Page 29 of Knock Knock

Thank fuck for that.

CHAPTER10

XAVI

Nate gagged a bit,but he tried to hide it. He had a weird mix of spearmint, coffee, and cigarettes fighting for dominance of his taste buds, and I knew they were all winning.

Coffee might have been the only thing in my mouth, but all the words I wanted to blurt about that kiss burned hotter than this brew. I tried to rein them in, keep them under lock and key, and not spew a bunch of new fantasies that had sprung to mind because we needed to talk about the logistics of the kiss. Not how hard it made me. He accused me of not caring about our friendship, and that shit hurt, so I wanted to do this right and make sure he knew he was the most important thing to me.

“Real talk?” I asked him.

Nate took a drag, coughed, chased it with a sip of coffee, and refused to spit the gum out because I’d given it to him. He nodded. “I have a thing for you.”

“What’s it mean?” I asked, ready to get to the root of this with the only person in the world I felt comfortable around. “A thing?”

Nate turned his body towards me, the lawn chair groaning. “Okay, so you know how you ran into Andrea at the store and she made you buy shitty rum?”

“Yeah.”

“And she told you I had to tell you something?”

“Yeah.”

“It was that. She caught on a long time ago. She knew I… she thought I wanted you more than I wanted Kaylee. Or even her that night we tried.” He took a breath while my mind blew, and my heart blew harder. “And she was right.”

“Nathan fucking Sawyer!” I squawked like an idiot who was way too happy to hear that confession. “You had a thing for me all the way back then?”

He laughed and sort of blushed. “It… yeah. Like… okay, let me lay it out for you in a language you speak.”

“What language?”

“Vampire Diaries.”

“I do not watch that shit, Nate!”

“It’s like Elena and the brothers, right? She’s got a thing for both, but she’s all wishy-washy. Well, I stopped being wishy-washy a long time ago, cut Elena out of the picture, and then there were two brothers who were best friends, and I didn’t know what to do about it because… because I didn’t want to fuck up our friendship. I think that’s why I blew up on you that night. I spent a year freaking out about you finding out, and then you just… said it like it was nothing, and I felt like the idiot everyone calls me for making a big deal out of nothing.”

Well, hated him for making me watch vampire shows, but I understood what he was saying. “A year?”

“A year.” He nodded. “Can I spit the gum out?”

“No. You lied to me for a year, so fuck you.”

He chugged some coffee and swallowed it instead. “Don’t lock up on me now, Xavi.”

“I’m thinking of a response that won’t make you hate me.” I laughed. “Because as much as I love that you freaked out about it because of our friendship, I’m also kinda pissed off that you accused me of not caring, and then thought our friendship wouldn’t survive the truth. We’re better than that, no?”

Even though I was the world’s biggest hypocrite because I’d had that very same chat with Maddox and claimed our friendship was too important to risk. I’d rather not tell Nate that, though. One of us had to be forward, and I’d have no problem taking the role if he wanted to be the hesitant one. We took turns being responsible, and it’d been working for us for years, so this was no different.

“Fuck you a little bit, Xav!” He laughed. “Our friendship has never been tested this way. It’s always been friendship, and now it’s… friendship with more.”

“Mm, keep speaking romance to me, Nate. Define more.” I smiled at him.

He gawked at me like a carp. “Really? You’re just fucking dandy with this?”

“I’m acting the same way I always act. Thrown into a situation, not really understanding it, and then making fun of it.”

“Well, add another step on the end there, bud. Process it.” He looked at me, getting a bit shy. “You said you couldn’t picture doing life without me, and that shit rumbles with me.”

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