Oooh. I like those lines.

Pausing with the chest press bar halfway up, Falcon Harper stared across the gym at the guy in the tight orange t-shirt. He had the most visually interesting workout routine of anyone here. They hadn’t yet talked, but they’d exchanged eye contact now and then.

Not that Falcon hoped it would lead to something more. At most, a fumble in the gym showers was all he hoped for. That thought drove him to action again, lifting the bar the rest of the way before letting the weight stack lower with a loud clank.

Who’d have thought that he still wouldn’t be dating, more than five years later—going on six… Wait. Seven now? God, time flew! All because of one shitty stupid ex.

He wasn’t opposed to dating, if the right guy came along. But nobody seemed to. At least, nobody who was interested for more than a night. Nobody who was willing to work for him.

That was probably close enough to sixty seconds rest. He started pushing up again, counting mentally.

His arms were shaking by the time he got to the showers. Sweat trickled down his back and made his t-shirt cling to his abs, but he was too worn out to even glance around the locker room for interest. He could hardly raise his arms to get his shirt off.

That made it a good workout. There was no growth without weakness. He’d learned that when he put the first twenty pounds of muscle on. He got a hell of a lot more attention now than he had when he first started going to the gym, and he didn’t want stupid big gains now. He’d look weird with biceps as big as his head.

Just maintaining what he had was fine by him, in every area of life. It was a treadmill, but unlike a real treadmill, life seemed to burn more than a carrot’s worth of calories in an hour.

His phone rang when he was in the shower, so he ignored it until he was dressed and out on the street again, walking for his car. He mumbled under his breath at how strange it felt even to pull something out of his pocket after arm day. How the hell was he gonna drive, anyway? With his knees?

Falcon looked at the screen: Mom. Oh, boy. He called back. “Hey, Mom. What’s up?”

“Darling, where are you? Did you get the email? So, autumn isn’t an ideal time, but we’ll have to work out…”

“Email? What email? Jesus, I just got out of the gym. Gimme a sec!” he laughed. “Or feel free to fill me in.”

“Oh, no. I couldn’t break the news! I mean, they should have mailed invitations, but…”

“Mom!”

“Your sister’s wedding!”

Falcon stopped with his key in the car door. “Huh?” His sister, Rosalina, and her fiancée had been engaged for a year now. Everyone had expected the wedding to be a few years in the future. “That’s… this autumn?”

“I called them, of course. It sounds like Jenny’s grandma is ill. And they want to get married before…”

“Oh, no.” Falcon frowned. The girls were hopelessly in love with each other, and so well-suited for each other, and both of their families seemed fully supportive. It actually made him a little jealous in a weird way.

Not least because Rosalina was out to them all, and… well. He wasn’t, technically. They all knew, but he’d never said it, because he’d never had reason to. Why bother if he didn’t have a boyfriend on his arm to introduce to them?

He cleared his throat. “So, uh, autumn. Right. Who’s going?”

“I got a copy of the guest list,” his mom went on, and he rolled his eyes. Of course she had. “School friends, your aunts and uncles, everyone important. It’s going to be a flowery gala.”

“Of course it is.” Rosalina had been born with the same aesthetic as him, just in a different way. Falcon’s artistic appreciation manifested in creation. Painting, however unstable the income, was his career and his passion. Rosalina’s aesthetic showed in consumption. Her fashion sense was an expensive habit. The wedding was doubtless going to be expensive. Luckily she and Jenny were a DINK couple.

Dual income, no kids, stable and traditional jobs. Caribbean all-inclusive vacations, a nice starter home, and cocktail parties with fancy business MBAs. He didn’t begrudge his sister a nice life, but sometimes… well. Sibling rivalry was a strong impulse to ignore.

“They can afford it, though,” his mother said, thinking along the same lines. “Without plans for kids.” She sighed. “And you? Any signs of grandbabies I should know about?”

“Mom,” Falcon groaned.

“Oh! Your friend, Spencer, will be there. I wonder if he’s brought a plus one yet? Such a late bloomer…” She was talking, but he wasn’t listening anymore.

She couldn’t have known what a shock to the system that was. Falcon may as well sat under a shower cranked to “polar expedition” for five minutes. Even hearing Spencer’s name made his spine freeze into a block of ice.

Late bloomer? Hardly.

Three years older than him, Spencer had been a friend of Rosalina’s from first year of college when he met then-sixteen-year-old Falcon.

Just when Falcon was realizing in a final, inescapable way that the men’s underwear in Rosalina’s mail-order catalogs were way hotter than the photos his friends downloaded on the wi-fi at McDonald’s. The school network blocked straight porn sites, but not sex ed, not that anyone had thought they needed it at that age. But anything gay? Hell, teen Q&A websites? Blocked with a vengeance. This was Tennessee, after all.

It hadn’t taken long before he fell hard for the older, sexy Spencer. And Spencer had used him as his secret boy toy for almost two years before ditching him the moment he brought up telling other people about them. Or even, God forbid, living together once Falcon moved out for college.

Dropped like a hot potato.

Seeing Spencer again, all these years later? He wasn’t sure he’d be able to stand it. It grated to think about Spencer’s constant smug self-satisfaction. He’d been convinced that his dick was the only one Falcon needed. He’d tried to talk Falcon out of the breakup by promising to come out to Falcon’s family at some unspecified time in the future, then segueing to persuading him that the sex was greater than it had really been.

“I guess we’ll need wedding gifts, right? She hinted that she wouldn’t mind something personal from you.”

“That’s… a painting, right?” He tried to sound normal, like he hadn’t just tuned out the last three minutes of his mother talking. “Of what?”

“Well,” his mother drew out the syllable. “You know she’s always loved meerkats…”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be cute,” he agreed. Rosalina and Jenny had something of a wild nature theme going on in their living room. A meerkat painting would be easy. He could do a series, too, while he was at the zoo. Animals were a very commercially viable painting subject. “I gotta drive now, Mom. I’ll call you back soon about the plans. Once I’ve read the email.”

He dropped his phone into the cup holder and stared across the parking lot at the front of the gym for a minute, trying to let the news sink in.

Spencer, of all people.

H1N1? Is that a thing? Can I get my appendix out that weekend? How do you induce appendicitis, anyway?

No, he wouldn’t let Spencer win. He’d show up being all happy and successful and show Spencer what he’d missed out on.

Yeah. That was the key. He ignored the voice itching in the back of his head, telling him that it would help if he was any of those things.

He was happy enough. A hell of a lot happier than Spencer had ever made him. And, hell, maybe he could find a nice guy, come out in a low-key way, and avoid the pressure of them setting him up with nice boys.

Falcon paused, his key in the ignition. What was wrong with his family setting him up with nice boys? Apparently he couldn’t find them on his own. The help might be appreciated.

But I don’t know if I deserve a nice boy. Fucking Spencer. His resolve hardened. I can do this.