Chapter 22 Evan #2
She sighs and gets her phone out of the kangaroo pouch on the front of her pajamas. “Fine, I’ll remove the tag.”
“I can do it myself,” I nearly yell at her.
She startles and stares up at me with wide, shocked eyes.
“Sorry,” I say quickly. She’s nuts for sure, but she’s a nice person. She can’t help it if she’s quirky or whatever. “This is just a lot.”
“I know. I was totally spiraling about it earlier until I had the Go Fund Me idea. I only tagged you because you have pictures of Apollo on your account. Just so people would know I wasn’t lying.”
“No one’s saying you’re lying, Millie, but you can’t prove it was him, either.”
“You sound super problematic right now.”
“Oh my God.” I step away from her door. “I can’t with this.”
“You wanna go to the vet with me on Monday? Manon’s getting a sonogram.”
“No,” I say, retreating to my apartment.
“Let me know if you change your mind. You know, the quicker you wrap your mind around this, the better. It’s gotta suck having to sneak up and down the stairs to avoid me. We shouldn’t have to live like that. I love being friends with you and Deacon.”
“Deacon’s not gonna like that post,” I say.
Her face falls. “Really? I mean I know it was a total beg, but…it’s all true.”
“What if it’s not?”
“You mean what if the puppies turn out to be half Golden Retriever?”
“Or Chihuahua? Whatever. What if she doesn’t even need a surgery?”
Millie steps out of the way and gestures at Manon who’s lying on a shimmery pink dog bed, looking hella pregnant with some big puppies. Or a lot of little ones. “Jesus, is she okay?”
Millie sighs. “Supposedly. I’m gonna be working from home for now.”
“Yeah.” The dog looks like she needs an assistive device.
“I have this theory that fetuses steal some of your life force. Like they take years off your life in order to grow. Like parasites.”
“Gross,” I say.
“Right? She’s never gonna be the same.”
“The logistics just…”
“I don’t get it either,” Millie sighs. “But…somehow he managed.”
“We’ll see.” I finally make it to my door. “Good luck.”
“Thanks. ‘Night, Evan.”
“Good night.”
After I’m safe inside and have removed the tag from Millie’s post, I set my Insta to private and decide to deal with clearing out all the notifications later.
It’s hard to hate Millie, but I’m pretty fucking close.
I have several texts now, too, regarding the post. Everyone who’s ever seen Apollo seems to be checking in on me and asking if he really did it.
As I’m responding to a few of them, Deacon comes into my room.
The door was open, so he didn’t knock. Apollo is with him, which I figured since neither of them were here when I got home.
“Walked him, fed him. It took him a while to do his business, but it got done. Talked to Millie, too. She said she’s really sorry about the post.”
“Did you see it?” I ask from the center of my bed.
“Yeah. She took it down since she met her funding goal. We should talk about getting Apollo fixed.”
“Apollo couldn’t possibly have—”
“I get it. But still. Unless you’re planning to breed him—”
“No.”
“Then—”
“Fine,” I say with a sigh. “I’ll call the vet.”
Apollo has now noticed me, and he’s making his way over.
He acts like he’s ten and arthritic, but he’s really two and lazy as fuck.
I love this damn dog. It’s extremely irritating to think people might be saying bad things about him on the internet because I have a neighbor with no filter.
I bend over to pet and kiss him. He climbs on the bed, and his head lands on my lap with a thud.
“You busy?” Deacon asks.
“No,” I say.
“Can I talk to you?”
I straighten up. “Is this gonna be about Isaac?”
“Isaac. You. Me.”
“Should I be nervous?”
“Is there a reason you always assume I want to give you bad news?”
“It’s just been kind of an intense day.”
“I have a favor to ask.”
Oh, God.
“Okay.”
“Would you be interested in getting together with me and Isaac? Like tomorrow night maybe? Just to—you know—see if we can figure this whole thing out?”
“Don’t you think that would be weird?”
Deacon shrugs. “I think it makes sense. I mean clarity is always a good idea, right?”
“But shouldn’t we all be figuring our shit out individually? One on one?”
“Did your one on one with Isaac this morning help you figure anything out?”
I want to tell him no, and that’s exactly why I need to talk to him some more.
“Is this gonna be like the two on one date on The Bachelor? Two girls, one rose, one stays, one goes?”
Deacon frowns. “Is that a pop culture reference?”
“It’s a reality TV show.”
“Do they like—fight over the rose or something?”
I laugh. “No. The Bachelor decides who to send home. The one who stays gets the rose.”
“Oh, yeah, no, I don’t think of this that way at all. This would be more of a group decision making model.”
God bless Deacon and his beautiful brain.
“And I don’t know,” he adds. “Maybe it would be cool to hang out together.”
I narrow my eyes. “Hang out? With a guy we’ve both had sex with?”
“You and I sort of have, too.”
“And this is a good idea, why?”
“Tell me why it’s a bad one,” he challenges.
I decide I’ll be honest. “I don’t know how I’m gonna react to seeing the two of you together.”
“That’s interesting,” he says thoughtfully. “Because I’d like to see the two of you together.”
I frown. “Together how?”
He just sort of looks at me, and I feel my cheeks heat. “Deacon?”
“However you are.”
Isaac and I have never been around other people before—not people who know we’ve fucked. “Yeah, I don’t know what that looks like.”
“Nothing has to happen. I think we just need to communicate with each other.”
“What does that mean? Nothing has to happen? Like what? Like…sex?”
“Yeah, I’m definitely not saying that has to happen, but…”
“But?” I think I’m hallucinating.
“If we’re all attracted to each other, and—”
“Deacon, I need you to stop right there. You win, okay? You can have Isaac. Go forth and be merry or what the fuck ever, but please for the love of everything sane and sacred do not ever suggest anything like that to me again.”
My best friend Samuel is available when I call him after leaving my apartment in a rush.
While Sam usually answers the phone when I call, he’s rarely available to hang out, but since his boyfriend is out of town, he’s actually free.
That’s how I wind up at his training gym, processing my feelings via a punching bag in possibly one of the most physically cathartic outpourings of my life.
About fifteen minutes in, he says, “This can’t all be about the dog. Are you working through caffeine or blue balls?”
“Ugh,” I shout, hitting the bag again. I’m already drenched in sweat. No wonder Samuel’s so cut. This is hard. And my hands hurt. I step back to take a short break and grab some water. “Where’s Calyx?”
“New York. It’s fashion week, duh,” he says with a grin.
“Oh, right. Of course. Why aren’t you with him?”
“Technically, it’s next week. I’m flying out tomorrow.”
Samuel, the six-foot-four amateur MMA fighter, is dating a five-foot ten androgynous runway model who’s one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen.
I was following Calyx on Instagram for about a year before I met him at one of Deacon’s dinner parties for his friends.
Evidently Calyx and Ryan are gym bros or something.
Sam’s father is Calyx’s modeling manager, so that’s how the two of them ended up meeting.
As a couple, they mostly keep to themselves, but also I think they’re really busy. “Do you wanna hear how fucked up my life is?” I ask.
“Absolutely. But I can’t promise one of those platonic jobs that made me feel better that one time.”
I snort. Since Calyx isn’t here, it’s safe to talk about that one time I blew Samuel because he was overly stressed and horny.
That made me his first boy BJ, and it also made him the only other guy I messed around with during my office affair with Isaac.
“I’m okay. I got one yesterday. I get laid most days, actually.
Or I did.” Definitely noticed nothing happening today during the longest day in the office ever.
“Who’s the guy?”
“You know who the guy is.”
“Still?” He sounds incredulous.
“Why do you say it like that? Yes, still my boss. It’s a thing. Now it’s actually a whole thing, and it’s gotten messy.”
“No offense, but that was bound to happen. Did someone catch you?”
“No. That would be simple. This is—he went on a blind date and got lucky, and it just so happened to be with my roommate—you know—the one I’ve had a crush on since I moved in? Yeah. And now everybody’s gone nuts.”
“Whoa. Slow down.” Sam backs away from his punching bag and gestures over to one of the wrestling mats.
“Just like old times?” I joke as I head over. We were on the wrestling team together in high school when he was a freshman, and I was a senior.
Sam takes off his gloves as he sits with me on the mat, stretching his legs wide and setting his forearms on the mat.
“You’re really flexible now,” I note.
He winks at me. “Yoga. I’ve got a good teacher.”
I roll my eyes. “Right.” Calyx is also a yoga teacher when he’s not making a fortune being a runway model. They’re a disgustingly cute couple.
“Your boss is Isaac, right?”
“Yes,” I say, aware of the small world thing we’ve got happening here.
“How old is he?”
“Calyx didn’t tell you?”
“I never asked him,” Sam says.
“He’s thirty-five.”
“Oh. Younger than I thought.”
“Yeah, he’s not old.”
“And he went on a blind date with Deacon?” he asks as he moves to stretch over his left leg.
“Yeah, but I didn’t know it was Deacon until a few days later when Deacon took me out to dinner to let me know he might be having a guy stop by from time to time and by the way—it’s my boss.”
“Oh, shit. He took you out to dinner to tell you that?”
“He’s got some quirks. Anyway, this led me to tell him—because I’m a friend, right?—that by the way, your new boyfriend happens to fuck me five days a week, usually in the mornings.”
“How’d he take that?”