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“Yeah,” Ben said, exasperated. “SOS.”
“No, I mean—” She stopped and shook her head. “Never mind. SOS is fine. So, you send the text, and I put a name on my list of whose ass to kick when I get back into the country?”
Ben didn’t confirm or deny that because in all reality, he might need her to throw a punch, and she was one of the few friends he had that would be willing. He didn’t actually think he was going to become the subject of a true crime podcast from a handful of app dates, but his luck had been so crappy over the last few years that it wouldn’t have surprised him in the least.
“Maybe it would be more interesting to go out that way than die some lonely old professor with two fish and a book collection my brother’s just going to put up on eBay.”
Selina blinked at him. “Uh. Did I just miss half a conversation?”
“Yes,” Ben said from behind a sigh before backing out of the parking space and pulling out onto the main road. The bar was close to campus—surprisingly close to the staff parking lot—and Aaron had been right. It was two miles from his apartment, which did make him feel better.
Unless one of the guys turned out to be a stalker, but he’d deal with that if it came up.
“Did you get a good look at any of the guys you’re meeting?” Selina asked as they breezed past campus and headed for the little taqueria drive-thru they always had on Wednesdays.
Selina’s brother ran the shop, and being that his current contract paid less than dick, he was always happy to eat on a family discount.
“I glanced at them,” Ben said. And by glanced at them, he meant stared obsessively at their single profile photo while insomnia took him out at the knees. “For a very, very straight man, Aaron has surprisingly good taste.”
In reality, none of them were really Ben’s type, but they were all very aesthetically pleasing. All of them were listed as tall, and most of them had light hair and chiseled jawlines and could definitely have fit into any frat alum lineup.
In short, they were men who wouldn’t normally give someone like Ben the time of day.
He most definitely wasn’t unattractive, but his glow-up had come much later in life. In fact, it had crept up on him midway through grad school, so he hadn’t even noticed and had been entirely surprised when his first boyfriend gave him the time of day.
But somewhere in the midst of doing whatever he could to not fall apart with the weight of his PhD looming, Ben had discovered self-care and some semblance of fashion. He distracted himself by learning how to do his hair, and a few of his friends had gone through a skin care phase, which benefitted him because he was always dragged along on shopping trips.
Now, he could be found most Saturdays with his feet up on a coffee table, a Dead Sea mud mask on his face, a book in his lap, and lotion wraps on his feet.
But he still wasn’t a heartthrob, and those weren’t the kind of men he preferred dating because they tended to care about things he never would. And more than that, men who fit that description tended to be complete and total assholes to people they considered unworthy.
So yeah. The guys might have been hot, but he was preparing to take a hefty dose of shaming by total strangers as a gift from his brother.
Life had been worse, but he was pretty sure, at some point, it had to get better.
* * *
Back in his office, Ben was attacking a salsa stain on his shirt when there was a soft knock on his door. He looked up to see a shadow hovering near the edge, and he cleared his throat, then sucked at his teeth to make sure there were no lingering cilantro leaves hanging out in the gaps.
“Come in,” he called.
He was expecting a student, but it ended up being Micah—the only other professor with any background in ancient history in their department. The university boasted their liberal arts programs while also quietly cutting both staff and funding, so he and Micah had declared themselves the last stand.
“Busy?” Micah was tragically shy unless he was standing in front of a class, being able to lecture with all the passion he kept deep inside his small chest. And he always looked at Ben like he was preparing to be told off and thrown out of his life for good.
Ben gestured at the chair across from him—not the shitty one he’d forced his brother to sit in. “Just trying to look like I have my shit together before my next class.”
Micah laughed. “Tacos?”
“Did Selina bring you some?”
Micah nodded, grinning softly and hunching his shoulders. “She invited me and Jake to movie night next Friday with her and her husband. Are you going to be there?”
Ben shook his head, feeling a sour resentment rising in his chest in the form of carne asada heartburn. “My brother’s first night Chanukah gift is happening on Friday.”
Micah frowned, confused. “Uh. What? I thought your family didn’t celebrate with gifts.”
A true statement. He and Micah had compared notes since Micah’s family had been the Chanukah bush and eight nights of gifts kind of family. Ben’s parents had tried that once, when they were briefly living in Kansas City, and he and Aaron had come home from school demanding to know why Santa hated them.
