Page 100 of Hiding From Laughter

“You…you’d like the steak place…it’sfancy…Conner was fancy…I love you, Micha.”

I’d been wrong…he hadn’t even lasted aminute.

“I love you too, baby.” I loved everythingabout him. Every fantasy. Every fear he’d tried to hide. Every ramblingexplanation. Every declaration that he didn’t have to talk because it was inhis contract. “Crazy logic and all.”

Because that was the best kind…it was inhis contract too.

Epilogue

Ashton

“No.” His logic was so overly linear andquestionable it made me wonder what else he was confused about. “Then everytime someone went to the doctor for…stuff…it’d be cheating.”

Naked penises being examined was notanywhere near the cheating definition.

“That’s not the same thing.” Micha rolledhis eyes as we continued to have the whispered discussion as we walked throughthe zoo.

He’d tried to convince me that we needed tohave it at home but I wasn’t going to admit he’d been right. He hadn’t been. Hejust wasn’t completely wrong because we had to keep whispering. Doing it as wewalked around was a wonderful distraction, though.

I kept forgetting what we were talkingabout every time we got to a new animal.

“There’s naked-naked andprofessional-naked. They’re very different things.” Micha rolled his eyes as Ishrugged.

“Then asking Conner to play doctor could beconsidered appropriate, and judging by your definition, that would becheating.” His logic was still questionable even if I was able to replicatesome of it.

“Because he’s not a real doctor.” SomehowMicha was able to whisper and make it sound frustrated at the same time.

“That wasn’t in your explanation.” Goodnessgracious. “You’re very worked up about this for someone who’s had openrelationships in the past.”

Judging by our dating histories, I waspretty sure I was the one who was supposed to be paranoid over cheating. I’donly dated one person at a time, and some of them had been spectacularlydisastrous, so it made me wonder if his more flexible background had been thebetter choice.

Not that I was going to explain that…in hiscurrent mood he’d somehow end up thinking I wanted to break up or cheat.

“But you haven’t.” His arms jerked like hewanted to throw up his hands, but he couldn’t because he didn’t want peoplethinking we were arguing. Because we weren’t. We were just defining thingspassionately.

Because he was still confused.

“So?” Using my boring background against meshould be cheating too. “Okay. Let’s not worry about strict definitions.”

That wasn’t helping in the slightest and Iwasn’t sure we’d ever get to that point.

“What’s another way we can do this? There’salways another way.” Oh, more monkeys. “Next time we need to bring my spoons.”

There had to be a way to make carrying themaround look normal and boring…but I’d let Micha figure out how to make thatwork.

“We could—” He paused, glaring at me again.“Stop distracting me.”

No…that would not be a reasonable promise.

“You’re not the jealous type anyway. So Idon’t understand why you’re so worried about this.” He was acting insane forsomeone who didn’t get jealous.

His groan said I was missing somethingabout that, though. “You do.”

“So don’t feed anyone else a bottle andwe’ll be fine.” It wasn’t rocket science.

Yes. It wasn’t rocket science, so we justneeded to look at it from an easier perspective.

“Story time me.” Swinging his hand, I triedto stay big but it was hard. I was ready for animal nuggets and lots moremonkeys. Maybe if I wasn’t too big of a pain in the ass Micha would let us dothe monkey parts over and over. “Playwhat-ifand then I’ll tell you ifit’s cheating or not.”

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