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Nova grinned and shook his head. “There’s no way you could be cuter. I just mean you could wear them and not look like you tumbled out of a music video from 1985.”
Ben burst into laughter. “You’re way too young to remember that era.”
“I’m notthatyoung. And I’m an eighties kid at heart. Boy George was my queer awakening. When I was twelve, my mom flipped her shit when I came home from my friend’s house one weekend with blue extensions and a fake nose ring and eyeliner.”
Ben sucked in a breath. What he would give to see Nova in eyeliner now. “I bet you look amazing in makeup.”
“Amazing enough I flirted with drag for the winter semester of my sophomore year in college. But I could never manage the heels, and I didn’t want to be the only loser up there wearing ballet flats.”
Ben buried his face in the cushion as he grinned. “You were probably great anyway.”
“I’m great at a lot of things, but drag isn’t one of them. I’m a better performer behind the bar.”
“Mm. Throwing drinks into unsuspecting faces and telling the whole bar about their big dick?” Ben challenged, his ears hot.
Nova slapped a hand over his face, and Ben could see his cheeks go flaming red. “Oh God. I went too far, didn’t I? It just sort of…came out, you know? And I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
“You didn’t. It was kind of amazing,” Ben said. He felt suddenly drunk on courage and desperate to stop himself before he said something foolish. Only he couldn’t. “I don’t think I could live up to that description though.”
Nova leaned forward and took his hand properly, tangling their fingers together. “Trust me, that’s not a bad thing. Big dicks are only good for porn and bragging. When I was twenty-two, I had my shortest-lived relationship. It went on for six hours. We broke up after I had to get two stitches in my rectum.”
Ben went green. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly. We called him Henry Horse Dick after that night,” Nova told him. “It probably would have been fine if he used enough lube, but we were young and dumb.”
Ben shook his head. “What even is your life?”
Nova laughed again and shrugged. “Sometimes I think I should write a book, but I couldn’t really give it a happily ever after yet, so I’m not sure anyone would want to read it.”
“It boggles my mind you’re not taken,” Ben said, then panicked because he actually didn’t know if that was the case.
But Nova just shot him a sad look. “Single is better than my past experiences. I made some really bad choices in college. I was too young to really know how badly they were going to affect me, but I thought things would get easier after I graduated.”
“Yeah. I think that’s the lie everyone wants to sell so we don’t spend our younger years depressed and hopeless,” Ben said. “This week really doesn’t seem to be helping though.”
Nova scoffed. “No shit. Your brother owes you a Caribbean cruise after this.”
“Yeah,” Ben said, then lost his breath a little when he felt Nova’s thumb graze over his knuckles. They were still holding hands. “Although there are worse ways I could be spending this holiday.”
Nova said nothing, but his grip on Ben’s hand tightened, and Ben felt closer and closer to losing himself to a wild sense of hope that this could end up being more.
ten
“I’m officially in a panic,”Ben said, rocking back in his desk chair. He tried not to FaceTime his best friend on her vacation, and he felt like shit because he only ever seemed to crisis when she was away for the holidays. She was currently in Ireland visiting her husband’s family.
Selina tapped her brightly colored nails on her little lap desk. She was in her hotel bed, having another fit of insomnia, which was why Ben didn’t feel bad about calling her in the middle of the night. “You know there’s a solution to this problem, right?” she pointed out.
Ben sighed and rubbed at his eyes as his gaze cut to the window. The sun was almost set, which meant the fifth candle. And, once it was lit and he was on his way, the fifth date. “It’s not a solution.”
“There’s no way in hell someone’s that nice, Benny. And I mean that literally. No stranger is going to go out of their way to rescue you from bad dates and cook for you…and Jesus, how many tabs has he picked up?”
Ben flushed. In truth, the only time he ever paid was when he dropped cash on the table, but most of the bad dates, Nova had dragged him off before he could. “It’s a write-off,” Ben said.
“You’re so full of shit you’re lucky I love you,” Selina told him. “Get your head out of your ass and just ask him out. Stop this eight dates crap. Your brother has the worst taste, and we both know that. The only reason he got an awesome wife is because they were working together in the same office for almost ten years.”
That was also true, but it wasn’t like Aaron had sat down and conversed with these dates. He just picked them at random, and even Ben hadn’t seen anything particularly wrong with their profiles. He wanted to blame Aaron just to have someone to be angry at, but in reality, it was probably time to accept that the world sucked.
“I don’t think I’m ready,” Ben finally confessed.
