Ross was just lining up his shot at the pool table when Travis said, “I think you and Tom are good together.”

Ross nearly scratched the table with his cue. “What?”

“We’ve been working on communication skills,” Lance said, only half joking.

Travis was infamous for not saying how he felt or what he was thinking. Since dating Lance, he’d been getting a lot better at it.

“You look surprised,” Preston said, taking his turn and sinking a ball neatly into the pocket.

Ross shrugged, trying to play it casual. “We just met, that’s all. We’re not really officially dating or anything.”

“You two spent the whole time flirting when we last saw you, and now you show up here together what, three weeks later?” Lance looked at Travis for confirmation, and Travis nodded.

“Are you just friends with benefits?” Preston asked.

“I guess you could say that,” Ross answered. “We haven’t really put a label on it. We like each other, we want to keep having sex, but we’re keeping it casual.”

“I think you should snatch that guy up while you can,” Preston said. “I’d have a go at him if I could.”

“You’d wreck him,” Ross replied.

“He wrecks everybody,” Lance pointed out.

“Yeah, I know, but…” Ross felt protective of Tom—he wouldn’t let Preston, with his temper and lack of consideration, get his hands on Tom, someone who so clearly needed reassurance, someone who had insecurities lurking just underneath the surface.

“Aww, is someone jealous?” Travis asked. “Worried you’ll get your boy taken away?”

“Tom wouldn’t have Preston even if he wasn’t with me,” Ross replied. “Not that he’s even officially with me. I’m just saying.”

“Uh-huh.” Travis shook his head. “Sounds like jealousy to me, Ross. I think you like him more than you want to admit.”

“You sound like Lance,” Ross replied. “Except Lance is nicer about it.”

“That’s why he keeps me around, so I can be not-nice about it.”

Ross rolled his eyes. “Look, we’re just seeing how it goes. No strings attached, no pressure.”

Travis, Lance, and Preston all looked at each other. “Is it because of your mom?” Lance said at last.

Ross missed the ball on his turn and glared at Lance. “No.”

Lance’s gaze was soft, but unyielding. “You were different leading up to that point, Ross. You know it. We all knew it. We hardly ever saw you. You’re a lot better now, but it was only six months ago. That stuff takes time to heal.”

“It’s not about my mom, okay?” It was, in a way, but only in that it was connected to Jeremy. That was what this was about—but he didn’t even know how to begin explaining that to Lance and the others. He hadn’t even talked to them about it when he was in the middle of it.

He didn’t know how to say, Hey, so the reason I wasn’t around and I was acting so weird was I was in a relationship that turned abusive, and also my mom was dying.

But if he did say that, it would turn into a whole thing, and everyone would want to hear about it, and they'd ask why he hadn’t talked to them—as if talking about something like that was easy, as if there was ever a good time to just bring it up in conversation—and it would be an awful mess.

And it would distract from what the real subject was. Jeremy was gone. Out of his life. Done. The subject now was Tom, and apparently, how good he and Tom were together, and that their friends wanted to see them be an official couple.

He knew that Lance and Travis wouldn’t have said anything otherwise. Preston would have, because Preston had anger management issues and liked to stir up trouble. But Travis liked to keep his opinions to himself, or at the least, had a hard time expressing them. And Lance wasn’t nosy the way that Davis could be.

If they were saying something, it was because they’d really noticed something good in the way that Tom and Ross interacted.

“We’re just … Tom’s busy, and says he doesn’t have time for a relationship,” Ross explained. “And you know me; I don’t really do the whole relationship thing.”

“And why don’t you?” Lance asked.

“They ask you to give up too much of yourself,” Ross replied. It was an off-the-cuff response, but he found as he said it that it was what he actually thought.

Lance frowned. “The right relationship shouldn’t do that. You shouldn’t have to give up some of yourself. You’re not a half becoming a whole, or a whole that has to become a half. You’re just you. And you get to share yourself with someone else, just the way you would with your friends.”

“If Tom’s worried about his work, then I don’t see why he’d ask you to give up anything,” Preston said in a moment of wisdom. “He can’t fairly ask anything of you that you couldn’t then ask of him. I think he’d be understanding of your independence.”

“He works for Adam,” Travis pointed out. “That means he’s a good guy. And he’ll probably have seen how Adam and Luke are. He’ll know what a relationship should be.”

Luke and Adam were the unofficial mascots for the rest of them as to what the perfect relationship looked like. Although it was best not to tell Luke and Adam that; they’d be hugely embarrassed and self-conscious.

“What I don’t get,” Preston said, “is why you’re even bothering to spend time with him if you’re so hesitant about the whole thing. Shit or get off the pot.”

“Wow, Preston, real eloquent,” Ross shot back.

“He’s got a point,” Lance said. “If you’re bothering to do this with Tom, then it means that you want to spend time with him. Why not just go all in?

“That doesn’t mean you have to really change anything. Just be honest and say you want a relationship. You don’t have to put any other labels on it, and you can go as slow or as fast as you want to, but dancing around it by saying it’s just casual and you’re not sure what it is, is just unfair to you and to Tom.”

Ross thought about that, passing his pool cue off to Travis, since clearly somebody else needed to play if Ross was going to keep getting distracted like this.

Did he want a proper relationship with Tom?

He couldn’t do that without telling Tom the whole story with Jeremy, though. Anybody who actually dated him now deserved to know the full story, and to be prepared.

Could he stand to tell that story?

It had been six months. Was that enough time?

“Earth to Ross,” Preston said, snapping his fingers.

“Sorry.”

Lance sighed. “Okay, obviously this is a big deal to you. I know I’m not meaning to push, and I don’t think Trav or Preston are either.

“But you two seem really comfortable together, and you’re definitely being flirty. You’ve given him a nickname, for crying out loud. I think you should think about giving this an actual shot, instead of just dancing around it because you’re scared for whatever reason.”

“Easier said than done,” Ross replied. “It took you how long to talk to Travis about how you felt?”

“Learn from my mistakes then,” Lance said, completely unfazed by the callout.

Ross sighed. “I’ll think about it, okay? That’s all I can promise.”

“That’s all we’re asking you to promise,” Lance said.

“You seem happy,” Travis said. “And you haven’t really seemed all that happy, not for the past year or so. Recently, it’s like … on a one to ten scale you were at a one, and you’ve worked your way up and now you’re up to a five, and then with Tom, you’re up to a nine. Just like that.

“We’re going to notice that, and we’re going to voice our support for it, because we hated seeing you at a one, and we saw how long it took for you to get back to a five, so you jumping all the way up to a nine is awesome for us to see.”

“Because we care, asshole,” Preston added.

“That was actually a pretty good metaphor,” Ross admitted. “I’m impressed, Travis.”

Travis gave a small, mocking bow. Ross settled against the wall next to Lance, since he sure as hell wasn’t going to try and take the pool cue from Travis now that he’d given it to him.

“Take your time,” Lance said quietly. “Mull it over. You don’t have to make a decision right away.”

Ross nodded. He knew that. But he wasn’t the kind of person who just stood around contemplating things. He was a surgeon who worked in emergency rooms. Standing around contemplating things was death in a situation like that. He was a man of action—although he hated calling himself that. It sounded like he should have a cheesy theme song or something.

The point was, he acted. He thought things through, but he thought them through quickly, without hesitating or wasting time. He made a decision and he acted on it.

Now, he had to make a decision about Tom.