The Wingman by A. Poland

Chapter Two

The moment Lorcan uttered the name, Miles, a dam had burst open. As though just saying this guy’s name unlocked a forbidden chest filled with things Lorcan hadn’t been able to say before.

But as Lorcan unloaded these once-restricted thoughts onto Nathan, all Nathan could think was Why didn’t Lorcan tell me sooner?

Sitting beside him was the very guy Nathan had been convinced he knew better than anyone else in the world. Someone he knew better than himself. And somehow, Lorcan had successfully hidden this great big personal discovery from him?

Sure, Nathan was fully aware he’d been away for a year. Of course he was bound to miss some things. But it wasn’t as though they hadn’t talked every day.

A bi awakening should have been the topic of one of those calls.

A simple “Hey, Nate, I’m into a guy!” would have cut it.

Well, maybe. It was very probable Nathan would have spiraled into an existential crisis anyway, worsened only by the fact that he was at the other side of the world and unable to do a damn thing about it.

Then again, he was here right now, and what could he do about it other than listen?

He wondered how he’d missed it. How he’d spent all these years assuming Lorcan was strictly into girls. It wasn’t as though he’d done anything to indicate otherwise, no lingering gaze at another guy’s ass or a passing remark about someone on the basketball team. And some of those basketball guys were pretty cute; Nathan would be, and had been, the first to say so.

Zero, zilch. Nothing.

If Nathan had known before, then maybe he could have planted some seeds about the two of them. Put some moves on Lorcan or something.

But that would have meant having moves to speak of, and Nathan was admittedly lacking in that department.

“Hold up a second,” Nathan quickly intercepted, holding a hand up to stop Lorcan from waxing on about how environmentally conscious this Miles was. It’s LA; almost every hipster was environmentally conscious. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“Oh.” Lorcan blinked as though the question had completely come out of the blue and telling Nathan hadn’t once occurred to him. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

He shrugged those broad shoulders (No, don’t get distracted, Nathan admonished himself) before continuing. “When we’d go out and you would introduce me to all those girls—it was great; it really was.”

There was a but coming. This was definitely a but sentence.

“But”—there it was—“it meant I didn’t think about other options. About other guys.”

Nathan narrowed his eyes, lips set in a thin line as he translated exactly what Lorcan meant by that—because there was no way Lorcan could be blaming Nathan’s matchmaking skills for him not realizing he was into guys sooner. Right?

But Nathan didn’t have the chance to feel offended before Lorcan continued.

“So, I went out by myself.”

Which, okay, Nathan hadn’t expected Lorcan to be a complete shut-in while he was away. But it was still strange to think about. Nathan and Lorcan were kind of a pair deal; one usually wasn’t seen out clubbing without the other. Both for good company and for Nathan’s ability to set him up with someone every time.

Which was apparently a problem. Okay, Nathan might still be annoyed about Lorcan’s implication that he was at fault.

“Then Miles came up to introduce himself. It was like a switch flipped and I knew.” A whimsical smile crossed over Lorcan’s face, not unlike the expression he made when Nathan put extra mini marshmallows in his hot cocoa. Completely smitten.

Except this time, it was with a guy and not mini marshmallows.

Nathan tried to not let this revelation hurt his ego. That apparently this one person had been enough to convince Lorcan he was also into men. It wasn’t as though Nathan had been there for the past twenty-one years, readily available.

Nathan grew quiet, clasping his hands together on his lap. He wasn’t sure how to feel, how to react. All he wanted to do was go inside, raid the freezer for ice cream, and eat his feelings.

That was meant to help with heartache, if movies could be believed.

But he couldn’t because this was a big moment for Lorcan, and Nathan wasn’t about to make it all about him. So, he plastered a supportive smile onto his face and turned to Lorcan, embodying every bit the bolstering best friend Nathan prided himself to be.

“I’m happy for you, Lor,” he told him, perhaps a bit too quietly to be sincere. Lorcan, luckily, was too caught up in the moment to notice the mute inflection behind his words.

“Now I just need to ask him out.”

Nathan shook his head as though removing the cobwebs that had gathered there. He must have misheard him.

“What do you mean? You haven’t asked him out yet?”

Nathan resisted the urge—but just barely—to hang his head in his hands in complete dismay. How had Lorcan survived without him for so long?

“Well, no.” Lorcan even had the audacity to sound bashful about it. It was easy to forget how shy Lorcan could be in the face of flirting. Drunkenly making friends in the bathroom on a night out? Sure, he could manage that like a pro. But other than that? He tended to follow Nathan’s lead. “You know how bad I am with this stuff.”

Which was fair. People tended to be interested in Lorcan from the get-go, which Nathan couldn’t exactly blame them for, considering the handsome, talented, and fun triple threat Lorcan had going for him. But it meant he never had to practice approaching people first.

On one memorable occasion during a freshman mixer, Nathan had encouraged him to start a conversation with a girl by himself. To this day, Nathan wasn’t sure what had gone wrong. Only that Lorcan had ended up with a face full of spiked punch and a wounded ego.

So Nathan nodded knowingly.

“Which is why I need your help.”

Nathan blinked blankly at his best friend.

“My help?” he parroted, not quite getting what Lorcan was suggesting. It wasn’t as though he could go up to this Miles guy and talk his ear off about Lorcan to encourage him to make the first move. They’d already met; they’d spoken. If Miles was interested, he’d make a move.

Hope stirred in Nathan’s chest.

If Miles was interested, why hadn’t he already made a move?

“Yeah, I need you to do your thing.” Lorcan nodded, looking at Nathan expectantly, as though that would make Nathan whip out a ready-made action plan on how to get into Miles’s pants.

“Dude, I do that so you can talk to them without doing the awkward introductions yourself.” Nathan spoke slowly, as though explaining how to draw a straight line to a child. “You’ve already covered that.”

“Well, then think of this as a part two,” Lorcan allowed with a huff, probably because Nathan was making very valid points. “I don’t know if he’s even into guys.”

Nathan frowned thoughtfully. Normally, it was easy to tell if someone was into Lorcan. Or at least to Nathan. He liked to think his dad’s perceptiveness had been inherited—to a lesser extent, of course, because Nathan was good, but he wasn’t that good—enough that he made a great wingman to other people, not just Lorcan. Hell, a few of the people in their friend group had asked for his help before.

It wasn’t as easy, sure. But Nathan had a pretty high success rate. A few of them in happy, long-term relationships to boot.

Maybe he should have business cards made.

Nathan Reed—will get you laid.

Nathan shook off that thought as quickly as it had come because that made him sound like a matchmaker, and he was decidedly not experienced enough to consider that as a career path.

“So you…what? Want me to meet him and suss out if he’s interested?” Nathan tried talking slowly, one brow apprehensively raised.

“Yeah!” Lorcan grinned. “Exactly. Work your magic.”

Nathan huffed out a laugh, rolling his eyes at Lorcan’s enthusiasm about Nathan’s apparent “magic.” It wasn’t magic; it was just knowing how to talk to people. Specifically, talking to people about Lorcan. Who, in Nathan’s opinion, was the easiest thing in the world to talk about.

Sometimes, on very good nights, Nathan didn’t have to do as much. Sometimes, the woman would know exactly why he was approaching and just cut to the chase. He always appreciated those; they made his life a lot easier.

“Okay, I’ll do you this one favor.” Nathan sighed, clearly teasing. There were no favors between them. No one kept tabs over who owed the other what. “Now drive me somewhere to get food. I’m starving.”

Lorcan laughed, his mood clearly elevated from earlier. Even that was enough to settle Nathan a bit more. Sure, his brain might still be working overtime on limited sleep, but Lorcan’s coming-out experience had been painless for him, and that was something at least.

“Your wish is my command,” he quipped back, starting up the car and taking them to their usual haunt.

There was nothing better than getting food with Lorcan.

Lorcan was a picky eater, while Nathan happily consumed anything deemed edible. Which meant Nathan tended to get extra of whatever Lorcan didn’t like, and no food was wasted.

Win-win all around.

But this time, the experience was different.

Nathan hadn’t been worried about any uncomfortable silences or lapses in conversation after being away for so long, and he’d been right not to.

But he never thought to be worried about Lorcan never shutting up.

Which, under normal circumstances, would have been fine. But these weren’t normal circumstances.

Lorcan wouldn’t stop talking about Miles.

In the last half an hour, Nathan learned more about the guy than he ever wished to. His gut twisted with each and every new fun fact presented to him, his shoulders drawn tighter and smile more strained.

So far, Nathan learned the following:

Miles was a musician.

A lot of people were musicians, especially in LA; it wasn’t a big deal. In fact, Nathan had taken piano lessons for an entire week and could still successfully play “Twinkle Twinkle.”

Miles was a graduate from Juilliard.

Nathan might have asked Lorcan to repeat himself because there was no way he’d said Juilliard.

But he had. And that was fine. Juilliard was a college just like any other. Saint Andrews was nothing to scoff at either.

Miles was adopted.

It made sense. Probably adopted into a wealthy family with plenty of connections, considering the Juilliard thing (fucking Juilliard).

Miles’s eyes were this unusual gray color.

Lorcan spent a great deal of time talking about the color of Miles’s eyes. (There were only so many ways to describe stormy gray with flecks of brown, Nathan groused, please move on.) Anyway, Nathan had been told that he had unique eyes. Granted, they’d been compared to a swamp before. But still. Swamps had a bad rap—they had frogs.

But no, Lorcan clearly had a thing for smoke-colored eyes now, not gunky-green.

Miles was hugely involved in environmental activism.

Nathan recycled.

But what Lorcan seemed to be most enthused by was Miles’s interest in hiking and camping.

Nathan couldn’t come up with a rebuttal for that because camping was the one interest of Lorcan’s that Nathan couldn’t bring himself to be enthused by—and not for a lack of trying.

Lorcan had always been more interested in the outdoors than Nathan.

When they were younger, it had been a common sight to see Nathan stuck up a tree after being coaxed by Lorcan to climb it. It happened so often that Ben propped a ladder up against the side of the garden shed, ready to go.

Even then, Nathan had been terrible at saying no to Lorcan.

Lorcan’s interest in climbing trees naturally progressed to climbing mountains.

When they both started college, Lorcan had immediately flocked to the hiking club. But once he’d gotten more confident with the equipment and his map reading, he’d often just drive out somewhere and blaze the trail himself.

To Nathan, it sounded like a very personalized form of hell.

To Lorcan, it was his own piece of heaven.

Nathan shoved a fry into his mouth with a little more force than necessary. Miles already had one up on him with the hiking. Nathan had actively chosen to ignore all of the other impressive things he’d just learned about him—something the two of them could do together and bond over.

They could have tent sex, the sheer thought of which terrified Nathan to his core. Tent sex was just one flimsy plastic layer away from wilderness sex.

“Hey, Nate, you listening?” Lorcan abruptly stopped talking about how white Miles’s teeth were, waving a hand in front of Nathan’s dazed face as he thought about all of the things that could and likely would happen during wilderness sex.

“Huh? Yeah, I’m listening.” Nathan quickly recovered, taking a sip of water to buy himself a moment. “He sounds great. A real keeper.”

Unfortunately.

“Would you be up for it if we went out tomorrow night?” Lorcan ventured hopefully. “I know you’re tired, but Miles is playing a gig nearby. I thought we could stop by for an hour or something…”

Stop by so that Nathan could work his magic.

“I should be human enough by then,” Nathan assured him, reaching out for a straw because he needed something to gnaw between his teeth or he was going to start grinding them.

“You shouldn’t use those,” Lorcan quickly corrected him with a disapproving look. “Bad for the environment.”

Nathan moved his hand back from the container of straws as he fixed Lorcan with a stare. Never once had Lorcan expressed interest in the environment beyond having a recycling bin at home. And while Nathan was all for congratulating self-improvement, the source of this development was enough for him to resent it.

He’d just grind his teeth then. It was fine.

Lorcan dropped Nathan home not long after, once he’d noticed Nathan’s eyelids shouldn’t be drooping like that and he was at high risk of drooling in public. Really, it was a miracle Nathan actually made it upstairs to collapse face-first on his bed.

It would be a lie if he said that he didn’t consider taking a brief catnap on the stairs, but he somehow managed to power through.

Seconds away from falling asleep, stale clothes and unbrushed teeth be damned, Nathan rolled over onto his back and cracked his eyelids open upon hearing a soft knock against his bedroom door.

Did you have a good time with Lorcan? Ben asked, the bed dipping slightly as he perched on the edge.

Yeah, it was fun. Nathan’s motions were lackluster and floppy at best, but he was sure Ben would just about make them out. He hoped his dad would write it off as jet lag. Ben took a long look at his son, pursing his lips thoughtfully in a way Nathan was too exhausted to read.

Get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning. He patted Nathan lightly on the shoulder before pushing himself up from the bed and switching off the light.

Nathan was asleep before the door fully closed.

It took twelve hours of broken sleep for Nathan to feel physically capable of getting up for a shower. The warm stream of water worked wonders, and when he emerged smelling like warm coconut instead of a weird mix of airplane air and stress, all he could focus on was how hungry he was.

Ben was already ahead of him, downstairs cooking up a feast that Nathan almost wept in joy at seeing.

To some, that reaction might have been a little dramatic. But they’d clearly never sampled Ben’s cooking before. Nathan’s eagerness to try most food definitely stemmed from his father’s ability to make just about anything taste good.

When Nathan was in college—UCLA, the same state, this time—care packages including cookies had been frequent. But he didn’t have to worry about that right now. Nathan had a solid four months to catch up on his dad’s cooking before he had to focus on his final year—and eventually worry about that inevitable time without Lorcan by his side, considering Nathan was now a year behind him what with his time in Scotland expanding the length of his degree.

Time that would also be consumed by playing Cupid between Lorcan and some guy.

Once Nathan’s lucid thoughts came back online, that was the first thing to register with him. The knowledge settled in his chest like a blossoming infection. He’d done this many times before, but this time it’s different. It was with a guy, and that meant it was closer to Nathan.

He was comforted that he knew next to nothing about Miles’s sexuality. All was not lost just yet. He’d just need to tell Lorcan he got negative gay-vibes from Miles, and then Lorcan could set his sights on some other guy.

One who was more Nathan-shaped.

He could do this. It’d be fine.

After a brief nap in the afternoon, Nathan figured he should probably start getting ready for the night ahead. Lorcan hadn’t mentioned where Miles’s gig was, but it was a safe bet it wasn’t going to be a super swanky place, considering they’d met for the first time in one of the more regular bars notorious for their two-for-one drink offers.

Nathan picked out fitted blue jeans and a gray T-shirt, a standard getup for Nathan, who dressed more for function over fashion. His tattered sneakers could definitely attest to that.

With an encouraging nod to his reflection in the mirror, fixing one wayward strand of blond hair, Nathan determined he looked pretty good before grabbing a jacket and meeting Lorcan right outside.

“You could at least pretend to be a bit less eager,” Nathan called by way of greeting as he shrugged on his denim jacket—which had once been his mom’s in college and, therefore, was a little misshapen from time—and desperately tried not to stare at Lorcan.

Which was hard to do when the guy was wearing a shirt that tight.

Lorcan was a simple guy when it came to his style as well, all block-colored clothes, mainly jeans, shorts, and T-shirts. But, shit, that man could pull off a suit if the occasion arose.

Nathan had gone to a wedding with him once. It was for some distant cousin of Lorcan’s who Nathan had had a couple of shots with. And that night, he’d had the most mind-blowing jerk-off session of his life after being subjected to Lorcan in a suit for the whole day.

No suit today, but Nathan was still having difficulty looking away despite that. Luckily, Nathan had had years of practice playing down how affected by Lorcan he actually was.

“What isn’t there to be eager about?” Lorcan replied, arms splayed as wide as the grin on his face. “The sun is shining, my favorite person is back home, and we’re going to have a great night. You should be just as eager as I am.”

Okay, well when he put it that way.

“So where’s Mr. Perfect playing tonight?” Nathan asked as he buckled himself into Lorcan’s car, making a conscious effort to keep his tone light.

“Neon,” Lorcan responded casually, but he seemed to be pointedly keeping his eyes away from Nathan, using the excuse of looking out the back window as he safely reversed out of the driveway.

“Neon?” Nathan repeated, dismayed. “That’s over an hour away!”

“Exactly why we’re leaving early.” Lorcan smiled, taking off before Nathan could object any further.

Neon was a well-known bar with live performances throughout the week. They only went if they happened to be passing by, considering how far out it was. And even then, it would have to have been for a very good act.

There were plenty of decent bars closer by than Neon.

Nathan knew that wasn’t why they were trekking out to Neon, but he was allowed to be annoyed about it. He gave himself permission for that at the very least.

He didn’t kick up much of a fuss after that because telling Lorcan “no” wasn’t something Nathan did. There were only a handful of times he’d ever said no to Lorcan, and no matter how respectfully Lorcan might have taken the refusal, it still destroyed Nathan every time.

Lorcan had killer puppy dog eyes. Nathan’s guilt was completely justified.

By the time they reached Neon and trudged through the hell of finding parking, the bar was bustling with activity, with bouncers at the door grumpily checking IDs.

It was a new thing for both of them, to not have to worry about sneaking into venues similar to this. Lorcan rarely had a problem, but Nathan was often stopped to be checked. Even in Scotland, where the legal drinking age was eighteen, bouncers doubted the validity of his ID.

Cursed with a baby face, Nathan liked to think he’d be the one benefitting from it when he was in his fifties. Unless he aged terribly and that youthful appearance suddenly collapsed in on itself. That sounded more like Nathan’s luck.

Nathan presented his ID—completely legal, this time—with a self-satisfied flourish that the bouncer definitely didn’t care one bit about. Miraculously, Nathan was waved in with only a few seconds’ delay. He was about to crack a joke about maturing during his time away, but Lorcan was already looking eagerly around the dimly lit space for a familiar face, so Nathan held on to the quip.

“He might be backstage setting up,” Nathan appeased, placing his hand lightly on Lorcan’s forearm. “C’mon, you owe me a drink for hauling me out here.”

A few minutes later, armed with a bottle of ice-cold craft beer for Nathan and a soda for Lorcan, they leaned up against the bar—always the best vantage point for people watching. Nathan had already spotted a few people he would have pointed out to Lorcan if it was one of those nights—when they had every intention of going home with someone.

Well, mainly Lorcan.

Nathan wasn’t the greatest salesperson for himself unless he happened upon a guy who was either:

a) not fussy, or

b) into Nathan’s whole talks-too-much-and-too-fast vibe

Lorcan only had eyes for one person tonight, so Nathan stopped scanning the crowd and instead tried to distract his best friend. He might have started vibrating out of his skin if he didn’t settle.

Before long, multicolored lights erupted on the stage, and someone with a guitar walked out.

“That’s him,” Lorcan said, leaning over to inform Nathan, wide eyes glued to the stage.

And, really, Nathan could understand why—because holy shit.