Pretty Boy (manxboy)

Chapter Five

Sam

On Sunday, I woke up from receiving a text.

As per usual, I turned around and buried my face in the pillow instead of actually seeing who was texting me.

Then there was a rapid fire of texts after the first one, coming a second after the other.

I groaned and flipped over to grab my phone off the nightstand.

I saw that I had nine texts from Evan Cooper, one of my brother's best friends and his husband's personal assistant. I also considered him my friend, but he had never texted just me before—only our group text with Danny, Danny's other best friend Taylor, Evan, and me.

My friend Will was right, I really was apart of their gay squad. That thought wasn't as frightening as it had been before for some reason.

I still knew I wasn't gay though.

I may have been having out of the ordinary reactions to Gabe, but that didn't suddenly turn me gay.

I opened my phone to read Evan's text.

Hey Sam. So with Danny and Elijah out of town I haven't gotten a lot of interaction with people besides my family. They're smothering me now and I was wondering if you could hang out.

I'm sorry.

That was stupid.

You're probably really busy.

You have a lot of jobs.

Never mind

Ignore what I said.

I'm perfectly fine.

Okay, have a good day.

I sighed, not very surprised by Evan changing his mind. He was really insecure and shy. It had probably taken a lot of courage for him to text me at all.

I quickly replied, I would love to hang out Evan. Why don't you come over?

It was barely ten seconds before I got a reply.

Are you sure?

I'm sure, Evan. I'm going to hop in the shower and I expect you to be almost here by the time I'm out.

Ok! I'll hurry up then!

I chuckled and rolled out of bed.

Then I headed to the shower to get ready for the day.

________________

Small drops of water were dripping onto my plain white t-shirt when I opened the door to an awaiting Evan.

I grinned at him and he smiled shyly, pushing his black rimmed glasses higher on his nose.

"Hey, man. Glad you texted," I said.

He turned red and I let him into the apartment.

Evan was adorable. I had always thought so.

He was round and pudgy with brown hair that hung down and almost obstructed the view of his brown eyes.

But he was painfully shy and insecure, mostly stemming from something that had happened in his past that he had never quite opened up about to Danny, Taylor, or me. But we had only known him for a few months—even though it felt like longer since he fit with us so perfectly—and I think we all hoped that he would feel comfortable enough one day to tell us about what happened to him.

"Thanks for letting me come over," he said with a slight blush.

"No problem. Been boring at work without Elijah there?" I asked, closing the door and leading him over to the couch.