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Then he’d remember the thousand-and-one locker room g*y jokes he’d heard from his twin. He’d remember Gabriel’s swift and brutal judgment of anything new. Gabriel knew how to cut right to the quick, and this felt so fragile and untested that Nick was afraid to bare skin in the face of that blade.
Then there was Michael, overworked and overwrought, who’d said last week that he couldn’t handle one more complication in their lives. Nick did the bookkeeping for their landscaping business—they could practically reach out and touch their bottom line.
That left Chris, brooding and distant, who might be okay with it—or he might not.
They couldn’t afford discord right now.
“Things at home—they’re complicated . . .” he started. Then he caught her eyes. His things at home had nothing on hers. “I don’t want to rock the boat,” he finally said.
“What about Hunter?” she said. “Are you guys still sharing a room?”
“Yeah, until we figure out a new sleeping arrangement. And seriously, you think I should start with my roommate, who, gee, happens to be my twin brother’s best friend? You’re right, Quinn. That’s a great idea.” He left her and went back to the path. At least slinging flagstone gave him a way to work off frustration.
Quinn came back to the bench and resumed stretching. “Is that weird for you? Sharing a room with a guy?”
“I shared a room with Gabriel for the first twelve years of my life.”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
Nick rolled more sand flat. “No,” he said, his tone resigned.
“It’s not weird. At least not for me.”
“You think it would be for him?”
Nick had no idea. He didn’t say anything.
“Tell me,” said Quinn. “Does he have tattoos and piercings all over his body, or what? Though I can’t decide whether that would be hot or disgusting—”
Nick threw a handful of sand at her.
But really, he had no answer. He was so well practiced in the art of Do Not Look at Other Guys that he kept his head in a book anytime Hunter was even in the room.
And Hunter totally wasn’t his type anyway.
“I’ll stop pushing,” said Quinn.
“Thank you.”
“But you’re definitely coming tonight.”
He sighed.
“Oh, you can’t back out now. I already texted Adam that you’ll be there.”
His head swung around. “You what?”
“He’s looking forward to it. See?” She held up her phone.
A smiley face.
A smiley face? Nick had no idea what that meant. Was that casual happy? Excited happy? An obligatory response that didn’t mean anything? It wasn’t even a D smiley. It was one of the parenthesis ones.
God, he was trying to puzzle out the hidden meaning of the punctuation in a frigging emoticon.
“You look nervous,” said Quinn.
He shrugged.
