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“Hello? Earth to Declan.” Corbin snapped his fingers in front of my face, and I realized I’d been spacing off.
“Holy fuck!” Parker exclaimed. “You were looking really dreamy just now. Did you get laid that we don’t know about?”
I took a drink of my mimosa. What would they say if they knew I’d fucked Sebastian Cole? Hell, that I knew Sebastian Cole and had for a decade? “I’m confused why you’re under the impression that I tell you every time I fuck someone.”
Corbin laughed. “I’d never shut up.”
“You’re an idiot,” Marcus told him.
“Yes, but you love me.” Corbin gave Marcus a loud, smacking kiss on the cheek. Marcus jerked away before rubbing a hand over his buzzed, black hair.
Parker said, “Can we get back to Declan’s shmoopy face when he was daydreaming about whoever he just had sex with?”
“I don’t even know what the fuck shmoopy means, and I wasn’t daydreaming about him.”
“You just fucked up,” Marcus said in unison with Parker and Corbin’s, “So there is a guy!”
Fuck my life. Why was I friends with them? And why did I record a dumbass podcast where I would have to talk about things like this? No one would be able to get me to do something like this other than them.
“First, don’t go all Parker on this.” He would write a Disney-worthy love story in his head that had me in love with Sebastian and the two of us married with kids in the same vein as the fantasy he had for his own life. “And second…” Well, shit. I didn’t know what the second thing was. “I don’t daydream unless it’s about murdering my best friends.”
“You know what would be funny?” Corbin mused. “If someone murdered one of us and they took that as your confession. You’d now be the number-one suspect. Oooh! And then me and Marcus would come to your defense and have to solve the mystery ourselves! We’d totally save your ass.”
“Maybe slow down on the true-crime shows, Scooby Doo,” Marcus said.
“Wait. Why am I the one who got murdered?” Parker asked. “Marcus pisses off more people. It would be him.”
“Yeah,” Corbin said, “but I feel like he’d be more help solving the crime, and since Declan is the suspect, that leaves you.”
And this was what people listened to every week—us being idiots. I would never understand it. “Can we get on with the show?”
Corbin smiled. “This is the show.”
“I’m still pissed that I got murdered,” Parker grumbled. “I can solve crimes.”
Marcus sighed. “You do know you weren’t actually killed, right? That you’re alive?”
“Yeah, but Corbin sacrificed me pretty fucking easily.”
“Oh my God.” I rubbed my temples. “How have I put up with you three for this long?”
“Because no one else would put up with you?” Corbin countered.
Marcus, raising his voice slightly to get our attention, said, “The ‘Mimosas and Man-Talk’ segment is supposed to be about current events, what’s in the news, what’s hot on TV and things like that, right? We’re getting off-track.” He was good at steering us back into the direction we needed to go.
We talked about what everyone was watching, and by everyone I meant Parker and Corbin because Marcus and I weren’t really TV-show kind of guys. From there we went into queer news before we plugged our sponsors and Marcus ended the show.
“I have a headache,” Marcus said. “Does anyone else have a headache after that?”
We chuckled. As crazy as they all made me, I didn’t know what I would do without them.
“What are you guys up to today?” Corbin asked.
“I have some work to do,” Marcus replied. If he had his way, he would never stop working. His parents had been workaholics too. They owned Alston Architecture, a major firm in residential and commercial design. They’d made a whole lot of money over Marcus’s lifetime. He went to college to be an architect as well, but was working in real estate, where he’d built his own empire and made his own fortune. If he wasn’t at his job, he was working on the podcast. He did all the postproduction and editing. Corbin was good at that kind of thing too, and once in a while Marcus would let him help, but most of the time, he took it all on himself, no matter how much Corbin tried to give him a break.
On cue, Corbin said, “I’m forcing Marcus to the beach. You guys want to go?”
“You literally just heard me say I have work to do,” Marcus countered. “And the beach is right outside my back door.”
“I literally just ignored you as well. It’s Sunday. I’m feeling feisty today. I’m not letting you work,” Corbin told him.
Marcus groaned because he knew that once Corbin decided something, he wouldn’t let up until he got his way, so basically, Marcus was fucked. Corbin came off as self-centered to people who didn’t know him the way we did, but he wasn’t. He had a big heart, and there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for us. When he was a kid, he’d been teased mercilessly for his looks and his weight, but something had happened as he’d gotten older—Corbin had turned really fucking hot. Beautiful, really. Where he felt cast aside before, now everyone wanted him, and that made him feel good. He enjoyed the benefits immensely.
