“You need another drink?” I yelled from the kitchen. “Popcorn’s nearly done.”

“Nah,” Ev said from his spot on my navy blue sofa. “I’m good.”

I opened the refrigerator and heard the channel change in the living room. “I swear to God, if you’re putting on that stupid show again…” I yelled, but I didn’t finish the threat. I never did. Mostly because I liked arguing with Ev almost as much as I hated the shows he liked to watch.

“Uh, how about a little respect? This was the best-rated drama on television.”

“Like ten years ago!” I said, rescuing the popcorn from the microwave as it dinged.

“Making it a classic, old man.”

“Making it outdated, whippersnapper.” I dumped the popcorn in a bowl and sprinkled it liberally with salt then carried it out to the living room, where Ev was sprawled on two-thirds of the sofa under a blanket. I handed him the bowl and sat on what had become my spot, with my feet propped on the little coffee table in front of me. "Not that it was ever that accurate to begin with."

“That guy is cute.”

“That guy is at a crime scene without gloves,” I sighed. Ev elbowed me in the stomach. He hated when I interrupted his viewing with comments about realism.

Which was why I did it.

“Okay, but seriously though. It’s daytime on that show, right? They just walked through the sunshine to get inside? Explain to me why they’re in the dark, using flashlights.”

“Because that’s how real police work is done, Officer Sloane,” Ev said. “With dark-lights and fluorescent spray. Pay attention. Learn something.”

I pushed my lips together to hide my smile, but I couldn't quite do it, and when he saw me smile, he smiled too.

“And that’s why they never turn the lights on in the lab, either?”

“They’re concerned for the environment! Some people take this stuff seriously.” He pointedly looked at the doorway kitchen, where I’d left the light on.

I rolled my eyes. “The victim guy is trapped in a cave…”

“Underwater.” He shrugged. “I’ve seen this one before.”

“Right. And meanwhile, the cops find his girlfriend at work, tending bar? If you can’t call in sick because your boyfriend is trapped in a cave…”

“An underwater cave,” Ev supplied.

“Uh huh. If that’s not a good excuse to not smile at customers all night, what is?”

“Maybe she doesn’t like her boyfriend all that much,” Ev mused. “Maybe he’s an annoying person. Maybe he interrupts her when she’s trying to watch television.”

I grabbed the throw pillow from beside me and bopped Ev on the head. “If you were trapped in a cave, I’d be out looking for you. I think that’s, like, a baseline for boyfriend behavior.”

Ev went tense and I mentally rewound my comment to see what had set him off. Oh. The B-word. More perilous around here than dropping an f-bomb in front of Dragon Dorian back in the day.

Ev selected a piece of popcorn from the bowl and crunched it methodically, watching me like he was waiting for me to say something more, but I kept my mouth firmly shut. I’d learned, over the past three weeks of being not-just-friends with Everett Maior that it didn’t do to push him to define exactly what we were, or to come any closer to suggesting we were boyfriends than I’d already done. It didn’t do to ask him why the box of paint supplies was still sitting in my garage, untouched, or why he’d never stay the night. Otherwise, he’d…

“I should probably get going,” Ev said, throwing the blanket back like he’d heard all the things I hadn’t said. He set the popcorn bowl on the table and felt beneath it for his shoes.

“It’s still early,” I reminded him.

“But you wore me out before dinner.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “And I have school tomorrow and you have work.” He kneeled on the carpet so he could wedge more of his arm under the table. “Speaking of which, anything new?”

I shook my head. “Believe me, if I found anything on John Carpenter or Elliot, I’d have told you,” I said glumly. “You know, you really don’t have to go.”

Ev found one shoe, dug it out, and looked fixedly at the laces as he untied them. “I really do, though,” he said. “Remember, I have a grandfather who expects me home by a decent hour.” He rolled his eyes. “I swear he’s taught Daphne how to meow in a really guilt-inducing way, too.”

I said nothing. There wasn’t much to say. This had been our routine for the past three weeks — three weeks in which I’d learned every inch of Everett’s delectable skin and all the best possible ways to make him come with my mouth and hands, three weeks in which we’d christened my shower and couch and bed and kitchen table (and on one delightful occasion, the front seat of my truck), three weeks in which we’d talked around the idea of anal sex but I hadn't pushed the issue because I was too busy watching Everett systematically wall off any deeper connection between us, brick by careful brick.

I thought I finally understood why Jamie kept going back to Parker's bar, though. Why he kept slamming himself against a brick wall, and couldn't manage to stay away, even when he knew it was going to fuck him up relentlessly.

My phone dinged on the side table, and I reached over to grab it, then sighed as I read the display.

“Called out?” Ev asked, sliding his shoe on.

“No. My mom’s worried she’ll have to cancel the memorial hike for Matty’s anniversary next Sunday.”

Ev looked up from tying his shoe to blink at me. “Why don’t you sound happier? You haven’t exactly been looking forward to this.”

I leaned my head back against the sofa cushion. “Because she’s canceling it on account of people in town being afraid to go in the woods since Elliot and John are still missing.”

Ev winced. “That’s not your fault,” he said.

“I know it isn’t!” I said, exasperated. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel like there’s something else I should be doing. I’m sitting here with you and maybe I could be… I don’t know, out looking for someone.”

Ev stopped digging under the sofa for his second shoe and plopped next to me. “You’ve followed every lead, Silas. You’ve done everything you can.”

“And it’s not good enough.” I scrubbed my face with my hands. “Nothing is ever enough.”

“What does that mean?

I shook my head. “Nothing. I’m just… frustrated.”

“About the case?” He was cautious.

“About a lot of fucking things.” I was getting tired of caution. “I don’t get why she needs to have a memorial for Matty in the first place, but I sure as fuck don’t understand why it has to be on that particular day. Are we celebrating his life? Or celebrating his death?”

Ev sat quietly for a second. “I know it’s exhausting, but she’s trying. She reminds me a lot of my mother — constant wailing and hand-wringing. Just agreeing to make it a hike instead of some graveside thing was a concession…”

I pushed to my feet and stared down at him. “I’m sure it felt like a concession to her. It doesn’t feel like a concession to me. I want to be patient with her, but is it wrong to wish that she could learn to be just a little happier about what she has right now, rather than focusing on what she’s missing?”

Yeah, caution and I weren’t even in the same room right now.

I wanted my fucking boyfriend to say that he was my boyfriend. I wanted us to sleep together all night and wake up in the same bed. I wanted us to be together, so maybe I didn’t feel like he had one foot out the door all the time and was taking two steps away for every one we took forward.

I wanted to be the bakery treat. I didn’t want to be the potato.

I ran a hand through my hair and sighed. That was literally the stupidest thing I’d ever thought about myself, and I owed Reggie What’s-his-name a huge fucking apology for ever thinking it about him.

I fucking hated that I’d become an insecure, whiny fuck.

Maybe I should have foreseen it from the beginning, though. I’d known we weren’t in the same place. I’d just sort of imagined that we would start where we were and move forward together slowly. I hadn’t anticipated that we’d be detouring backwards first.

“Grief is like a security blanket sometimes,” Everett said, staring at his own hands. “It’s hard to throw it off all at once. Maybe give her time.”

I huffed out a breath and stretched my neck from side to side. “How long?” I asked.

We both knew I wasn’t talking about my mother.

“Is it so terrible?” he asked.

I tried to find the words to tell him without sounding like an idiot. I wasn’t sure I could. I rubbed the back of my neck.

“Sometimes. It’s really, really hard to compete with someone who’s dead, Everett. There’s no way to win. I’m always going to be second best.”

Second best to my parents, second best to Ev’s husband.

Ev peered up at me, stunned. “You… you really feel that, don’t you?” Ev said.

I shrugged. “I mostly try not to think about it at all.”

Ev frowned. “This is why you ignore your mother?”

“I don’t ignore her.”

“I mean, you don’t visit her either.”

I turned to glare at him. “How the fuck did this conversation become a debate on my treatment of my mother?”

Ev shook his head. “It’s not. It’s not. I just sometimes don’t understand how you and I look at the same facts and come up with two completely different interpretations.”

“Right, and mine are all wrong?” I was defensive and I couldn’t stop it.

“In this case?” Ev stood too and stepped forward until he was right in front of me, one shoe on and one shoe off. “You’re dead wrong, Silas.”

He grabbed my jaw in his smooth, cool hands and forced me to look at him.

“Silas Sloane, you are no one’s second choice. You’re a second chance.”

I wanted to believe it. God, I did. So, I closed my eyes and let him kiss me, let him tow me to the sofa and attempt to prove his words to me.

But when he drove out of my driveway a few hours later, I knew they weren’t true, even if I wanted them to be. I just wasn’t sure what I wanted to do about it.