Page 171 of Finance Bros

“Yeah,” he sighs, sounding utterly defeated. “I need to hear that you’re not planning to leave for Seattle at the end of the summer.”

That’s what he’s afraid of? After all the kisses, all the showers? The confessions under streetlights? This man will never cease to surprise me. “Look at me, will you?” I ask.

He does, lifting his gorgeous eyes to meet mine. “I don’t think that’s what you need to hear. I think you need me to tell you Ilikeyou.”

He blinks and swallows, the truth evident on his beautiful, expressive face. “Do you?”

I nod.

“Why?”

I roll my eyes. “I don’t know. Jesus. I could ask you the same thing about me. I like hanging out with you. You’re fun.”

“Fun?”

“Entertaining,” I try again. Fuck, I’m terrible at this.

“Like…a clown?”

I laugh. “Fuck, no, not like a clown. Christ. More like a good video game.”

He gives me a watered-down grin. “What about with my clothes on?”

I nudge his knee with mine. “Jackass, I wasn’t talking about sex.”

“But the sex is good, right?” he asks.

“I don’t know how you can ask that.”

He sighs this huge, exhausted sigh. “I don’t know how you can avoid answering half the questions Idoask. It’s like I need a fucking bulldozer with you.”

“A what?”

He gestures at me vaguely. “The walls, Ryan. When the fuck are you gonna let me in?”

I stare at him in surprise. “You feel like I haven’t?” Because it feels to me like the exact opposite. Like I’ve dissected myself and shown him all my soft insides.

“Is the sex good for you?” he asks again.

“Yeah,” I say softly. “Yes. The best.”

“And are you planning to stay in San Francisco once the internship is over?”

“If we’re still together, and you want me to, then yes.”

He nods. “I guess that’s the best I can ask for.”

No. I can do better, so I keep talking. “If we keep doing the YouTube and the podcast, we’d have to be here, right? I know Bailey doesn’t want to stop once the challenge is over, and Miguel seems pretty invested, too. It’s been this total pain in the ass that it turns out I look forward to more than just about anything. And we’re making a ton of money.”

“It is pretty cool that we were able to do that,” he says. “I don’t want to quit that either.”

“That’s saying something,” I say, half as a joke. He pretends to glare at me. I ask him something else. “What did Miguel say that calmed you down?”

“He said a lot of things, but mostly what I took away from it was that you wouldn’t say something if you didn’t mean it, and I realized that as long as I’ve known you that’s more or less true. And I love that about you. You mean what you say.”

I nod.

He goes on. “But that’s not nearly the only thing I love about you.”

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