Love, Lies, and Cryptids by M.L. Nolan

Author:M.L. Nolan [M.L. Nolan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Emily Einolander
Published: 2023-08-08T00:00:00+00:00

Oh god. Nico was in his house. His house where he lived. Fortunately, Jasper was a pretty clean guy, and also it was Tuesday. Things didn’t usually fall apart until a little later in the week. But still, what if he’d left out something he didn’t want them to see?

God, he needed to relax.

Jasper wasn’t sure what he had done to make this happen, why Nico had said yes when he’d asked them to come inside. But then, the night had been going well, and Andie seemed to like him, and getting the best friend to like you was kind of a big deal, wasn’t it?

Here he was thinking about this as if it were actually happening. Nico could just want to be friends.

Yet, the fact was, something was happening. They were sitting on the couch beside him, sipping tea and looking at their nails, eyes occasionally flicking upward to sneak a look at him.

“So do you know when we’ll be heading up north?” Jasper asked. He didn’t necessarily want to talk about work, but the silence was starting to make him nervous. After all the progress they’d made tonight, he didn’t want to ruin it by being a bad host. He’d already almost messed it all up by being weird about the tea.

Nico sighed with resignation. “Probably sometime in the next couple of weeks. I don’t imagine they’d do anything so considerate as giving us time to adjust.”

Setting his cup of tea down on the table, Jasper turned his body toward Nico. “You’re probably right. But you might have guessed, I don’t have a lot of other things to do, so it’s not like they’d be interrupting anything.”

God, way to make yourself look like even more of a loser, Jasper.

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Nico said, then sat up straighter as if they’d just remembered something they’d left in the car. “Hold on, we haven’t even spoken about equipment. Brent hasn’t assumed—has he assumed that you’d volunteer yours?”

That hadn’t occurred to Jasper, but the idea annoyed him. However, at this point he was just as resigned as Nico. “I guess I don’t mind. Although, I think we should hire an engineer to help us. There’s someone I know in Olympia who might be able to help.”

MixerKing was pretty talented, but he was having trouble finding gigs right now. Hopefully his schedule happened to be clear for whenever this trip happened (and Brent would agree to it). Plus it would be cool to finally meet him in person.

“If he’ll pay for it.” Nico rolled their eyes and slouched against the back of the couch. “I feel very out of my depth, honestly. If I’m supposed to be hosting this or asking questions or…I don’t know. I’m not exactly a performer.”

“Yes, but you have a very good natural speaking voice,” Jasper said before he could hold the words in. “It’s a lot better than mine, to be honest.”

Visibly flustered, Nico shook their head. “No…that’s not true, you sound—” They cleared their throat and turned to set their mug on the coffee table as well.

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