Aubrey found himself blinking back tears of his own. “Okay. Well. Then let’s keep the lines of communication open, yeah? Meanwhile I’ve got to go, because I’m being terribly rude to a friend who needs to celebrate a successful audition.”
“All right. I love you, sweetheart. I’m glad you called.”
“Yeah,” Aubrey agreed, his throat too thick to squeeze out what he wanted to say. “Me too.”
He pulled his phone from his ear as Greg handed over his bag. “Hey. Sorry about interrupting.”
“No, no, it’s fine. I’ve done enough character development for one day.”
“Good. Because I just lined up a job for you, so I think you owe me a drink.”
“It’s not even noon on a Wednesday.” Aubrey was no stranger to a champagne brunch, but he was thirty now. He saved that stuff for weekends. “How about we start with lunch?”
THE RESTAURANTthey chose was quiet. Aubrey figured half the city was knocking off work early for the holiday, rather than going out to lunch. That suited him fine. The longer he spent away from his apartment building, the more likely he could forget what was happening with Nate and how much it was great and sucked at the same time.
Greg let him off the hook until he’d eaten half his weight in fish tacos. Then he said, “So, you’re sleeping with Nate. That’s an exciting new level of stupidity and reckless disregard for your emotional health.”
Aubrey looked forlornly at the last half of a fish taco, but no, the moment was gone. “Yeah, well. The second time was an accident, sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“I went to a bar to pick up. He went to thesamebar to pick up. We just… went home together.”
“Uh-huh.” Greg sipped his mimosa. “And the third time?”
“Yeah, the third time was the problem.” He blew out a breath. “So you know how the heat in my apartment building went out a couple nights ago? We’d just gotten back from Tampa after a day of flight delays. Nate offered to let me crash with him. I was too weak to say no. The next morning, one thing led to another….”
“Say no more.” Greg stole one of Aubrey’s fries.
“Oh, I’d love if the story stopped there, believe me.”
“Wait, the stupidity extends past sleepy domestic morning sex?” Greg gave up the pretense that he wasn’t going to consume the rest of Aubrey’s fries and pulled the whole plate toward himself.
Aubrey felt a headache coming on. He closed his eyes and rubbed at the bridge of his nose, only half so he didn’t have to look at Greg while he said, “I got up and took a shower, and while I was looking for a towel, Nate’s parents showed up.”
Greg inhaled on a fry and spent a few seconds coughing into a napkin. He reached for his water glass and took a deep gulp. Then he managed, “That was awkward, I assume.”
“Not as awkward as the fist-bump she gave Nate after.”
“Yikes.”
“Yeah.”
“So that’s it? You made a bad decision—three bad decisions—and then your crush’s mom saw you naked?” He dunked a fry in ketchup.
Aubrey knocked back the rest of his beer. “No. Then Nate asked me to pretend to be his boyfriend so his parents wouldn’t think he was having a midlife crisis.”
Greg stared at him, speechless.
Aubrey didn’t have much to say for himself either, but the buzz of his phone with an incoming text saved him yet again.
Well, sort of.
He looked at the screen and groaned.
“What?”
“It’s Nate,” he said. “He needs me to pick up butter and sage for Thanksgiving dinner.”
