Page 55 of The Gaybor War

Good. Maybe the walls should be disappointed in me too.

I didn't go over there to flirt. I went over there because he'd nearly concussed himself spying on me from inside my recycling bins. Any decent person would've checked on him.

Probably.

Except somewhere between checking on him and standing in his living room, things got complicated.

I drop my keys on the counter and scrub a hand over my face.

No. That's not true. Things were already complicated. That's the part I keep trying to ignore.

This is exactly how it starts. The cliché. The one where the supposedly sensible guy spends months insisting he's immune, only to get blindsided by someone he never saw coming.

No. Absolutely not.

The trouble is, that argument would've been a lot more convincing before I crossed the street.

I pace my living room, jaw tight. The problem isn't that I want Benji. I've known that for a while now. The problem is that walking away felt wrong.

I stop in front of the window and immediately regret it. Across the street, his lights are still on. He doesn't look outside. Doesn't text. Doesn't manufacture some absurd excuse to knock on my door. Which is irritating. Because I've spent weeks convincing myself Benji Stewart is impossible to ignore, and apparently, he's perfectly capable of leaving me alone.

I lean back against the counter and stare at my quiet kitchen. This is why I don't do this. I like knowing how things end. I like plans. Routines. Predictability.

Benji is none of those things.

He's noise and color and opinions and somehow the only person in this neighborhood who says exactly what he's thinking.

He should drive me insane.

Instead, I can't stop replaying the look on his face when I showed up at his door.

He wasn’t smug or flirtatious, as is his default mode. No, Benji looked relieved. Like he was genuinely glad to see me.

I open the fridge, close it, and open it again as though clarity might be hiding behind the mustard.

Nothing. I grab a beer instead. The first swallow is terrible.

Good. At least something in my life is behaving as expected.

My brain supplies images without permission. His smile. His laugh. The way he got quiet when I got serious. The way he looked at me when I said I wanted to be there.

That part lingers. Not the almost-kiss. Not even the attraction. The trust. And that's somehow worse.

I drain half the bottle and set it down. Attraction is easy to explain. What I'm feeling now isn't.

I switch off the living room light and head for bed, already planning to avoid him tomorrow. Which, if I'm being honest, feels a lot like planning to fail.

By the time Saturday rolls around, I've stopped pretending Benji Stewart is a temporary distraction.

Unfortunately, I haven't come up with a replacement explanation.

The chili cook-off takes over the clubhouse and spills onto the lawn, a sanctioned disaster of folding tables, crockpots plugged into extension cords that definitely violate some code, and handwritten labels that shout confidence with absolutely no credentials to back it up. The air smells of cumin, onions, and competitive insecurity.

I arrive early. I always arrive early. It’s a character flaw. Benji arrives exactly on time. Naturally, he makes it look like an entrance.

He sets his crockpot down two tables from mine. Two. As if that's a coincidence. As if he didn't calculate the distance with military precision and decide psychological warfare was the appropriate setting for a neighborhood chili cook-off.

He’s wearing fitted jeans that highlight the swell of his perfect ass and a black button-down patterned with tiny red chili peppers. The sleeves are rolled to his forearms in a way that feels aggressively intentional.