7. Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven
Beau
W e’re in trouble and I don’t know what to do about it
I roll my eyes at Darren’s text, just barely out of the shower and sprawled on my bed, only a towel around my waist while I consider which pair of sweatpants might replace it.
Dramatic much?
I’m serious. Need your big brain
It would be easy to crawl down to Darren’s level and make a joke about what other big parts of me he might need. So easy. Too easy, maybe, and I let it go.
Fine. Who’s we and what’s the trouble?
Trailhead and some financial bullshit over my head. V is trying to make it seem fine but it’s not. And btw adrian is here again
Jfc. Fuck. We’ll figure out V for sure. But he’s really there?
Do I need to hand him my phone? Careful with your answer, might still have your bare ass as my phone background
I’m sure you do. And no. Leave him and V alone. I’ll be there soon
I drop my phone to the bed and accept that I’ll have to trade my towel for jeans now. Of course I’m worried about V and Trailhead and whatever financial trouble has made Darren nervous, but the heavy thump of my heartbeat has more to do with Adrian, and I wish getting dressed to go out wasn’t about to matter in a way it shouldn’t. Just as I did a little over a week ago, I’m gonna sit at a bar whose splinters I memorized years ago, and I’ll have a beer or two and maybe a shot if I don’t say no, but I’ll be too close to Adrian while I do all of that, and Darren wouldn’t have bothered to text me if he hadn’t known it, too.
I pull on my favorite jeans and a henley Adrian hasn’t seen, and when my fingers work to buckle my belt, I pretend my palms don’t itch with a phantom scrape. Then I slip back into the bathroom to make sure I look reasonably put together, blinking and searching for something in my reflection that I’ll have to go further to find, and I return to my bedroom to grab my cowboy boots before pausing at my dresser.
There’s a wedding band of my own inside, and I wonder if it still fits.
There’s something else tucked next to that, and I think I’m the only one who knows it exists.
But just as quickly, I leave it all behind, the engine of my truck purring within another minute or two. I could walk to Trailhead from my apartment, but it would waste time that might be important to me tonight, and I’m not interested in scuffing up my boots anyway. The drive lasts less than a song, and I’m more than halfway to the big barn doors before I think about how weightlessly I move without my ring, and how Adrian might be pinned in place by the heaviness of his.
I use the last several seconds of solitude to hope that he’s taken it off already.
But I can’t tell right away, Adrian on my old barstool with his left hand curled around the far side of his glass. What I can tell is that, ring or not, Adrian has captured the attention of the collectively drunk and horny, a couple of eager men leaned into a space I can’t claim as my own. I stay back to watch for a few minutes, flashing a smile at Riley—a silent promise that they don’t have to worry about me —and when the path to Adrian clears, I close the distance between us. He seems to notice me before it should be possible, but maybe being on guard has given him a sixth sense, his grin tired in a way I want to fix with a touch to the corner of his mouth.
“You just sent two men packing in near record time,” I say. “I’m a little nervous about what’ll happen after I say hello.”
“Four.”
I tilt my head and hum. “Four what?”
“There were four men,” Adrian explains. “Guess you didn’t get here in time to catch the beginning of the show.”
“Ah, well, I’ll have to ask Darren why he was so slow to text me about your arrival.”
The man in question slides a bottle across the bar top for me and is gone again before I can close my fingers around it, and Adrian snorts.
“Thanks for not making me guess which one of them gave you the heads up this time. Did you make that request, or did he go rogue?”
I shrug. “He’s never been great about stayin’ out of my business.”
“Even when you finally gave up your front-row seat at his?”
“Even when,” I say, nodding at where Adrian has made himself comfortable. “You’ve got a pretty decent view of the room when there isn’t a parade of strangers trying to say hello. And I can get out of your way too, if you wanna make me lucky number five.”
“After you went through all the trouble of making the trip here?” he asks.
“Eh, I wouldn’t call it trouble when I live about four minutes away.”
Adrian’s head tips back with an accidental laugh that takes us both by surprise. “So, you put the least possible amount of effort into seeing me tonight.”
“Yessir. The absolute least,” I confirm, sliding onto the stool next to him, because while I’d take my beer elsewhere if asked, I don’t actually want to go anywhere. “You’ve hated me since the first time I interrupted a drink of yours, so putting six or seven minutes in would’ve been a hell of a chance to take.”
I know my cheeks are flushed, but my beard does me the favor of hiding some of it, and there’s little Adrian could say when the color in his own face gives away too much. We both take a sip and spend longer than necessary swallowing, but then he’s the one to bump a leg into mine this time, steady there when we make eye contact again.
“You think that’s the only chance you’re taking here? Having me hate you all over again?”
I can’t answer—can’t even ask Adrian what chance he might be taking when he doesn’t send me away—and after a brief attempt at people-watching that goes nowhere, we fall into something mundane, getting to know each other in a way that seems entirely backward for two men who once used each other to come.
I learn Adrian was born and raised in New York City, part of a large, chaotic family that had always turned to him whenever they needed to be settled down, mostly because he’d never been all that good at raising his voice, even when he had something important to say. He used to have a fancy suit-and-tie job at some fancy PR firm in a fancy building in Manhattan, nobody quite sure why he’d give that up to take pictures of people instead, especially when they told him the chill of an office building matched the blue steel of his eyes, and becoming a photographer would require the kind of connection he’d always been loath to make. Later, at least a handful of them decided it wasn’t so bad when his newly flexible schedule meant time to solve problems that didn’t belong to him.
Catholicism be damned, bringing a serious boyfriend home for the first time wasn’t a big deal, three cousins and an older sister beating Adrian to one label or another, and I would envy something about that if I wasn’t still stuck on the little ways Adrian’s family might’ve left him with a dozen other bruises. And there were other people in Adrian’s life before Levi—men and women from what I gather—but it doesn’t sound like any of them lasted long enough for memories to linger. Levi, though. Everyone in his family loved Levi, and the wistful rush of his name has me finally catching sight of the ring that had eluded me before. Adrian aims a sad smile at the empty glass in front of him and drops that part of his past on the bar next to it.
Riley stops by to drop off another glass for Adrian and a second bottle for me. One of us mentions a shot of whiskey. The other one agrees. Riley is gone and back again before we can worry about right or wrong or the hatred that was supposed to simmer between us.
“What’s the story there? With you and Riley?” Adrian asks once the burn of the liquor fades. “It’s not the same as what you and Darren have, but it’s something.”
I don’t look at Adrian, nor do I respond right away, appreciating instead the fluidity with which Riley moves, here and everywhere. I’m so used to being caught up in these moments, but I nearly chuckle at the thought of how often others must be confused by the contradiction that comes with Riley’s attention, the Trailhead crowd pulled close and held at arm’s length at the same time. As much as anyone here might be thirsty, I assume plenty of them approach Riley for a closer look at their piercings—ears, eyebrow, tongue, and both nipples—but I think most people miss the way Riley reaches for anything soft—towels, bandanas, and hoodies—the moment the demand for alcohol slows.
I also think Adrian noticed a while ago.
Riley isn’t particularly small, and they’re far from fragile, but there’s always been something about them that makes faux cowboys feel tough, and there’s nothing quite like watching Riley weaken those men with a smile. Their gaze is an endless icy blue, but even among those asking for no more than a drink, eye contact with Riley is fleeting at best. And while they’ll quietly charm anyone in the shadow Darren’s more obvious flirting has left behind, they’ll also disappear into the night with ear buds and little else, long before they ever drag a stranger home in the dark.
Everyone seems to want to touch Riley. Very, very few can.
I’m one of the few, and Adrian’s noticed that, too.
“I love them,” I shrug. “Have since day one, I think. It’ll never be more or less than that.”
“They’re safe here.”
It’s a statement, not a question, and I think he means it far beyond any sort of potential physical concern. And it’s true—both that Riley needs that kind of safety, and that they’ve found it at Trailhead. Confident in the trust Riley has in me, I keep the conversation going, even when it’s none of my business, and it’s definitely not Adrian’s.
“I think it’s better than going home sometimes.”
Adrian nods. “Because they’re alone, or because someone else is there?”
“Someone else,” I say. “Or sort of, I guess. Nobody understands it exactly, and most of us have only seen Ethan a couple of times, but I don’t think they live together. Just that when he’s around, it’s not great.”
“Define ‘not great’ for me, because I never got to punch you in the face, and I’m not opposed to aiming for someone else just to get it out of my system.”
I warm, maybe because Adrian wants to defend Riley or because it’s easy to remember what else Adrian got out of his system or because I was right that I could share this part of Riley with some kind of pseudo-enemy who’s never been anything like one. He’s still pressed against me though, and it’s enough reason for me to keep talking.
“I don’t think it’s abuse so much as—disinterest? Neglect? A million promises made and never kept? Ethan’s away for work a lot and doesn’t seem like he wants much to do with Riley’s life, except when he does, if that makes any sense.”
“Riley goes home and waits to be wanted, and it doesn’t happen often.”
“Pretty much,” I confirm.
Adrian takes a long drink and waits for me to do the same, and then he leans in to nudge my shoulder. “Okay, so, I told you all about me, and now I know a little about Riley—do I get to hear anything about you, or should I go tease it out of your ex?”
“Darren would spill everything before you even got the word tease out of your mouth.”
“Then I guess you should start talking before he does.”
I take a deep breath and ignore the way my body rises and falls against Adrian’s, then I tell him I grew up in Texas, not far from the Louisiana border, with an older brother who loved to kick my ass when I was little. I describe a childhood spent mostly outside with energy it took at least 30 years to burn off, though as I dig past a memory or two, I remember all the times I’d lie in the grass and stare up at the sky, a dreamer long before I understood why other people weren’t. I know my expression is complicated when I talk about playing football all the way through high school, admitting in the next breath that I was never quite good enough for the kind of money that would’ve helped me get to college. Then I smile a little when I tell Adrian that I used to tend bar at a place not entirely unlike Trailhead, trading wild nights for a day job when it felt like the right thing to do.
I break for another sip or two, then I say something again about living nearby, and that I’d love to get a dog, but not when I’d have to leave it alone in an apartment all day. I joke about getting older, my 40 th birthday only about a year and a half away, and I roll my eyes when Adrian threatens to join up with a few of the guys at the bar who are already excited to plan something stupid on my behalf. There’s a beat or two when I imagine there’s any chance Adrian will still be around then, and then I distract both of us from the thought when I talk about coming out to my friends and family the day I turned 22, their mixed reactions demanding something of me that I wasn’t willing to give.
We fall quiet again, and it’s not uncomfortable in any of the ways I want it to be. We’re sort of cut off from the rest of the bar, physically and emotionally, seated at the furthest end of it and next to the door to the beer garden fewer people use in November, and both of us ignore the buzz around us anyway. Darren, Riley, and V— fuck , I still need to find out what’s going on there—have decided to leave us alone, and I consider asking them not to, just so I don’t have to think about the empty space between each beat of my heart.
“I still don’t dance,” Adrian says, quiet when he breaks some kind of spell and pulls me into another.
“No, you don’t.”
“And you’re still not going to take me outside.”
“I am not.”
“Because you don’t fuck married men.”
I nod toward Adrian’s left hand. “Think the albatross might get in the way, even if I changed my mind.”
“Maybe I should chase down some of the guys from earlier,” Adrian offers, pulling his hand away from the glass to frown at the ring. “Gotta be someone willing to be a third.”
Adrian’s wrist is right there, and I can’t help but close my fingers around it, Adrian’s hand far from small, but still nothing compared to mine. I turn it over and tell myself not to pause just to trace the lines on Adrian’s palm, or massage the tension from it, my thumb stupidly gentle instead when it brushes over the metal.
“Never said I wasn’t okay with bein’ a third. Just want to make sure all three of us are actually in the room.”
It’s supposed to be a joke of some kind, but it has no chance of making either of us laugh .
“What are we doing?” Adrian whispers, almost unbearably still while I touch him.
“Hmmm?”
“We’re talking, but it’s—we’re not friends.”
“That hate thing,” I say. “Yeah, you’ve mentioned it a time or two.”
Adrian shakes his head. “There’s so much ugliness in me—mostly guilt and failed expectations, I think—but it’s never gone anywhere. My whole life, I've absorbed it from everyone else, and then I’ve held on to it. Let it warm my blood. Let it make me angry. I’ve never known what else to do with it.”
“You knew what to do with it a few months ago.”
“Because you made it okay.”
It’s a lot to hear—almost too kind given the subject itself—and my grip tightens without my permission. “Is that why you want to do it again?”
Adrian raises an eyebrow. “I never said I wanted to do it again. I only asked if you were planning on it.”
“Then why ask me what we’re doing? It sounds like you’ve got it all figured out,” I say. “You were fucked up. I let you be fucked up with me. Now we’re talkin’ about it like it wasn’t over and done with months ago.”
“Over and done with? The last three times I’ve walked through those doors, you haven’t been here. But then someone texted you, and you showed up within minutes. Every time.”
“It’s only—”
“Four minutes away,” Adrian interrupts. “ Yeah, I got that. But you still came.”
“To be fair, that first night wasn’t supposed to be about you.” I sigh and drag my fingers from Adrian’s skin. “That first night wasn’t supposed to be a lot of things.”
“You think it was a mistake.”
I almost challenge Adrian on that—I’m ready to spit something incredulous at him when it sits bitterly on my tongue—but I swallow and breathe and try to figure out a way to address everything at once.
“I want more,” I start, and it’s wrong already, Adrian’s eyes going wide in response. “No, I—I want to be more than whatever I’ve been the past four years. And maybe long before that. Before Darren. It’s why I was thinking about gettin’ away from this place the night I first danced with Levi. I’d already stopped fuckin’ around, but I was still stuck here, and I only stayed then because I could dance with him without it being anything more than that. I could have fun and not confuse it for something else.” I throw back the rest of my beer and wipe my mouth and don’t react when Adrian’s gaze drops to watch. “Then he was gone and the first thing I did was go right back to the same bad habit. After months of being better than that, I just—wasn’t.”
“You really think casual sex is some kind of moral failure?” Adrian asks. “That all those years you’d been doing something wrong?”
“Not at all. Some nights felt like—I don’t know, whatever the opposite of that would be. Something entirely goddamn holy,” I say, stopping myself there because, well, it’s entirely goddamn holy. “But I became someone else too many other nights. Careless and numb. So, I want more than that, and I don’t think I can find it here.”
Adrian tips his glass back until he catches an ice cube he crunches between his back teeth, sending a chill through my body. “Someday, I’m going to want more, too.”
“You will, but not with me. I’m always gonna be the guy you fucked because you tried to take on a couple of stages of grief at once.”
A sixth sense lifts my head in time to catch a silent question from Darren, but I shake him off. If Adrian and I are driving away tonight, we need to be done.
“So, what happens the next time one of them texts you?” Adrian asks, pulling my attention again and holding it too carefully.
“I think I have to tell them to stop,” I answer.
“Because otherwise I’ll keep asking you about going outside, and you’ll keep telling me no.”
“We did it all wrong that night,” I shrug. “And I can’t do it wrong all over again.”
“And like I already said, we’re not friends.”
“We are not.”
Adrian is the one to reach for my hand now, gentle when he turns it in his own and touches his fingertips to my palm. There’s nothing to see there, no matter how long he stares, and I wish for the sudden appearance of a physical scar that could make at least one of us feel better. After another few seconds, he gives up on it altogether, covering my hand and pressing memories into something neither of us can hold.
Then Adrian stands, almost graceful about it, and I feel something in my chest tighten when he waves Darren over. It would make a strange sort of sense if he decides he needs something I’ve already refused to give—Adrian had spoken to Darren before I ever knew Levi’s name—but all I can think is that the three of us deserve something else and I don’t know what any of it might be.
“You guys change your mind about another round?”
“No, but I have a favor to ask,” Adrian says.
“A favor,” Darren echoes, his gaze flitting to me and back. “What’s up?”
“The next time I show up here, don’t text Beau about it. Taking a break from here was good for him, and I’m not gonna be the reason he keeps coming back.”
Another look. Me and back. “Sure. Okay.”
I shut my eyes for a moment, and it’s long enough for Adrian to disappear, only a foot or two away, but so goddamn far after I’ve become used to the way we always seem to sit too close to each other. He’s supposed to hate me, and it’s not fair that there’s been a single second to suggest otherwise. It makes the distance between us something that matters, the pain of it dangerously sharp and frighteningly dull.
“Wait.”
For the second time that night, my hand curls around Adrian’s wrist, but his back is already turned, and it’s almost impossible to hear him .
“Beau.”
“Maybe it’s this. Being here,” I say, pausing to hold my breath until Adrian looks at me again. “Maybe it’s Darren and Levi and sawdust and songs that say too much. Maybe if we’re not here anymore—”
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe I could give you my number and you can text me when you wanna go somewhere else.”
I don’t have to wonder what my face looks like when it processes a dozen contradictions at once, Adrian’s expression fighting all the same terrible and wonderful things. He could be ready to run away from me or follow me the four minutes it will take to get us through my front door, but then his eyes fall shut and open again, in search of the patience I have always been willing to give.
“You said you have bad habits. That you got stuck and want to be more than whatever you’ve been for so long,” Adrian starts, his voice shakier than anything I’ve noticed before, and I drop my arm just so I don’t have to feel the intimate tap-tap-tap of his pulse. “But you have no idea. I’m a mess. An absolute bitch, and a mess.”
“No shit,” I snort.
“We did it all wrong that night, and I can’t do it wrong again either.”
“Fine. Then we don’t even try. Not for that. We had our chance, and we fucked it up and we’re both gonna stay a little bit angry if we can’t find a way to let it go. ”
“But we’ve never been friends before,” Adrian says.
“Nope. And maybe there’s still time. Maybe that’s the part we haven’t messed up yet.”
Adrian pulls his phone from his pocket.