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“No, please. What else does Parker like? And not like? It’s good that you know the things he doesn’t like too.”
“Are you for real right now?”
“Oh, Park, you’re amazing.”
“He helped us! What did you want me to say?”
“This is my amazing and ultra-sexually-endowed boyfriend who puts up with all my bullshit like the time I played Speed Racer with a mom in a crossover!”
“She was going sixty fucking miles an hour, Shaw, and every time I tried to pass her, she sped up! What the fuck did you want me to do? She’s lucky I didn’t run her off the fucking road!”
“He didn’t even know we were a couple!”
“Who the fuck cares what he thinks? I’m in love with you!” The shout echoed inside the sedan. North moved around in his seat, restless, his face twisting. Then he slapped the dash. Hard.
The sound made Shaw startle. His face was tingling, and he buzzed down the window. The air had the kind of dense, low-boil heat that was August in the Midwest, and it smelled like loam and sumac and a hint of their exhaust.
“I realize it’s kind of a mixed message when I say it like that,” North said in a low voice.
Shaw nodded. The hot, humid air did nothing to help with the tears in his eyes.
“Come on,” North said. “I haven’t seen him in how many years, and then boom, there he is, while we’re in the middle of searching his boss’s office.”
Shaw ran his arm over his eyes. “Was it serious?”
“Shaw.”
“I can ask.”
“Did you know me in college?”
In spite of everything, that made Shaw smile.
“Ok, I wasn’t that bad,” North grumbled.
“We had to keep a line. Ok, sir, go on in. It’s your turn.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“You were the pre-fuckboy fuckboy.”
“Yeah, I broke a lot of barriers.”
“I seem to remember you telling Percy you were ‘up to your dick in Chouteau boys’ at one point. Then you said, ‘I mean standing up, like, height-wise, not balls deep.’”
North laughed, and the sound was both startled and genuine. “So, I was a colossal asshole. Not a lot has changed.”
Shaw glanced at him. North looked back. He was very fair, and when he blushed, the color rode high and clear in his cheeks.
“You weren’t an asshole,” Shaw said. “Well, maybe sometimes. Like when you threw out my sociology experiment.”
“Porn.”
“And my biology experiment.”
“Also porn.”
“And my literary masterpiece.”
