Out Of Focus (Wattys 2023)

28. Silly Rabbits & Lucky Horseshoes.

"OK so maybe we did just crash your fake party to tease and make fun of how ridiculous this is, but can you really blame us?"

Oliver's rolling his eyes at the gang of uninvited guests that have made their way over to him after he's wrapped up a dramatic promo shoot between meeting families. It's definitely hard to be mad at Benji (I mean he's adorable for Christ's sake), but Clide and Carmen staring back at him with smug looks on their faces is earning quite a few points in the annoying category.

"How do you guys even know I was here?" Oliver says, grabbing both of his friends by the arms as he shoos the camera crews away. "My agent is literally going to kill me if this thing isn't the absolute talk of Twitter. She said if I'm not trending for something good by the time it wraps I'm getting another lecture."

Carmen rolls her eyes as he guides them away from a pretty large crowd, Clide eventually jabbing him in the side to make him let go.

"Lighten up man," he says. "You look about as interested in this as I used to be of my grans cooking shows."

"I don't know," Carmen says. "She might have been onto something with that one about the chefs making cupcakes."

"Isn't that like every baking show ever?" Oliver adds in, annoyance still very thick in his voice.

"They have to make fancy designs with the cupcakes," Carmen continues, heading over to an unoccupied park bench and plopping down, the other two guys and Benji joining her.

Oliver scans his surroundings, searching for Shayne, who still hasn't texted him back; but comes up short. He realizes while looking, that some of the women and their families are very pointedly staring at him (not that he's not very used to that by now). He knows he should be mingling, not worried about Shayne, and acting like the friends he's spent amazing time with while home doesn't exist. He knows these things, but at the same time, he's way too tired of having to put on this show to care much about what anyone else thinks.

"Earth to Oli," Clide says, which gets an agreeable bark from Benji.

"Sorry guys," he says. "A little distracted by all of this. You never know when someone's going to shove a camera in your face or tell you to go schmooze." (Or pretend like he cares about schmoozing with any of these families. As he cares about anything other than where the guy is that he held in his arms weeks ago.)

"Something tells me you're a little bit more distracted about something else," Carmen chimes in, always the empath of the group.

"Is this about the Facetime thing?" Clide asks.

It's what he's asked his friends to refer to his date with Shayne as in any talks that folks might hear. He still hasn't let them in on who the date was actually with, but they know he isn't interested in any of the women on the show.

"Oh my God it is," Carmen says. "Are they here?"

She's grinning so wide, Oliver wants to tackle her and tell her to shut up if he knew it wouldn't put #OliverIsOverParty right back into Twitter's trending algorithm. Instead, Oliver just shrugs, because what else can he do really?

"They?" Clide asks, raising an eyebrow at Carmen as he rubs Benji's belly.

It's Carmen's turn to shrug now, her voice only loud enough for the three of them to make it out under the blaring music. "I don't know their pronouns, trying to be respectful and all that if Oli is going to be mysterious.

"Thank you," Oliver says, it's very genuine gratitude. Even if he can't or doesn't want to share everything quite yet, he's glad to have supportive friends.