Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 127213 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 636(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 424(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127213 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 636(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 424(@300wpm)
Ezra tossed a cushion his way and shook his head. “I don’t sound like that!”
Ros chuckled with his mouth full of bread. “Come on, we all want them back here. I should have brought a sweater, but when Jag said we’ll be on a boat, I kind of assumed inside, since it’s all about the moon being scary?”
“It’s my fault that the cabin is uninhabitable,” Ezra said and handed Ros one of the rescued comforters.
“You mean you didn’t try to make a bonfire in the cabin?” Dane asked, barely withholding laughter.
“Oh, I did. So hard I almost lit myself on fire,” Ezra said as they all shared the opened bottle between them.
“Did you do it to let Frank play the hero?” Ros asked before finishing the wine. At this rate, maybe someone should text Dex with a request for more booze, but Ezra didn’t feel the need for artificial relaxation. There was an ease to this moment under the starry sky. Just him and Frank’s friends, who were maybe-kinda becoming his friends too? None of them was in any way uptight or judgmental, a stark contrast to Carmen and Ezra’s other acquaintances.
Did it make him a bad person that he didn’t miss a single one of them yet always felt so happy to see someone from the junkyard crew? That it felt good to not always look his best or anticipate comments about the slightest change in appearance? There would be no discussion of the macros of the foods on offer, or if it was safe to eat all that gluten in the focaccia.
The last time he’d seen Carmen in person, she’d told him to choose a Bloody Mary instead of the cocktail he wanted, to cut down calories before heading off to the beaches of California, and while he’d been annoyed with her, he had in fact chosen the Bloody Mary. And now that he was spending time around people who didn’t put nearly as much value on things that were paramount in Ezra’s normal life, he was starting to feel ashamed of the way he’d let that lifestyle dictate everything he did. It should have been the other way around.
“He’ll always be a hero to me,” Ezra whispered with a smile.
Ros leaned over to pinch Ezra’s cheek. “Aww! That’s adorable.”
Dane glanced over the railing with a soft smile. “Jag saved my life. That kind of bond can’t be broken.”
Ezra opened the next bottle of wine and passed it to Dane first. “Is it okay to ask what happened?”
Dane drank but then nodded, grabbing another pepper. “Sure. I’ve always had a bit of a thing for bad boys, but my ex? He was just evil, man. Literally tried to murder me.”
As Dane went on, telling the story of how he met Jag, what they went through and his feelings about it, Ezra was struck by the realization that he’d never bonded with anyone this way. His parents were cold. The people he’d considered friends—always ready to deliver biting comments in lieu of jokes and they never opened up the way Dane just had, unwilling to show their vulnerable underbellies. It was… new. And while the relaxed attitude of the guys he now hung out with made him uncomfortable at times, it was refreshing to see them say what they thought and quarrel without the aim of hurting each other.
It made him want to open up too, even if he wasn’t yet ready.
Ezra had no idea what his future would be like in the aftermath of Paul, but that was the rational part of him. The emotional side already felt at home with these guys, with Frank, just hanging out, being himself, and not having to either posture or look over his shoulder at all times.
Chapter 17
Ezra
Ezra was running out of his PrEP. There was another bottle in his apartment, but he couldn’t take his car out of the shed and drive home as if that whole thing with Paul being a murderous psycho had never happened.
It was kind of important, because he and Frank skipped rubbers altogether, and it wasn’t like he could ask for Frank to get tested while not doing so himself. It would have been rude. Not to mention that with Frank already doing so much for him, Ezra didn’t want to be ungrateful, which left him worried each time he checked the number of pills in his bottle. He was down to three.
Frank didn’t seem like the type to get angry over being asked about his health status, and he never seemed to have an issue with condoms either, but one never knew. Ezra wanted to believe Frank when he claimed to have only been with him in the past year, but people lied about these things, as Ezra had found out early in his career, when an STI took him out of commission.