Ben asked, as soon as Tom was out of earshot. “How are things between you and Nick?” There was just a moment of hesitation before Ben said, “Fine. Why?” Right. Okay, until very recently Ben and I had had a pact in which each of us stayed out of the other’s love affairs. But I didn’t think that was possible now, when we were dating cousins who had been raised as brothers. “It’s just that Peter seemed to wonder if you were still together and—” “Oh, Peter,” Ben said, derisively, as if his friend’s name were a swearword. “Peter! He’s known me since I was in high school, and he has this bug in his brain about how I’m only dating Nick because I’m on the rebound, and Nick isn’t my type at all.” I thought of Ben’s ex—small and blond and, let’s face it, somewhat effete. I thought of the guys I was almost sure Ben had dated before that, at least the ones I knew. They’d all been smaller than Ben, and they’d all trended somewhere between blond and very blond.
