Page 26 of Sour Candy (Sour Candy #1)

Benji grinned lazily as he got in the elevator.

Five thousand dollars richer. Come dripping into his boxers.

The bone-deep satisfaction from Noah calling him a good boy.

There was still some embarrassment, but it was easy to ignore if he just focused on the memory of Noah whispering in his ear as he cleaned him up.

Telling him how well he did. How proud he was.

Making Benji say he was gorgeous didn’t do much for him except make him feel even more naked, but it was incredibly sweet.

Like Noah believed in it so hard that he needed Benji to believe, too.

And , to top it all off, Benji didn’t have to talk to Tia, his best friend who wanted to vet him. Noah assured him she was just overprotective, but it made Benji nervous. He didn’t make a good first impression. Or a second. Or even a third! He had one friend, for fuck’s sake.

Anyway. No Tia was a win. Benji hummed as the elevator doors drifted closed, wondering if he should skip his next class or not. It was annoying getting back to the campus from here. It would be so easy to go home and watch TV, make an early dinner so it was ready for Max when he got home.

A hand slammed between the elevator doors, making Benji jump.

The doors slid open. A man slid into the elevator, and Benji almost swallowed his tongue.

It looked like Noah. Except he had a ponytail and crow’s feet, and his smile had none of the trustworthiness Noah had. His smile was as shiny and fake as the dildo in Benji’s underwear drawer.

This must be the brother, Benji realized. What was his name? Mitch? Mike?

Whoever he was, he was staring. Even as the doors slid closed. Those brown eyes narrowed, and the back of Benji’s neck prickled.

“Do you work here?” the brother asked.

Benji gave him a stiff smile. “Nope. Just dropping something off.”

The elevator doors slid open. It wasn’t Benji’s floor, but he got out anyway. Slipping past the people getting on and walking until he found the stairwell, trying to calm his racing heart. Telling himself that nothing bad had happened, even though everything in him screamed that it had.

The nagging panic was still there when Benji showed up at the bar that night, looking over the crowd of art students with a sinking stomach.

He needed a drink if he was going to tolerate this for two whole hours, which was what he’d promised himself when he confirmed with Daphne.

It was her birthday , after all. Finally, twenty-one.

She could use her real ID now, not the knockoff Benji bought her when they were seventeen, which claimed that she was twenty-seven and her name was Mathilda-Joyce Braggart.

He was losing hope when he spotted a hand shooting up from the thickest part of the crowd.

“BENJI, MY LOVE,” Daphne screamed.

She charged through the crowd. It parted easily, and she threw her arms around his neck.

“Drinks are on me,” she cried. Then she leaned back, hissing in his ear, “ Legally !”

“Congratulations,” Benji told her, tweaking the Kiki’s Delivery Service earrings he’d gotten her for her last birthday. “No more Mathilda-Joyce.”

Daphne pouted. “I know! I’m gonna miss her. Come on, I want you to talk to Heather. You remember her? She said that thing in that tutorial, the Michelangelo eroticism thing about veins.”

He pulled back against her grip. “Can I give my best friend her present first?”

Her eyes lit up. She spun, clapping excitedly as he pulled a neatly wrapped present out of his jacket, ribbon and everything.

“Got the store guy to wrap it,” he admitted as she tore it open. “I’m useless at that shit. He even curled the ribbons! What the fuck?”

“It’s my life goal to someday learn how to…” Daphne trailed off. Her glossy lips fell open as she stared at the painting.

The silence went on so long that Benji started jumping from foot to foot, almost bumping into his drunk classmates as they passed.

It wasn’t that bad. Right? He actually thought it was pretty good.

Noah agreed, and Benji didn’t even think he was saying it to be nice.

He’d helped Benji pick out a frame, off-white with elegant flowers perched along the sides. Cute but tasteful, just like Daphne.

And then the painting, crafted with the help of several old Facebook photos as references: twelve-year-old Daphne and Benji, their arms around each other. They were wearing roller skating gear, their hair tangled and dirty as they beamed at the viewer.

“Because we joked that we should’ve been friends as middle schoolers,” Benji explained, heart falling in disappointment. “You said you wished I’d been around to show you how to roller skate because your parents said it was too dangerous, and you?—”

She threw her arms around him, squeezing so hard the rest of the sentence died in a splutter.

“Oh.” He sank into the hug, relieved. “Okay.”

She sniffed. “This is beautiful. Thank you, Benji.”

He shrugged awkwardly. Daphne had always been a crier.

He was too, he supposed. He’d just rather stab himself with a rusty fork than do it in public.

Or in front of anyone, until very recently.

Noah was an exception. He’d never cried in front of him except for sex.

Sex crying didn’t count. It wasn’t an emotional thing, but a body thing.

Like groaning when you came. No way to stop it.

Daphne wiped her cheeks with a sigh. “There goes my eyeliner! Where’s your daddy? I was hoping to meet him.”

Benji hunched, the din of the bar suddenly louder, the crush of people tighter. “Why? Why do we need to meet the people in our friends’ lives? Can’t we just let them be?”

“ I can’t,” Daphne said. “Not when it’s you. You don’t get people in your life! You don’t let them in!”

Benji rolled his eyes. Daphne was of the naive opinion that Benji’s problem was that he was prickly . Not that people were, on the whole, judgmental dicks who would rather sneer at Benji than get to know him.

“Meetings are running long,” he said, unable to stop the bitterness from seeping into his tone. “Last minute. Can’t do anything about it.”

Daphne frowned, stroking his arm.

“But I saw him at lunch,” Benji continued.

Before he could decide how detailed he wanted to get, a shout went up from the door.

Benji turned. Two more classmates were squeezing a “21” balloon through the door, waving wildly at Daphne.

Daphne lit up. “Hey, guys! Oh my god, balloon time!”

“Go on,” Benji told her as she turned back to him with big, apologetic eyes. “I’ll mingle .”

Daphne’s apologetic eyes turned flinty with amusement. “Go talk to Heather. There are some really cool people at our school, I promise they’ll like you if you show them the sweet, bitchy, wonderful Benji that you showed me.”

She coaxed a grudging nod out of him. Then she took off toward the balloon-holders, arms out, screeching joyously.

Benji watched her go, envy curling in his gut.

He hated to admit it, but being open and trusting looked…

nice , sometimes. At least, Daphne made it look nice.

Benji used to sneer at her for it before he found out how many people had treated her like shit growing up.

That just made it more baffling. How was she able to be like this, smiling and laughing and making friends everywhere she went, and Benji retreated into himself so hard he had to be dragged out kicking and screaming?

He looked over at the table Daphne had pointed him to, where Heather, the Michelangelo eroticism enthusiast, was doodling on a napkin, and sighed.

He needed a drink.

Daphne found him in the alleyway fifteen minutes later, smoking.

She wrinkled her nose at the cigarette dangling from his lips. “Since when do you smoke?”

“Seemed like a good excuse to get out without actively leaving.”

Daphne leaned on the alleyway wall next to him, rubbing her arms against the chilly spring breeze. “Did you talk to Heather?”

“ Yes ,” Benji said defensively.

He’d talked to her for two whole minutes.

It was doomed from the second he sat down, her eyes widening in shock as he started talking.

He’d tried to bring up Michelangelo, but she’d started talking about how much she hated Mr. Frizzle, which might have been a good jumping-off point if her friend hadn’t sat down; then it became clear how much Benji wasn’t a part of their conversation.

He offered her the cigarette. “How goes the party?”

“Better if my bestie was there,” she replied, leaning in to take a drag, no-hands style. “I do appreciate it, y’know. You coming to these things. I know parties aren’t your scene.”

“Anything for you,” he said, bringing the cigarette back up. He tried to make it sarcastic and silly, but the sincerity dripped through anyway. He’d done several shots back in the bar: pre-Heather, for courage. And then post-Heather, to drown his sorrows in how badly it went.

His phone buzzed in his jeans pocket. He scrambled for it, almost biting the cigarette in half in the process.

Email spam. Not Noah texting him something stupidly sweet to make up for not coming tonight.

He’d been going on about Benji’s eyes in the five-minute break before the meeting started.

Benji kept opening the text and staring at it.

I should fuck you in missionary more often.

I can’t get enough of you when you’re staring up at me, all teary and beautiful.

Daphne laughed. “Man, you are down bad ! I’ve never seen you like this.”