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Dom stopped telling them he wasn’t having children—that he most definitely wanted a boyfriend, but it wasn’t likely he’d ever end up with one because they’d never compare to the one person he wanted.
He glanced over his shoulder at the window and realized it was only late afternoon. He hadn’t meant to kip at all, but somehow the end of the week had gotten to him. He’d sent Shiloh a text before he went to help Benjamin with the Friday weeding, but Benjamin had caught him yawning enough times that he’d ordered him back to the house.
Dom promised himself he’d just rest his eyes for a bit.
He fumbled for his phone on the coffee table and froze when his fingers came into contact with a small, very familiar box and a tiny, folded paper swan sat on top of it. He didn’t bother unfolding it. He couldn’t read for shit, so at best, there would be a poorly done little sketch on the inside, but likely there was nothing.
That wasn’t the point of the swans anyway. He only wrote the limericks because he liked the way they made Shiloh laugh. Once upon a time, anyone laughing near his writing would have made him lose his mind, but Shiloh had never once made him feel less for it.
And in all honesty, he could sit and listen to Shiloh’s laugh and only Shiloh’s laugh for the rest of his life and never tire of it.
Stretching his arms up over his head, Dom worked a couple of kinks out of his back, then shuffled down the hall to Shiloh’s bedroom. If he squinted hard enough, Dom could see the place the two of them had spent all their time as kids. He could still see all the posters Shiloh insisted on putting up, even though he couldn’t see them for shit.
Once, he spent all his pocket money on music magazines, cutting out all the prints of Kurt Cobain because Dom was madly in love with him and in the middle of his grunge phase. Dom tried to protest, humiliated he was so obvious, but Shiloh had just told him to shut up, then covered the far wall—every single inch of it. If Dom hadn’t already been in love with Shiloh then, that might have done it.
The room was also the place where they’d shared their single kiss. The quiet night Dom had whispered about wanting to know what it felt like, and Shiloh saying yes. Dom, knew his heart was going to shatter but unable to take it back because if he could only have it once, he wanted it.
Shiloh had been soft and sweet. He’d tasted like the lemon he put in his chamomile tea and smelled like the goat’s milk soap his dad made to sell at the market on weekends. Dom had touched his cheek and let the warmth of his skin rush up his arm, and he stored that memory away in perfect form.
Taking a breath, Dom peered through the door and found Shiloh at his desk, one hand in his hair, the other tapping his marking pen on an essay. Shiloh had been a chronic workaholic. He spent his days at the school, his afternoons on the farm, and his weekends trying to fit in both.
Dom was convinced the man was going to drive himself into the grave long before he was supposed to be there, and it terrified the shit out of him.
“Didn’t you just spend a whole week doing rubbish teacher stuff?”
Shiloh spun around in his chair, jumping up so fast it went hurtling behind him. Dom’s arms were open just seconds before they were full of Shiloh, and he buried his nose in his friend’s soft curls, breathing him in.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” Dom asked as he set him down.
Shiloh rubbed the back of his neck. “Dunno. You looked really peaceful, and Dad said you needed the rest.”
“The traitor,” Dom muttered.
Shiloh laughed. “You know how he is. Thanks for staying here with him and keeping an eye on him.”
Dom scoffed as he dropped to Shiloh’s bed and kicked his feet up to shuffle toward the pillows. “Come here and give us a cuddle. You don’t actually need to do work right now.”
“I have seventeen essays to finish marking. So yeah, I do,” Shiloh said, but he abandoned his desk again and climbed up beside Dom, curling against him.
Dom understood why everyone thought they were in love—why no one realized it was only one-sided. They truly were like a couple. Not the old married sort but the ones who were still in their honeymoon phase. And it killed him a bit more each day, but it was difficult to care.
“How was it? How was dickface?” He couldn’t help Jules’s old nickname. It wasn’t meant to be cruel now the way it had been when he was dealing with raging jealousy that Shiloh and Sarah had gone to uni and made a best friend who wasn’t him. But he grudgingly had to admit he kind of liked the guy. A bit.
“We have to stop calling him that,” Shiloh said, peering up at Dom. His eyes were a bit more restless than usual. That happened when he overworked himself. Which was always. “He and Sarah are going to get married.”
Dom laughed. “Mate, she’s never going to marry anyone.”
“She’s going to marry him,” Shiloh said. “He’s proposing at the Halloween party.”
Dom blinked, shock running through him. “Oh God, no. No. She’s going to eviscerate him for asking. She’s going to ruin him. Then they’ll have to break up, and she’ll be a mess, and we’ll have to—”
“She knows,” Shiloh cut in.
Dom’s teeth snapped together. “She knows?”
“He says she knows,” Shiloh clarified. “He doesn’t want to make it legal or official or whatever.”
Dom’s frown deepened. “So why bother?”
