He can’t even blame Neil. He wants to, it would be so easy to, but even if it was Neil’s fault that Andrew couldn’t stop thinking about it, Andrew had been the one to bring it up. Mostly by pulling a thick, ridged black dildo out of his drawer one day and saying, “I want to fuck you with this. Yes or no?”

“Have you considered the possibility that Neil has chosen you, but believes you have not chosen him?” Renee says. "Have you ever explicitly told him what you want?” “Neil knows what I want,” Andrew snaps. This is not Andrew’s fault. “How do you know?” Because Neil always knows. He is as fluent in Andrew’s micro-expressions as he is in German and French. He knows which head tilts mean “go on” and which ones mean “shut up.” Without ever asking, he learned what it meant to see Andrew wearing double layers of long sleeves, or taking multiple showers in a day, and learned to hand Andrew the car keys. That has always been the most terrifying thing about Neil — his patience to wait, watch, listen, learn. The prospect that if Neil were given enough time, there would be no part of Andrew that was just Andrew’s anymore. “He has to know,” Andrew says. “Does he?” Renee says. “Have you ever known Neil to assume that he is wanted?” Five times Neil tells someone that he and Andrew aren’t dating, and one time Andrew uses his words to set the record straight.

“Eat my ass,” Andrew says, shoving his middle finger in Neil’s general direction. He goes back to scooping cookie dough onto the baking sheet, but the sudden silence from his usually so argumentative boyfriend unnerves him enough to glance over his shoulder. Neil clears his throat. He’s bent low over his papers, but his eyes aren’t moving anymore and his ears have turned curiously red. “I would, if you wanted me to,” he mumbles, almost too quiet to hear.

In which anal sex is ruminated on, discussed, and joked about, but not actually had. Or, Andrew pokes and prods at his sexual boundaries a little at a time, as a treat.

“Can I help you pick something?” Andrew turned, ready to say no thank you and instead froze in place, the purple vibrator held chest height between him and the most beautiful boy he’d ever seen. The tag on his floral shirt read Good Vibrations and just underneath that, Neil. Neil stood there all open and relaxed, a gentle curve of pink lips, unruly auburn hair hovering over sparkling blue eyes. Andrew’s mouth snapped shut. He put the box carefully back on the shelf and walked out of the store without a word.

“Is there a reason you don’t like Neil?” Bee asks him then and Aaron doesn’t understand how the fuck they got onto this when she’s supposed to be fixing him and Andrew. “I don’t trust him,” he says eventually. “All he’s done since he’s got here is cause trouble.” “Well, a lot of that was out of Neil’s control,” Betsy reminds him evenly. “That doesn’t suddenly make him a good person.” “Watch him then.” Aaron startles so much at Andrew’s voice he twists in his chair to stare at him. Andrew hasn’t addressed him directly all day but he’s looking at Aaron now. “You think he’s using me or trying to fuck me over or whatever’s going on in your head- watch him. Watch us for the next week. Stop averting your gaze and pretending it doesn’t exist and then I might listen to what you have to say.”

Neil works three low paying, dead-end jobs and makes just enough money to afford a room to sleep in and to keep himself from starving. He has no prospects, no hope, no future. That all changes when a chance encounter results in a job offer that he can't ignore. The job? Pretending to be professional exy player Andrew Minyard's boyfriend.