...and Finding Out

“This isn’t a love story, it’s a prolonged bad decision with excellent sex.”

Ren and Nolan have a new agreement.

The first one worked. Almost annoyingly well. They became friends, had spectacularly filthy sex, kept romance out of it, and somehow managed to make the whole thing easier than most actual relationships they know.

So after New Year’s, they make a few adjustments. The new rules are supposed to keep everything simple while they figure out what they want from everyone else.

Instead, Ren and Nolan start figuring out what they want from each other. Not romance. Neither of them is looking for that. What they want is harder to define.

Nolan is learning how to ask for things instead of quietly handling everything himself. Ren is learning that letting someone matter does not automatically give them control over her life. Somewhere between increasingly filthy experiments, bad jokes, arguments nobody else could follow, and the kind of honesty neither of them gives away easily, the friendship starts asking more of them than the sex ever did.

They are still fine. Their agreement is still working. But Nolan has to go to Miami for five days and takes Ren with him.

No family or friends watching them and deciding what every touch means. The two of them, a hotel room, a beach, several questionable ideas, and five days to find out what their arrangement looks like when nobody else is around to define it for them.

Miami might be the easiest part. The question is what happens when they come home.