24. Chapter 24
Chapter twenty-four
Evander
“I am in love with this wallpaper.” It was definitely partly the lack of a hangover and definitely partly the fact that he’d blown his load in such a spectacular manner, but it was mostly the wallpaper itself. They’d gotten the entire accent wall done in the bedroom. It took Evander a lot of finagling to get that pattern in a timely fashion, but the large, watercolor peacock was a focal point to his design. It was a night scene, so it took heavy inspiration from the quilt Ev had become so enamored with at Melanie’s parents’ house. A full moon in one corner, a pond the peacock was drinking from, and little speckles of whitish stars above a willow tree. It was a lot to be certain. Big swing, which meant the possibility for a big miss, but it felt like some part of his vision was finally coming to life.
He threw his arms around the two contractors who’d put it up and gave them a little squeeze. “Thank you thank you thank you. It looks amazing.” A big pattern like that, there was always a high risk that something got misaligned. It had taken a lot of trust on Ev’s part to let someone else handle the install, but it hadn’t been misplaced. And it let Evander get on a call with Robinson, Aras, and the folks from the countertop place to get the rest of the kitchen squared away. With only minimal shouting from Aras, which was a win.
When the contractors headed out, Bunny walked in. She whistled low, eyebrows raised. “Damn. That is one hell of a feature wall.”
“I know, isn’t it great?” Evander clapped his hands a couple times. “I’ll center the bed here, so the feature isn’t blocked off, but they’re not staring directly at it when they try to sleep. I know that would be too stimulating. But I think it’ll be really nice and calming when everything is set up, as long as it isn’t the main focal point of the room.”
“Good luck making that anything other than the focal point. But if anyone can pull it off, it’s you.” She sat down on one of the two nightstands that Jake had built and folded her hands in her lap. “So, can you confirm some hot gossip for me?”
“Doubt it. Haven’t heard anything juicy since we got here.” Ev took a seat on the other nightstand. “Also, cameras.” Because they were full-on being filmed and recorded, and the cameraman in the room wasn’t even pretending not to focus exclusively on them. Such was apparently the life of a TV personality.
Bunny waved that away. “They’ll cut it if it’s boring. And if it isn’t, we saw that Eliza still affords some privacy, with the whole Jake and Quinn thing.”
Evander nodded. She had handled that pretty tactfully, as far as he’d been able to tell. “Well, fill me in on the chisme .” Evander rarely slipped in Spanish, but chisme always felt more accurate than gossip in his head. He remembered his mom and aunts having chismosa get-togethers every time something big happened. They’d get drunk and spill tea until three, four in the morning. That was chisme . Not gossip.
“A little birdie mentioned that Ozzy might have the hots for you again.”
Evander’s stomach tightened. He raised an eyebrow, trying to keep calm. “Where’d you hear something that crazy?”
“Jake said he was eye-fucking you like crazy yesterday.”
You couldn’t control yourself for a second, Ozzy? “You’d have to ask him. I feel very thoroughly un-eye-fucked.” It had been dark in the hotel room, so it wasn’t a lie. There’d been very minimal eye fucking going on.
“Well, keep watch. I want to know if you two are finally going to hook up again.”
Evander’s focus fully shifted away from the prospect that they might have been found out. “What do you mean?”
She shrugged. “You two are happier together than you are apart. Keep waiting for you two to realize it.”
Evander couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.” She inclined her head to one side. “Figured you’d be able to see that.”
“We were so toxic with each other, we blew apart the entire channel.” Not the only damaging part of their relationship, but it was the one that spilled over to others the most.
“Yeah. You broke up , and then things went wrong.” She stood and raised her hands up in front of her chest. “But it sounds like you’re not thinking about it, so forget I said anything. But keep me up on the gossip if anything changes.”
She walked back out of the room and Evander just sat there. He couldn’t blame it on the hangover anymore. What Bunny had said just struck him and settled in his chest. He started to file back through everything that went down when they had their big breakup. Things had been brewing between them for a hot minute. With a little distance, Evander could admit he hadn’t been as supportive a boyfriend as he should have been. Ozzy didn’t need him weighing in on his family drama, and certainly didn’t need him talking about it in public like that. Not everyone was as lucky as Evander, didn’t have the kind of acceptance he’d gotten on coming out. His situation wasn’t sunshine and roses—he lost plenty of cousins and it took a long time for his relationship with his dad to be anything other than frigid—but at least everyone acknowledged that he was actually gay.
When Ozzy brought Evander over, his parents still acted like he was straight as could be. Very pointedly.
Everything had collapsed when they broke up, though, hadn’t it? Evander tutted his tongue. If he was really going to stay committed to his honesty, then yeah. It had. He couldn’t lie about that.
“Fuck me.” His face heated up as he considered the implications.
If they really were happier and better together, did that mean it was time to try and pursue it?
Before last night, Evander would have said a big, stinking, flashing “NO” to that. But as much as they might have sworn it was all physical and about convenience…they both had access to the internet. They were both good-looking guys—especially Ozzy. Both of them could have found a willing mouth, even in a smaller town like Three Rivers, if they just wanted a way to get their rocks off.
Instead, they’d drifted back toward each other. Ozzy had broached it.
Evander scrubbed his hands over his face and repeated, “Fuck me.”
Turned out the patio wasn’t necessarily going to be the biggest problem to solve.