Page 28 of Doing Life

“Well, aren’t you sweet?”

“Oh, shut up, you fucker.” There were lots of things he didn’t mind being, but sweet wasn’t one of them. He didn’t want the guy who once thought he was the hottest thing going to think he was sweet. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“What do I bring?”

That was easy. “Beer and ice cream.”

Beer and ice cream were always, always welcome.

“Beer and ice cream; you got it. See you tonight, Lance.”

He hung up the phone and closed his eyes. “I did it.”

“You did it. You so did it.”

He had, and, to be honest, it felt damn good. It felt like something he could possibly even do again.

Lance blew out a hard little breath. It was difficult learning to be normal.

“Oh. Text him that we can’t have anything peanut butter in the ice cream department. You know. Chris gets all itchy and his throat…”

“Right.” He told his phone to text, and it worked, and he got a

You got it

back from Sloan.

Look at him go.

“I texted the guys,” Brick said. “That way there’s no surprises.”

“Cool. Thanks.” Wow. Sloan was coming to hang with his housemates.

Okay. Cool.

Totally cool.

Chapter Nine

Sloan got vanilla ice cream. He got fudge ripple. He got cherries and whipped cream and hot fudge. No nuts. And two kinds of beer.

Okay, he might be a little worried about meeting Lance’s housemates. He’d met the one in the wheelchair, whose name he couldn’t remember for sure, much to his chagrin. And he’d seen Brick. The other guy was a mystery.

But Lance had been so casual. So he needed to bring that energy and not dork it up.

Still, he had an invitation, and he was going.

To be honest, the only one he was really worried about was the guy that had severe burns, whose name he couldn’t remember. Because at least with Lance’s scars, he couldn’t tell that he was looking at them. Because Lance was blind, which was kind of handy for that particular shocked first moment.

And also they were kind of hot in a weird sort of way. It made Lance seem like a survivor.

Sloan couldn’t wait for the chance to touch them. That would make them real. Of course, there were all sorts of otherthings he wanted to touch too, but he knew that most of those were real already.

He wanted to see Lance’s leg too, which was probably sick and weird, but he just wanted to put eyes on it, because once he knew, then he would be able to process it, deal with it, and accept it. Because no matter how ugly it was or how tore up it was, he’d handle it. Whatever he was imagining had to be worse than the reality.

But the guy with the burns, Sloan was going to have to not see them and not seem like he wasn’t staring.

Yeah, he was totally screwed on this whole don’t-be-a-dork thing.

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