“Oops, sorry. Um, please forget I said that.”
“Wait, Rusty said you didn’t know.”
“What? Of course I know. I’ve known the guy since high school. They don’t talk about it in front of Kyle, obviously. And I think Milo and John are pretty vanilla. But yeah, I know all about that. Did you know there’s a club here in town?”
“Uh…yeah.” She laughed. “I’m one of their newest volunteers as of Monday night.”
He snapped his fingers. “Oookay, so that dinner where you ran into them Sunday was one of those brunches.”
“Munches, yeah.”
He chuckled. “I didn’t want to ask, because I didn’t want to find out I was suddenly being ostracized from the group or something.”
“No. No! No, nothing like that. It was their Suncoast Society munch.”
“That makes sense.”
Maybe all was not lost.
“Are you…” She left the question hanging open-ended in the air.
“I’m open-minded. I’m not against that, but I don’t want my ass smacked, sorry.”
Skye tentatively breathed a sigh of relief. “No, I prefer to be the smackee, not the smacker.”
Well, I’m here, might as well dive on into the deep, cold end of it.
“How do you feel about that?” she asked.
He shrugged. “You’re an adult. As long as you’re not being abused, it’s not my business.”
She swallowed hard. Maybe his interest in her was only as a friend after all.
* * * *
Axel was still trying to process everything. At least now he didn’t feel bad anymore over being excluded from the Sunday dinner.
“They assume I’m straight when I’m not.”
“You’re gay?”
Shit. That wasn’t the impression he wanted her to have of him, either. Not when he hoped to maybe keep the door open for more.
“No, I didn’t mean straight-straight. I meant straight-laced, sorry. They think I’m a monk or something.” He thought about it. “Then again, I haven’t dated anyone in over two years. I guess I am sort of a monk by default.”
She reached over and patted his thigh. “Sorry.”
“It is what it is. Just no interest in looking, especially after Baker died.”
“Baker?”
“My dog. He was my buddy. He was fifteen. Named him after Tom Baker.”
She smiled. “Your favorite Doctor.”
“Yeah.” He had to regroup for a second. He couldn’t believe she still remembered that. “Between the emotional beating I took with the divorce, and then that, I just…gave up looking and focused on work and that was pretty much it.”
She seemed to need a moment, so he didn’t try to fill the space with nervous chatter.
