Page 9 of Finley

He was going to see Daniel in less than twelve hours.

Suddenly, his day was looking up.

Chapter 3

“YOU ARE NOT wearing that.”

Brantley looked over at Jordan, his colleague and friend, who was perched on the end of his bed. He’d let him in ten minutes ago, filled a wine glass, and then told him to either entertain himself or help him pick out an appropriate outfit to?—

“Make a man ten years your junior want to fuck your brains out?”

“Ahh no, no. I’m not forty yet,” Brantley said. “So technically nine. Don’t add years to me that aren’t already there. It’s bad enoughyoujust turned thirty-five.”

“That’s what you get for befriending a genius. It’s not my fault I was a child prodigy.”

That was true. It wasn’t Jordan’s fault. He’d had a very interesting childhood. One that had led him through a fast-tracked education and then spat him out the other side as a professor by the age of twenty-four. The youngest to ever be hired on at UCF.

The fact that he was five yearsBrantley’sjunior was nothing new, but it’d always been a bit of a sore spot for him. And now, it was more apparent than ever. Here he was, closing in on forty, while his best friend was turning thirty-five and Daniel had just hit thirty.

Great.

He fidgeted with the hanger in his hands, then threw it aside and pulled the tie from around his neck. Once he’d tossed it on the pile of shirts draped across a chair, he shook his head. “And thanks, by the way. You’ve been very helpful.”

“What? Thatisthe goal tonight, isn’t it?”

“No,” he said as he unbuttoned the striped shirt he’d put on a minute ago. He shrugged out of it and then moved to the next choice he’d picked out.God, this is ridiculous.

This was at least the tenth shirt he’d tried on, and even though he kept telling himself not to be anxious, he couldn’t stop the excited nerves spiking his adrenaline. He still couldn’t believe he was going to see Daniel,his Finn, in a little over two hours.

For the entire day, he’d tried not to overthink the meaning behind Daniel’s return. But that hopeful part of him, the part he’d been trying to squash after he hadn’t heard anything in response to his note, had blossomed once again. Bringing with it all the promise and possibility of new beginnings.

He needed to stop that, however. He needed to distract himself or he would go insane. No matter how this went tonight, Daniel was there, and anything after that he could deal with.

Right?Right.

“It’s not like that, Jordan.”

Jordan took a sip of his Pinot Noir and lounged back on his elbow. “Sure it isn’t.”

“It isn’t.”

“Okay, I’m just saying. We both know what a hot piece of ass Daniel Finley was back in the day. I’m preeetty sure he couldn’t have changed that much.”

Brantley looked in the mirror and stared at the changes in his reflection. He would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about how Daniel would look, because he was more than aware of the laugh lines creasing his own eyes and?—

“You don’t look old,” Jordan chimed in behind him.

That comment earned him a death glare.

“What? I know that’s what you’re thinking.” He scooted to the edge of the bed, downed the rest of the wine, and stood.

When he walked over to the closet, Brantley groaned as Jordan shifted through the hangers.

“No. No. No.Oh, this would look hot on you.” He turned around holding a bright fuchsia shirt up.

Not really what Brantley had in mind for this first…What the hell is this, anyway?Not a date. It was at Daniel’s mother’s house, for God’s sake.

He screwed his nose up and shook his head. “No. I think I want something a little more…subtle. We’re not meeting at club Boyz.”