to friends with benefits, a little voice in his head piped up. It was definitely something Alex would have agreed to in a nanosecond, but he had a feeling that wasn’t in the cards, so he cast that thought aside. He could do friends.
It was probably better that way. Judging by how attracted Alex was to Noah, this thing between them could get complicated quickly. They worked together. Sort of. And it was never a good idea to sleep with somebody you had to see every day for the foreseeable future, unless you were actually pursuing something with them, which Alex wasn’t. Definitely not. For one thing, he was leaving at the end of the summer, and secondly, he just wasn’t looking for a commitment.
Even the word made him shudder. Him? In a relationship? Being called somebody’s boyfriend? No, and a very emphatic thank you.
If he’d learned anything from his parents, it was that Alex was not a lovable person. His own mother had preferred to fuck off to Europe, rather than stay and raise Alex. And Alex’s father had tried to get rid of him every chance he got, sending him away from home time and time again, be it for school, camp or, case in point, community service on the other side of the country. It wasn’t that anybody had come out and straight up told Alex that he couldn’t be loved, but come on, he’d been given so many hints over the years that he should have been dumber than a box of hammers not to connect the dots.
Besides, it was fine. So what if even the two people who should have loved him instinctually couldn’t force themselves to care enough to spend more than a couple of hours in Alex’s presence every couple of months? At least thanks to them, Alex was rich, so if he really needed the illusion of love one day, which in and of itself was highly unlikely, he could just buy it.
Alex glanced at Noah from the corner of his eye. Even if he couldn’t get into Noah’s pants, it might be nice to have somebody to hang out with from time to time. Alex was a social creature, so three months with only Carl’s grunts and the sounds of animals as the soundtrack of his life seemed pretty damn awful.
“Friends it is,” he told Noah as the other guy smiled at him. Fuck, he looked good. Alex really needed to let off some steam if he planned to go through with that whole being-just-friends thing. He’d been relying on his own right hand for the better part of a month already, and if he kept it up, the relationship would go stale soon.
The chances of finding an out and proud gay man in a town the size of Riverton would be pretty damn small, but there must have been some people who were at least curious, and Alex could definitely work with that. It wouldn’t be the first time he got to corrupt somebody, and that was always fun.
He cocked his head to the side as he eyed Noah thoughtfully. He looked like a normal enough person. Surely he had other friends. Ones that would want to hook up with Alex so that they could remember the experience in the cold winter months, marveling over how adventurous they’d been.
“It’s my day off tomorrow,” Alex said.
Noah’s lips twitched. “What a coincidence, mine too. Want to hang, friend?”
“What? Hang out? No, you totally misread my comment. I just wanted to brag,” Alex said, with a serious face. Noah laughed as he punched Alex’s shoulder and Alex tried to dodge him.
“Fine,” Alex sighed dramatically after they’d scrambled for a while, each trying to push the other one off the well cover they were sitting on. “If you must force your company on me, I guess you can come, too.”
“Oh, where are you going?” Noah asked innocently.
“I was thinking of finding a local who could show me all the interesting things to do around here.”
“It must be your lucky day. I’ve lived here for years. I mean, I’m probably not a local by Riverton’s standards. They consider you a local only when your ancestors arrived during the gold rush, but I know what to do around here, so I guess what I’m saying is that I’m your best bet.”
“Is that so?”
“Uh-huh,” Noah said smugly, and it managed to be both adorable and hot as fuck, so Alex had to force himself to think about