Page 28 of Knock Knock

“Wait, so you’re good?” Devon asked.

“Did you fuck?” Maddox bluntly blurted at the same time.

I tried to cover my hard-on, mostly just to be somewhat modest, but it was far too late for that. All my joints popped and cracked as I stood up, and I frowned at the TV. “Aww, did we miss episode nine?”

“What the fuck is going on?” Maddox asked. “You’re good?”

“And what do you mean you got us to share a bed?” Devon asked, already enraged before the sun was fully up.

Xavi laughed, corkscrewing his finger to remind me of the squiggly pube night. Gross. I could still fucking feel it in my mouth. He trimmed that shit now, and I wondered what they’d feel like against my face. Wait, what?

“You two are fucking gullible. That’s what we mean.” He put on a dramatic show of wincing in pain as he got to his feet. “I gotta piss.” He started for the hallway, but I was already there. “Uh, maybe we avoid tight spaces until…” He looked at our brothers and raised a brow. “You leaving?”

“I told you they’d be fine,” Maddox chirped at Devon. “You owe me forty bucks.”

“Fuck you, Maddox. They aren’t fine.” Devon looked at us. “Something is going on.”

I let Xavi disappear down the hallway to pee, so I just went out back and peed off the deck. That waterlogged piece of paper about community service was still wedged under the bottom of an old coffee mug, but I was far too lazy to bring it inside. If it was important, I guess we’d find out.

“Why are you still here?” I asked Maddox and Devon when I got back inside. “I thought you were over your workaholic days,” I teased Devon.

“Excuse me for worrying,” he scoffed. “But when one of you shows up at our place with broken toes and a bloody nose, and the other won’t talk about it, it’s a pretty big deal, Nate. What’s going on?”

“We just had a little… snafu. Nothing to worry about.”

“Do you even know what that word means?” Maddox asked.

“Like a situation?”

Devon groaned under his breath, so clearly, I’d gotten it wrong. “It means your normal situation is all fucked up, and if that’s your stasis, fine, but this new level of fucked up ain’t right. So spill it.” He looked at me. “Is this about what you told me?”

“How do you know more about words than me?” I asked.“I do the crossword.”

“He tried to read a war book once,” Maddox said.

“Spill, Nate!”

I ignored him and started making coffee in the old drip brew pot that came with the place. “Look, while you’re here, we need to talk about one of us actually getting a mechanic licence so we can be legit and work with insurance claims.”

“Not it,” Xavi called, walking out of the bathroom in a pair of sweat-shorts, which were just sweatpants that he’d cut into shorts, and they looked trashy and terrible, but weirdly hot. They weren’t even cut evenly.

“Devon?”

Devon scoffed, leaning against Maddox. “Hell no.”

“Come on, Dev. It’s like a few hours of class once a month and the rest is hands-on.”

That did the trick because Devon shoved Maddox from behind like he’d been the one to suggest school. Then they were gone. None of us were scholars, and I didn’t really give a shit if we actually had a certified small engine mechanic or not, but at least it got them to leave.We still needed to decide on a business name, though. We were running under a number for the time being.Customers don’t remember numbers.

Xavi, never one for subtleties, sauntered over in his cut-offs, braced both hands on the counter, and looked right at me. “We gonna talk about the fact that we got wedged in a tiny-ass hallway and made out?”

This was why our friendship worked. This was also why I’d fucked it up by getting mad that night. “It wasn’t a make-out,” I huffed, grinning. “Barely a kiss.”Best kiss of my damn life.

“A kiss that made your dick hard,” he fired back, taking the coffee I’d made for myself. “My dick’s still hard.”

The counter blocked my view, but I tried to look, and he noticed. I shook my head and made another coffee.

Xavi grabbed my pack of smokes, my almost dead lighter, and the pack of gum he carried around for me, and then he walked to the patio door. “Come on, Nate. No more running.”

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