12. George
George
I wake to the smell of coffee and Lance humming something out of tune from the kitchen.
My neck protests the moment I try to sit up on the couch, a reminder that his two-seater was never built for someone my size. There’s a blanket over me I don’t remember pulling up. I check my phone. It’s past seven.
Cabinet doors open and close. Something sizzles in a pan. I text Carter I’ll be at the shop around ten.
I push myself up and look toward the kitchen, then I stop moving entirely.
Lance is standing at the counter with his back to me, cracking eggs into a bowl. He’s wearing my old Navy hoodie, the gray one I left here months ago and keep forgetting to take back.
The hoodie swallows him completely, sleeves hang way past his hands, cuffs flopping loose every time he moves.
The hem drops all the way to mid-thigh, leaving his bare legs exposed in one long stretch from the edge of the fabric down to his feet.
He’s got nothing beneath but dark green boxers, the thin material hugging his ass and clinging just enough to show the muscle of his thighs.
Every time he shifts his weight, the oversized hoodie rides higher on his thighs, showing more bare skin than it should.
The contrast between the loose fabric swallowing his frame and the muscle underneath does something to me.
It looks casual as hell, but the way it leaves so much of him uncovered feels unintentionally hot, like he has no clue what he’s doing to me standing there half-dressed in my clothes.
He shifts again while whisking eggs, completely unaware I’m awake and staring at him like he’s the entire fucking breakfast menu.
This is normal. Lance has borrowed my clothes before. I’ve got an entire drawer of his shirts at my place that migrated there over the years through the same process of casual exchange, and I’ve never thought twice about it. It’s normal among friends. It doesn’t mean anything.
Right now, watching him move around his kitchen in my hoodie, I can’t convince myself it doesn’t mean something else to me.
I know he grabbed it without thinking because it was there, but it makes me want to cross the room, put my hands on him.
Keep him exactly like this, in my clothes, with no one else close enough to interfere.
Lance turns around with the bowl in his hands and sees me sitting up on the couch, and his whole face lights up. “Morning, Big Guy. You want coffee?”
I grunt.
“You slept okay?” he asks, not looking at me, focused on the eggs.
“Yeah. Fine.” My voice sounds wrong. I clear my throat and try again. “Couch isn’t bad.”
“Liar. Your neck’s probably killing you.”
I stand up and walk straight to the bathroom before he can say anything else. The door clicks shut behind me.
I stay there for a moment, hands braced on the sink, trying to get my breathing under control.
This is Lance. My best friend for ten years. The guy who gives me constant shit about everything, eats my food, falls asleep on my shoulder when we watch television. There’s no reason for my chest to feel like this just because he’s wearing an old hoodie I don’t even use anymore.
I exhale through my nose and force myself to move.
Right, bathroom.
My eyes drift to the shelf. Our toothbrushes are standing side by side in the same cup holder. Same routine and space. There’s nothing new about it.
But now it doesn’t feel the same in my head.
I brush my teeth longer than necessary, then take my time in front of the mirror. Beard’s fine. Hair’s not great, but it’ll do without a shower. Good enough.
When I step back out, Lance is at the counter finishing breakfast. Eggs, toast, bacon arranged neatly across the small kitchen table.
He looks up as I come back in and catches me staring at my hoodie on him.
“What?” he says, looking down at himself. “Oh, yeah, this. I guess it’s been here so long it feels like it’s part of my wardrobe now.” He tugs at the hem, the sleeves flopping comically over his hands. “You want it back?”
He reaches for the hem like he’s going to pull it off. I see a strip of his stomach, the hard line of his abs, the band of his boxer shorts sitting low on his hips. My brain shuts down completely.
“No!” The word comes out too loud and fast. “Keep it. Don’t want it back.”
Lance pauses mid-strip. The hoodie is still halfway up his torso, his left pink nipple peeking out. I can see the defined V of his hip bones, and a whole lot of skin. He looks at me, confused, while I’m still staring at way too much of him.
Fucker. My hands are practically shaking with the urge to grab his torso and maul it.
“You don’t?” he says.
I’m scrambling for footing here. “Doesn’t fit me anymore. Put on more muscle since.”
What dumb shit am I saying?
He looks confused, but he’s letting it go.
“Okay, suit yourself,” he says, pulling it down and gesturing to the chair across from him. “Sit. Eat.”
The thing with Lance is he can’t cook for shit. The toast comes out too dark in patches, the eggs overdone at the edges, but I’ve been eating whatever he manages to throw together from his kitchen for years now, especially on mornings like this when I’m not the one cooking.
“You missed a spot burning this section here,” I say, pointing at the corner of the toast. It’s not a complaint, just an observation.
He fucking laughs. “Oh, that’s actually hard to achieve.” He smiles sweetly at me, doing more damage.
I chomp down on a big forkful of eggs. He cooked them, so they get eaten. That’s the rule.
“So, Carter’s got something he needs to talk to you about?” Lance says eventually, reaching for the hot sauce. “At the shop?”
“Yeah. He texted yesterday, probably about ProMotive again.”
“They still trying to buy you out?”
“They’re persistent,” I say, and take a piece of bacon off his plate.
He doesn’t even look up before slapping my hand away.
“Latest offer came in last week,” I add. “Better terms, more money. The usual.”
“Are you considering it?”
I take another piece of his bacon, faster this time, and he laughs when I get away with it. “It’s my dad’s shop. I’m not selling it to some corporate group that’s going to gut it and turn it into another chain location.”
Lance nods like he expected that answer. He knows me too well. “By the way, Marcus is coming to visit.”
“Who?”
“My brother,” Lance says, like I need the reminder. I’ve never really warmed up to him, and the feeling’s mutual. “He mentioned coming down in a few weeks.”
“Still in Seattle?”
“Yep, still a lawyer, still living the life our parents expected for us both.” There’s no bitterness in his voice, just a mix of resignation and affection. “I saw Dad on the news last week about a senate hearing. Marcus texted me to ask if I’d watched it.”
“Did you?”
“I saw it, but didn’t really listen in.” He takes a bite of toast, chews and swallows. “I don’t follow that world anymore. Marcus does enough for both of us.”
I know enough about Lance’s family to understand the shape of it.
High-profile lawyer parents who expected both sons to follow the same path. An older brother who did and a younger one who didn’t. Marcus ended up in the middle, smoothing things over, carrying expectations that were never really his but somehow always landed on him anyway.
Lance used to orbit their mother’s world.
Grew up in her office, listening to legal talk he was too young for, absorbing it anyway until it sounded normal.
I can picture Eleanor noticing early, the way he picked things up fast, the way he was meant to become something she could point to and say, “That’s mine. ”
Then he left Seattle.
They don’t talk much about it. He doesn’t bring it up, not directly. But every now and then, it slips through anyway.
Lance’s expression softens. “He’d like you, if you ever got to know my brother properly.”
“We’ve met.”
“Once, at my nursing school graduation, for maybe ten minutes.”
Lance goes back to his eggs and talks about being short-staffed at the hospital again, picking up overtime shifts he doesn’t want but can’t get out of because someone has to cover.
I tell him about the ’69 Mustang restoration I’ve been working on, the one that’s been dragging on because the previous owner did some fucked up things to the engine. He listens while he eats, asks the right questions, grunts at the right moments. It’s easy. It always is with him.
Then his phone lights up on the table between us.
I see it first from where I’m sitting. Dark blue compass icon, one I recognize but haven’t used before. The preview reads “You have a new match!” Below it, a message from someone named Elliot.
My grip tightens on the fork. I force it loose.
Lance looks up. “You okay?”
I don’t look at him right away, nodding once, keeping my face even. “Yeah. You’ve got messages.”
He reaches for the phone and sees the screen.
Nothing happens for a second. No joke or comment. He goes pale before setting the phone back face-down on the table, as if it might bite him.
“Oh. Yeah. That.”
I stand up. The chair scrapes louder than it should, and I take my plate to the sink. I turn the water on.
“So, you’re on a gay dating app,” I say, keeping my tone level, but a low, uneasy churn starts in my stomach as soon as the words are out. Then I make it worse. “Anyone interesting yet?”
“I was going to delete it,” he says quickly. “I mean, I am. Just downloaded it last night.”
I grunt. “No, don’t. You’re figuring shit out. That’s good.”
The feeling in my gut turns sharper. My stomach drops hard enough that nausea climbs up the back of my throat. I stop moving for a second, one hand braced against the counter while I breathe through it slowly. There’s a faint swimmy feeling at the edges of my vision that irritates me.
I don’t understand why the fuck this is happening. It’s just a dating app.
I stare down at the counter a second too long, trying to get myself back under control before he notices anything’s off.
Behind me, I hear Lance stand up.
“George?”
Something in his voice makes me glance over my shoulder. The second he sees my face, his expression tightens.
“You look pale as hell,” he says, already stepping closer. “What’s going on? You feeling sick?”
“I’m fine,” I say automatically, coughing a little and clearing my throat.
Lance doesn’t buy it. He moves right into my space and presses the back of his hand to my forehead. His skin is warm against mine, palm near my temple, his body close enough that I can feel him there everywhere at once.
For a second, my entire focus shifts to that contact—his hand on my face, his concerned eyes searching mine, the immediate instinct to lean into him instead of away. To wrap my arms around him and bury this sick fucking feeling against his shoulder until it stops twisting.
My hands clench hard at my sides, then I tap his wrist away with two fingers, grumpy on reflex. “Cut it out. I’m not dying.”
Lance’s hand hovers there a moment longer before dropping. “You’re clammy. Sit down for a minute, I’ll go grab some—”
“I said I’m fine.” I step back fast, putting the space I need between us before my hands do something stupid. I scrub one hand over my jaw and force my voice back into something normal. “Has he asked you out?”
It takes him a long second to answer. “Yeah… got that message just now. He’s picking me up.”
I nod slowly, swallowing against the fresh wave of nausea, and make myself really look at him.
“It’s two nights from now. Eight o’clock. That bar in Point Loma—Breakwater? I think we’ve been there last year.”
“Yeah. We’ve been.”
Lance lets out a breath that almost sounds like a laugh, but it dies fast. He rubs the back of his neck, eyes somewhere on the floor.
“Guess I’m really doing this,” he says. “Dating guys. Trying to figure that part out.” He pauses, then adds, lower, “The wedding changed shit for me. More than I thought it would.”
The words hang there between us. The wedding. It pulls everything back into the room—all the things we’ve been pretending didn’t shift everything between us. Whatever happened that week never really ended. It’s still sitting in my chest, still moving.
“Yeah. Good for you.”
I glance at my watch, force a small smile, and gesture toward the door. “Hey, listen. Thanks for letting me crash and for breakfast. Have to swing by the shop on my way home.”
I gather my things and step into the hallway before he can say anything else.
“G, are you sure you’re okay—”
“Later,” I call out over my shoulder, trying to keep my voice light. It just comes out rough.
I close the door behind me and walk away fast, boots heavy on the concrete. I keep my eyes straight ahead and tell myself it doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter that he’s figuring himself out. That some other guy gets to take him out, get close, learn what I’ve been avoiding for too long.
It fucking doesn’t matter. I’m still the friend, the one who stays.
The one he keeps.