Page 47 of Toren

CHAPTER 16

Andrew

Another month passed, and Andrew and Toren had reluctantly decided it was time to pop the bubble. There was nothing wrong with cultivating a world where the only thing that mattered was seeing each other as much as possible and being naked for at least eighty percent of that time, but their responsibilities were suffering, friendships were falling by the wayside.

Andrew hadn’t seen his brothers, Donovan had turned into a ghost whenever Toren tried to find him, and Sawyer and Holt had begun showing up unannounced in an attempt to catch Andrew with his pants down. He and Toren had finally agreed that Toren would meet Andrew’s friends the following Thursday, and the Friday after that, they would go to LA to see the Covingtons.

“Do you think they’ll hate me for monopolizing you as long as I have?” Toren asked, shoulder propped on the doorframe that led out to Andrew’s back yard.

“I’ve monopolized me,” Andrew promised. “I’ve been right where I wanted to be.”

Toren took a drag of his cigarette and blew the smoke over his shoulder into the yard. “I believe you.”

“So do they.”

Toren hummed agreeably.

Andrew had invited his closest friends over for dinner with the plan to introduce them to Toren. They said yes before he’d finished asking, but Toren was the one who had needed some convincing. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to meet Andrew’s friends, he’d explained, it was he worried about the future if they didn’t like him. Andrew had sworn they would.

Who could look at Toren and not like him?

A knock on the door drew Andrew’s attention from the sliced meat he was arranging. From the back yard, Toren groaned, snuffing out his cigarette in the ashtray on the table before coming in to wash his hands.

“You get that,” he said, kissing Andrew’s head. “I’ll finish up your snacks.”

Andrew wiped his hands on a towel and headed for the front door.

Sawyer and Holt looked like kids on the last day of school, ready to jump out of their skins with excitement. Holt had a bottle of wine in one hand while Sawyer had a six-pack of beer in his. They both raised the drinks in greeting when Andrew opened the door, and he couldn’t help but roll his eyes at their eagerness.

“Honestly wasn’t sure he was even real,” Sawyer said, brushing past Andrew and into the house. “Thought you might have taken up smoking and used a fake boyfriend as a ruse to not tell us.”

“Not a ruse,” Toren said from further in the house, and a soft smile fluttered across Andrew’s face without him even thinking about it. He took the wine from Holt and followed his friends into the kitchen.

Toren had made easy work of the charcuterie in his short absence, arranging the meat and cheese into a much better design than Andrew had been able to come up with on his own.

“This is Toren,” Andrew said, gesturing at his boyfriend. “Toren, this is Sawyer and Holt.”

His best friends took turns introducing themselves to Toren, Sawyer plucking a bundle of salami out of the center of the plate after he shook Toren’s hand. Toren huffed an amused laugh out of his nose and replaced the meat before picking the tray up and heading for the living room.

“I’ll get drinks,” Andrew said, grabbing four wine glasses from the cabinet and polishing off the wine Sawyer had brought. He tossed the bottle into the recycle and joined everyone else in the living room.

He’d expected awkwardness, but Toren didn’t seem fazed by the line of questioning his friends had immediately begun to level at him. Andrew sat on the arm of the couch closest to Toren, combing his fingers through Toren’s hair to get his attention. Everyone had their wine, and Sawyer launched back into his questions. Andrew had expected things like who are you and what are your intentions with our friend, but what Sawyer asked instead took him by surprise.

“When did you realize you had fallen in love with Andrew?”

“A little bit every second, I think. From the first time I saw him.” Toren chuckled, taking a sip of wine and glancing at Andrew from the corner of his eye.

“And what about you?” Holt asked Andrew directly.

There was no polite way to say he’d fallen in love with Toren the first time Toren sucked his cock into his mouth like it was the size of a thumb.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “My answer is much more crass than his.”

Toren tilted his face up and Andrew leaned down and kissed him.

“And you knew he had a boyfriend at first?” Sawyer asked.

“Not at first,” Toren answered. “He told me afterward.”