I touched one, gently taking it out of its resting place. “Oh, William…they are so gorgeous.” One dozen carefully painted figurines, all in different poses and portraying different types of characters. There was a jester and a knight in full plate armor, a scholar and a man holding a map and a sextant.

“Those are the ones you’ve admired when you have visited.”

I blinked, looking back at the box and noted that he was exactly right. These were the figurines that, in the past, I’d pulled off the shelf behind his worktable to take closer looks at them. Among hundreds of figurines that he’d had sitting there, he had remembered every single one I’d specifically admired.

I took the figurines out of the box and arranged them on the coffee table in front of me. “I’m going to find a special place for these. So I can always see them. They must take forever to paint.”

“Not forever. Or I’d never finish more than one. Depending on the figure, they take about six to nine hours to complete. First, I need to prime them with base paint, then I do the biggest amount of base color…”

And he went on like this for about the next ten minutes, tirelessly explaining every step while I nodded and smiled and examined each figurine in turn.

Heath brought him a beer at some point—maybe hoping that would break his monologue—but William didn’t quiet down until Adam arrived. And William grew visibly uncomfortable at the sight of his cousin.

“Hey, Liam,” Adam said as he sank down on the couch beside me and leaned over to kiss me on the cheek.

William gave Adam a cold nod. I raised my eyebrows and Adam frowned and pretended not to notice the brush-off.

William looked at his watch and then, with dismay, at his nearly finished bottle of beer. “I need to wait another forty-five minutes or so to metabolize the beer before I can drive home.”

“I think you’re probably good, William,” Heath said. “You’re tall and it’s just one—”

But Adam cut him off with a hand gesture. “Yeah, best to drop it, Heath, and just let him stay. There’s no point in arguing it.”

Heath got up to answer a text message and I reached out and took Adam’s hand. William watched with interest, so I held our hands up and smiled. “See, William? All’s good with us. You don’t need to be mad at Adam anymore, okay?”

“I was angry with both of you,” he said simply. “You were both behaving immaturely.”

Adam and I exchanged a startled look. I hadn’t meant to open that can of worms. There was an awkward silence but then William continued. “If you would have talked to each other, you wouldn’t have had the problems that developed.”

I swallowed and Adam’s hand tightened around mine. “You’re absolutely right. But we really don’t want to talk about all that right now. It’s not productive.”

William peered at his cousin through slightly narrowed eyes and then nodded. “How did you two…How did you start dating?”

Adam and I shared another long, uncomfortable look. Of our friends, only Heath knew the sordid circumstances of our beginnings—the virginity auction, Adam winning the bid and pretending he hadn’t been my online friend already for over a year. It was all a complicated mess that was either a) too hard to explain, b) too embarrassing to explain, c) none of their business or d) all of the above.

“We met in the game, Liam. I told you that,” Adam said.

“Yes, but you were only friends then. When did you ask her to go out on a date with you and how did it happen?”

I shifted in my seat and fought the urge to giggle at Adam’s discomfort. It was funny, actually, watching him sweat it out, but I decided to let him off the hook and answer. “Adam and I decided to meet and then after we hung out for a while—as friends—things developed into more.”

Adam’s dark eyebrows raised briefly at my careful arrangement of the truth and William seemed to accept that. Adam’s cousin frowned and then rubbed his thumb along his forehead. “So how do you go from knowing someone—maybe even being a friend—to having a romantic relationship?”

Adam opened his mouth to answer and then shut it, looking utterly lost as to how to answer that. By now I was suppressing laughter behind my free hand. William really was asking the wrong person that question! Adam had had no romantic relationships before me. Just a series of standing hookups with various partners over the years—not so affectionately referred to by me as “fuck buddies.” In fact, our mutual inexperience in the relationship department was a big part of why our relationship had run into trouble in so short a time.