I woke up earlier than normal, thanks to a particularly vivid sex dream I’d been having—I wasn’t even going to question why Laurie had starred in it. I mean, that was fairly obvious at this point. Apparently, my cock wasn’t quite as straight as my brain thought we were. At least, not when it came to Laurie anyway.

That blow job last night was probably the hottest thing that had ever happened to me, second only to that amazing kiss we’d shared on the patio right before. So why then, had I run off both times as though nothing had happened? I hadn’t even acted this juvenile when I was teenager.

I absently scratched the hair on my chest as I stared up at the ceiling and wondered how the hell I would broach the subject with Laurie. There’s no way he’d missed me freaking out last night. But, how would I even begin to put into words that I hadn’t freaked out for the reason he thought I had?

Strangely enough, the fact that I’d been intimate with another guy wasn’t what was bothering me—the thing that bothered me was that it was Laurie, my only true friend. I mean, what if we fooled around and fucked things up? I couldn’t handle losing my best friend again, the decade he’d been away had been ridiculously hard, and I had no desire to lose my friend ever again.

I turned to look at him, smiling at how peaceful he looked as he slept. Had I ever even told him how much I’d missed him while he’d been away, how deep the hole had been that he’d left in my life? No, there was no way I could live through that again. Besides that, I couldn’t risk hurting the kids.

Stretching out my hand, I brushed the back of my fingers across Laurie’s cheek. I jerked my hand back when his eyes slowly opened. He regarded me silently, those blue eyes seeming to see right through me. He opened his mouth as though to speak, when suddenly his cell phone began to ring on the nightstand beside him.

Laurie flashed me a wink. “Saved by the bell, cutie… at least for the moment. Don’t think we won’t be discussing this later though.” He was still grinning as he flipped over to grab his phone, answering it with a cheerful greeting. “Hello, you’ve got Laurie.”

His expression changed completely as he sat up and tears began streaming down his face as he nodded against the phone as though the person on the other end could hear his body movement.

I held out my hand for the phone, and Laurie passed it over without hesitation. “It’s… it’s Tanya. We have to go home—now.”

While I put the phone to my ear, I watched in consternation as Laurie jumped out of bed and began rushing around the room and dumping things into our suitcases after pulling out outfits for the two of us.

“Tanya? This is Dean—what the hell did you tell Laurie to get him so freaked out?”

I gasped in shock when my cousin told me her reason for calling and interrupting our honeymoon—Laurie’s beloved grandpa had passed away last night. My cousin had found him when she’d gone to take him his daily medicine.

“Tanya, honey. Calm down, hon. I know this is hard. Is anybody there with you right now?”

“Just Chuck, but I sent his creepy ass out to feed the animals. He doesn’t belong inside the house anyway—I don’t know why he tried to slip in while the emergency crew was here, except to be nosy.”

“You’re absolutely right, honey. Listen—you go on upstairs and get yourself cleaned up. Laurie and I will be there within the hour. In the meantime, I’ll give my brothers a call and get one of them over there to keep you company.”

I hung up the phone, and sent a quick text to my brothers before I jumped out of bed. I walked over to where Laurie was fighting to get his suitcase closed, and pulled him away from it. He fought me briefly as I pulled him into my arms for a hug—until finally, he relaxed and let me embrace him.

“I can’t believe that Gramps is gone, and while he was home dying alone in his bed—I was here acting like an idiot. And this is totally not the time for this conversation, but I need to tell you that I’m sorry that I made you feel weird last night.”

“Hush, the only idiot in this room is me. And for the record, you didn’t make me feel weird—I did that on my own. As for your Gramps, as far he knew, you were off on your honeymoon and he was happy about it. If you’d been home, you would’ve found out the same way you did here—by Tanya waking you with the news. Now come on, let me help you get everything packed so we can hit the road.”

Laurie sniffed, and nodded his head as he turned back to the suitcase while I ducked into the bathroom to take a quick piss and jump into my clothes. By the time I came back out, Laurie was also dressed and had his suitcase waiting by the door.

I lifted a brow at him having hefted the luggage in his condition, but wisely kept my mouth shut as I tucked my dirty pajamas into my suitcase and closed the latches.

While Laurie made one more quick sweep around the room and went to check us out, I carried our suitcases outside to the car. I pulled up in front of the spa to pick him up, right as Laurie came rushing out. He jumped in the car and immediately buckled up while I put the car back into gear and pulled out of the driveway.

“That was perfect timing,” Laurie said a few minutes later. “We couldn’t have planned that kind of precision if we tried. Gawd, I ran into the Dirk in the lobby. Kirk was in tears that we were cutting things short. I’m supposed to text them the funeral information, like we haven’t seen enough of them for one week, right?”

We made small talk for a few minutes, but things were still awkward and a little tense between us. I took a deep breath, and addressed the elephant in the room—or car, as it were.

“Listen, can I say something?”

“Wait—let me go first,” Laurie said quickly as he spoke in a rush. “I’m so sorry that I took advantage of you last night.”

“Are you being serious right now?” I said in surprise. “You can’t take advantage of a willing party, Laurie—and I wasn’t drunk enough last night that I was unaware of what we were doing. Emphasis on the we—not you, we,” I said firmly. “We were both in that bed last night and equally involved.”

I worked my jaw from side to side as I tried to decide how to phrase what I wanted to say. I glanced over to see Laurie staring out his window, with his hands clasped in a white knuckled grip in his lap.

“Laurie?” I said softly. “I’m not ashamed about what happened last night. To tell the truth, I feel like shit because of the way I treated you—as if it were some sort of business transaction or something. I mean, I just got up and fucking left the room without so much as a thank you. I might as well have tossed some cash on the dresser while I was at it, you know? You don’t deserve to be treated like that by anybody—but especially not by your best friend and fake husband.”

When he giggled at me referring to myself as his fake husband, the atmosphere in the car lightened up a little bit and I continued my thought.

“See, the thing is that I don’t want you to feel like you’re my guinea pig in my exciting new journey of sexual exploration. I’ve never in my life thought that I was attracted to guys, and suddenly I’m finding myself attracted to you. I don’t know if it’s because of who you are, despite your parts—or if maybe your parts don’t matter as much as I always thought they did. And I’ve been pretty confused about it, you know? I’m sorrier than hell about the whole thing, and for putting you through it.”

Laurie was silently staring at me, his brows raised in shock. Instead of waiting for him to respond, I started babbling some more.

“Oh, shit. And now I realize that I’m protesting like there’s something wrong with being gay and that’s not what I mean at all. I’m just confused, okay? I mean, this is all so fucking new for me. All of a sudden I’m having all these fucking urges, you know?”

“Urges, huh?” Laurie licked his lips and waggled his eyebrows up and down. “Now that’s something I can get behind. Let’s talk about these urges of yours, Dean. I’m pretty sure you weren’t seeing anything to satisfy them on that porn you were watching last night. At least, not if you’ve been fantasizing about me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Laurie, I’m trying to be serious, so quit giving me shit and listen for a second, okay? I mean, what the fuck, right? I can see myself liking you, but I’ve never been gay. Trust me, I’ve had way too much fun with boobs in my lifetime to be gay. But then... I also have this attraction to you and I’m not sure how to deal with that—so, yeah… Not gay. But also maybe a little gay because I’m definitely having gay thoughts. Can you help me out with this? Because I’m at a loss.”

Laurie looked at me seriously. “You know, despite your mother’s hatred of you wearing pink, liking that color didn’t mean that you were gay. But, even if you were—what’s wrong with being gay? Most alphas and omegas don’t even care one way or the other about gender. Why do you?”

Heaving a sigh, I shrugged noncommittally. “I don’t know, maybe it does have something to do with my mom? Who knows. It’s just… I mean… Fuck, Laurie. You know I like women!”

“All right, but you do realize that there’s a little thing called bisexuality, right? I mean, you’re allowed to like both, you know.” Laurie spoke quite seriously, when I didn’t answer he turned up the radio and began to sing along to Gaga. Every once in a while he flashed me a grin as he sang some shit about being born that way.

I was laughing at his antics by the end of the song, and shook my head. “Okay, you’ve made your point. So, maybe I’m bi then. Huh, just when you think you know yourself, right?”

Laurie giggled and playfully ran his fingers down the length of my arm. “This is so sweet, I’m the first person you’ve officially come out to.”

Our car swerved out of the lane as I gulped and lost control for a second. Luckily no other cars were nearby, and I was quickly able to regain control of the vehicle.

“I mean… I guess?” I paused for a long moment, as I tried to work that phrase around in my head before I spoke hesitantly. “I’m bisexual.”

Laurie and I shared a private smile before I said it again, this time a little more firmly. “I’m bisexual.”

“Hi, bisexual. I’m Laurie,” the little asshole teased.

I felt my face flush as I fought back a grin. “Shut up with the dad jokes, Laurence. Just because you have three kids and one on the way doesn’t mean that you have to be such a dad.”

When Laurie quit giggling, I decided to tease him a little more as I spoke in a fake English accent. “Okay, so as a newly minted bisexual, am I now only allowed to imbibe with frilly drinks containing umbrellas, or am I still allowed to have a pint with the guys?”

“You’re such an adorable baby-gay,” Laurie teased.

“I thought we’ve been over this,” I joked. “I’m not gay. Didn’t we just agree that I’m bisexual? Don’t give me a label if you’re only gonna turn around ten minutes later and rip it away, dude.”

“Okay, okay—fair enough. We’ll go with baby-queer then.” Laurie tapped his chin thoughtfully. “You know, you’ve really got a lot to learn if you think that you can’t enjoy a beer now that you’re admittedly bisexual.”

“Forget the beer, I was joking anyway. But can we go back to that baby-queer thing? Can we just, I don’t know, stick with me liking you and being open to the fact that you have a dick without needing to put other labels on me?”

Laurie looked at me seriously for a moment, his eyebrows drawn together in concentration. “Dean, if you can’t even apply the words gay or queer to yourself without being embarrassed, do you think you’ll honestly be able to have sex with me at some point? Because, that’s pretty gay, you know. Having sex with another dude? Totally gay—just sayin’.”

“Fair enough, I’ll work on that,” I said quietly. If I’d had any doubts about this whole conversation regarding my possible bisexuality, they would have been erased the moment my cock jumped in my pants at the mention of us having sex at some point.

“Hey, Dean?” Laurie said quietly a few minutes later.

“What’s up, you want to tease me some more?”

He shook his head, then turned to stare out his window at the passing scenery. “Thanks for helping distract me from thinking about Gramps. I know this was a big conversation that you needed to have, but it was also good for me to just… not think about what I’m going home to, you know?”

I reached over and closed my hand over his where it rested on his leg. “What we’re going home to, Laurie. Don’t forget, I loved that grumpy old goat too.”

Laurie didn’t say anything else, but instead quietly turned his hand over under mine and held my hand the rest of the way home.