Naughty November

Chapter 2

TWO

REID MCKINLEY

Nineteen members showed up.

At one point, I’d…okay, I wouldn’t have called them friends—I wasn’t what one might call a people person—but I’d at least enjoyed having them around for events and the occasional barbecue at someone’s house.

Now I was over it. They were all childish motherfuckers who couldn’t stop feeding the drama. Didn’t matter if they were in their late forties or early twenties.

Max and I didn’t belong here anymore.

I stood next to him as he started his speech.

“Some of you have asked why we haven’t sent out the membership invoices for this month, and it’s because there won’t be one,” he said.

I watched the confusion flit through.

“Wait, what?” Linda asked.

It dawned on George right away. “Fuck, are we closing?”

I folded my arms over my chest. Damn right.

Max inclined his head. “Yes,” he confirmed. “November is our last month, and we’ll be using what’s left of the community funds to cover the expenses. We have no more events planned.”

“Oh my God, nooo,” Tina complained.

“But why?” Donnie pressed. He looked distraught. “Is this because of the drama on Discord?”

It wasn’t just there. They brought their catty fights to events.

Max slid me a look, and I wasn’t touching that one. He could talk. I could stand here and do nothing. He was better with words. I would end up telling everyone to go fuck themselves.

In my head, I was already on my way home. I’d call for pizza and ask Max to come over for dinner. He didn’t get Alex until Monday anyway, so he could chill with Dylan and me. Have a few beers and relax. I’d installed two heaters on the rooftop and everything.

Max cleared his throat, and he plastered that look on his face. The one I saw sometimes when I stopped by his practice for lunch and he’d just had a difficult patient in his chair.

“Listen,” he said, “Reid and I have done what we could for Old Town—and we’ve loved running this community for almost eleven years now, but…”

Yeah, but . But, good-fucking-bye.

It took no convincing to get Max to come over for pizza.

In my opinion, he should get a new place closer to me. He’d never liked his condo. He’d bought it because it was close to Alex’s school, but Max was an Old Town man like me. We wanted the old buildings, the homes that were filled with history and character, not some top-modern complex with a doorman.

I’d inherited my parents’ place six years ago, and as we reached the street, I felt myself relax. This was home. A street where brightly colored row houses shared the cobblestone sidewalks with trees and old gas lamps. My two-story colonial was the one in red with white shutters, crammed in between two three-stories in blue and green.

For a building inspector, I was awfully fond of creaky stairs and uneven lines .

The Christmas lights would go up soon.

“Fuck, my mouth is watering,” Max said. He was eyeing the pizza boxes in my grasp.

The lights were on in my kitchen, so Dylan must’ve arrived.

Shit felt good. Good riddance to the community. More time for chill evenings and weekends with my boy—whenever he came home—and hopefully Max and Alex. Hell, bring over Monica and Arianna too. I liked them. Alex’s moms were funny. Arianna, especially. She always beat me in poker.

I unlocked the door and stepped inside. “Dylan!”

“Upstairs!”

Okay, good.

“I’ll get drinks,” Max said.

I nodded. Wasn’t our first rodeo. This was practically tradition.

After shrugging out of my jacket and taking off my shoes, I headed upstairs as Dylan emerged from his room.

“Good seein’ you, son.”

“Hey, Dad. Lemme.” He grabbed the boxes and opened the top one, and he groaned at the smell. “Fuck yeah, I’m starving.”

I chuckled and headed for the last steps. These ones creaked even more than the main stairs.

The rooftop was my absolute favorite spot in the house, and it was Dylan’s baby. He’d turned an empty deck into a rooftop garden with a nice seating area under a wooden pergola with slithering ivy. In the summer, all the pots had flowers in ’em. Now, the olive tree and lemon tree looked a little sad from the cold, but they’d make it.

Dylan and I had built the pergola together, with him as the designer. The architect in the making.

“Is Uncle Max comin’—oh. You installed the heaters. They look great.”

I thought so too. And it’d be a waste to only spend the warm months here. “Max is on his way up.”

I switched on the heaters while Dylan opened the chest where we kept cushions and whatnot.

He’d designed that too. ’Cause my boy was deathly afraid of spiders. He’d made sure the thing was airtight. Once, at around fourteen, he’d pulled out a blanket at his aunt’s place, and he’d screamed bloody murder when a common house spider dropped in his lap.

Max joined us soon enough, and he had beers and napkins for everyone.

A question about the holidays and upcoming exams led to their discussing our Thanksgiving plans, another thing to look forward to. We’d be here this year. Dylan, Max, Alex, Monica, Arianna, and Max’s parents—possibly his brother and his family too.

We also had Max’s forty-second birthday coming up. And I was not fucking forgetting this one. Christ. In my defense, I’d been down with the flu last year—and I’d made up for it by taking him and the boys fishing down in South Carolina.

I bit into a slice, content to just listen—and have my pizza to myself. Those two went all in for triple cheese and pepperoni. I wanted the works on mine.

It was probably best to keep an eye on Max the next few weeks. Closing our community was bittersweet to him, and I had a feeling he’d struggle to find his footing.

“That’s such bullshit,” Dylan laughed. “Me, Alex, and Mike’s kids fucking annihilated y’all last year.”

Max shook his head and reached for his beer. “I don’t remember it that way. I remember Alex fumbling with the ball a whole lot, and you fell into the lake?—”

“Dad pushed me!” Dylan yelled.

I chuckled. “The fuck I did. I was swattin’ away a wasp.”

He gave me a sarcastic look. “In November? Nice try, old man.” He huffed and grabbed another slice. “Whatever. We’re gonna beat you this year too.”

That made me laugh, because playing football in our backyard? It was a patch of grass and approximately 160 square feet large.

“Have fun doin’ that in our backyard,” I said.

He rolled his eyes. “Believe it or not, there are other places we can go.”

Hmpf.

The following Monday, I stopped by Max’s clinic for lunch. I hadn’t heard from him all weekend, not counting a couple of texts, and we usually talked on the phone if there’d been a game.

There was always a game.

“Hi, Reid. Max is almost done with a patient.”

“Perfect. I’ll wait in the break room.” I veered right, preferring not to linger in the waiting room. Everything was pristine white, and I’d just come from a worksite.

Nobody was in here, so I started unloading Chinese food on the table. It was a small clinic, with two dentists and four other staff, including Cathy at the front desk. Max was like me in that we liked taking our lunch later in the day, so we usually got the room to ourselves.

My favorite orthodontist showed up a few minutes later, lookin’ awfully tired for one-thirty in the afternoon.

“You’re too young to look that old, buddy,” I said. “You okay?” I kicked out his chair and stuck a shrimp in my mouth.

He yawned and set his empty coffee mug in the sink before joining me. “I slept like shit. I think my neighbors are getting a divorce.”

I’d heard about their loud fights before.

“About time.” I eyed him as he prepared a plate with rice and sweet-and-sour chicken.

My bet? Another week or two, and then he’d set up accounts on various dating apps.

He’d always been chasing something. And it wasn’t that he couldn’t be single; his chase was related to whatever was going on inside his head at the moment. It was about his own identity. Where he’d fit in, who he was, what he was. I’d watched him go through so many kink phases.

He’d made a good Daddy Dom, but he’d walked away from that too.

I hadn’t bothered looking in years. Why would I? I knew what I wanted. But since I couldn’t have that, I’d settled for casual arrangements and a handful of relationships predestined to fail .

“Thanks for coming over, by the way,” he said. “I wasn’t looking forward to my sad sandwich.”

“Everythin’ about you is a little sad now, innit?”

He frowned. “Thanks.”

I smiled.