Page 54 of Boys Like You

“You’re lucky I love Chinese, Levi.” He laughs and helps Mercer set up. Rory lets go of my waist and we all sit in a circle around the food.

There’s something for everyone; satay chicken for Levi, beef and black bean for Rory, Mongolian lamb for Mercer, sweet and sour pork for Rocky that looks more vegetables than meat, and Maximus has something with duck. He tried to make me taste it last time but it was a hard no from me.

“Your fried rice has thespecialsauce,” Levi says, handing me my fried rice and honey chicken.

“You’re so gross, Levi.” I laugh and throw my chopsticks at him. They fly past his head.

“If I tell you I have prawn crackers, will you forgive me?” I tap my temple as if I’m thinking.

“Actually, I think this fried rice needs more special sauce.” All the guys look at me, wide-eyed.

“You can’t be serious.” He knows I’m joking or he thinks he does, but I hold my composure.

“Don’t be shy now.” A glint in his eye has me regretting this. He stands and drops his pants, leaving him standing there in his boxers. “Okay, you win. I wave the white flag.” He retrieves his pants and sits back beside me. The other guys laugh.

“Don’t start a game you can’t finish.” I can feel the smugness on his face.

“You haven’t won this game, just you wait. Maybe I want to see this so-called monster and it’s all a ploy. The whispers are quite legendary but I’m not convinced.”

“If you look at his, you have to look at mine. I miss all the good shit. Maximus gets a kiss and —”

“Little spoon,” Is all I need to say to make him stop.

“Fine, but if anyone gets naked, so do I.”

“Great, now I’m thinking about you all naked, which isn’t fair because that is a lot of hotness.”

“I think we make her horny,” Mercer adds.

“Don’t you start.” I chastise him. I look around at them all. “I would never have sex with any of you.”

“And why not? What’s wrong with us?” Rocky looks butt hurt. This conversation has gone off track, but maybe it’s the perfect time to bring up what’s been on my mind.

“Nothing’s wrong with you, I mean I could never choose. You all mean so much to me, I couldn’t pick one over the others.”

They all nod at what I have to say.

“You know, there is a solution,” Rocky says, entertaining the idea.

“If you say rock, paper, scissors, I will hurt you.” From the look in his eyes, Mercer means it too. He looks about ready to kill Rocky for opening his mouth.

“I think everyone is jumping the gun, you’re entertaining the idea of what exactly. This is somewhat the issue I have been talking about with my therapist.”

“You have spoken with your therapist about us.” Rory asks, I nod. “Why exactly? We can get back to this sex stuff later.”

“I have actually been talking to my therapist about this because I’ve been confused about my feelings for you all. I can list so many things about you all that I LOVE.” I emphasise the word love. “But she’s concerned that my feelings are because you all saved me. Like maybe I’m holding onto you all as a safety net.” A nervous giggle slips out. “Listen to me going on as if you’re all infatuated with me. I don’t even know if you like me that way.”

“Trust me, we do. We kinda talked about it together but didn’t know how to bring it up with you. Rocky had an idea, but it’s crazy.”

“Shut up, Levi, it isn’t crazy, it makes total sense.”

“Okay, hit me with it, it can’t be any crazier than having feelings for you all.”

“I thought that for now we just keep doing what we are doing, getting to know each other. Everything you are comfortable with up to having sex is on the table. We see what happens when we graduate or when you get your memory back. If after that you like just one of us, we can deal with that, or if you still feel the same about us all, we can deal with that too.”

I decide to throw it all out there while we are talking about it. “And what if I want to have sex?”

“Then you need to talk to Maximus, you said yourself a first time is special.” Levi looks at Maximus and he nods for him to continue, “There are some events from Maximus’ past and he deserves his first time to be special, the rest of us used sex as a way to channel the anger from our pasts and place it somewhere, Maximus is different, intimacy is somewhat a trigger for him, so if it gets to that please be careful, Maximus freaked out over his reaction to a kiss.”

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