Page 42 of Stepbrothers with Benefits
“Naw, I got mad at him for it,” Milo said, rolling his eyes before twisting to lie on his back. “I didn’t know what to be more mad about, that he tried to trick me, the fact that he still didn’t believe me that you and I weren’t a thing and never had been, or that afterward, he tried to turn it into another argument about whether I was cheating on him. God, that shit got so old so fast. I shouldn’t have stuck with him as long as I did. Guy had issues.”
I glanced at him, smirking. “Please tell me you didn’t purposefully cuddle me that night to make him freak out.”
“No!” Milo said, the outrage in his voice making me believe him more than anything else. “But...I wasn’t against taking advantage of a happy little accident to push him to end things with me, ya know? Do you uh...think that was wrong?”
“I mean...not morally wrong,” I told him with a shrug. “And honestly, as much as he kept acting like he didn’t want to be with you because he was so afraid of you cheating or leaving him, he kept a stranglehold on you too; didn’t let you out of his sight for too long. I’m not sure there was going to be another way for you to end that relationship without him being so pissed off that he just...left.”
“Still kind of a chickenshit move, huh?”
“Oh yeah, definitely. But hey, he was probably the sort to stalk the shit out of you if you stood up and ended things on your own, so maybe it worked.”
“Moira says you enable my...my...what was the word she used?”
“Knowing her, it was slightly bitchy, mostly funny, but said with love.”
“Dipshittery.”
“Okay, that’s a very Moira thing to call it.”
“Yeah, she’s so mean sometimes. I love her.”
“She loves you too, you drunken idiot.”
His eyes opened, and he grinned at me. “Tonight was fun. I had a lot of fun.”
“Mmm, evident by the brewery smell coming off you like the worst cologne imaginable.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay, you and Marshall had fun. Good bonding time?”
“He’s a lot of fun, and the guy can drink like a fish. Seriously, he could probably outdo a goddamn group of frat boys in their last semester.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about a fully grown adult man being able to drink as much as a college senior, but I wasn’t going to voice that hesitation. Milo was the one to dive into a new situation with hope and enthusiasm; sometimes that meant minimizing the potential downsides to his detriment, but he was always looking for the best in things. He also didn’t like it when people dragged out the potential downsides, not when he was basking in the afterglow of being proven right for his enthusiasm and optimism. I would have to wait until he wasn’t riding the high of a good time and was sober before I could bring up anything negative.
“It was nice, having fun with someone who keeps up with me,” he said, then glanced at me, eyes wide. “Other than you, I mean.”
I snorted, patting his hip. “It’s okay, I wasn’t going to get upset because you had fun with another man.”
He rolled his eyes. “He thought you were my boyfriend.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Everyone always thinks that. Even the people who know you’re straight and I just...it’s weird. Like they know something we don’t, I guess.”
Now that was an interesting way to put it. “It’s funny when we point out that we’re stepbrothers, though. The panic is top tier.”
“True,” he said, closing his eyes and smiling. “Sometimes I want to get so mad, but I don’t. I guess it’s because I would be pretty lucky to have someone like you for a boyfriend.”
Ah, we’d reached that part of the drunken night. “Maybe that’s why people think it.”
“Pfft, maybe they just think we’re a good match. I mean...in personality anyway. Obviously, there’s stuff that gets in the way. Like the fact that you don’t like dick.”
“True, well, I guess I can’t say that I don’t like dick.”
“Why, because you never tried it?”
“There are some people who say that.”
