back here. But I really wanted to see Oscar happy, so…”
Mike nodded. “I get it. Me too.”
“So you and Ezra…?” she said, and Mike had known it was coming, but it didn’t stop the question from feeling like a blow to the back of the head. “What’s the deal there?”
Mike wet his lips, trying desperatelynotto look at the display full of lube in front of him.
Did he tell her they’d been faking before, or did he tell her it was real now? Either way was risky. She’d think he was pathetic if he admitted to faking, but if he admitted that he reallywas…
Hell, whatwerehe and Ezra? They definitely weren’t boyfriends.
Mike wasn’t sure he was ready to have a boyfriend.
But they’d kind of expanded the boundaries of their friendship to include mutual orgasms, which was new. They’d never done that before.
“I guess…” Mike began, unsure what to say. “I guess I… when I came back here, I realized…”
Shit. He was going to tell Rachel the truth, wasn’t he?
