Right Move (Clean Slate Ranch #6) - A.M. Arthur Page 0,2

a schedule, to knowing which town he’d be performing in next, to a nomadic existence that made real, long-term relationships impossible.

Now he had a new town, three kittens, and a potential new friend. After completely losing himself to alcohol and drugs for a year of his life, this truly felt like the beginning of his second chance.

Chapter One

After living an incredibly solitary life for the last seven years, having friends was a huge mind fuck for George Thompson. He and his twin brother Orry had lived in their apartment for close to six months, and neither had done much to endear themselves to their neighbors except to stay quiet and not bother anyone. Now, half a year later, they had four good friends in their two sets of downstairs neighbors, and George was still getting used to being around people again.

Being around people before was essentially what sent the twins into hiding in the first place.

George was just finishing up his latest video-captioning assignment when his phone startled him with a text. Orry used to be the only person who ever texted him, but Orry was currently napping in his bedroom in between jobs. He worked his ass off doing multiple jobs to help pay rent and car insurance, but neither of them wanted to move out of their San Francisco neighborhood. They needed to stay close to their grandparents.

He grabbed his phone off the corner of his desk.

Slater: Pizza in the living room.

The text made him smile. The apartment was one of four inside a renovated old house—two upstairs and two downstairs. Their sextet of friends had started referring to the home’s big lobby as the living room because it had furniture, magazines and books that all residents were free to use. The other upstairs residents, a quiet father-daughter duo, weren’t very sociable and that was fine. Once upon a time, George hadn’t been sociable either.

George responded he’d be down, then went to check on Orry. He’d been napping for a few hours and would probably like to eat. Orry never turned down free food. His brother was sprawled on his bed, face pressed into a pillow, his phone playing a white noise app. Even though George used headphones when closed-captioning, so Orry couldn’t overhear the videos, Orry said it made him feel less like he knew George was in his own bedroom watching porn.

Closed-captioning for porn was definitely a thing, and George had seriously lucked into a job that didn’t require him to leave the house.

“Dude, you want pizza?” George asked.

Orry jerked upright in bed, as if summoned from the deep by the mere mention of the p-word. He yawned and rubbed at his face. “M’kay. Where?”

“Living room. Slater offered.”

“Cool. Gimme a minute.” Bro code for I gotta whiz.

George waited in the living room for Orry’s rumpled emergence from the tiny hallway beyond their open living space. His attention went to the floor near a section of wall where a photo had broken a few months ago. Broken because of George’s stupidity. He thought they’d cleaned up the glass but Orry had cut himself a few days later, because George had missed something. Small things like that loved to take up space in his head, and George was tired of it.

Having friends meant new things to take up space in his head, instead of letting the past crowd everything out.

Orry appeared a few minutes later, and together they went downstairs to the “living room.” Slater and Derrick were there with two pizza boxes and a six-pack. At almost the same moment George and Orry appeared, the door to the other downstairs apartment opened, spilling out Dez and Morgan.

Morgan used to scare George because of his general size and muscles, but he was the epitome of the gentle giant. His partner, Dez, on the other hand, was roughly half his size, nonbinary, and preferred she/her pronouns. Today, Dez wore leggings, a button-down shirt and a tie, and her hair had grown out a bit. Slater and Derrick were a now-committed couple whose relationship had started as fake and ended up as something way more permanent—a truth Slater had finally revealed to George and Orry around Halloween. George had genuinely believed they’d been a couple the whole time because chemistry oozed off them.

“Hey,” Morgan said once their sextet had collected themselves around the food. “What are we eating today?”

“I decided to be nice to Dez,” Derrick replied, “and one of the pies has vegan cheese and vegan pepperoni. You’re