I needed to talk to Miles…and I needed toget my head out of my ass.
****
As the phone rang,I expected it to be Asa saying he was dead at his desk because that should bethe only reason he hadn’t left work, but it turned out to be Warner.
“What?”
He snorted. “Nice to talk to you too. Whatcrawled up your ass and died?”
Refusing to laugh, I paced over to thefront of the house and stared out the window. “That’s a lovely image. Thank you.”
Besides, it’d been so long since I’d feltlike bottoming it was basically a one-way street at this point.
Warner chuckled. “You’re welcome.”
“Did you have a point or were you justcalling to drive me crazy?” He’d done that a lot lately as he’d been navigatingthrough some kind of midlife crisis.
When he was feeling just randomly chatty hecalled someone else, but when he wanted to just fuck with someone for attention,he called me.
“You’re in luck. I have a point this time.”I could hear the grin in his voice. “I am calling to tell you that the dinnerwe were tentatively planning for tomorrow has been canceled. I got weirdexcuses from both Julian and Niall, and Porter is beyond distracted withLandon. I don’t think they’ll crawl out of bed for days at this point.”
I barked out a laugh. “Yeah, he’s head overheels for the boy.”
I could see why, even though Landon was abit too quiet for me. He was hot, but the blank wall he kept tightly aroundhimself made me uncomfortable. Not that I was going to volunteer thatinformation anytime soon.
“But what’s up with Niall and Julian?”Those two had been oddly stressed lately. “They’ve both been weird.”
“No idea. I can’t decide if I should ask ornot.” Since I was at the same point, I had to agree with him.
“Yeah, Niall isn’t usually chatty anyway,but Julian is.” And he’d actually avoided my call earlier in the week, so hewas up to something.
I’d thought it was about Asa or the way I’dbasically ditched everyone last weekend, but now I wasn’t so sure.
“Do we give them more time or make themtalk?” Warner’s question made me snort.
“They’re grown-ass men. We should be ableto trust them to manage their own lives.”
“But we don’t. So?”
I rolled my eyes. “Another week or two. ThenI’ll talk to Julian and you take Niall. They’re probably just having issues atwork or with family. It’ll probably work itself out.” If not, Julian and Iwould have a sit-down.
“Deal.” Warner sighed. “Alright, my dinnerhas arrived. Talk to you later.”
I snorted. “Don’t make that sound sorational. You order pizza every Friday for dinner just ’cause the pizza guy ishot.”
Warner groaned. “He quit. So I’ve switchedto Italian again because the owner sends me extra dessert since she’s trying tofix me up with her granddaughter.”
That had me laughing. “She’s barking up thewrong tree with that one.”
I could almost picture Warner shrugging.“But I get dessert, so don’t expect me to explain that to her.”
“Sorry the pizza boy quit.” I didn’t botherpointing out that he should have done more than leer at the guy. We’d alreadyhad that discussion too many times to count. “Check those hookup apps. Youmight see him on there.”
Warner had said there was a spark betweenthem, so the guy had to be at least bi, but he’d also said there hadn’t beenany indication he wanted to date or if he was a sub.
“I’m not going to hold my breath.” I heardhim saying something low in the background and a quiet laugh as he got hisfood. “Am I going to see you later?”
“Nah, not tonight. I’ve got a few things tocatch up on, but I’ll be there next week.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, but what Iwas going to be catching up on was explaining a punishment to a naughty sub.
