I moved to stand next to my best friend Doyle, appreciating once again how he was the perfect height—shorter than me just enough that I could comfortably rest my arm across his shoulders. Then I waved the other one in a wide sweep at our—finally, thank all the gods—completely unpacked living room.

“Well, roomie,” I said, pitching my voice to sound like a game show host—albeit, one that sounded more campy than professional. Or was that smarmy?—”with enough sound financial planning and penny-pinching, all of this will never be ours.”

Doyle rolled his brown eyes at me. “Well, thank God for that. If I thought for even one moment, that all we had to look forward to was ending up trapped in cheap apartment hell for the rest of our miserable lives, I’d…I’d”—he paused briefly, his roundish face scrunching up as if the thought was too horrible for even him to find the words—“probably order two of those jumbo-sized, meat monstrosity pizzas you love so much and eat all of them in one sitting. Go out in a blaze of gastric and coronary glory.”

I clutched at my chest, miming horror and disbelief. “You? Poison yourself with one of those gastric biohazards?” I grinned widely at him. “I still say you don’t know what you’re missing. Those things are the bomb.”

Doyle snorted. “Exactly my point. You try walking into an innocent-looking room and getting hit with a stench that could rival three roadkill skunks because you don’t have the decency to go into the bathroom and turn on the fan!”

“That just proves my point. You can’t defeat my addiction,” I said in an entirely serious voice. “You should give in to the dark side.” I waggled my eyebrows at him. “We have sausage.”

His thin lips twitched at the corners, but he kept the irate expression pasted on his face, mostly anyway. I was pretty sure he was biting his cheek to keep from smiling.

“Jed, if I joined you in the most drawn-out, culinary suicide known to mankind, the Environmental Protection Agency would be on us like a military operation. This place would be immediately condemned as unsafe for at least twenty years, and we’d lose every penny we’d shelled out for it.”

I started to deny it, but when he cocked one eyebrow at me, I shrugged. “More like thirty.” What else could I say? He had a valid point.

Doyle’s voice softened. “Do you believe we’re as crazy as the guys think we are?” He turned his face to me, lifting his chin slightly as if he were bracing himself for bad news. His chocolate brown eyes—just a shade lighter than his hair—darted off to the side just slightly. “All of them are enjoying having their own places now that we’re all out of the dorms. They’re looking forward to no curfews, clubs all the time and being able to have anybody over at all hours, not planning on scrimping for their first down payment on a house.”

I dropped all humor immediately. “No, not for even one fraction of a second.” Admittedly, my first reaction when he’d told me his idea a few months before graduation hadn’t been my finest hour. No, the chuckles and jokes about cramping my single lifestyle had been outright juvenile, but, in my defense, I hadn’t realized he’d been serious. I’d kept yammering on, trying to draw out that laugh of his that always caused a warm glow to spread through me. It had taken me a few minutes to realize he hadn’t just been trying to keep a straight face as usual. But, finally, I’d caught the flash of pain in his eyes, the way his face had tightened.

Sometimes I could be the world’s blindest asshole.

“I think it’s brilliant. Buy a run-down house in a decent neighborhood. Fix it up and rent it out, then start over on a new one,” I said.

My dad was a general contractor. From the time I could hold a hammer, I’d spent every moment I wasn’t in school learning everything I could. I loved it—as a hobby, that is, or a second income. I’d be forever grateful that my dad understood. He had just been thrilled I enjoyed it enough that I’d spend time with him, pitching in when possible. Of course, it helped that my twenty-year-old sister, Katie, was just like him and was planning on joining him in his business and eventually taking over.

“Neither one of us is going to get rich in our careers, at least not me.” I grimaced. Unfortunately, business majors littered the ground wherever you went these days. I had been lucky enough to have gotten into a manager training program for a local convenience store chain. It would teach me what I needed to know to eventually do my own thing. No, not the least bit glamorous, but they had great benefits, including a profit-sharing plan for management. “You, on the other hand, will probably be raking in a fortune in under ten years.”

I didn’t think I was exaggerating, either. Doyle was like a computer savant. While I was just good enough with them to find porn and, hopefully, hide my browsing history from my mother, Doyle could make them sing and dance, outperforming any Broadway cast.

The man wrote his own video games for fun. I still had the one he’d made me for my birthday three years ago. It had knights and dragons, swords and sorcery. My favorite part was the end, when the knight saved the princess and broke the evil spell the dragon was under. The dragon shifted to a very large, handsome man and laid a kiss on him so hot I swore my laptop screen was smoking. The dragon and knight flew off into the sunset together, leaving behind a very bewildered princess.

He’d based the game on a picture I’d posted once on Facebook.

He gave me updates for the game every birthday, chronicling the dragon and his knight’s next adventure. I’d even asked for extra ones.

I put the backup copies in my safety deposit box, along with my birth certificate and other important papers.

He blushed now. The slight pink of his cheeks had me grinning as I listened to his usual protests.

“Yeah, yeah, you only think that because computers are not your friend.”

He was so right on that note. It was a given that I’d make backups for the backup’s backup. If I had a dollar for every time I’d hit the wrong damned key when working on a college paper… Well, I’d have enough to buy a new technological monstrosity that might not be so twitchy.

Doyle had proven he was truly a saint among our dorm troglodytes countless times, never once cussing me out when he heard my panicked yell, ‘It ate it again!’

Even at two in the morning.

“I don’t think that is a strong enough way to put it. That computer is more like my arch nemesis—or maybe some kind of weird temporal anomaly.” I widened my eyes as I whispered at him, “Maybe I’m like that guy from the book series you got me to read. It could be an electrical field of some sort that I generate.”

“You? A wizard?” Doyle shook a menacing finger at me in warning. “So help me God, if you start waving a staff around and yelling ‘fuego’, I’ll kick your ass!”

I gave him my best wounded look. “You don’t think I’m special enough to be chosen for such a gift?”

Something sparked in his dark eyes, a glimpse of vulnerability that had me hesitating for a moment. Was I missing something yet again? But it vanished as quickly as it had appeared, if it had ever been there in the first place.

“Yes, yes, Jed. You’re special.” Doyle rolled his eyes as he said it. Giving a long-suffering sigh, he continued, “I should probably check the smoke detectors, just in case the powers-that-be decide you are the chosen one. Maybe you should remind me to call our insurance agent tomorrow and see if our renter’s insurance covers fire spells that go horribly, horribly wrong.”

“Hell, the spells would be the least of your worries. It’s the vampires that you have to watch out for. Those bastards are always causing Harry problems,” I said seriously.

“If they look like Luke Evans in that Dracula movie, I’ll do more than watch out for them.” Doyle’s face went a little dreamy. “I’d be willing to risk my life to lick him from head to toe.”

I gave him an affronted look. “Hey, dude, I called dibs on him. You can’t have him.”

Doyle scoffed. “As if you have a chance with him. That man looks like a top to me.” Doyle walked off to his room, shaking his tight little ass the whole way. “He can have a piece of this anytime.”

“You never know,” I called out after him. “He might be a switch.”

A twinkling laugh drifted out of Doyle’s room. “Okay. If he is, I’ll be more than willing to share him.”

I about choked when a vivid image of the three of us exploded into my mind at his words. Doyle being fucked by the hunky vampire while I joined them. The ball of possessive anger that formed in the pit of my stomach was surprising.

That’s weird. Why would I get jealous over an actor I’ll never meet?

I shrugged. The last two days of moving our stuff here and assembling the inexpensive furniture we’d bought must have been messing with me and making me too tired to properly enjoy a hot little fantasy.

* * * *

A month after Doyle and I settled into our apartment, I sat in my car after another day of work, my head about to explode from the sheer amount of information I was supposed to retain about ordering systems, inventory logs and health inspection guidelines. I’d been at work for a total of three weeks and I swore they were trying to cause my neural pathways to short out.

And I’ll deny to my dying day that I’d whimpered when Adam, the manager training me, had said that note-taking wasn’t allowed.

Adam had given me a sympathetic look. “Yeah, their theory is that you’ll do better long-term if you don’t rely on notes.” He was a decent man. Around forty with only a little paunch, he had a loud voice and tended to pepper his speech with so much profanity that it’d had me looking at him in fear the first few days. But I’d quickly realized that it was his humor-filled green eyes that showed the real man. He wasn’t mean… Well, maybe a little. He tended to be harsh with employees standing around doing nothing with—and I quote—‘their thumbs up their ass’.

And God help the person who he caught using their cell phone while on the clock.

I’d looked at him in frustration. “So I’m not supposed to take notes, and they don’t have some kind of instruction book I can take home to review?”

Clapping me on the back, he’d smirked. “Welcome to the wonderful world of corporate idiocy, where common sense gets left at the door.” He’d made a show of looking to one side then the other, as if to check for someone watching us, then he’d grinned at me. “But you go ahead and write down whatever you need to. I’m a big believer that writing helps you remember. We’ll call them ‘sanity savers’ instead of notes. You just won’t be able to keep bringing them to help you out after a while.”

I was about to bang my head on my steering wheel, hoping that it would knock me out so I could get rid of my headache, but I had another idea. I pulled out my phone, then swiped twice. I listened as it rang.

Doyle’s voice came over the line. “Hello.”

“Hey, have you started anything for dinner yet?”

“No, I’m not home. I thought you’d be there by now.” There was a slight pause before he continued, “Oh, wait, was this the night you had a date? Why are calling me, then?” I heard him say something else, not clearly enough to understand it but enough to know his day hadn’t gone much better than mine.

“Hey, you okay, Doyle?” My stress was forgotten.

“Huh? Oh, yes, I’m fine.” He sighed.

Nope, that bullshit wasn’t flying. “No, you don’t sound like it. I didn’t understand the last thing you said. What’s wrong?”

“Oh, that. Sorry. I wasn’t talking to you,” Doyle squeaked.

Uh-huh. Still wasn’t buying it. “Who were you talking to, then?”

“Umm, Cam. I was talking to Cam. I went over to the rainbow room after work.”

The rainbow room was what he called the LGBT Alliance headquarters by Oklahoma University, our old campus. I chuckled to myself. The room looked like a Crayola factory had blown up in there.

“Why did you go back there?” I never understood why he was so into that. I mean, I got why he cared about what they did but not why he spent so much of his free time there. I wasn’t that much of a joiner. After a ten-hour work day, all of my desire for social interactions had been stomped into oblivion. It hadn’t been any better when I’d been in college, either.

In my free time, I wanted a beer, pizza and a movie, while parking my ass on my own couch.

Well, I did like to go cruise a club for a blow job or maybe a more intense hook-up if I hadn’t met anyone recently. But it’d been weeks—no, make that almost two months—since I’d had anything around my dick except for my own hand. No wonder I was going stir-crazy.

“Because I like hanging out with Cam and the others,” Doyle said dryly.

“Cam’s an asshole. I don’t understand what you see in him.” I meant it, too. I’d never liked that guy. He’d treated Doyle like crap while they’d been together.

“It’s my nine inches of thick cock, asshole!” Cam’s voice came snarling through my phone.

I rolled my eyes at the sound. I’d seen him naked. Accidently, because I did have standards on who I ogled—some, anyway. The only way Cam would measure at nine inches would be if he taped a dildo to his pencil stick. “Am I on speaker, Doyle?”

“Oops?” Doyle apologized. “I’m trying to fix whatever somebody did to fuck up one of the computers here.” He paused then asked suspiciously, “You weren’t over here standing near it, were you?”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “No, I swear to God it wasn’t me this time.” I got back to the reason I called. “Do you want me to pick up tacos or something for dinner? I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like cooking or doing dishes tonight.” And I really didn’t feel up to whatever healthy food concoction he tried next in his never-ending mission to change my eating habits. “I can meet you at home in about thirty.”

“It’ll take me a little longer to get home, but go ahead. Tacos sound good,” he said. “I have to catch the bus.”

That had me snapping to attention. “Why? What’s wrong with your car?”

“How the hell should I know?” Doyle’s incredulous voice sounded in my ear. “I’d have about as much luck figuring that out as you would writing software.”

I admitted that it had been a stupid question. “I’ll come get you, then we can stop somewhere and grab a bite before heading home.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind? That would give me a few more minutes to finish this up.” Doyle sighed. “I know you’ve had a hard day, too.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” I protested.

“How bad is your headache?” he asked knowingly.

Oddly enough, it had gone away since I’d started talking to him, so I ignored the question. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

* * * *

When I walked into the rainbow room, I was happy that this stress-filled day was almost over with. But when I got a load of the scene in front of me, my mood took a downward turn so far south that I probably could’ve reached out to touch Satan himself.

Cam had Doyle backed up against the wall, his larger body caging my slim friend intimately. Yet, that wasn’t what had me silently fuming. No, I expected that of Cam. He seemed to think that being friendly exes meant that he could fuck Doyle whenever he wanted, with no strings attached. Doyle would just laugh at whatever ham-handed move Cam pulled. Usually. At least he had every other time I’d seen Cam pull this shit.

So why did Doyle have his hands on Cam’s hips? Why was he smiling up at him? Wait, was he? He was. Goddammit! Doyle was pulling that jerk forward, pressing his groin into him.

Oh, fuck no! Did he not remember walking in on that bastard screwing someone else when Doyle had gone over to Cam’s for their date? I sure as hell remembered how quiet and withdrawn he’d been afterward. I’d been desperate to cheer him up, so much so that I’d managed to fix him up with a hot guy I’d been trying to get into bed.

That had backfired.

Doyle had been so depressed that he’d gotten angry at me for that. I’d been really worried then, not understanding how my smart-as-a-whip friend had fallen so hard for such a douche. But it wasn’t like I had a lot of room to talk. So far, my longest relationship had lasted maybe a month, but I didn’t screw around if I was in a relationship. At least I wouldn’t have if I’d ever really been in one, because I really don’t think that hooking up for sex five times in three or four weeks had really qualified as one when we hadn’t said anything other than the usual stuff like ‘feels good’ or ‘harder’.

I think we had said ‘hello’, too.

Huh? Maybe I wasn’t much better than Cam, after all.

But Doyle sure as hell was, and, more to the point, he wanted a relationship to go with the sex.

I was proud of myself for not storming over there and throwing Cam off Doyle. I showed some restraint. “Cam, get off of him!” I snapped. See? That was calm.

Cam turned his pretty-boy face toward me. “Damn, Sullivan. Your timing sucks. Another fifteen minutes and we would’ve been done.”

Doyle squeaked, his face flushing a deep red. “Cam!” He popped Cam a quick jab in the belly. Decent power behind it, if Cam’s swearing was any indication.

“Since when are you one for getting it on in front of others, Doyle?” I asked.

Doyle waved an arm around. “Do you see anybody else here? It’s almost eight on a Friday night. Where do you think everyone else is?”

Cam muttered under his breath, “Trying to get laid, like me.”

I glared at him while I told Doyle to get his stuff so we could go.

After Doyle left to hunt down his laptop, Cam moved in closer to me. “What’s your problem, Jed? Do you get off on cockblocking him all the time?”

“No. I just want to make sure you don’t hurt him again.”

Cam let out a sigh. “For cryin’ out loud, Jed, how long are you going to hold that against me? It was a damn mistake because I didn’t know he thought we were serious. I never would’ve hurt him on purpose.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “He’s a friend. What’s your problem with us hooking up every once in a while?”

I watched Doyle pick up his bag and check for all the myriad techie things he carried around. I could almost hear his whisper as he counted under his breath. He nodded to himself, his shaggy sable hair falling into his eyes when he swung the strap onto the shoulder. He took a step in my direction, then another.

Wait for it.

One more step then he bit his lip, stopped, then he checked the bag again, rolling his eyes at me while he turned around and darted over to another desk to grab his laptop.

“Because he deserves better than being a hook-up.” I met Cam’s gaze head-on. “I get that you care about him. It’s just not the way he needs it.” I tried for honesty. “He’ll regret it in the morning, Cam.”

Doyle caught my attention as he finished packing his laptop in the oversized, leather messenger bag I’d given him last Christmas. He gave me a self-deprecating smile then he swung the bag onto his shoulder again.

I felt the affectionate grin spread across my face when Cam shook his head at me. I looked back at him. “Do you understand now?”

Cam gave me a slight smile and chuckled. “Absolutely,” then added, “I just wonder when you will.” With that said, he waved at Doyle. “I’ll let you guys go get your tacos now. Later.” He whistled while he walked off.

Well, that was a bit weird, but I put him out of my mind as Doyle made it over to me, asking, “So where’re we going to eat?”

“I don’t know. You pick.”

* * * *

I spent the next morning checking out Doyle’s car, a usually serviceable Honda Civic that was approaching a fuck-ton number of miles, sighing as I cleaned off the battery cables that had become hideously corroded. He was going to have to seriously think about getting another car in the next year or so. This time it looked like an easy fix, but at just under three hundred thousand miles on the odometer, the next time it could be worse. Hell, it would be worse. I gave it an affectionate pat. “Just hold together for one more year, baby.”

I swore the transmission whimpered at me.

Getting into the car, I turned the key, relieved that it started right up. Thank you, God!

Doyle came out of our ground floor apartment. “What’s the damage?”

“Not too bad. The cables needed cleaning. I probably should go ahead and do an oil change.”

Doyle shook his head. “I’ll just take it in for one. You should enjoy your day off, not spend the whole Saturday working on my car.”

“I don’t mind, Doyle.”

He shot me a stern look. “I do.” Then he gave me a tight smile. “Anyway, don’t you have a hot date tonight? Boyd, right?”

I could only hope. “Yeah, but that’s seven hours away.”

Doyle examined my hands, saying dryly, “If you start power washing them now, you just might get them clean in time.”

I tossed the oil-stained rag I was wiping my fingers on at him, laughing as he jumped back, squealing.

“That wasn’t nice!”

I raised an eyebrow at him, “Your point being?”

“Yeah, yeah. What was I thinking, calling Mr. Bad Ass Grease Monkey nice?” Doyle chortled, his face soft with amusement. Then he reached out to touch my arm.

I was taken aback by the tingle that shot through me at the brief contact.

Doyle looked up at me, sincerity shining in his warm brown eyes. “Thank you, Jed. I don’t know how I lucked out getting you assigned as my roommate in the dorm.”

“Maybe good karma from a previous life?” I joked to play off my uneasiness, because it hadn’t been luck.

I’d been walking down the hall to my assigned room when I’d heard the voices drifting out of another.

“Oh, crap! You got Doyle Weston to share with?”

“Yeah,” a wary voice answered. “What about him?”

The first voice had responded, “I went to high school with him. He’s kinda weird, and he’s queer.”

“Oh, hell no! I don’t have a problem with them, but I’m not sharing a room!” the second voice had barked out, then continued with protests that I couldn’t make out. No matter though. I’d heard plenty.

I’d poked my head into the room. “Hey, I heard what you said. You wanna ask the guy in charge to switch with me?”

The chubby guy sitting on the bed had practically leaped at me. “Yeah, I do. Thanks!”

The other one had looked at me suspiciously. “Why do you want to room with a queer?” He’d taken in my solid six foot plus size and maybe gotten a whiff of the hostility I’d been feeling. “He’s a little strange, but he’s harmless. I just thought this guy should be aware. I don’t want to cause trouble.”

Oh, now he’s going to be all concerned about the fag? Let’s just hand him the Nobel Peace Prize now. No need to vote, folks. “I don’t have a problem with it, but it sounds like you might, so I figure this will make everybody happy.”

And, who knew? Maybe I’d hit it off with him in a ‘friends-with-benefits’ way.

I held back the wince of guilt I always felt, remembering that last thought. When a skinny little guy had stumbled through the door two hours later, I’d been thrilled to see that he was attractive in that sexy nerd way I secretly liked, his naïve eyes smiling until they’d landed on me. Doyle had taken one look at me standing there, twice his size, my blond hair almost military short, jock written all over me, and I could tell he was about to run screaming in fear.

“Hey, you must be Doyle. It’s nice to meet you! I’m Jed.” I’d smiled as big as I could and kept talking before he could rabbit. “I hope you don’t mind my saying this, but I want to be upfront with you right away. I’m gay.” I’d held back the laugh that had wanted to bubble out when his eyes had rounded comically large. Holding out my hands in what I’d hoped was a nonthreatening way, I’d said, “I hope you don’t mind. I promise I’ll keep my eyes and hands to myself.” Unless you’re interested at some point down the road.

He’d stood there for a moment, mouth hanging open, before reaching out to shake my hand, his timid grip gaining quickly in strength. He’d said hesitantly, in painfully shy voice, “Hi, Jed. No, it doesn’t bother me.” Then he’d taken a deep breath to bolster his courage before continuing, “I’m gay, too.”

“I decided to come out for college. So I’m not sure how the guys I went to high school with will react. The ones I played football with might not take it too well.” I’d shrugged, uncomfortable with talking about myself, but I could see how he’d relaxed with every word I’d said. “I’m tired of pretending to fit in.”

He’d chuckled. “I think the kids at school knew about me before I did. I was lucky. They didn’t really know what to think of me. I skipped a couple of grades, so they left me alone for the most part.”

He’d skipped a couple of grades? My gut had clenched in dread. “You must be smart, then. How old are you?”

He’d shrugged. “I’ll be seventeen in February.”

It had been August then. My dick had whimpered in horror and guilt over all the hopes I’d had about having a gay roommate. “I’m twenty, almost twenty-one.” Self-conscious over revealing that to a kid who was apparently a genius, I’d rubbed the back of my neck as I’d answered the curiosity he couldn’t hide, “I didn’t look both ways when I was eight. I went one-on-one with a Honda, and the car won. It set me back in school, since I had to relearn how to walk and talk.”

His deep brown eyes had filled with compassion and something else I couldn’t quite identify until he’d spoken again. “Wow, that had to take a lot of work and guts.” His voice had been full of admiration.

At that moment, I’d decided I was going to be his friend and watch out for him throughout our time here.

I’d never stopped, watching as the short, skinny kid shot up in a couple of growth spurts and developed lean muscles from working out with me. Doyle had gone from an innocent kid that I’d felt honor-bound to look out for to a best friend who wasn’t afraid to stand up to me when I was being an idiot, which was way more often than I liked to admit.

I bumped my shoulder into him. “Nah, I was the lucky one. If you hadn’t been around to save all my computer catastrophes, I never would’ve made it.”