At all. His grin came easy and never failed to light up that handsome face with his lopsided dimple and honey-gold eyes. He had a great sense of style, blowing my basic khakis and gray polo shirt out of the water with his stone-gray pants rolled up at the ankles and a floral black-and-blue button-up half tucked into the waist. His sleeves were also rolled, and a thin golden necklace shone around his neck, gleaming brightly against his tan skin. He was a little shorter than me—which I liked—and was blessed with an ass that could double as two basketballs if the NBA ever found themselves in some kind of dire shortage.

Noah spotted me and offered a friendly wave, walking over with two bottles of white wine in his hands.

“Hey there,” I said, moving aside as a determined grandpa pushed past me with a cart full of Lunchables and toilet paper.

“So you do exist outside of the 9-to-5,” Noah quipped, reaching out and poking me with a finger and nearly dropping one of his bottles.

“Do I? Or am I just in your head?”

“Don’t do that to me right now, Jake. Grocery stores are already hellish enough. I don’t need to have an existential crisis while I’m in here.”

That got a laugh out of me. “Good choice of wine,” I said, pointing at the bottles in his hands. “I’m a pinot grigio kind of guy, too.”

“It’s not just for me,” Noah clarified. “It’s for my book club.”

“Oh, you’ve got a book club? What’s it called?”

“Reading under the Rainbow. It’s a bunch of queer people getting together and reading mystery and thriller books. We talk about the chapters we were assigned that week, get drunk on wine, and end up talking shit about one thing or another. It’s fun times.”

“Sounds like it,” I said. “What book are y’all reading now?”

“Just Beneath Her Bones. It’s about a girl who—”

“Who’s being stalked by someone, and then she finds out the jewelry she’s been ordering online is actually made of human bones.”

“You’ve read it?” he asked, his eyes lighting up.

I nodded, feeling a spark of something in my chest at how impressed Noah appeared to be. “Just finished it last week, actually.”

“I didn’t know you were a reader.”

“I think there’s a lot about me you don’t know,” I said, cocking my head.