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"Not a damn thing," Al replied.

Unlike Melvin, Al was enjoying the vacation. He quite liked having ******** to do with his time and despite the ugly truths that came out the night before, he was determined to enjoy himself and just avoid the bigger assholes. Surprisingly, Melvin wasn't one of the bigger assholes so received an amicable smile for his efforts. "You bored man?"

"You're always hot," Al tried to tease lightly before humming at Melvin's question in mild confusion.

He had no idea what Melvin was asking or trying to say with that. "What?"

"No really," he shrugged at Melvin. "I don't think any of my questions were malicious. I was just curious what her deal was because she just was pretty relentless towards me for no reason near as I could tell."

"What?" Al threw his head back in genuine boisterous laughter. "No. I was interested in him first and then she took him from me. If she wants to just skip over that part then let her, no skin off my nose, but it's no the truth. The truth is she stole him first and he only went along with it because he misunderstood me an' thought I wasn't serious about us. So I just showed him I was and - took him back."

"I could have sworn I told you about this already when I was encouraging you, though I probably shouldn't have -" given his own answers about Rodney, "- to get Lawr back." He shrugged at Melvin. "She even admitted, finally, that he was no meant for her."

"I don't think our relationship is confusing. What confuses you about it?"

Al tipped his head to the side and somehow, deep down, found a bit of humor in Melvin being asked questions rather than the other way around.

"When the ******** isn't she pissed, honestly?" He shrugged at Melvin in earnest. "I barely remembered her from before but she's been nothing but a shrieking banshee since I got back so of course that's all I've really got to go by."

He shrugged again but this time more exaggeratedly before physically turning his body around completely to face Melvin as he was realizing this was going to be a bit of a discussion. "Yeah, there were misunderstandings from all sides at the start. Ones that for the most part worked themselves out. Maybe not perfectly. But me an Noah understand each other better now for it."

He drew a deep breath and then sighed before continuing. "I asked him out, he agreed, but then he started to think I only asked just to mess with him. Like a really mean prank or something. When no, I meant it, I was just really upset that I meant it like. I found out for the first time ever that I was even interested in guys like that because of him. It was startling."

He looked down and ran his fingers through his bangs to straighten them downward nervously, talking to anyone about any of this in such a blunt way just felt a bit embarrassing even if he wasn't embarrassed about Noah or how he felt about him at all.

"Peyton. She. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time for everyone, herself included."

"We never officially broke up," he propped his head up on his hand and stared at Melvin. There was a pause of silence as if weighing how much information to give Melvin, because he didn't want to paint Noah in a bad light as a cheater or anything when Noah simply misunderstood how serious Al was about him - about them. "Like I said, it was a misunderstanding and she didn't say much to me before or after. Just suddenly was dating my boyfriend on me. I love him and couldn't be happy again without him and you heard her, they weren't meant to be. She said it herself."