“I could relax a smidge,” Alex admitted.
Simon nodded and then kissed his forehead. “What a good idea.”
“Are we?” Alex asked, before this gorgeously warm moment could end.
“Are we what?” So pretty. He was so pretty Alex almost forgot the question—but not quite.
“Are we in a relationship?” Because on the one hand, damn, that was fast.
But on the other, he’d been waiting for that moment in the bed this morning for pretty much his entire life.
“Absolutely,” Simon said, giving him a brief kiss on the lips. “And as soon as we’re eating breakfast, I’ll tell you why it’s a relationship from the get-go, but right now I’m starving. Here, let me put everything in when the oven’s ready, and you go start your shower.”
“You’re going to tell me during breakfast?” Alex asked, feeling a little left behind. But then, that was how Simon functioned at work too. “Alex, do X, Y, and Z for me, and I’ll show you why it’s going to save my client thousands of dollars.” Or “Alex, take this class—trust me, we’ll need it.” Or even, “Alex, come with me to the food trucks—they’re supposed to be great.”
And his ideas were always good ones, and they always panned out, which was, of course, why Alex had followed him to the food trucks the other day.
Maybe he was right. Simon seemed to be taking Alex’s life on faith—maybe it was time for Alex to take Simon with that same sort of trust.
“Yes,” Simon said now. “Now go!” And his smile had the sort of gentleness that reminded Alex—for possibly the first time in the past two days—that Simon was a little older than he was and maybe understood a little better how the world worked.
So Alex took him on faith—trusted that Simon could take care of breakfast and that, even if they took a few detours to explore Simon’s body under those skintight clothes, they might still make it to their destination.
A LITTLE less than forty-five minutes later, they sat next to each other, shoulders touching, and devoured Bartholomew’s sausage pie with some cut-up fruit on the side.
“Oh wow,” Simon moaned, taking his time with a bite of flaky crust, fluffy eggs, and seasoned gravy. “Wow. Seriously. He just made that for us this morning?”
“I guess so,” Alex said, enjoying his own bite. “But fair warning—we’ve got until about four before everyone starts dropping by for breakfast leftovers, and that’s only because….” He flushed. “Uhm, Jordan called to tell me he’d be by in an hour, and I, uh, well, sort of did what I’m doing now….”
“Blushed and stammered?” Simon asked before popping another bite of pie into his mouth.
“Yes, exactly. Anyway, Jordan gave me until four, and, well, I’m pretty sure he’s going to be at Kate and Josh with a club to keep them away.”
“So you’re saying we have a deadline?” Simon asked, turning toward him, and Alex grimaced.
“Yeah, sorry. It’s… I wasn’t kidding about the spell and trying to keep Glinda from disappearing and….” He breathed out and looked at the newly redecorated tabletop with Dante and Cully’s picture on top of it.
“That thing you refuse to tell me,” Simon asked delicately.
“It’s sort of hard to believe,” Alex said with a sigh. He reached out and touched the picture of Dante and Cully.
“Jordan,” he began thoughtfully, “had this way in school of sort of reaching out and grabbing us all. He and Barty were roommates first, and Barty—I mean, you think he’s shy now. You have no idea. But when he was around Jordan, he just sort of opened up. I’ve met Barty’s parents, and they’re awful. They’re the sort of people who criticize the words before they’re even out of your mouth. Not bigoted, thank God, but anything else Barty does….”
“That’s a shame,” Simon said, the warmth in his voice gratifying. “Bartholomew is sort of amazing.”
“Right?” Alex took a bite of his sausage pie and shuddered. Magic. “Anyway, Jordan grabbed me next. We were in the same statistics class, and I was”—he grimaced—“Mr. Organized. Always had the right answer. And he always sort of ran in at the last moment, apologetic and humble, but he absolutely had to stop and talk to someone—often a professor—on his way in. The professors loved him. Anyway, this statistics class was boring, this professor was a jerk, and I was….” Oh, this always sounded conceited.
“Way smarter and further ahead in theoretical mathematics?” Simon proposed dryly.
Alex flushed and concentrated on his plate. “I wouldn’t put it that way.”
“Oh, I would.” Simon brushed his knee under the table. “You’re our best accountant, Alex, not only our best worker. And I would bet you’ve been doing the books for your friend as well.” He nodded toward the modified kitchen. “How else could he afford all this?”
Alex shrugged. “For all of them. Kate, Jordan, and Cully all sell things through Barty’s booth. He just attends the cons, and they give him a percentage. I sort of make that all legal.”
“And profitable, I imagine,” Simon told him, that quiet confidence making Alex all glowy inside. “But go on. You were smarter than your professor, and Jordan was everybody’s friend. What then?”
Alex chuckled. “Well, the professor got something wrong, and I was explaining—at the whiteboard—why it was wrong, and the professor got mad and told me to sit down. And Jordan said, ‘No! I’m taking notes, and I want to see how this problem works when it’s done right!’”
Simon laughed, and Alex nodded.
“I was so flattered he’d even noticed me I almost dropped the marker. But anyway, I finished the problem, and after class Jordan stopped me at the doorway. I thought he was going to ask me to tutor him, because, you know, brain tutors slacker—it’s a trope. But Jordan’s grades were better than mine. He was asking me to come down to the river with him and his friends to go hunt bugs.”
“Bugs?” Simon looked a little squicked out.
“Well, yeah. At first I was like, ‘ew,’ but Jordan, he’s an entomologist, and he was taking pictures for a project. So he’s got the lot of us down there, taking pictures of praying mantises and dragonflies, and he’s just so excited with every find. Afterward, he took us all out for pizza—and asked us to his dad’s house party that weekend. Now me, I was like, ‘Uh, that’s forty minutes away and you barely know me!’ and he was like, ‘It’ll be all of us—don’t worry. There’s a pool, and my dad and his husband really like to invite people. They told me to bring friends. You guys’ll love it. It’ll be fun. Come party. No drugs, beer if you want it, free food. I swear, we don’t bite.’”
“Wow!” Simon squeezed his eyes shut in disbelief and shook his head. “That’s a little… forceful?”
“Right?” Alex shook his head too. “But… you know. Jordan. Kate and Josh were there, and Dante and Cully, and Jordan took me and Barty in his car, and we talked all the way up. And Jordan’s family is, well, the best. Asa and Sebastian—that’s his dad and stepdad—are the nicest people.” Alex chuckled a little. “It was hard not to crush on Sebastian—he looks like a boy-band front man, and he’s wicked funny. But it was a good weekend. And after that Jordan kept grabbing us. I mean, bug hunting, the zoo. He got us to pool our money and rent a house by the ocean for summer vacation. And his dad got us these houses for a steal for rent, and it was sort of wonderful.”