The Wingman by A. Poland

Chapter Twenty-Six

As it turned out, Nathan was right in his assumption about the motorcycle belonging to Izzy. When he mentioned such, Izzy snorted and tossed Nathan a helmet before she swung her leg over the bike.

“Miles, honey, I’m stealing your man for a little,” she called over her shoulder to her amused-looking brother. “We’ll see you there.”

Nathan glanced between Izzy and Miles, helmet in hands, as he tried to decipher the silent conversation going on between them. Nathan would never understand how a sibling bond worked, considering his lonesome status as an only child, but he was determined to understand what those little looks meant someday.

“See you there, I guess.” Nathan shrugged. He’d never ridden a motorcycle before, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to.

“Arms around me,” Izzy instructed cheerfully, sliding down the visor of her helmet. Nathan did so obediently before glancing back over his shoulder and excitedly waving to Miles.

And then instantly screeched when Izzy set off without warning. With his arms clamped around her waist, Nathan pressed his helmeted head against her back for protection. He was sure his scream could still be heard back at the house, even if they were already halfway down the road.

“People let you fly planes?” he managed to choke out as Izzy zigged and zagged her way through traffic. Izzy laughed and called something back to Nathan, but he couldn’t hear her over the whoosh of wind and roar of the engine.

Maybe closing his eyes would help. Nathan’s stomach lurched, the strawberries and cream from earlier completing an enthusiastic flip.

Yeah, no. Bad idea.

It was a lucky thing the Lumbard was close by. The moment Izzy skidded into the parking lot, Nathan scrambled to get off the bike, yanking the helmet off and bracing his hands on his knees as he bent over to compose himself.

“You all right there, honey?” Izzy asked, seemingly unable, or not wanting, to stop the amused smile on her lips, even if she did sound genuinely concerned.

“Yep,” Nathan just about managed, standing back up straight. “You probably get that a lot, huh?”

“No, not really.”

Nathan clamped his mouth shut with a firm nod and ran his fingers through his hair to fix any potential helmet hair the ride from hell had caused.

“Come on.” Izzy threw her arm around Nathan’s shoulder and led him into the bar. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

Turned out, Izzy’s partner was a bartender there and mixed cocktails so fluidly that Nathan was transfixed. Who knew there were so many tricks?

As someone who never actively drank cocktails, Nathan wasn’t prepared for a few things.

Firstly, how good they tasted. Which led to them being easy to drink. And secondly, how quickly you could get tipsy from them.

By the time Miles showed up with everyone else—except Jess and Luis, who had to save their kids from a minor disaster involving a water gun on their playdate—Nathan was on the verge of merry, locked in an intense conversation with Izzy that stemmed from her very special brand of shovel talk.

Which consisted of her saying she was glad to see that Miles was happy and that Nathan should keep up the good work. At some point, she winked at him and threw her arm around Nathan’s shoulder, and Nathan designated her as his favorite Mitchell. Or second favorite, as Miles had already reserved first place.

Nathan wasn’t aware of how tipsy he was until he launched himself into Miles’s arms and sloshed the contents of his glass onto both of them.

“Aw, man,” Nathan huffed, Miles’s hands coming to steady him.

“Rian was mixing your drinks, huh?” Miles asked with a chuckle, looking to Izzy, who shrugged with a shit-eating grin on her face.

“Not my fault he’s a lightweight!”

“Hey, I am not a lightweight,” Nathan protested, beaming all the while. “I’m just…not used to cocktails. This is Rian’s fault!”

“Guilty as charged,” Rian called from the other end of the bar as they set fire to the top of a drink—what was that? A Molotov cocktail? No, Nathan, that’s the name of a bomb. Whatever it was, it was flammable and looked delicious, and it earned a cheer from the group of people they were serving.

Nathan sighed, maybe a little more dramatically than needed. “I didn’t come with the intention of getting completely smashed. Promise.”

“I know.” Miles held Nathan snugly to his side. “Good thing you’re a really cute drunk.”

“I am a cute drunk, aren’t I?” Nathan might preen to himself for the next ten minutes.

A few more people came to join them over the next hour—partners and friends of the Mitchell siblings who couldn’t make the dinner —and before long, the bar had entirely filled up. Deeply engrossed in conversation with Jordie, Nathan had lost Miles a few minutes ago.

Maybe Jordie was his favorite, Nathan considered. Wait, should Nathan even be picking favorites?

Granted, he was probably annoying the hell out of Jordie by asking her questions about unsolved cases and giving his own bogus conspiracy theories on them— “But what if it was aliens, Jordie?” It was lucky that someone tapped him on the shoulder; Jordie might have been a few moments away from plunging a salted peanut into Nathan’s eye.

Turning around, expecting to see Miles, Nathan blinked in surprise at the redheaded guy standing behind him. It only took Nathan’s tipsy brain an impressive five seconds to register who it was.

“Andy!” Nathan exclaimed. “Shit, man. I haven’t seen you in so long. How’ve you been?”

“I’ve been good, yeah.” Andy nodded with a small smile, brows furrowed slightly as he glanced around the bar. “Lorcan isn’t here, is he? I didn’t see him around.”

Nathan had tried to arrange to meet up with Andy a couple of times, but nothing ever came of it. Nathan would hesitate to say he’d been ghosted because they’d been such good friends. Was this a result of the collective “Nathan&Lorcan are a set pair” mentality?

“Oh no.” Nathan frowned. “Lorcan’s in San Jose for the rest of the summer.”

The tension in Andy’s shoulders instantly relaxed. Clearly, Lorcan had blocked Andy on Instagram because every second day Lorcan posted something about where he is.

“That’s cool. San Jose is nice.”

San Jose was nice, but Andy hadn’t come to talk about how nice San Jose was. Considering how close they used to be, combined with the fact that Nathan hadn’t seen him since way before Scotland, this reunion had no right to be as stilted as it was. And tipsy-Nathan had a lot to say about that.

“So what have you been up to, huh?” Nathan asked cheerfully, securing the little paper umbrella he had tucked behind his ear. “You must’ve been busy, considering you stopped replying to any of my messages.”

Oof, that earned a wince from Andy.

“Okay, yeah, I deserved that,” he conceded with a deflated chuckle as he rubbed the back of his neck, a nervous trait Andy’d had for as long as Nathan had known him.

“Damn right,” Nathan said and took a sip from his Moscow… What did Rian call it? Moscow Moose? Moscow Mole? Mule! Moscow Mule.

“It was just weird, you know? After what happened, I didn’t want to step on any toes.”

“Stepping on what toes? You had some blowout with Lorcan, not me.” Nathan frowned, narrowing his gaze on Andy before muttering, “Not that I know anything about that” into his glass.

“You know it was about you, right? The argument.”

Sobriety washed over Nathan like a cold wave, and he fixed Andy with a sharp look. What did he mean by that? Why would the argument have been about Nathan? From what Nathan could remember, Andy and Lorcan had disappeared together on a night out. “Elaborate for me there, buddy.” Nathan hoped his tone conveyed the no-bullshit vibe he was going for. Andy didn’t look like he was happy to elaborate on anything.

“I really don’t want to make things awkward…”

“Don’t worry; that ship has long since sailed. Just tell me, Andy.” Nathan was getting a little pissed off now. After all, if the argument was about Nathan, why shouldn’t he know about it?

And just like that, as though he had a sixth sense that something was going wrong, Miles was by Nathan’s side, a gentle hand on his hip. The rush of relief was surprising but completely welcome.

“Hey,” Miles murmured, as gentle as he always was. “Everything okay here?”

Boom. Sixth sense.

“Yep. Yeah, everything’s okay here.” Nathan’s eyes remained locked on Andy, who was glancing between Miles and him, eyes drawn to the arm around Nathan’s waist. “Andy’s an old friend.”

“Oh. Hey, man,” Miles greeted with a little polite wave.

Stop being adorable, Nathan inwardly groused; he was supposed to be pissed off.

“Andy was just about to tell me about the argument he had with Lorcan about me,” Nathan continued, a smile on his face that was anything but friendly.

“Well, clearly it was bullshit anyway,” Andy suddenly burst out, gesturing between Miles and Nathan. Even though Nathan hadn’t introduced Miles as his boyfriend, there really was no mistaking it. “I kind of had a thing for you, and Lorcan got all uppity about it.”

“I’m sorry; run that by me again?”

Andy pulled a face, eyes flicking worryingly over to Miles. “Sorry about this… I didn’t get your name?”

“Miles,” he provided helpfully.

“Miles.” Andy nodded. “I’m not coming on to Nathan or anything. This was a while ago.”

Did Andy think Miles was going to punch him or something? Nathan didn’t think Miles had ever punched anything in his life. He’d taken an hour the other day to get a cockroach out of the loft because he didn’t want to freak it out. An hour.

“Don’t worry about it,” Miles assured him.

“So, yeah. I asked Lorcan if he thought you’d be interested, and he flipped out. And…” Andy trailed off as though he wasn’t sure if he should continue.

“Come on; don’t leave us in suspense,” Nathan urged, because Miles was in this now too.

“And I said some shit about Lorcan being too possessive of you and how he needed to let you have a life and stop relying on you so much. But hey! I must have gotten through to him. Here you are, with a boyfriend and no Lorcan!” Andy’s tone lightened at the end as though that excused him for potentially having been an asshole to Lorcan. Nathan knew Andy, and he knew he had a sharp tongue when he wanted to inflict some damage.

“First of all, you have nothing to do with my relationship right now. Which is amazing, by the way. Right, babe?”

“Right,” Miles confirmed with a nod.

“And second of all—” Wait, what was his second point? “You were into me? Crap, no. Not what I want to focus on.”

“You have your own life,” Miles offered politely.

“That’s it! I have my own life. Lorcan has not and will never dictate what that life is.” Nathan was getting hyped up now. Maybe the whole sobering up had been a mistake because it felt like Nathan was gearing up to jump into his own TED Talk about independence. “He’s my best friend. And yeah, he can be a self-righteous asshole but…I miss him.”

Nathan said the last part quietly, his shoulders slumping, losing steam on his inspirational epiphany quickly when he remembered just who they were talking about.

“Riiight,” Andy drawled with a slow nod. “Listen, I’m going to bounce. You guys have a nice night.”

Nathan wasn’t listening, his eyes out of focus on some spot on the wall behind Andy. Nathan missed Lorcan; that much was undoubtedly true. Even if he had no idea why Lorcan had gotten so defensive about Andy having a crush on him, even though Lorcan had made zero indication of wanting to continue a friendship with him—Nathan missed his best friend. Getting Miles out of all this wasn’t something he would ever regret. They clicked in a way Nathan hadn’t experienced with another person. Hell, Miles had even made Nathan into someone who was into PDA—that in itself was an incredible feat.

But losing Lorcan as a friend? Nathan didn’t see why it had to work out that way. His life had more than enough room for the two of them.

“Do you want to get out of here?” Miles asked quietly, leaning down so they were level and Nathan could hear him properly over the loud voices in the bar. And, with one nod, they politely said their good-byes and made their way out.

But before they could leave the bar, Jordie grasped Nathan by the arm and drew him close to her.

“Is the redhead a problem?” She’d asked in a way Nathan could only interpret as “just say the word and I’ll help get rid of the body,” and Nathan couldn’t help but smile.

Was that the Jordie seal of approval? Definitely the favorite.

“Nah, he’s good for now.”

Seeing as Miles’s apartment was closer, it made sense to go there. Then again, around half of Nathan’s nights were now spent at Miles’s apartment.

Once they got back, Nathan immediately kicked off his shoes and pants and climbed up to the bedroom, where he promptly wrapped himself in the comforter.

“You look like a burrito,” Miles commented, having followed up behind him. He smiled softly at the sight of Nathan’s head poking out of the blankets.

“I feel like one too,” Nathan retorted, then sighed. He was silent for a few moments before quietly speaking again. “I don’t want to go back to college without my best friend.”

Miles didn’t answer, not immediately. Instead, he kissed Nathan’s forehead first and quietly murmured, “I know.”

Damn. Forehead kisses were like magic.

“I’m going to make some tea. Would you like a cup?”

“Nah, I’m good,” Nathan managed through a long yawn. “Don’t be offended if I pass out in the meantime.”

Miles chuckled as he made his way back down the steps. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

True to his words, Nathan nodded off a few moments later, the soft hiss of the teapot and Miles’s gentle murmuring downstairs lulling him to sleep.