Page 34

Dom rubbed a hand over his face. The need to defend a man he barely knew was unsettling, but he couldn’t stop talking.

“He knows I’m missing the house coming together, which is dumb, right? It’s just a house. But he knows I’m curious about the progress, so he sends me pictures,” he explained. “He said this might make me feel like I’m still part of it.”

Evan smiled into his coffee, and Dom narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“Nothing.”

CJ was less subtle. “I like him for you.”

“He’s not ‘for me,’” Dom said, using finger quotes. “He’s just a friend.”

“I said what I said.”

“You met him, what, one time? When he was painting Evan’s condo? You don’t even know him.” Dom shook his head and huffed in annoyance.

“I know he texts progress updates, and that he asks about Lucky every day,” CJ countered. “And I know he takes pictures because he knows you’re disappointed to be missing everything.” He shrugged. “Sounds like a decent guy.”

“He is.” Again, a declarative statement without any hint of hesitation. Dom frowned slightly and rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean…he’s a nice guy. I guess we have been talking kind of a lot.”

“A lot?” CJ echoed.

“Hey, he works on my house six days a week.” Sometimes seven, but Dom wasn’t going to share that.

“And?”

“And…I don’t know.” He searched for the right words. “Somewhere along the way, we stopped only talking about the house.”

“What do you talk about?” Evan asked.

Dom could hear the curiosity in his voice, and he thought about the question. “I mean. We talk about whatever. Sometimes he tells me stories about past clients that were impossible to work with. We talk about Lucia and my mother, and the fact that he somehow thinks the Giants are the best baseball team in the league. Oh, and we had a full debate about In-N-Out because he thinks it’s overrated.”

CJ gasped. “Red flag.”

Dom laughed. “Said like a true Southern California native. He says San Diego has adopted mediocrity as a personality trait. But being from New Jersey, that didn’t bother me that much.” He smirked as CJ’s eyes narrowed.

“I don’t know,” Dom continued. “He asks how spring training is going. He tells me about how he used to build custom furniture. It just…happened.”

Evan nodded and went back to the table. “That’s usually how friendships work, kid.”

CJ barked out a laugh, startling Lucky, who had started to fall asleep against his shoulder. Her unimpressed cry was sharp, and CJ rubbed slow circles on her back until she quieted again.

“As I was saying,” CJ whispered. “You’re delusional if you think this is leading toward only friendship.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Maybe not yet,” CJ said.

“Maybe not ever,” Dom countered. He sighed. “It’s not like that, okay? We’ve already talked about it because my mother tried to set us up five minutes after meeting him. He told me about his ex-husband and that he’s not interested in relationships anymore.”

That had been an awkward text exchange, when Gavin thought he’d had to make it clear he wasn’t on the market. Dom had assured him he wasn’t either and then apologized for his mother for the millionth time.

“So he knows you’ve taken a lifelong vow of celibacy?” Evan asked.

“Oh my God!” Dom threw his hands up, letting them fall with a slap against his thighs. “You guys are obsessed with my sex life.”

CJ wrinkled his nose. “No, we’re really not.”

“Then why are we still talking about this?”