Page 32 of Falling

“Wait for a tug on the line,” I said. “You’ll know it when you feel it.”

Miles laughed nervously. “I know trout are meant to be jumpy,” he said. “Which makes two of us.”

“They’re also aggressive predators,” I told him. “But we’re a little big for them.”

“You might be,” Miles said. “I’m probably bite-sized.”

I laughed. “They’re not tuna. You can take ‘em home from eight inches up.”

Miles snorted, the tension in his shoulders draining away. “That’s what Joel used to say,” he said.

“Joel?” I asked.

Not jealous. I wasn’t jealous over Miles mentioning the name of a man I hadn’t met.

Get a grip, Book.

“Evie’s best friend,” Miles said. “Mine, too, in a lot of ways. But he was never… mine, exactly. Sometimes I wished he was. He’s so sweet and he makes a fantastic human pillow for movie nights.”

I wondered if Miles was entirely sure Joel hadn’t wanted to be his. Or rather, I wondered if he realized at all that this Joel guy had definitely wanted that.

I was starting to think flirting just went right over Miles’s head.

Which led to a whole range of other paths of thought that I shouldn’t have been going down about someone who was trusting me to be their friend.

“And he’s a size queen?” I asked, remembering what Miles had actually said.

“You know, I’m not sure. I think he just liked saying things like that. He’s got the ideal boyfriend for him now, though. Nearly old enough to be his dad,” Miles said. “But he’s a good man. He’ll take care of Joel. He moved to Malibu to live with him. You should see the house. It’s got two different pools.”

“So you’re in the market for a cougar heiress who can keep you in style on a beach somewhere?” I teased.

Miles wrinkled his perfect nose. “Definitely not in Malibu, anyway. And… I dunno. I’ve never really… can I tell you something weird and personal?”

“We’re fishing buddies now,” I said, heart in my throat at the thought of hearing something weird and personal from him. “You can tell me anything. Sacred fishing buddy code.”

“That sounds made up,” Miles said.

“Look it up when we get back,” I suggested, hoping he wouldn’t since it was, in fact, completely made up. “But tell me. I’ll never tell another soul.”

Miles sighed. “Okay so. Joel used to hook up with someone new every week and if anything, Evie has him outpaced. I’m really glad that seems to make them happy, but I don’t get it.”

“Not a fan of hookups?” I asked, halfway sensing where this was going.

I’d known Miles was one of us from the moment I laid eyes on him. It’d just taken me until now to figure out how.

“I don’t understand what they get out of sex with strangers, I guess,” Miles said. “I’ve never felt like I could ask without it sounding judgmental. And it’s not! They’re not hurting anyone, they’re clearly having fun and I love them and I want them to be happy. I just feel like I’m missing something obvious and... I dunno. Thought maybe you could shed some light on it. You seem like you know things.”

I took a deep breath, but tried not to make it sound like that as I breathed out carefully. The last thing Miles needed right now was for me to sound like I was annoyed with him. Because I wasn’t, not even a little bit.

I was honored that he felt this safe with me.

“Feel free to push me into the river if this is too personal,” I began cautiously, “but, uh. Do you like sex at all?”

Miles’s brows knitted. He fiddled with something on the rod that he probably shouldn’t have been fiddling with, but this was more important than fishing.

“Maybe?” he said after a silence of a few heartbeats. “I don’t… umm, know. Exactly. I… with Robin, I never really… we only had sex a handful of times and it felt… awkward and like a lot of effort and not particularly satisfying. I always felt like I was letting her down. But then uh. I guess I was, by not being Evie, so…”

Reading between the lines, I was starting to get the picture here.