Stuck in the Middle (MxMxM)?

"Oh my god, he's adorable!" Ryder gushed, holding the chubby lizard to his chest and petting his head. The animal closed its eyes and was sleeping comfortably.

"You want cute? You should see him when I pull out the hornworms. He goes absolutely nuts." Adan laughed. "He falls all over the place trying to get to them through the glass."

"I wish I could see that. But I don't want to wake him up now."

"Don't worry, he'll stay like that for a while. We can watch a movie if you want?"

"Don't we have to put him back in the cage?"

"As long as he doesn't get on the counters or furniture, my parents are okay with it."

"Great. Then what movie were you thinking of?"

Adan thought for a minute. "Uh, how about we browse Netflix and see if anything catches our interest?"

"Sounds good to me."

They proceeded to the living room, with Ryder holding his hand up for fear that the lizard might fall. Then he got comfortable on the couch, where a blanket was draped over the back with the image of a dream catcher on it.

Adan got the remote and they scrolled through the available shows. "I'm surprised you wanted to hang out here. I thought you'd want to run around town instead."

"I don't know what all there is to do here. So far, the only places I've gone to were in Blue Field."

To that, Adan scoffed. "Yeah, that's because they like to imagine themselves as a 'tourist spot'."

"Well, they seem to know what they're doing."

"No, they don't."

Ryder noticed the man looked smug. "Care to elaborate?"

"They're wasting the town's money on entertainment. That fancy strip mall with all those restaurants is completely unnecessary for a town that small. But I'm pretty sure Blue Field thought it would attract enough new members to grow their population."

"Members?"

"I meant townsfolk."

"Oh. But you think they're going broke over it?"

"I know they are." Adan rolled his eyes. "If there's one thing I learned growing up, it's how to manage money. And there's no way they're earning enough to keep those places going for much longer."

"You seem to know a lot about a town you don't live in." Ryder noticed. "How do you know all of that?"

Adan hurried to think of an excuse, but Ryder already guessed he had talked about this with Kendric before their breakup. "Uh...I uh. It's not important. I just know Kendric is going to have his hands full if he intends on taking over."

"And Sutton is better?"

"Sutton was here first. We used to have a ton of coal mines back in the early days, which set us up for success in the long run. Our land is valuable, but we know better than to reach beyond our means. My uncle has been very careful about that. Once I take you out around town, you'll see that all of our places are well-kept. The parks are clean, the school is well maintained, the restaurants are all owned by locals and, again, well maintained. We don't waste money on 'modernization' if it's not necessary. Even our McDonalds is still original, unlike those black and grey cubes you see in Blue Field."

"You want to show me?"

Adan paused. "You want to see?"

"Yeah. You're gonna be mayor someday, so I want to see this town of yours."