16. Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Sixteen
Adrian
M y question wasn’t all that important when I asked it, but it gains a heartbeat of its own as several silent seconds pass. Beau doesn’t have to answer, and I have no doubt he knows that much, but I’m not sure what kind of time he’s trying to buy while he stares over my shoulder. Is he remembering a home-cooked candlelight dinner followed by slow dancing in his living room? Does he think he’ll hurt my feelings if he tells me about wining and dining someone in a bar with an ocean view and waking them up in a hotel room with his tongue somewhere around mid-thigh?
Whiskey warms my throat while I wait, but it’s barely further than that when Beau finally looks at me again, and I know. I know . For the briefest moment, I wonder whether I could distract him with a kiss before he becomes almost unbearably honest, but I don’t think I want either of us to lie .
“I agreed to meet a guy for dinner. He was new in town, so I suggested The Grove.” Beau smiles from where he’s still leaning against the kitchen counter and pauses long enough for a sip. “We had a couple of drinks and some incredible food at a nice little Italian restaurant, then took a walk together because neither of us seemed quite ready to leave. I talked him into a cupcake he didn’t want, and we wandered over to the fountain like maybe wishes were a thing we believed in. I wasn’t allowed to walk him to his car at the end of the night, but I drove home and thought about what it might’ve been like if I had. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how a lot of things might’ve been different, but it’s damn hard to complain about any of it right now.”
“Beau—”
“Too late. I can’t take all that back.”
“Wouldn’t ask you to,” I murmur, the slightest hint of laughter caught in my exhale, even when nothing is all that funny. “But I don’t—it’s been four years, and I know you didn’t stop introducing yourself to Darren’s customers after two meaningless fucks.”
“No.”
“But you didn’t take any of them out for Italian food and cupcakes.”
“No.”
“Then why me?”
“Because this was never gonna be that.”
I would throw my hands in the air in frustration, except that the liquor I’m holding deserves better, and maybe staying calm will suit me better regardless .
“This was exactly that.”
He stares into his whiskey for a minute, then he takes a bigger sip and clocks when I do the same, both of us disregarding any real reason to stop. In fact, Beau grabs the bottle and pours another finger into his own glass before holding it out to offer me the same, and I’m pretty sure I’m not gonna say no to much of anything tonight. He might have figured that out a while ago.
I watch him slide the bottle across the countertop, and then one deliberate step is enough for him to close most of the distance between us, the hand around Beau’s glass brushing against the one holding mine.
“You would’ve realized your ID and card were missing.”
“What?”
Beau’s eyes fall to my mouth before he blinks and finds my eyes again. I assume he’ll say more, but he takes my empty hand first and leads us to his couch, the two of us settling half on top of each other there, whether we mean for that to happen or not. We still have our drinks though, so we cling to those and let our touch wander, his fingers steady against my thigh, and mine drawing endless patterns on his forearm.
“The morning after,” he continues, and I want to groan at the cliché of it all. “You would’ve noticed you’d lost your license and debit card. And then you would’ve thought about the last place you had them. And then you would’ve called Trailhead and asked whether someone found them and gone back that afternoon to pick them up. That’s what would’ve happened if this had been anything else. ”
“And instead, you brought me breakfast.”
“That I did.”
“I wish you had stayed,” I confess, hushed about it because I’m not sure I should admit it at all. “I wasn’t—there was no way I could’ve—”
The hand on my thigh tightens almost imperceptibly, and when his thumb rides the inseam of my jeans for a moment, I can hear the embarrassing little sound I make. Beau hums and backs away long enough to set his glass down on the coffee table, returning a moment later to take mine and do the same, his other hand still in my lap when he leans close and keeps no more than a breath between us.
“I wish I had stayed, too.”
Then we’re kissing, and regret will have to wait for another day. It feels nothing like when we were in the stairwell, even when this kiss starts just as slowly, our mouths barely open as we feel our way through the beginning of something new, and I’m already sure this one is going to last. I’m the first to deepen the kiss, my head tilted to help me take more from a man who might give me anything, and it’s not long before we learn what whiskey tastes like on someone else’s tongue.
And I learn more about Beau’s beard.
It’s as soft as I remember from all those months ago, when he had taunted me into fucking him, but it’s so different like this, pressed to my chin, brushing against me time and time again. The gray in it still makes me wonderfully dizzy, and I reach for it now, to steady myself or just because I want another chance to touch him. It’s then that I feel both of Beau’s broad hands at my waist, my body going all too willingly when he encourages me to climb into his lap, and I’m just glad he wants to keep touching me, too. We’re both still careful though, and I’m not sure we could do this any other way, Beau’s grip firm enough to keep me from rocking into him, and both of my hands cradling his face to promise him we’re okay.
Our next kiss is almost excruciatingly tender, and it lasts close to forever, generous time allowing me to memorize everything about this version of him. And it’s not just his beard, no matter how much I can’t stop touching him there. It’s that there’s a pull in my thighs where I’m straddling Beau’s thick legs and it’s that his body is both pillow soft and undeniably strong and it’s that a single one of his hands could bind both of my wrists and take from me even while it could just as easily let go and tease me somewhere else and give and give and give.
As Beau’s tongue curls into my mouth again, my cock stirs, and I memorize that too, a specific desire that had felt like a betrayal for so long and is now becoming the honesty I want to paint onto his skin.
Maybe he wants to paint something too, his fingers slipping under my shirt to rub at my back until I moan and bare my neck to him.
“Feels so good,” I rasp. “But you must hate giving massages at home after working all day.”
Beau sucks at my pulse point until he pulls back to hum against my skin. “The kind of massage I give at work is nothin’ like anything I’d do here.”
“So, there’s a chance I can get one someday?”
“If you’re askin’ whether I’d like to get you naked and touch you everywhere, the answer is yes.”
I huff and find Beau for another kiss, hungry or thirsty or just plain needy. I want him to be the one to rid me of my button-up, and I want to help take off his shirt, and I want whatever might come after that, but for everything he is saying about touching my bare skin, there’s still so little he’s actually done to get us there.
“So why are my clothes still on?” I ask, barely coherent while I’m still half-kissing him.
“Because I’m not givin’ you that massage tonight.”
“We’ve already fucked. What are you so afraid of?”
There’s a challenge there—however gently I’ve laid it down—a chance for Beau to tell me all the things I can’t quite say. The whiskey might’ve made me bold, but it’s also made my tongue heavy, and I’m not convinced I can form the words to detail everything that terrifies me. It should be easy to tumble into bed with a man I’ve already heard come twice, and I’m ready to show him as much, but when he nips at my collarbone through a layer of cotton I want gone, I wonder if he wants to remind me how much things can hurt.
“You want to know what I’m afraid of,” Beau says, not a question and not something I could answer with much more than a nod anyway.
He doesn’t continue right away, though, reaching for my jaw and bringing me back down for a kiss that ends with his teeth dragging against my lower lip. I’m trapped between curious and aroused, needing his answer and willing to disregard it until the sun rises. When I kiss him again, I try to relieve any of the tension thrumming through me, rolling my hips forward until Beau stops me there, growling when his hands tighten at my waist. A second later, only one is bruising there, his other arm wrapped around my back as he flips us, his body crushing mine into a couch big enough for us to fulfill several fantasies at once.
“Oh my god ,” I groan, Beau the one moving now, grinding against me and making it perfectly clear that his own restraint is a tenuous thing.
But then he stills us both, and I might hate him a little, all over again, even when he kisses me senseless. I give it all back, but the way the hard lines of our cocks are pressed against each other is ignored when he supports himself on his elbow and keeps his mouth close enough to mine that each word grazes my lips.
“I know we already fucked. I think about it often. And I want you to fuck me again, or I’d be all too happy to fuck you, if we’re gonna try it the other way around next time, because you can—shit, you can have everything you want,” Beau promises, his beard sliding against my jaw before the rest of his confession lands just below my ear. “But I’m afraid of a hundred different things, and some of that will get better and some of it probably never will. Either way, I think I need one night to remember that my dick is all mine, and I think you need at least that long to remember that your left ring finger is all yours. ”
My eyes close when his mouth opens against the side of my neck, sucking there without the kind of pressure that will leave a mark, and I arch beneath him because my body hasn’t heard a word Beau has said. He doesn’t fight me though, and we kiss again as our bodies rock together, everything about it slow and careful, because if this is as much as we’ll take from each other tonight, we might as well make it last.
My hand is weightless where it rests at the back of Beau’s neck.
And for the first time, I don’t know how many days it’s been since Levi died.
“Tell me one thing you’re afraid of,” I mumble against him. “Just one.”
He bites my lip again. “And then you’ll tell me?”
“Okay.”
His tongue opens me up, and for a long time I wonder whether both of us can forget our fears if we just kiss long enough tonight. I think back to all the weeks— months —of being so sure we’d never have this, and I almost don’t know what to do when Beau breathes life into it again and again. Then something wraps tight around my heart when he pulls away to touch the tip of his nose to mine.
“I’m afraid if I don’t say goodnight soon, I’m not gonna want you to leave ‘til morning.”
“And I’m afraid I’ll ask to stay forever.”
We do say goodnight, long before forever, but nothing about it hurts. Beau and I don’t see each other for the next several days, and while I know it’s something neither of us wants, it might be something both of us need. We still text plenty and talk a few times, and being able to flirt with him unabashedly helps turn my restlessness into relief. I find myself relaxing into the physical distance between us as long as I can hear him smile, and there’s no small amount of daydreaming about what might happen the next time he has me pinned to his couch. But we’d also said a lot to each other that night, and it’s good to let a couple of new realities sink in while I keep my focus on work—photoshoots scheduled through my website and a meeting with V about ongoing marketing for Trailhead—and far away from the wedding band I left in Beau’s back pocket.
I don’t need it anymore.
I haven’t decided whether I should keep it close.
There will be plenty of time to think about it today, just over a week since I’ve had it on my finger, and as I cross the parking lot to Beau’s apartment, I’m focused on little more than this exact moment. The morning is just beginning to drag the sun above the horizon, a welcome chill in the air as the sky fades from one shade of blue to another, and I almost stop to take a picture. I keep moving instead, a small duffel bag draped over my shoulder and a reusable tote in my hand—a change of clothes and my favorite camera in one, and my contribution to breakfast in the other—and I take one deep breath before I go inside, a million others almost certain to follow.
The elevator is still broken—or broken again?—and I frown in its direction before I take the stairs to the second floor, knocking on Beau’s door just loudly enough to be heard by him without waking his neighbors. It swings open a moment later, and I’m suddenly shy in the shadow of this sleepy version of him, but he grabs a fistful of my jacket and pulls me inside, everything slow and heavy and perfect when it’s my body that shuts the door behind us, Beau blanketing me there. I only have one hand free to hold on to him when we kiss, but it’s enough for as long as it lasts, his forehead pressed to mine as he smiles.
“Mornin’,” Beau murmurs.
“Barely,” I argue. “But I can’t complain about starting my day like this.”
Beau steals one more kiss before he backs away to let me get situated, my duffel bag set down on the couch before I take the other into the kitchen and empty it there, a couple of things put into the refrigerator and the rest left on the counter for later.
“You know, you really didn’t have to bring anything.”
“You might be a hell of a cook, but I’ve seen the coffee you keep around here,” I say. “And I’m gonna need the good stuff when we get back.”
“And the fruit?”
“I figured if I was gonna be a dick about the coffee, I should probably be nice and pick up some fresh fruit to go with whatever you’re making.”
“You pick up that cute little hiking outfit, too?” Beau asks, the morning light making the mischief in his eyes look almost gold .
Refusing to get caught up in the way his gaze changes colors, I glance down at my new clothes and then glare at him. “What part of me being a queer Manhattanite made you think I’d have a closet full of outdoorsy shit?”
“What part of me thinking you look like an REI model is making you all hot and bothered?”
I’m not actually hot or bothered, and I can only assume my heart thumps wildly for some other reason, or maybe it’s just obvious when Beau’s apartment is so still around us. I finish folding my tote bag and set it aside and turn to find him lacing up his hiking boots, the two of us headed west into the Santa Monica mountains this morning while the world wakes up around us. And with nowhere to be for the rest of the day, I’ve promised to stick around for breakfast when we get back, Beau swearing it will be “moderately healthier than pancakes with banana butter and syrup, but still beyond delicious.”
Once we’ve double-checked that we have everything we need, all but my camera loaded into Beau’s backpack because I didn’t think to buy one, we climb into his truck for a drive that shouldn’t take more than an hour this early in the morning. The sun is a little higher now, and only a few clouds dust the sky, and he and I listen to music as much as we do anything else, Beau keeping the beat against the steering wheel like I did on one nauseating night several months ago.
We still need to talk—partly because of what happened between us the night of our West Hollywood expedition and partly because of everything that led up to it—but I figure that’s at least some of the motivation for a hike that will leave us with plenty of time for conversation. It should make me nervous, I think, the stories that have already scarred us and the ones whose serrated edges have barely teased the surface of our skin, but the fresh air spilling through the open window helps me breathe through the fear of whatever will happen next, and it’s only when Beau reaches for my hand that I realize I’ve given anything away at all.
He holds on to me until we’re close enough to look for parking, and then we’re out of the truck and on the move and past the paved beginning of the trail—Beau tapping the T on the trailhead sign as we go by—and onto the dirt that will carry us for miles. I have the fleeting thought that he might take my hand again now, but his fingers are curled around the straps of his backpack, and I decide not to miss his touch, my camera there to keep me company when I’m given Mother Nature’s blessing.
It’s better than church, and if I throw up a prayer, I’m not all that sure where it lands.
It’s quieter than church too, and if Beau has something to confess, I’m not going to stop him.
“I kept my ring when Darren and I split,” he says after a while. “It’s in a drawer. Has been since the day I moved into my apartment.”
My focus shifts, literally and figuratively maybe, and I raise my camera from where I’ve been chasing the shadows Beau and I throw over our path. “Okay.”
The next couple of minutes are filled with nothing but the sounds of chirping birds, gravelly footsteps, and the rustling of nearby greenery being used for cover by one critter or another. I assume Beau wasn’t offering me his own jewelry inventory as small talk, so I’m willing to wait for anything else he might have to say about it, even when he takes a bigger step forward, and leaves me to stare at the unyielding line of his bearded jaw.
“I’m a hypocrite, right?”
“I don’t know. Are all wedding bands created equal?”
His shoulders rise and fall more dramatically than I expect, but we’re still walking, and maybe he just needs a deeper breath or an extra second or two.
“You think I’m allowed to keep it because it was something that was given to me?” he asks.
“Mmmm, more like I think you’re allowed to keep it because comparing your relationship with Darren to the one I had with Levi is foolish from the start. If you’re trying to beat yourself up for any of what you’ve said or done, I think you should try a different angle.”
Without slowing, he looks back at me, and it reminds me to catch up again because we need to be closer to each other—common ground or equal footing or something like that. It feels a little like the beginning of couples therapy without us being a couple, except maybe denying that would be foolish, too.
“I took your ring away while I’ve never been able to get rid of my own.”
“You say ‘took your ring away’ like you didn’t ask my permission first.”
Beau stalks on. “You’re not upset that I took yours. You’re not upset that I have mine. And you don’t think I need to compare our relationships and how much they’ve fucked us up in their own little ways.”
“No.”
“But there’s something else?”
“I think there’s everything else,” I huff. “You asked before you slid the ring off my finger, but you didn’t ask before you did anything else. You told me to fight you or fuck you. You told me we wouldn’t do it again because I was married. You told me what I see when I look at you. And then you made my bed and told me I wasn’t ready for more.”
With his sunglasses in the way, I can’t see whether Beau’s eyes shift into something sad, but I feel it beneath my ribs, and it’s only the gentle embrace of the mountain around us that keeps me from taking anything back.
“You know that wasn’t all about you,” Beau says. “You’re not stupid—you know a lot of that was about me.”
“But what if I wanted it to be about us ?”
I come to a stop, breathless for no particular reason except that I might be failing at a couple of things, and I take my water bottle from Beau’s backpack just before I kick at his boot. Drowning my question with a long pull from the bottle helps, and then I slip it back into its pocket and start walking again before he bothers to respond. I’m already prepared for the subject to change anyway.
And it does.
After a few minutes of silence, Beau tells more stories about his parents and his brother and the aunts and uncles and cousins who lived nearby throughout his big Texas childhood. There’s plenty about fishing and boating and playing football—all the rough and tough boy stuff expected of him, but then he visibly softens when he tells me about dancing and the way it was everywhere when he was a kid—line dancing and two-stepping and waltzing at birthday parties and graduations and weddings.
“My parents didn’t seem to have a problem with that,” Beau says. “Maybe because it kinda requires partners or something. Pretty girls were out there, and someone had to dance with them, right? So many pretty, pretty girls on the dance floor.”
He’s awfully far down memory lane, and I don’t expect him to mention the time we slow-danced in my living room. It doesn’t keep me from sort of wishing he would.
He goes on to talk about meeting Benji in middle school, Luca two years older and far too cool to spend any of his time with them. That didn’t stop Beau from having a crush on Luca, even before he understood enough to put a name to the flutter in his chest and the dreams that left him aching, years of smiles met with teenage disdain. It wasn’t until Luca’s high school graduation party that he and Beau ended up by the creek a half mile back, making out furiously while Beau couldn’t quite believe that the guy who’d always hated him suddenly had his tongue down his throat.
I wonder whether Darren disliked him once upon a time.
Maybe Beau has a type.
“Any idea where Luca is now?” I ask. “I know he left when Benji died, but did he make it back eventually? ”
“If he did, it was after I was gone. And I’m not sure his family wanted to see him by then. I heard he got in a bunch of trouble, and I—I didn’t ask questions. I think maybe it’s better that I don’t know.”
“Are you more afraid that you’d get bad news, or good?”
“I’m more afraid of the story being over either way.”
It’s Beau’s turn to stop us then, stepping away from me to drink his water and bathe in the morning sun. I just barely grab my bottle before he goes, and then I don’t push, finding perfect pictures everywhere around us. Or maybe they’re all of Beau—the sweat at the back of his neck, the fist he’s working to relax at his side, the boot pressed against a fallen tree—and the honesty of it makes me dizzy. Eventually, I let go of my camera and clutch my water instead, and when Beau is ready to move again, I follow him with no need for more of his story. We don’t say anything at all, actually, but it’s not long before we hear the hum of other voices ahead, and I’m disappointed in myself for not noticing the absolute hush that feels at least as loud.
It’s white noise, the sound neutral enough to offer neither forgiveness nor damnation, but my pulse taps out a reminder that I’ve earned a little of both just as we close in on something stunning.
“Jesus Christ,” I whisper.
I’m not all that used to being surrounded by nature, my trips to the beach the biggest outdoor experiences I’ve had in California, and while I’ve been to Niagara Falls before, what I’m looking at now is intimately impressive in an entirely different way. The waterfall we approach has been hidden by the trees and a curve in the mountain path, revealed when Beau and I might have needed it most, and it feels like mine, however much it’s impossible to believe in something like that.
My heart pulls me forward, across an open stretch of rocky ground, the wind enough to help the mist of the waterfall meet me halfway, and I pause to close my eyes beneath the morning sun. It’s only when Beau nudges my shoulder and nods toward my camera that I remember to capture this feeling. I’m good at that. Great, even. I know how to translate unspeakable emotion into a picture someone can hold, and I’ll do it now because I won’t be able to describe this moment, even if someone gives me a thousand words.
And then I start to cry.