The Wingman by A. Poland

Epilogue

“Fuck,” Nathan gasped, one hand braced against the headboard of his bed and the other flat on Miles’s chest as their movements stilled. Nathan’s legs felt like Jell-O. Miles’s hands were clenched around Nathan’s hips, his eyes wide and loving, and Nathan was definitely swooning, damn it.

Nathan slumped down against him, breathing erratically and his entire body on fire—a nice kind of fire, more all-encompassing warmth and less agonizing pain. Miles’s arms came around him not long after, and he pressed a lazy kiss to the top of Nathan’s messed-up hair. Nathan had no intention of moving. There could be a record-breaking earthquake, and Nathan still wouldn’t move from Miles’s embrace.

Okay, maybe he was being dramatic. But the sentiment still stood.

“Love you,” Nathan mumbled against the crook of Miles’s neck. “You’re amazing and perfect and have a world-class dick.”

Miles snorted out a laugh that soon turned into an adorable giggle, eyes squeezed close.

“No, no, I’m serious. A-plus penis, eleven out of ten stars. Go you,” Nathan continued rambling, only encouraging Miles to titter more.

Miles’s endearing chortle came to an abrupt halt, jolting in place, when they heard a familiar thud against Nathan’s bedroom window.

“Stand down; we’re not under attack,” Nathan soothed, and Miles settled back in the bed, letting out a grunt of complaint when Nathan got off of him. He picked up a T-shirt from the floor and pulled it over his head. En route to the window, he plucked up a pair of discarded underwear and haphazardly yanked them on as well.

After lifting the blinds and cracking open the window, Nathan rolled his eyes at his best friend standing below.

“Anyone ever told you that you have terrible timing?” Nathan called down, his flushed cheeks and messy hair a clear testament to what he’d been getting up to.

“Sounded like you were done!” Lorcan called back up with a smug smile. “Y’know, just because your dad’s deaf doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t hear!”

For a moment, Nathan’s stomach lurched. Surely, they hadn’t been that loud. There was no way in hell the neighbors had heard them going at it. If that was the case, Nathan would have gotten an angry call from the Ferns long ago.

But then Nathan noticed Lorcan’s expression, his wide grin, and the mischievous sparkle in his eyes, a clear giveaway he was fucking with Nathan.

“You’re such a douche.” Nathan laughed, shaking his head. “Where’s the fire?”

“No fire, just bored as hell,” Lorcan said, arms swinging by his sides. “But if you and lover boy are finished, I’m thinking of hauling ass down to the beach for a barbecue? Mark the official end of summer.”

Nathan glanced over his shoulder to Miles, who’d propped himself up against the headboard, his tattooed arm resting above his head and legs sprawled, unashamedly naked. Nathan’s eyes might have glazed over a little, but that was his business.

“I’m up for it,” Miles informed Nathan with a roll of his shoulder.

It’d been weeks since Lorcan had come back from San Jose, since he’d firmly inserted himself back into Nathan’s life. It had been going as well as Nathan could have hoped, even this early on. Things were still stilted between Lorcan and Miles, but they were both putting in a notable effort around each other. Nathan didn’t expect that discomfort between them to disappear overnight. But he hoped a day would come when they could be friends again.

If something bothered Nathan, he told Lorcan outright rather than stewing and keeping it to himself. The biggest example was when Nathan finally confessed he couldn’t tell Sally and Emily apart. After Lorcan recovered from a downright insulting laughing fit, he let Nathan in on a little secret. Emily had a freckle over the center of her lip, and Sally didn’t. According to Lorcan, that was the only way he could tell the difference on sight without speaking to them first.

On the other hand, if something was weighing on Lorcan’s mind, he’d tell Nathan instead of bottling it until it became a way bigger problem. So far, it was about little concerns regarding Nathan’s relationship with Miles. Not out of envy, no. But rather, concern that he wasn’t getting as much time with Nathan. They were still getting into the swing of things, and Lorcan sometimes had difficulty remembering Nathan couldn’t drop everything just to hang out with him anymore.

Which was why Nathan appreciated days like this, when he could do something with the two of them.

“Yeah, we’re game!” Nathan called back down.

“Great!” Lorcan clapped his hands together. “Get Miles to call his sisters. See if I can get lucky.” He winked at Nathan teasingly, blowing a kiss in his direction.

“You got anything to say to that?” Nathan turned back to Miles, who looked like nothing in the world could bother him in that moment.

“They can handle Lorcan; I’m not worried.” Miles reached for his phone to send a text to the family group chat.

“Oh, I hope Olivia can come.” Nathan closed the window and crawled back onto the bed to lie beside Miles with a resounding flop. “I need to give her that recipe book back.”

Ben had more or less flipped when he found out that one of Miles’s sisters was a Michelin star chef (full-blown fangirling levels Nathan wished he’d recorded), and Nathan mentioned it to Olivia one day. The next time Nathan saw her, she handed over her prized recipe book for Ben.

Of course, Nathan never looked at it. Some things had changed, but he still couldn’t cook for shit.

*

“Hey, you sure about this?” Nathan asked quietly as they drove away from the main area of the beach. Lorcan was in the back seat, trying his best to keep the portable grill from falling on top of him and failing miserably.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Miles replied softly, reaching out to squeeze Nathan’s hand.

Nathan smiled and tried his hardest not to think into Miles’s inviting everyone to his secret beach spot as anything other than a nice gesture. Nathan found it gratifying that Miles was now comfortable enough to share that spot, his own private oasis, with people other than just Nathan. The first time Miles had brought Nathan there, Nathan hadn’t recognized how big of a deal it was. It was only when Nathan brought up the beach in passing, while meeting Jordie for coffee, that he realized no one else knew about Miles’s special place.

Nathan, if he pondered for too long, figured it might have something to do with Miles’s active attempt to acknowledge his own past and share it with others. The more Nathan talked about his mom or his childhood with Lorcan, the more comfortable Miles grew with talking about his own. Only small pieces of information here and there, not nearly enough to paint a clear picture, but Nathan was only a couple of pixelated images away from fully understanding.

Then again, he might be reading into it too much, and maybe Miles was just being an overall good guy, wanting them to have a fun time.

Like this first time going to the beach together. Miles helped Nathan down the rocky terrain, with Lorcan hot on his heels and jumping from rock to rock. Show-off.

“Hey, Miles,” Lorcan started, balancing precariously on a wobbly shard of stone that Nathan wouldn’t trust as far as he could throw it. Spoiler, not far, even if his core strength (not his balance, that was still a work in progress) had drastically improved since his sporadic yoga sessions with Miles. Admittedly, partaking was usually only an excuse to stare at how bendy his boyfriend was. “Are you into rock climbing?”

“Yeah.” Miles had one broad hand braced against Nathan’s back as they reached the bottom of the hill of death. “Haven’t gotten a chance to do it much, though.”

“I heard of this new place. You get to climb boulders; it sounds incredible. If you wanted to give it a go sometime?”

Nathan bit his tongue and clenched his hands to stop himself from whooping and fist bumping the air in triumph. Now this was progress.

“That’d be great,” came Miles’s enthusiastic reply—because, of course, he was into the idea of scaling a boulder—as he squeezed Nathan’s hand lightly.

“Nate can sit back and take photos.” Lorcan threw Nathan a cheeky look. “We don’t want a repeat of camping.”

The look Nathan shot him had the power to level a building.

“If I could get back up there, I would smack you so silly,” Nathan threatened, but everyone knew there was no venom behind his words. Hell, that awful camping trip had worked in Nathan’s favor in the end.

Lorcan’s booming laugh agreed with that sentiment as he hopped to another hazardously balanced rock.

By the time they finished setting up the cooler full of drinks, a blanket full of snacks, and the speaker, over which Miles had sole control, the others arrived. It was one of those rare occasions when all the Mitchell siblings and their partners were able to congregate in one place, other than the mandatory Sunday dinner at their parents’ house, which Nathan was now always welcome to. He was endlessly proud of that fact.

Not long after the music started playing and the drinks started flowing, they were midway through a very competitive game of frisbee—Nathan was convinced Jordie would end up injuring someone with her tackles—and a few more people had joined them.

Lorcan must have extended the invitation to more friends, some who Nathan hadn’t seen in ages.

Hell, even Andy showed up.

Nathan wasn’t sure who had reached out to who first, although he had a sneaking suspicion it was Lorcan and his new venture in being more independent and actual-confident rather than bullshit-confident. Nathan didn’t know how that conversation had gone down, but he was proud of Lorcan for making the effort.

And as the day bled into the night, not one moment went by that Nathan wasn’t smiling.

The night was beautiful, stars bright in the clear sky, the waves gently lapping at the shore. Music still played, and the group was evenly divided between those lounging and relaxing and those who were up and dancing.

Miles and Nathan lay on one of the blankets, Miles between Nathan’s legs and his back pressed against Nathan’s chest.

“Hey,” Nathan whispered into his ear. “You wanna step out for a minute?”

Miles glanced over his shoulder at Nathan, and Nathan wiggled his eyebrows to get his meaning across.

Nathan wasn’t sure what it was, but there was something about the way everything seemed to be falling into place that made him want to celebrate. Nathan was set to go back to college next week, Miles had just gotten signed on with an agent, and Lorcan had finally heard he’d been hired as a stadium assistant at SoFi Stadium, which was decidedly closer than San Jose.

So, yeah, sue him. Nathan was in a good mood. Surely there must be some dark corner they could sneak off to.

Sure enough, Miles stood up a moment later, yanked Nathan up by the hand, and they swiftly (and hopefully discreetly) made their exit.

“Only you could get me to do this.” Miles giggled in hushed tones, and Nathan grinned right back.

“Yeah, yeah, you just want a piece of this,” Nathan teased, lightly shoving Miles with his shoulder.

Miles’s hands came to rest on Nathan’s waist as they walked, and he leaned in close as he whispered, “Always,” in Nathan’s ear. Miles led the way, knowing the area like the back of his hand, and that apparently included the best corners to make out in.

“In here,” Miles told him, nodding toward a little dip at the side of the rocks. Not a cave, it wasn’t nearly deep enough, but a hollowing of the rock that would definitely hide them if any of the others happened to wander by.

But then, hearing a gasp, Nathan looked back to Miles to check if he’d hallucinated the noise or not. Based on the wide-eyed expression on Miles’s face, it definitely hadn’t been a figment of Nathan’s imagination.

Someone else had stolen the make-out corner.

“What are you doing?” Miles whispered as Nathan tiptoed closer.

Nathan pulled a face as though it should be obvious what he was doing. He was curious by nature, and if someone from the party had stolen the make-out corner, he wanted to know who they were. He tried to think if Jess and Luis had disappeared from the group, but he distinctly remembered seeing them dancing together—Luis once again putting those gyrating hips to work. And they had passed by Izzy and Rian cuddling on a blanket, so that removed them from the list of suspects.

Nathan leaned around the hollow, blinked, and then surged forward again to get a second look.

“What the fuck?” he exclaimed, squinting into the darkness at the figures nestled against the rocks. But there was no mistaking the two who jumped away from each other as though they’d been burned, even if they had been damn well close enough mere seconds ago.

“Miles, get a load of this!”

“Wait, no—” Lorcan stammered, hiding his face in his hands when Miles came to stand beside Nathan, his brows furrowed and eyes darting between the two.

Lorcan was shirtless, and Jordie still had her bathing suit top on, but one strap had fallen from her shoulder. Nathan didn’t think Jordie would let him live to see another day if he saw something he wasn’t supposed to.

“You guys owe us big-time,” Nathan managed between bouts of laughter, leaning against a shocked Miles.

Nervously silent, Lorcan peered at them between his fingers as though awaiting protective-brother-Miles to attack. Jordie just stood there with her arms crossed over her chest, her brow raised at Nathan.

Still guffawing, of course.

It was a few moments before Miles spoke, the silence otherwise filled by Nathan’s wheezing.

“Camping could have worked out so much better if you guys had figured this out sooner.”