Page 133 of Beau and the Beast

Despite that, he didn’t hear Lincoln come in until a few minutes after seven. Noah ended his day-long stay in the room to come out to the living room to greet him—only to find that Lincoln was balancing several pizza boxes in his arms.

“I didn’t know what you liked so I got two,” he said, setting them down on the counter.

Noah had stopped protesting when Lincoln did nice things for him. All he ever did was roll his eyes and wave Noah off, as if he wasn’t owed some gratitude for the kindness.

He went to take a seat in the kitchen but Lincoln crossed straight into the living room with the boxes, setting them on an ottoman in front of the couch before coming back into the kitchen to grab beer and paper towels.

“What are you waiting for?” he asked, staring at Noah. “Come on.”

Noah joined him in the living room just in time to see Lincoln flop dramatically down onto the couch.

“Killer fucking day today, dude,” he said, loosening his tie with one hand and reaching for a slice of pizza with the other. “We have these new sales quotas to meet at work and everyone in my department is about to have a conniption fit.”

“What do you actuallydo?” Noah asked, realizing that he hadn’t so much as stopped to ask Lincoln before now.

“Sales for this stupid media company. They own that paper Beau was working for. It’s a bitch and a half.”

“How does itnotsurprise me that you’re in sales?”

“I know, right,” Lincoln said, undeterred by the dig. “Good looks, charming personality. It’s like a perfect fit.”

“Right, yeah, no,that’swhat makes you seem like a salesman,” Noah said, rolling his eyes.

Lincoln passed him a slice of cheese pizza on a paper towel and then turned on the TV. “What movies do you like? Because not to rip on your brother but he’s a totaldragwhen it comes to movies.”

Noah laughed. “Oh no, I know. No movies with blood, nothing where a pet dies, no movies that will make him cry…”

“And it’s like, ‘dude,everythingmakes you cry.’”

“Sad endings… happy endings…”

“Impossible, right?” Lincoln said, laughing. “So are you gonna cry on me or what?”

“I’ll watch whatever,” Noah said, shrugging. “Not a big movie crier. But I do stand by the rule that no pets can die.”

“How about this one?” Lincoln said, navigating to a big-budget action movie that Noah had legitimately been dying to see. He hesitated for a moment, wanting to push for something less bro-y, not sure why he suddenly wanted to impress Lincoln with his movie taste.

Don’t be a dick,he told himself.You’ve been waiting for this movie to be on Netflix for half a year.

“You know you don’t have to entertain me, right?” Noah asked.

“Dude, are you just going to sit in my room all day? Like, don’t be a weirdo. At least sit and watch a movie with me before you go back to the cave.”

“Fine,” Noah said, biting down a smile.

“So is this one going to offend your delicate sensibilities or can we watch it?”

“Fuck yeah,” Noah said, finally.

“Fuckyes,” Lincoln said.

Over the course of the movie, they made their way through most of the pizza and a six pack of beer.

Noah hadn’t been lying when he told Lincoln that he’d been on dates before—but what he hadn’t told the other man was the fact that he didn’t have anyfriendsoutside of his brother.

Noah loved Beau. What better friend to have than the person who was the closest to him in the whole world?

But he’d known all along that he was missing out on something that most other people had. As he sat on the couch with Lincoln, he knew that he had found that thing that he’d been missing—and as illogical as it was, he’d found a friend in Lincoln.

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