Take It Outside (Trailhead #1)

5. Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Beau

I t’s not a good idea, but I watch Adrian leave, and maybe it’s better than the times I’ve had no say in that sort of thing. I ache in at least a couple of ways, and I take a deep breath as though that could soothe anything, reminding myself to be grateful that I don’t need to tend to a black eye or busted lip tonight. Still, the simple act of standing where Darren and I had earlier, the wall behind me absorbing bad news and pleasure without a care, has the grief hitting me somewhere lower before a rush of guilt takes its place. I refuse to look down at the trash in my hand when I finally turn toward the beer garden.

My first stop is at the small restroom nestled into the corner of the outdoor space, added on five or six years ago when the crowds became steady enough to justify it, and a godsend now that I’m not ready to go back inside yet. I throw the napkin and condom away and wash my hands and straighten my baseball cap, refusing to look into a mirror that will confirm that I look the same as I did before Adrian fucked me tonight, and a month ago when Levi was still alive, and probably four years ago when Darren and I signed off on our failure.

Surrendering those versions of myself is impossible, but I let the restroom door slam behind me and I step back into the night. The few people who’d been drinking here before are gone now, and I collapse onto one of the benches, my back turned to the bar because it’s easier to stare at nothing.

I’m feeling far too much.

Levi. Adrian. Darren.

Benji and Luca.

Stop .

I’m pretty sure I’m only allowed to miss a couple of them, and I lack the words to describe the way I long for anyone else. For a moment, I wonder whether Adrian has only just learned what it’s like to hurt in some of the same ways, and then just as quickly, I worry that my self-flagellation might’ve left him with a scar he doesn’t deserve. I won’t have the chance to ask whether my need to grieve his loss left a mark—I figure I’ll never see him again, actually—but I’m sorry for it all the same.

I’m a lot less sorry about how perfectly he and I fit together in the dark, and it’ll take me a while to forget what it had felt like to come in his arms.

It’s only the sudden appearance of an icy bottle on the table that keeps me from sinking into the memory now.

I look up. “Since when do you bother with table service, darlin’?”

“Don’t think this counts as service,” Riley says. “I’m off the clock.”

I nod, mostly for my own sake, and I watch as they settle onto the picnic table bench more gracefully than anyone should. Their rainbow bandana is gone for now, probably tucked into the pocket of their zip-up hoodie just in case they need to reach for it later, and their earbuds are in place, ready to play whatever music will carry them home. Their eyes, though. Their eyes haven’t left mine yet, and there aren’t words for how easily Riley breaks me and puts me back together all at once.

Turning away from them now, I touch a couple of fingertips to the beer and frown. “I shouldn’t be this upset.”

“By what happened to Levi?”

“Is there something else I should be talkin’ about?”

“Not if you don’t want to,” Riley answers. “We can talk about Levi and ignore the reasons you chased Adrian for a second conversation when the first had already gone so well for you.”

I finally pull the bottle closer and take a careful sip before I sigh. “You’re really gonna let me get away with calling it a conversation?”

“If it helps.”

“You think it was a terrible thing for me to do?”

“I think it took two of you to do it.”

“It was really good,” I murmur, dropping the beer back onto the table. “I wasn’t expecting it to be so good.”

Riley snorts. It’s stupidly endearing, even at my expense. “I’m sorry, but you cannot convince me that you’ve been having bad sex all this time.”

“It’s been a pretty long time since I’ve had any sex at all.”

“My point stands. And if it was that good for you, then maybe it was also that good for him, and maybe neither one of you did something so terrible after all.”

“Does it really matter?” I ask. “He’s gone now.”

Riley doesn’t respond right away, ignoring me to reach for the bottle and help themself to a long drink, my attention captured and held long enough that I almost miss the question that follows.

“What scares you more: going back to all those lonely nights with strangers, or wanting one person to be more than that?”

“Pretty sure you know that answer already.”

“Okay.”

“You’re gonna let me get away with that, too.”

Riley sips and smiles, and I can hear the way it curves around their words. “If it helps.”

“You don’t usually drink,” I say, tugging the bottle from their hand for another turn of my own, and remembering that it wasn’t long ago that I’d hoped for more time to talk to them just like this.

“No.”

“Has that always been true?”

“No.”

I pause, unsure about how far I’m allowed to push until I meet Riley’s eyes again. “Does this have something to do with Ethan? ”

“No,” they answer easily, shaking their head without looking away. “He’s never—it’s not like that with him.”

“Like that,” I echo.

Riley takes the bandana from their pocket, and I want to throw it to the ground just to hold their hand instead. The subject has changed, and I’m off the hook for a minute, but it’s a minute that might leave them with a bruise, and I think I’d rather comfort them than make them hurt for the sake of my curiosity. Their hand isn’t mine to hold, though, no matter what Riley says next.

“It’s never been bad like that—whatever you’re thinking. And it won’t be. There aren’t a lot of parts of my life that have anything to do with Ethan these days.”

“Is he in town?”

“Not right now, no.”

“But you’re still—”

“Yeah, we are,” Riley interrupts, and it’s fine because I’m not sure what else I wanted to say about it anyway. Then they shrug before they stare up at the moon and go on. “I don’t usually drink because there are too many things I need to keep track of in my head, and it just becomes one more. It’s hard, having to hold on to it all, and I don’t think it would be a good idea to let anything fall.”

“So, why share my beer tonight?”

“You’re the safest place the pieces of me could land.”

They’re still not looking at me, their head tipped toward the sky and a whole damn rainbow twisted in their hands. It gives me plenty of time to drink, each swallow going down rougher than the one before, and the bottle is empty before it’s back on the table, my fingers left cold until I rub them over my beard and forget what they feel like altogether.

“He’s dead, Riley.” It’s a hell of a way to make the conversation all about me again, and I can’t tell whether that was my goal. “We danced together. That’s it. We danced and then he died, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that when it doesn’t feel like I have the right to do a damn thing.”

Riley’s head drops, their beautiful scowl aimed at me. “Do or feel? Because once you get a few more minutes away from whatever you did with Adrian, you have the right to feel everything about Levi. All of it.”

“I didn’t really know him, though. Adrian made that real fuckin’ clear.”

“For the record, you’re allowed to feel everything about him, too.”

I don’t argue with them—can’t fathom where it would begin or end—but anything I might’ve said dissolves on my tongue when I hear familiar footsteps approach from somewhere behind us. Riley slips the bandana back into their pocket, but they take another few seconds to pull their gaze from where I have a hard time letting go, only looking up at Darren when we both have to.

“Hey, kid. Mind if I talk to Beau alone for a minute?”

“You don’t have to leave,” I say with one more glance at Riley.

Darren rolls his eyes. “Didn’t say they had to, just asked if they’d mind.”

“No need to fight, boys,” Riley says, pushing up from the picnic table with their phone in hand, something queued to pulse through their earbuds if it’s not there already. Then they bend to kiss me on the cheek, and I catch the hum of a mystery song along with the words whispered in my ear. “Let yourself feel things again. One of us should remember how.”

They disappear just as I stand, nose to nose with Darren for the second time that night. “Go ahead. Things can’t possibly get any worse.”

“Don’t be so sure, babe. I’m getting ready to close up soon and just finished walking around outside, checking for stragglers or bottles or whatever else people leave behind.”

I sigh, impatient and annoyed and unwilling to play games with a man who has already won too many. I know his routine, and I know that he walked the same side of the building where I had offered Adrian the chance to fight, but I can’t figure out why he’s softened his expression into something careful, and so far away from the smirk that might’ve made us both more comfortable.

“I’d congratulate you, but I’m guessing that’s not your point.”

Darren stares at me for another moment or two, then reaches for my hand and presses something into my palm. Or a couple of somethings, actually. I feel them slip against each other before I’ve done much to hold on to them, and I hate that my entire body has responded already—stomach dropping, adrenaline humming, eyes falling closed—until I fight the urge to play stupid and look down at the driver’s license and debit card I’ve never seen before. I beg for the chance to feel nothing, fail miserably, and surrender to whatever else Darren has to say.

It starts with an unnecessary nod toward the dark. “Found them on the ground over there. Thought maybe you’d want to return them.”

“If they ended up on the ground, what makes you think me returning them would be a good idea?” I ask. “We weren’t exactly taking the time to get to know each other, I wasn’t particularly nice to him, and he bailed before he realized anything was missing. Pretty sure he’d rather come back and get these from you when I won’t be around.”

Darren doesn’t budge, and maybe I expected that all along, a standoff that never gets to become one when I close my hand around Adrian’s things. It remains a bad idea, but it seems like everything about tonight has been, and Darren offers just enough of a smile to make me think there’s some small part of it that doesn’t have to be as bad as my regret might suggest.

“You know I could hold on to these. You know he’d come back here to get them, and you’d never have to see him again.”

“But you think I want to,” I say.

Darren laughs then, and it doesn’t hurt like it should. “I know you want to.”

“His boyfriend died a month ago. And he mostly hates me.”

“Definitely true and probably true,” he agrees. “But then you fucked anyway, so it sounds like there’s room on the other side of that ‘mostly’ if you’re up for finding it.”

“For another round or two?”

“Sure. Or the friendship you both need. ”

I roll my eyes. “Because a friends with benefits arrangement would be healthy for both of us, right?”

“I think you missed my ‘or’ there,” Darren snorts. “Please do not attempt both.”

“Still not sure I should attempt anything, but thank you or I’m sorry or whatever else I’m supposed to say right now.”

Darren sways closer for a moment, and I can’t help but relax at the familiarity of it. “I love you. Go home.”

He swipes the empty beer bottle before he leaves me there, and while there’s probably nobody left inside to care that I’m still around, I decide to walk around the side of the building because there’s something shameful about it that has nothing to do with sex. It’s late though, and I think that if I can manage to sleep off enough of the guilt I only sort of understand, a visit to Adrian’s in the morning might not be as awful as it sounds.

Hoping for anything better than that feels impossible.

My night is restless at best. I don’t want to be awake, but I don’t want to dream, flashes of Levi catching me somewhere in between.

Flashes of Adrian, too.

The memory of his arms around me, and all the anger and the solace and how perfectly he filled me while he moaned into the back of my neck. Fists and teeth and a whimper he tried to hide. Not quite as tall as I am, and not quite as broad, but somehow able to demand everything I would have given him if he’d just asked nicely.

Then again, I’m not convinced asking nicely is something Adrian does. And maybe having me show up at his door is exactly what he deserves.

I take a long shower, and if there’s a lingering ache—imagined or otherwise—that has me stroking myself through it, relief bittersweet when it comes, that’s between me and the tiled walls painted with plenty of my secrets. My hands sting though, a consequence of a different wall entirely, and I growl at the series of scrapes scattered over my palms from where they were pressed against brick that didn’t care to be kind. It’ll make work suck today, the pressure applied to a half dozen other bodies bound to hurt me more than it should. With any luck, that’s as bad as it’ll get.

Once I’m dressed in my scrubs, I comb my fingers through my hair and pretend anyone will care what I look like when they’re face down on the massage table, or any time before that. I squint in the bathroom mirror and try again to see someone new, but there’s nobody else there, so I give up after another few seconds and make my way to the kitchen, bailing before I can stay there long either. There’s time for me to have coffee and make a small breakfast for myself, but if I want to drop off Adrian’s ID and card before work, I should leave before I bother playing chef.

If I want to grab something for both of us on my way, I need to go now .

Thinking about it any longer is bound to freeze me in place, so I hurry to wriggle into my sneakers and grab my things, and then I pass the apartment building’s unreliable elevator before I jog down the stairs instead. I drive through somewhere familiar and travel further to fight traffic that’s less so, and by the time Linda Ronstadt is singing to a lonely cowboy, I pretend it has nothing to do with me. At the moment, denial feels better than the reality of parking on the street outside Adrian’s townhouse.

The eventual knock on Adrian’s door is stronger than I feel.

It goes unanswered.

I sigh and consider leaving everything on his doorstep, except that it would’ve been safer on the ground outside Trailhead, and if I’m honest with myself, I’m really only a coward sometimes. After a blink or two, I knock again—louder this time, and carrying the same faux strength—forgetting to take a step back when I hear the heavy click of the deadbolt and the lighter one of the lock somewhere below it. In the next breath, the door swings open slowly enough that there’s probably still time to walk away.

I don’t.

“I’d ask how you found out where I live, but I’m almost more curious whether I’m being given a second chance to punch you in the face.”

Adrian’s glare doesn’t waver, his eyes a dark denim blue I hadn’t noticed the night before, but he’s barely awake, and I hate any role I played in making the past several hours worse than they had to be. My goal had been the opposite of that, but the tight line of his unshaven jaw gives too much away, and I wonder if pressing my apology to his sleepy pulse might help.

It won’t, of course, but Adrian is gorgeous, and I can’t help but consider it because I’m tired, too.

I’m not sure how long he’s been out of bed, but Adrian’s still wearing pajama pants and a t-shirt worn thin, and with his feet bare, he suddenly seems so much smaller. I frown a little, thrown by how much isn’t going the way I think it should, but for however much I remain bruised by a dozen small things, they’re not mine to feel this morning, and a well-timed breeze brings me back from where my mind had wandered.

“You dropped these outside the bar—” I start, handing over the license and debit card without a detailed explanation of how they might’ve ended up on the ground. “And as long as I was stopping here before work, I figured I’d grab breakfast for you.”

Adrian pushes his hair off his forehead and the movement hides at least a couple of the questions he won’t ask before he finally responds. “Lucky me. Conveniently located so you can drop by unannounced whenever you’d like.”

“Not so convenient, actually,” I say. “No need to worry about seeing me again.”

“If I’m not on your way to work, why’d you bring my stuff here?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Didn’t realize it would’ve been better to make you worry about it ‘til Trailhead opens and you could give ‘em a call.”

“Anyone could’ve dropped them off,” Adrian argues.

“Yeah, anyone could’ve. And you could’ve punched me last night, so I guess we’re both rethinking our choices, huh?”

There’s another glare, but I’m ready for it and meet the anger head-on. Only a small nod changes anything, Adrian finally reaching forward to take the coffee cup and paper bag I’ve been holding. There’s a breakfast burrito inside—one of my favorites—but I won’t stick around long enough to see whether Adrian spits it out just to piss me off. In fact, I’m fully prepared to step back and say goodbye, but I make it nowhere.

“Hey, what happened? Are those from—” Adrian scrambles to set everything down on a table I can’t see from the wrong side of the doorway, and then he grabs my wrist until he can get a better look at my hand. “The brick wall. Jesus Christ , Beau. I didn’t—”

Adrian doesn’t finish his sentence, and he doesn’t need to, his fingertip gentle when it traces the ugly scrapes covering my palm. It’s more, somehow, than any of the ways we’ve touched each other before, and I let him take his time with each jagged edge—a dozen small wounds marring skin Levi once admired as soft. I hate that I’m here like this, and that he’s holding me all over again, but I wonder if our unfairly shared grief was always going to last longer than a night.

Still, I know it’s almost over now. I might’ve pulled away already if I wasn’t busy grabbing Adrian right back.

And then touching him with just as much caution.

“You weren’t wearin’ this last night.”

“No.”

“Why not?” I ask, my finger surprisingly steady on the cool metal of Adrian’s wedding band .

“Didn’t know it existed until yesterday,” Adrian whispers. “Didn’t put it on until I got home. After.”

I ache with the implications of that—every layer of them—and I take a deep breath because I have to get to work, and I have to leave Adrian behind, and I have to forget about the past, and I have to remind myself that there is no future. But before I can do any of that, I clear my throat and lift my fingertip from the ring and offer the same handshake that had been ignored 12 hours ago, along with an introduction that sounds too much like one I made to Levi last month.

“Hi, I’m Beau Davenport. It was very nice to meet you.”

Adrian stares at me for a long time, and then his hand slides against mine like maybe I’m not the only one reaching for memories, our pain trapped between us until we have to let go. If I never see him again, this might be enough.

“Adrian Ortega. It was very nice to meet you, too.”