Page 97 of The Guy Next Door

“Fair enough. First off, I want to say I’m so sorry about everything that’s going on around Mike. I can’t imagine what you’re going through. And sorry I didn’t get back to you before. That wasn’t my usual Reddit account. Wasn’t something I wanted linked to my other shit, you know? And it kept getting inundated with requests from podcasters and TikTokers, so I stopped looking at it after a while. Wasn’t until I saw the press conference being tweeted about that I checked again. Even more requests, but then I see this one from a guy claiming to be Mike’s bro, and I was like, the hell?”

“I appreciate you got to it at all.”

He glances between us. “You guys are a lot cuter than the pics I’ve seen of you online.”

“You looked at Leif’s?”

“I checked out his profile when I got that reply on the subreddit, so I already knew what he looked like, but I pulled it back up when you said he’d be coming with you. And obviously, I’ve seen you on Mike’s Insta.”

So I was right.

“We didn’t have that same advantage,” Leif points out.

“Probably for the best. All my socials link to my OnlyFans, so you’d have gotten to know me way better than I would’ve gotten to know you.”

Wes just gets more and more interesting by the second.

“But if y’all want to see…” he goes on.

“We’re good,” I say.

Leif turns to me, not even attempting to disguise his smile as he rests his hand on my thigh. I’m waiting for him to call out my jealous streak, but he offers a gentle rub of his thumb, and damned if that doesn’t offer the reassurance I need.

“But enough about me,” Wes says. “We should get to the point of why you wanted to meet up.”

“You said you were friendly with my brother.”

His gaze wavers. “Eh, he’d come over and we’d smoke a joint or take an edible…and stuff.”

And stuff?

Holy fuck. Not that I’d never considered my brother might have been queer too, but is this how I’m going to find out?

“Wait. You and my bro were hooking up?”

“What the hell?” Wes asks. “That’s what you thought I meant when I saidstuff? No. We playedFortnitetogether. You know your bro’s straight, right? But trust me, if he’d let me, I would have let that guy do whatever the hell he wanted to me. But speaking of…you guys are sitting awfully close. I figured when you said you were bringing Leif that it was only because of the note on the subreddit, and maybe my instincts are totally off, but is there more here?”

“We’re boyfriends,” Leif says. It’s nice hearing him claim me like this in front of a stranger, especially one that, frankly, I’m intimidated by. This guy is way more in Leif’s league, and I’m enough of a creeper without sitting near fucking Adonis.

Wes’s eyes widen, a smile sweeping across his face. “Wait. Okay, there’s a story here. So I assume you didn’t know each other before any of this?”

“No,” I say. “We met…” As the details come to mind, I realize this is going to distract from what I actually want to get. “You know, maybe we can get to the stuff about my bro and then tell you about our fucked-up meet-cute.”

“He held me up at gunpoint,” Leif pipes up.

Wes winces. “That a joke?”

“It wasn’t funny at the time.”

Wes cringes, like he’s not sure what to think, before his smile returns. “You guys are weird. I like it. Are you exclusive, or are you open to—”

“Closed as closed can be,” I spit out, surprising myself. Some knee-jerk response to make it clear Leif is mine.

Andonlymine.

“Ooh, a challenge?” Wes says with a wink, making something flare deep within me, before he adds, “I’m teasing you, man. Sorry. I forget you guys don’t really know me, so it’s hard to get my sense of humor.”

“Trust me. I know the feeling.”

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