Page 144 of Neighbors With Benefits

His lip curled in a smirk. “The best.”

I looked at each of my neighbors, my lovers, and smiled. I felt so much love from them right now. It washed over me like a warm shower, cleansing away all of my doubts.

My doubts.

“Thank you for sharing how you feel,” I said. “But I’m still worried about the future. How all of this would work.”

“What’s confusing about it?” Bash asked.

“Big things. I want children. A family. How would that work?”

“We all want kids,” Aiden replied simply.

“Two, maybe three,” Bash added.

Still leaning against the wall, Dante only nodded.

“What about how society will treat us?” I continued. “Will our friends accept this situation? What about our family? And then there are other people, neighbors and colleagues, our kids’ teachers and the other parents. What if they judge us?”

Dante snorted. “Who gives afuck?”

“I don’t care if people judge us,” Bash said. “Dante and Aiden are the best friends I have, so no problem there. And if other people are weird about it, I can shrug it off.”

“I do have concerns about family,” Aiden admitted. “My grandparents will never understand, but I only have to see them maybe once a year. My mom, though…” He stared off. “I hope she would accept this. I don’t know. But ultimately, that’s not as important as the feelings I have for you, Jazz. And it’s certainly not a reason to self-destruct our entire relationship.”

“Fuck everyone else,” Dante said bluntly. “If people won’t accept us? Then I don’t want them in our lives.”

All of them had clearly given this a lot of thought. Because of course they had—they’d been considering a relationship like this since before they even met me. That was oddly reassuring. They had the same concerns I did, but weren’t going to let it stop them.

Their confidence, theircertainty, quickly bled into my own emotions. If they were fine with it, then I could be too.

We would strengthen each other. Lean on each other. In that regard, this relationship would be stronger than a so-callednormalrelationship.

“I think we’ve convinced her,” Bash said with a grin.

Aiden was still kneeling on the ground. He sighed, then leaned forward to kiss me. “Have we convinced you?”

Slowly, I nodded. “I just have one question. What now?”

58

Jazz

We changed out of our Pickleball clothes and then the four of us walked across the street to Howard’s house. I had to knock three times before a shadow passed across the peephole.

“Go away,” Howard said through the door.

“We want to talk to you,” I said.

“We already talked a bunch.”

“They want to talk to you,” I tried. “Dante, Bash, and Aiden.”

There was a long pause.

“No, thank you,” Howard said.

I turned to my three lovers. “You’re going to have to tell him through the door.”

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