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“Fair enough,” he says, although I can tell he doesn’t quite believe me. “So if you’re not together, then why are you staying married?”
I bite into my sandwich, chewing for a very long time. I’m not avoiding. I’m just hungry. “How’s Mal doing?” I ask.
Niko shakes his head, but there’s a smile on his face. “Mal is great. He and Henrik adopted another cat.”
Mal was a performer at Elite 8 Studios not that long ago, nicknamed Malibu on set. He ended up falling for an escort client who happens to be blind. Last I heard, they were living together and happy.
Good for them.
“And your sisters?” I ask.
“You’re very bad at this,” Niko says, crumpling up his trash. “They’re fine, which you would know if you returned any of their texts. I haven’t heard the end of it this past week. I can’t stall them forever, you know.”
“Yeah, sorry,” I mutter. Niko’s sisters are like sisters to me, too, the same as Niko is my brother, in a way. I have been avoiding their messages, along with everyone else’s. I don’t know what to tell people. “I’ve been…”
“Hiding,” Niko fills in. “Like you’re doing now.”
I let out a breath. “My family,” I say, answering Niko’s original question about why Teddy and I are staying married. “My parents found out.”
Niko’s expression turns dark, a far cry from my usually laid-back friend. “You’re allowed to cut ties with them, Kipp.”
“Am I, though?”
“Yes,” he answers immediately. “All they do is tear you down. That’s not what family is supposed to be.”
“I know,” I say, reaching across the table and squeezing his arm. “Because you’ve shown me what it means to be family. But they’re still my blood.”
He shakes his head, but he doesn’t push it. We’ve had this conversation many times before.
I let his arm go with a sigh. “Anyways, you know how weird they are about the sanctity of marriage. They don’t believe in divorce—or being gay—so I thought it’d be better if they were only mad at me for one of the two, you know? But they’re still going to be upset, and they’ll probably yell at me, and—fuck.” I scrub a hand through my hair. “Why am I dragging Teddy into this?”
“Tell them it’s none of their business,” Niko says, as if it’s that simple.
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“Kipp, I say this with love.” Uh-oh. “You have the sweetest heart of anyone I know. But you need to grow some thorns.”
“I’m very horny,” I shoot back.
Niko looks as if he wants to bang his head on the table, or bang my head on the table, but then he laughs. “Fuck, I love you.”
“Love you, too, bro-friend,” I reply, making a heart with my hands. “You’re my number one.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Niko says, grinning. “Just do me a favor, will you?”
“The last time a favor was mentioned, I moved in with my husband.”
“Your life, Kipp,” he says, shaking his head.
“I know. I’m a natural disaster.”
“More like a national treasure,” Niko says.
“D’aww.”
“Just… Don’t beat yourself up over this, all right? It’s not your fault.”
“It’s not my fault that I got your coworker wasted, asked him to marry me, moved myself into his apartment, told him I didn’t want a divorce, and then proceeded to hump him most every night because the man is built like a tree?”
