13. Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Thirteen
Beau
I am so far gone, and there may not be a way out as long as Adrian keeps talking. I’d known somehow, when Adrian had called instead of texting back, that we would end up here, but as much as I think I’m supposed to be sorry, I don’t have it in me tonight. I want this—want Adrian —and have for so long that I’ll borrow this time from wherever it will come due tomorrow.
“Don’t want to do it against a wall, though,” Adrian says, causing me to picture that and a hundred other scenarios at once as I shift my hand and put a little more pressure on my cock. “Not the next time.”
“Where do you want me to fuck you?”
Adrian sighs and I want to kiss him just to shut him up. “I’m boring. I want to be in your bed.”
I smile. “Nothing boring about that. I’m more than happy to wreck you in comfort. ”
“Are you in your bed now?”
“Yes.”
“Are you comfortable?”
“What are you really asking?”
“I don’t know anymore,” Adrian admits, breathless about it. “And I can’t stop what I’m doing.”
“I’m naked right now,” I tell him. “I usually sleep naked as long as none of my friends are sleeping on my couch, and I like to keep the apartment on the cold side so I can sleep buried under my duvet. But right now, the duvet is down around my ankles, and I’m holding the phone with one hand because even with you on speaker, you’d be too far away.”
It’s a lot to say when none of it is filthy enough to get us off, but I wonder if that’s only half the goal anyway. Adrian encourages me to continue, and I’ll give him anything he wants.
“My other hand is on my cock. Has been for a while. It’s too easy for you to turn me on, and I’m so tired of ignoring it, so I’m gonna make myself come tonight, and all I need to know is whether you want me to make you come, too.”
“If I say no, you’ll just let me go?” Adrian asks.
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“We’re both gonna let go after this, aren’t we? No matter what happens next.”
“I think we have to.”
Adrian’s exhale is full of need. “I want you to make me come.”
“Then let me sit you on that couch of yours and drop to my knees,” I start. “I know you’re dripping for me already, so let me taste it. Let me push your legs further apart and press my thumbs into your thighs and hold you open while I take you so deep inside my mouth that you almost lose it right there.”
“More.”
“Gonna suck your dick for as long as I can, but I don’t want you to come yet.”
“I’m already so close, though,” Adrian breathes, shaky about it at best. “Please tell me you’re close.”
“I am. I’m so fucking hard for you. And I’m gonna push you onto your back and use my precum to get you ready for me. Maybe yours, too. Because as soon as I took you out of my mouth, you got yourself wet again, didn’t you? Is it everywhere?”
“I’m so wet.”
“Good. I can rub both of us all over my cock before I slide it inside you. Bare, just like you wanted.”
I can feel it when I tighten my fist, and I know I’m getting loud, but I can’t possibly care. Adrian is moaning in my ear, and I am damn near flying.
“Tell me how it feels to finally fuck me, Beau. Tell me how badly you want to fill me up.”
“You have no idea, Ade,” I rasp. “Being able to look down at you. Being able to see how much you want me. I couldn’t see you that night, but watching you take me deep again and again? Christ, I want you to come all over yourself, so I know what I’m doing to you. Can you do that for me? Will you come all over yourself so I can come inside you?”
“I’m gonna make such a mess. You make such a mess of me.”
The next sound I hear might be miles away, but it’s still better than when Adrian’s mouth was pressed to my shoulder outside Trailhead. Adrian doesn’t have to be quiet now, and maybe neither one of us wants to be if we can tell ourselves we won’t hear the echo of it in the morning. My eyes squeeze shut, and I know the exact moment Adrian starts to spill across his own stomach because it’s only a few seconds before I do the same, my hand sticky as I work myself through it.
“I’m a mess too,” I whisper.
There’s no response to that right away, and I wonder if maybe Adrian’s walked away to clean up, or whether he’s done with me altogether. But then I hear the smallest beginning of a laugh, and I want to tuck it under my pillow and save it for later.
“Ade?”
“Hmmm?”
“You called me Ade ,” Adrian says. “Where did that come from?”
I snort. “Didn’t have a lot of blood left in my brain. You’re probably lucky I found words at all.”
“Not something that’ll be an ongoing issue in our friendship, I guess—you losing your ability to use my full name.”
“You didn’t like it.”
“I think I need to take a shower,” Adrian says, his nickname set aside, for now or always. “But I’ll see you Tuesday morning?”
It’s not fair to be disappointed in a goodbye, and I fight the urge to ask for more. “Yeah, I’ll see you Tuesday.”
I’m not all that superstitious, but I do pause to consider whether bringing breakfast burritos to Adrian’s is smart when it’s the same sort of peace offering I’d made the morning after we’d fucked at Trailhead. Of course, very little of this is the same—I was invited over today, and it’s been a few days since we’ve talked, and we didn’t actually fuck this time around—so I think it’s probably fine. With the bag of food in one hand, I knock with the other and remind myself that I’m here to help Adrian with things that have nothing to do with me. I’m a friend, and I’ll behave like one, and if I see anything in Adrian’s eyes to suggest there could ever be more, I’ll assume it’s a reflection of my own longing.
The wedding band still matters, whether there was a wedding or not, and hoping for anything else hurts.
“It’s unlocked, come on in,” Adrian shouts from inside, and letting myself into Adrian’s home like this feels at least as intimate as anything else that’s happened between us.
It’s too easy to step inside, kick off my sneakers, and lock the door behind me, and then I decide to drop my keys and phone on the nearby table for good measure. Adrian is sitting on the floor on the far side of the room with an array of painting supplies in front of him, and his beautiful face is contorted into a familiar scowl while he studies a couple of swatches. I can’t stare at him long though, too distracted by what is between us—or no longer between us—all the bedding gone from the couch and the coffee table mostly clear, like nobody ever slept there at all.
“Mornin’ sunshine,” I say, ignoring the disappearance of the elephant in the room. Or one of them, I suppose.
Adrian raises an eyebrow at the greeting, then tips his head toward the kitchen. “Help yourself to some coffee. I’m already on my second cup.”
“You know you could’ve dragged my ass out of bed earlier.”
“Figured I’d get plenty of your ass today. Wasn’t going to rush it.”
I nod and make my way to the coffeemaker, a mug and my favorite creamer already waiting for me on the counter. The sight of it helps none of the riot in my head, and I take a deep breath as I set the burritos down and pour myself a cup. A sip or two in, I pull our breakfast from the bag and remember where the plates are, getting us set up as nicely as any takeout meal will allow.
“You gonna eat with me or—”
Before I can finish my sentence, Adrian is behind me, his fingers just barely brushing against my hip. “Yes.”
We sit side-by-side on the same stools I remember from Christmas morning and spend a few minutes comfortably quiet while we eat. Adrian’s wearing faded black joggers and a stained shirt he must be willing to get dirty again, and it’s obvious he hasn’t bothered to do anything with his hair since getting out of bed, careless about it when he must know he’ll still catch the eye of several admirers if he chooses to leave his house today. A chunk of scrambled egg falls from my burrito then, tripping over the edge of my plate and onto the ratty jeans stretched over my thigh, but Adrian grabs it before I can, just silly enough about it that I almost don’t recognize this lighter version of him, and wonder if it’s safer to focus on anything else.
I trade my food for a long drink of coffee, then I very carefully eye Adrian again. “Looks like you got started on the living room early.”
“The couch.”
“Mmmm,” I hum.
“I think I needed to after—” Adrian shrugs and falls silent.
“Okay, so we’ve got painting, pictures, and what looks suspiciously like furniture that’ll piss me off a dozen times before we get it assembled.”
“It comes with instructions.”
I huff. “Is that what you wanna call ‘em?”
“Fine, you’re in charge of taping everything off before we paint, and you can frame my pictures for me. I’ll get started on the furniture and only use you when I need brute force.”
“I feel like there’s an insult in there somewhere, but I’m gonna need more caffeine before I find it.”
I lift my coffee again to drive the point home, and Adrian takes another bite, and we don’t need to talk much more until we’re both done with breakfast. Adrian messes around with his phone in the meantime and finds us a playlist that immediately strikes me as falling somewhere between mellow and melancholy. It’s probably right for the changes Adrian wants to make, but I wonder what the next several hours will do to the man sitting next to me now.
It’s not long before we’ve got our sleeves pushed up and are busy with our respective projects, and I’m moving anything in my way before I tape the two walls we’ll be painting today. Adrian wants one to be a foggy gray, and the other, sage green, and I stop before I tell him both suit him perfectly. He’s on the floor again, sprawled there as he organizes the pieces of the new bookcases he’s bought, and when I finish up, I throw a sticky ball of blue tape at his head, just because I can.
“You know, payback’s almost as much of a bitch as I am,” Adrian warns.
I just smile.
The music plays on, and Adrian joins me when it’s time to paint over the boring white he’s been living with for months. We make something like small talk for a bit, and I find it as easy as most of our conversations have become, everything reliably relaxed when I spend time with the unlikely friend who’d never wanted me to say hello. Something inside me tightens too, each glance at Adrian offering me a view of his body stretched or crouched or otherwise on display while making no attempt to show me anything at all, and I think about how naturally this could spin into a rom-com moment of splashed paint and one mess leading to another and another.
I shake the thought away. This isn’t that. We aren’t that. And if Adrian is looking at my body, too—well, he probably has his reasons.
We’ve nearly finished the first coat of one wall when Adrian tells me a little about the photoshoot he did the day before, spending some time with a couple on a gorgeous oceanside stroll before there was a proposal to capture among all the other pictures he took. His voice is steady, but I watch him closely, curious and always a little too eager to lean against someone else’s bruises if it means ignoring any of my own.
“How was that?” I ask carefully. “The whole romantic ring thing?”
“Fine.”
“Definitely sounds like it.”
“It was, I think. But I really need to figure out what kind of photographer I want to be out here,” Adrian says. “I worked a lot of formal events in New York. Fancy business shit and personal referrals from there. High-end whatever. Since moving, I’ve picked up a lot of family and general portrait stuff because it’s easier to sort of stumble into that with no connections, but I’m not sure making toddlers smile is a natural talent of mine.”
I chuckle. “You don’t say.”
Adrian is near enough to bump my shoulder with his own, and he does exactly that before moving a few feet away. “I just mean I’ve got the Trailhead photoshoot coming up, and maybe that’ll be good for me. Maybe it’ll be just different enough to give me a better idea of what I want.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” I tease. “Most of us are gonna act a lot like three-year-olds. If you keep your camera pointed at Riley, you should be safe, but Darren’s gonna want attention and snacks. ”
“And you?”
“I always want your attention.”
I walk away then, my paint roller set down so I can refill my coffee and forget about the truth that tumbled off my tongue. Adrian hasn’t reacted to it one way or another, and lord knows we have practice ignoring the things we’ve said to each other, so when Adrian continues to face the wall, it’s no surprise and probably perfect.
“Hey, who won the bet at Trailhead?” Adrian asks, so quiet about it that I have to step closer than I might have otherwise. “The night we met Darren there to talk about V. I assume it was Riley’s job to find out for you guys?”
“Yeah, Riley got the story,” I answer. “And none of us won—or all of us did, maybe? I was right that it was a first date, Darren was right that they had dinner somewhere else first, and Jake was right that they picked Trailhead together, so we called it a tie and we all kept our money.”
Adrian nods, paint dripping off his roller and onto the plastic he’s laid beneath us. He’s barefoot today, and I don’t know why it affects me the way it does, but I grab a rag to wipe up the paint before either of us accidentally steps in it, Adrian frowning about something that has nothing to do with paint and rags and spills.
“I guess if you’re all lucky, they’ll be back, and you can learn even more about them. Where they’re from, what they do, whether they want to dance with you.”
He’s trying to pick a fight with me, or at least lob the idea of one my way, but I’m not sure why it’s necessary. I glance around and wonder whether it has something to do with the memories of Levi we’re painting over or Adrian’s decision to build shelves Levi will never touch. The two of them are everywhere in this room, and very obviously not, but now I’m here too, and it strikes me that Adrian might be bothered by the fact that I held Levi in my arms longer than I’ve ever held him. It’s an unreasonable competition—one Adrian will win by default—but I don’t want to argue today, so I let him finish the last section he’s painting and then I pull the roller from his hand, leaving it to rest in the tray before I chance another look at him.
His dark blue eyes are cloudy. Frustrated in a way I don’t want them to be. And other than sending him away so I can change everything in his home without him having a say, there’s not much I can do but thread our fingers together and tug him toward the only empty floor space I can find, caught somewhere between the back of the couch, the kitchen, and a hallway leading into the dark.
“I want to dance with you .”
“I don’t—”
“You don’t dance, I know,” I interrupt, resisting the temptation to cut him off with anything more. My finger presses against his ring, and I sigh. “But once, please. Let me have one dance with you, and then we can forget all about it. We still have a lot of work to do.”
It’s not the best time to be doing this, Adrian’s playlist nothing like what I’m used to, but I can work with what I’ve got when he lets me tug him closer. I give him a few seconds to adjust to a hold that probably feels backward, even if this isn’t a habit of his, and then I lower my mouth to his ear and lead him through a too-slow two-step to a song not meant for it, everything about the quiet moment screaming that I’m making a mistake.
I’m making several by now, I suppose.
“I’m no good at this,” Adrian says.
“We’re both doin’ just fine,” I assure him. “There’s just very little room for us here, so I’m gonna do my best and hope I can talk you into giving me another chance someday.”
“You said one dance.”
“I’ve said a lot of things.”
Adrian probably rolls his eyes at that, but I can’t see his face while he’s watching his feet to help count his steps. He’s not nearly as bad at this as I expected him to be, and maybe he’s surprised too, because he relaxes in my arms as I steer us without the space for it to matter.
Then the song ends, and he must’ve been waiting for it, coming to a stop abruptly enough that I have to hold him tighter to avoid running over him entirely.
“Sorry, but we—there’s another wall to paint,” he sighs, his breath at my neck until I can push him away.
There’s a shift between us once we get back to work, though I couldn’t begin to guess what direction we’re headed in now. I’m a friend helping him with paint and furniture on a day off. I’m also a friend who might have trouble staying a friend when it’s so easy to remember what Adrian sounds like when he comes. I want to bring him breakfast burritos and talk about his photography. I also want to dance with him in a way that will end with us panting and horizontal. I want to forget about the reasons I don’t think we can have more, and I feel like I’m suffocated by them today.
Any conversation we make remains fine. Good, even. It’s flirty and fun and Adrian does splatter paint on himself, but he shrugs it off and I just shake my head. Everything is a little too careful though, like we’re afraid of saying all the wrong things, and I feel like it’s close to happening anyway. Maybe it’ll end with Adrian finally hitting me like he could’ve all those months ago.
Maybe it’ll end with Adrian reaching for my wallet again.
I don’t know whether I deserve either one.
We finish up the first coat of the second wall and set aside all the paint supplies for after lunch, and Adrian returns to his pile of particleboard and hex keys without worrying whether I will join him. Eager to avoid that brand of hell, I notice a separate stack of boxes on the dining room table and larger manilla envelopes next to it, so I kick Adrian’s leg and gesture toward it all.
“I’m guessing those are the pictures and frames?”
Adrian doesn’t freeze for long, but standing over him gives me time to clock it before he releases the tension and nods. “Yeah, if you want to start putting them together for me, that’d be good. We can hang at least a handful of them today, and I’ll deal with whatever goes on these two walls later.”
I open the boxes first, gentle as I lift each frame and arrange the largest of them on nearby chairs and lay a few medium-sized ones on the table. They aren’t fancy or anything, but I figure they matter just because they’re about to hold on to something special, and when I pull the pictures from the envelopes, I can’t tell whether I’m right or incredibly wrong. I think I’d expected pictures of Levi, or Levi and Adrian together, or something to keep memories close enough to touch, but I’m looking at a gorgeous, faceless world instead. Adrian’s got a hell of an eye, capturing one couple’s ankles pressed together beneath a patio table, an elderly hand wrapped around a mug on a foggy morning, delicate bare feet partially hidden by grass, and fingers tangled in someone’s perfectly messy hair. Each one takes my breath away, and anyone would be lucky to surround themselves with this kind of intimacy. I’m glad Adrian has seized it for himself.
After I give myself a moment or two, I think I’m done with this first step, but then I notice another envelope—a much smaller one that might have been an afterthought—and open it to finally find the face of the man who’d once asked me to dance. Levi is so much like I remember, and a ghost a couple of times over, but there aren’t any frames for him here, and it takes me a few seconds to swallow around that.
Clearing my throat, I tell myself to look anywhere but at the heartbreak in my hand.
“What would Levi have thought about the colors you picked for the walls?”
There’s no flinching now, and I wonder if Adrian’s been waiting this whole time for me to ask one strange question or another. He doesn’t answer right away though, stalling when he reorganizes the labeled pieces scattered around him and takes longer than necessary to leave them behind, turning halfway toward me only to focus on the couple of shelves he’s connected so far.
“As long as they’re not beige,” he says, flat and uninterested, like he’s repeating something he’d been told a thousand times. And maybe he is.
My frown goes unnoticed by the side of Adrian’s head and, ignoring the whisper inside me, I level it on the picture of Levi instead. He’s sideways too, sitting on the beach with his chin resting on his knees while he stares at the ocean, and I feel like I’m in danger of drowning before I’ve even gotten wet.
I wade in, softly reckless. “He was so bright. Warm. Happy. The way the sunshine reflects off the waves. I guess it makes sense that he wouldn’t want walls the color of the sand.”
“He wasn’t though.”
Adrian still isn’t looking at me, but when I think back on what I’ve just said, I’m not sure I need him to. “He wasn’t happy?”
“Mmmm.”
“With you?”
“With anything.”
I absorb that while I look at the picture one more time, but when I finally feel Adrian’s eyes on me, I can’t help but set it aside and turn to him. “I asked you if he had a drinking problem.”
“And I said no.”
“But I wasn’t that far off either.”
Adrian battles with a weary grin. “You were closer than anyone else ever has been.”
That shuts me up for a minute, and I use the time to close the distance between us, but before I can drop to the floor next to him, Adrian stands and takes a step back. He’s still looking at me though, so I stay where I am and push a little more.
“He didn’t drink much because it wasn’t good for him—struggling with depression, and if he was on meds—” I trail off and sort of shrug. “But I don’t—how did I notice more than anyone else? What about all your family and friends in New York?”
“Oh, come on. You just said it. He was so bright. Warm. Happy. He never wanted the rest of our world to think otherwise. And he was so terrified of losing the one thing he had—all that adoration, even showered upon lies—that he spent 20 years pretending to be fine. And I spent half of that at his side, smiling when he couldn’t.”
“Did you guys move out here so you wouldn’t have to pretend anymore?”
Everything is silent for a while, and I figure the longer it takes Adrian to answer, the more likely it is that I’ll get the truth. I want it all—whatever ugly honesty seems to be causing him physical pain—and I’ll stand here all damn day if that’s what it takes to hear it. But maybe Adrian is growing tired already because he sighs and tries to give me something.
“I think he wanted it to be magic,” Adrian says. “I mean, we both needed out of our apartment, I think. But then—I don’t know. He seemed to think starting over meant being finished with everything that had already happened, and depression is a lot more tenacious than that. It’ll follow you anywhere.”
“What did you want? ”
“What?”
“You said he wanted magic, but what did you want?” I ask. I hate that we’re still facing off in the middle of boxes and bookcases and pictures and paint, but maybe being caught between before and after makes sense. “It sounds like you knew his mental health would be an ongoing struggle, but you still came with him.”
“I loved him.”
“I know that. And so did he.”
Adrian sighs. “I wanted to stop carrying it by myself. And I thought with new friends and new coworkers, maybe he could let them in from the beginning. Maybe it wouldn’t just be me. Or maybe it wouldn’t have to be me at all.”