Page 15 of Knock Knock

He pulled his hat down, pushed it back up, and then sighed. “I… it fucking bugged me when you touched her.”

My stomach flapped around all obnoxiously. “Why?”

He looked at my hand, still gripping his arm and then met my eyes. “Andrea thinks I have a thing for you. That’s why she thinks I have to tell you something, Xavi. But that can’t be it, right? She’s just sensing our friendship.”

Our friendship? We’d never once been accused of having a thing for each other, and we did a lot of shit to suggest that we did. We shared a bed all the damn time, never spent much time apart, did everything together, and lived in a one-bedroom shitty apartment that used to be a staff room. Two mattresses pushed close together on the floor because we couldn’t fit a bedframe down the narrow hallway. Why were people seeing something different now? Andrea, Maddox, Devon, Kaylee, and who knew who else.Maybe even me.

“Do you?” I asked, brave because of moonshine.

“Do you think Stiles and Derek Hale will get together?”

“Stop deflecting.”

Nate stepped closer to me, our chests brushing. “I don’t fucking know, Xavi. I don’t know what’s going on in my head, and you’re the one I’d usually talk to about it, but now I can’t because we’ve got a literal lifelong friendship on the line, and I don’t want to fuck that up.”

“Right,” I agreed, even though I didn’t want to. “Our friendship.”

“Yeah.” He looked dejected, and I hated that. “It’s probably just this threesome shit, right? We should stop it. See if it goes away without the temptation there.”

Now I felt rejected. “Right,” I said again, because what the fuck else was there to say? “It’ll probably go away if we stop.”

Except his chest was against mine and I wanted him even closer, and his face was right in front of me, and I wanted to lean into it. I liked the way his hair stuck out the front of his hat, and my hand itched to touch it. It was longer than usual, and yeah… it looked like a nice fistful.

When he exhaled, he closed his eyes and took a step back.Fuck.

We walked in silence for a bit. The only sound came from the booze sloshing around in our stomachs and the bugs in the weeds. My mind was too lubed to think clearly because one part of me wanted to grab Nate and kiss him just to see what he’d do about it, and the other part of me figured he was right, and we shouldn’t risk our friendship over a temptation.

So, falling into the stereotype everyone already put on me, I chose not to take it seriously. “I hope so,” I told Nate. “Stiles and Derek would be hot together.”

“Knew you watched,” he mumbled.

Then a June bug came at me and I ran for my life. Maybe I outran my feelings.

CHAPTER5

NATE

I wasn’t sixteen anymore,so all-night benders with cheap rum and five-finger discount moonshine didn’t just disappear during sleep and completely vanish when the sun came up. It was almost noon, and neither of us had gotten our shit together.

I left the bathroom and ran into Devon in the narrow hallway. He was right in my face, shouting at me like an asshole. “We’ll meet you there! Don’t be late.”

I groaned, covering my ears. “Stop yelling.”

“You’re coming, right?” he asked, grabbing his purple motocross gloves off the counter. Maddox had finally given them to him, so Devon kept them at our place so he wouldn’t steal them back.

“Yeah. We’ll be there. Just go away so I can be alive first.” I leaned against the hall wall in my purple undies, knowing I shouldn’t go back to bed because I’d never get out of it. Devon left without a goodbye, but I was pretty sure he called me old.

“Sorry,” Xavi said, trying to squeeze by me in the hallway. He was all mussed up and hungover and cute about it. His abs rubbed against mine as we shifted past one another, and my tighty-purples didn’t do much to contain my semi, so when his hip grazed it and I groaned, his eyes flared and he muttered another sorry. He coughed, nodded, and disappeared into the bathroom.

I put some coffee on and leaned against the counter until my head stopped spinning. So much for not telling him about my crush. So much more for brushing myverylegitimate crush off as some misinterpretation on Andrea’s part. God, I was a fuck-up.That was my chance to come clean, and drunk me had failed present me.

But who was I to think I deserved anything more than friendship from Xavi? I mean, I counted my blessings every damn day just to call him my bestie, but I had to be real about this. I was Nathan misspelled-Neegan Sawyer, and I had fuck all to offer Xavi in the way of a life together. I was scared. Yes, my fears often came out as jokes I made fun of, or as thighs that wouldn’t bulk, or even a hate for feet because I once watched Andrea do foot care for the elderly, but this time, they locked me up in lies. I wanted to tell him. I wasafraidto tell him.I was terrified he’d laugh it off and break me.

When Xavi shut off the shower and came out in a towel, I slid a cup of coffee to him and nodded at the back deck. “Come on, Xav. We aren’t this weird.”

He laughed. Finally.

He left the back door open, and as soon as I sat down, a piece of paper blew from inside and stuck against my face. “The fuck is this?” I pulled it away. “Outreach?”

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