“Amazing?”Now I was the astonished one. “You think me sleeping with Travis is amazing? We couldn’t be more opposite.”

I thought they would be shocked and a little horrified. That they would tell me I had no business getting mixed up with him. That guys like me were nothing but toys to guys like him.

Or something of the sort.

“You are, but…Jesus. Now I’m imagining you two going at it. It shouldn’t be as hot as it is.”

“El.”I took his pillow and threw it at him.

He stopped it easily with a bubbling laugh.

“I mean, it’s a big shock for sure,” Antony said, smiling too, before his eyebrows furrowed slightly. “He likes good-boy types, then?”

My stomach knotted. “No. I’m not his type.”

They gave me a look that said ‘Sure, Scott. Believe that if you want.’ But he’d said it, hadn’t he? He probably dated guys that were comfortable with themselves. Open, out and proud, shameless spitfires.

A little like Eliot.

“So you’re friends-with-benefits, then?” Antony asked.

Were we? “More like non-enemies-with-benefits.”

I didn’t think we were friends. A friend of Travis’s was probably someone actuallycool. Much like his type. But then I thought back to our new-found banter, the way he smiled when I shot back at him with a blunt answer, and the way he winked at me when we said goodbye this morning.

It made something inside me flutter.

“Oh, I think youarefriends. Or more than,” Eliot said, putting the pillow on his lap. “I still remember the whole spit-roasted-cupcake debacle. I’d thought something was off then.” He furrowed his brows and cursed. “Jon had beenright.”

“Jonathan?” What had his boyfriend been right about?

“Jon told me there was some clear sexual tension between you. I’d brushed it off because A) you were arch-enemies, and B) you were straight. But clearly, he was on to something.”

Antony pushed up from the chair to come with us to the bed. “Are you into guys, then?”

“I guess. It’s all kind of new.” I wondered whether I should elaborate, and then decided to not overthink for once. “Travis is the first guy I’d ever feltthisattracted to, but when I compare what I feel for him with what I’ve felt for anyone else before…It just doesn’t compare.”

I didn’t know what it meant. I’d been attracted to my girlfriends, but it was only a fraction of how much I was attracted to Travis.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Eliot said, nudging me with his shoulder. “You know you have the hots for him and that’s all that matters.”

As soon as he said it, I felt like there was something wrong with it. I was obviously attracted to Travis, but it felt like too small a word to encompass everything I felt for him. The tingling sensation beneath my skin when he watched me, when he smiled. The eagerness to see him, to justbein his presence.

But did he feel the same? Was this experience as earth-shattering for Travis as it was for me?

Whatever the case, I was starting to realize that I liked the bad boy more than I should.

* * *

The cupcake selling finally came to an end. We all gathered at the end of a shift one morning, had a big applause for all of our hard work, and congratulated Travis’s sister Layla for organizing everything—even handing her flowers.

It was a pretty wholesome affair, one I’d spent right next to Travis, my concerns about being seen beside him in this context gone.

I actually kind of enjoyed the thrill of being seen beside him. Like we were giving the finger to people, secretly laughing in their face, when it was so obvious there was something going on, but no one would believe it because it was too outlandish for them to even consider.

And then, of course, came our dinner date.

The worddatemade my insides come alive, my heart flutter like bird’s wings, but I didn’t try to stop it. It was too late to try to control myself when it came to Travis Ashford, and a part of me didn’t want to.