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“And I will. Eventually.” He snickered, but sobered a few seconds later when I sighed wearily and said nothing instead of snarking back like I usually did. “Hey, I’m…” He paused awkwardly. “That was a joke. Sorry. I’m not trying to be a shitty neighbour, by the way. I’m just pretty terrible at time management. I’m sorry about the fence.”

A croaky grunt left me in response, because I had no idea what to say. I was so used to being pissed at Ewen, and him being a cocky dick back, that this show of sincerity from him was weirding me out.

“I promise I’ll fix it this weekend,” he added.

Another grunt from me.

He chuckled, as if my ire amused him, and shifted in his seat. “Made you a hot cocoa.”

“What?” My head whipped up.

He nodded and leaned over to pick up a second mug from beside his chair. “It’s just the really cheap powder stuff. It’s what I had as a kid, so I still get it. Didn’t have any marshmallows though, sorry.” He held the mug out.

I stared at it in silence from my own back deck. He’d made me a hot chocolate? Why?

Was it rude to ask why?

As if he knew I was wondering that exact thing, Ewen chuckled and stood up to amble across the fallen fence and onto my deck. “Made it just in case you didn’t deviate from our new routine and came out to join me. Figured you might get jealous when you saw mine.”

My cheeks flushed and my belly warmed. “Our” routine. That was weird, right? That I now had a routine with the neighbour I didn’t even like? With the guy I’d been secretly spying on and jerking off over?

“Uh… thanks,” I finally mumbled, automatically accepting the mug he held out. “I… um… I like hot chocolate.”

“That’s lucky,” Ewen said casually as he dropped into the other chair on my deck with a sigh. “Gonna be a long weekend for you, I bet.”

It was. We were going to be running test streams of the shows each night, getting ready to launch pay-per-view next weekend. Tonight had been stressful already because of the inevitable teething problems that kept cropping up, and I knew I was going to be exhausted by the time the last show was over for the week on Sunday night.

I should’ve been asleep already, should’ve come home and gone straight to bed. But obviously I hadn’t, and hadn’t all week. I’d stayed up and waited to see whether Ewen would appear on his couch through the living room window after we both got home from work…

“All ready for the launch?” he asked when I didn’t say anything.

But I was still fixating on the hot chocolate he’d made for me. I brought the mug up to my lips and blew on it, then took a hesitant sip. It was watery and mild and overly sweet—just the kind I liked too.

“This tastes like the stuff my parents used to get as well.” I looked up and found myself grinning at him. “I remember the first time I had the fancy stuff made with real chocolate. I thought it tasted like shit.”

Ewen laughed. “Me too. Moved to the big city and went into this pretentious little café near my apartment. I was feelin’ homesick so I ordered a hot chocolate, and they brought out this tiny little mug filled with what looked like melted chocolate and nothin’ else. It was too dark and rich.”

“Right?” I chuckled. “Mine was at college. My friend Teresa got it for me. I wasn’t expecting it, and I’m not great with surprises. She cracked up because she said my expression was like she’d handed me a cup of liquid shit.”

Ewen burst out laughing. “I can imagine.”

I tensed, my automatic response to get defensive and snarky rising up, but I forced myself to push it back down and take a few seconds. I didn’t think he meant it how my brain wanted to immediately assume—‘I can imagine you acting like that.’ ‘I can imagine you being a dick about it.’ ‘I can imagine you being weird.’ I was pretty sure he was just… making conversation. With me.

And I still didn’t really know what to do about that. We’d been doing this for almost a week now—coming out here and sitting on our back decks in the middle of the night, making small talk until I inevitably got pissed at something he said and stormed back inside—and I still felt awkward and uncomfortable and almost a little shy around him. I’d put it down largely to the fact that I was secretly getting off to the sight of him fellating himself, but it wasn’t just that.

Something about Dan Ewen just set me on edge, and always had.

Chapter Eight

Bisexual Awakenings and Billy Goat Beards

Rafe

“I don’t think I’m fully straight.”

Neville slowly turned from perusing bananas to blink at me in stunned silence. I flushed and looked back down at the limes, grabbing a few to shove into a paper bag.

I supposed this wasn’t necessarily the greatest time and place to come out to my best friend—in a busy grocery store on a Friday morning—but I’d been practically bursting with the urge to tell him since picking him up from his place.