“And what does your gut tell you?” Blue asked, reaching over to scritch Lara between the ears.
“My gut tells me that if there’s any kind of animal involved, Rex will be happy. But that also feels like too work-adjacent, doesn’t it? Like hey, you deal with animals all day, let’s go see some animals.”
Blue was quiet and thoughtful for a minute as he tried to figure out how much he could divulge about his boss and get away with it.
“The thing about Rex is that he's dated before, right. Like, obviously he has. But he seems to end up with these twats who don’t like that sometimes their weekend gets disrupted because someone’s cat got sick. Or someone’s dog got hit by a car, and he has to humanely euthanize them sometimes. And, yeah, you’d be so horny coming home after dealing with a dead pet and a grieving family. Seriously, the bar is on the floor.”
“So, basically, I’m good so long as I don’t morph into a huge douche overnight.”
“Who’s a douche?” Asher asked, walking in and taking a seat on the couch next to Blue. His hair was damp like he was fresh from the shower, but that didn’t stop him from curling into Blue’s side.
“Rex’s exes,” Blue said, wrapping an arm around Asher. “I’ll catch you up on the lore later, but right now, Perry needs our help deciding where to take Rex on a date.”
“He took me to the art show at the community center for our first date, and to a drive-in movie for our second date. He set the bar kind of high.”
“Well, if he likes art, you could do one of those paint and sip things where you drink wine and learn how to paint a sunset or a winter scene or a mountain or whatever.” Asher shifted around on the couch until his head was in Blue’s lap.
It was nice to see Blue so happy. He’d spent a lot of time not allowing anyone to get close to him, not in any meaningful way. But then Jax and Asher came around and had blown through his defenses. His walls had tumbled down, and he was now the happiest I’d ever seen him.
I was kind of envious of him and the relationship he had with Asher and Jax. Not that I wanted two boyfriends, but someday I hoped to have a real one. Not a pretend one I wanted to kiss, and not just as practice for his brother’s wedding. A real one to go on real dates with and kiss after.
It felt like I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Because if I planned a date, I didn’t want it to be too special, not like a dream date or anything, because Rex wasn’t really my boyfriend. If I made the date too special, I worried that no one would ever measure up to my fake boyfriend. But Rex had clearly put effort into planning when it was his turn, and I didn’t want it to seem like I was not putting any effort in at all.
I let out a sigh and thumped my head against the wall, prompting Lara to raise her head and give a gentle woof, like she was maybe sort of thinking of being a guard dog, but she quickly put her head down and went back to sleep instead.
Lukas popped his head into the room and shot me a quick smile before turning his attention to Asher. Asher was new to thefilming side of the business but had been around for a couple of years working as Lukas’s personal assistant.
“Can I steal you for a few minutes, Ash?”
“Sure thing, boss.” Asher sat up, stole a kiss from Blue, and slipped out of the room. Blue turned to me, a hint of something close to triumph glimmering in his eyes.
“You like him.”
“Ash?”
Blue groaned. “You’re so dense. No, not Ash. Rex.”
The expression on Blue’s face challenged me to argue with him. So I did.
“Of course I do. He’s a nice guy. We’re probably going to be really good friends after the wedding.”
Blue narrowed his gaze. “Don’t make me kick you.”
“Lara will protect me.” I buried my fingers in her fur, and she made no move whatsoever to rise to my defense.
“Lara and what army? We all know the most violent thing about her is her lethal dog farts.”
“Blue… I… Yes, okay. I like him. But I don’t know what to do with that information. I’m not exactly dateable.”
“The fact that Rex is already dating you proves otherwise.”
“These are just practice dates. So when we go to the wedding we don’t look like two strangers trying not to be awkward together. They’re like dress rehearsals. He hasn’t even kissed me.” I tried and failed to not sound like I was pouting about that. Clearly I was perfectly fuckable to some men and invisible to all the others. With Rex I was neither of those things apparently. I could deal with being fuckable. I could deal with being invisible. But I didn’t know how to be seen by someone who wanted to know my cat’s name and what my favorite movie was but then didn’t want to kiss me.
“I can’t like him.” The words trembled out of me, and I fought the urge to bury my face in Lara’s fur and smother myself to death.
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Plenty of things.”
