18. Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Eighteen
Adrian
W e shower and nap and raid Beau’s kitchen for more food before I head back home that afternoon, my body sated at least a few times over. Our shared day off means both Beau and I have work in the morning, so we don’t do more than text goodnight, but I sleep incredibly well and feel more rested than I have in a while.
It’s been about eight months, probably.
I needed it, and I needed everything that helped me get there, but none of what I’m feeling lasts as long as I want it to, the high I’d felt with Beau crashing down when I remember that I still have no idea what I’m doing with my business out here. With spring officially arriving a couple of weeks ago, I already have a lot more engagement shoots on my schedule, plus a few family portraits and graduation pictures booked. In between, I’ll be editing and printing and sometimes framing and mostly emailing until everyone is happy with the precious memories I’ve made permanent.
But as much as they’re happy, I’m not, and I know I can’t keep doing this to myself. I might as well go back to PR, or sideways into marketing, and there have been enough requests for that since our day in West Hollywood—other indie companies interested in the promo material I could help them create—that I could probably make it work if I shifted my focus again.
I fling a couple of business cards across my studio like tiny frisbees, frustrated because I don’t want to take pictures of babies and weddings and yoga studios and tattoo parlors.
I want me , and I’m just barely starting to remember who that is.
The next several days remain busy for me, no matter how restless I become, and Beau’s busy too, his regularly full days at work combined with a brief visit from a cousin he hasn’t seen in years and several errands he’s put off too long, all of which eventually give way to a small cold. He and I still talk at least a few nights a week and text throughout the rest, and when we make time for one late dinner and one quick breakfast somewhere in between, I hope my bad mood isn’t contagious. The warmth in Beau’s eyes suggests he’s immune, and I think maybe that’s been true all along.
In the moments we find, we hold hands and we kiss and we sink into each other’s arms, and if Beau knows what a goddamn relief he is to me, he doesn’t make a big deal about it either way. It’s a tricky thing for me to tell him—a confession a better man might make aloud—but I don’t know how to run toward a future with someone when I spent so many years trying to slip from its persistent grasp. All I can do is bury myself further into Beau’s embrace and hope that my silence buys me another day, and each time we go our separate ways again, I remind myself that it’s better than how we left things the night we met.
I’ve got more time to think about what we did all those months ago when I arrive at Trailhead one night, Beau having suggested we meet there for a drink or two because maybe we should try spending time there without the bullshit of a dozen other things between us.
It’s a great plan until it’s not, and I end up alone at the bar.
“Wait, you guys had a date, and he bailed on you to work?” Darren asks, my drink left on the coaster he’d dropped in front of me a minute ago.
I roll my eyes. “There was a late walk-in, and nobody else was around, so I told him to take it. He was already running late, so—”
Darren smiles devilishly and turns to where Riley stands next to him. “Did you hear that? Or not hear that, actually?”
“He’s not denying it was a date.”
“It’s a drink,” I tell them.
“One you decided to have even though Beau won’t be joining you,” Jake adds from a few stools away, his fingertip sweeping up and down his pint glass before he lifts it for a quick sip. “I’m a little surprised. Is this place really your scene?”
I bite my lip and study his worn leather jacket and motorcycle boots. “Guess you’ve been asked the same thing once or twice.”
“Not by anyone concerned about my motives.”
“Jake, come on,” Darren warns. “He’s at a bar with a drink in his hand. Not sure his motives have to be deeper than that.”
“You’re really not worried about what’ll happen to Beau when the mourning period fades? After Adrian gets tired of the push and pull that’s kept his mind off the man he lost?”
“Speaking from experience, are we?” I bite.
“Hardly.”
“Beau’s fine,” Riley interjects.
Jake snorts. “Beau’s been falling hard and fast, and you know it.”
My pulse kicks violently, and I swallow more whiskey than necessary before I consider walking out without taking the bait offered by a man Beau says has a heart of gold. Jake is being protective, and I get that—probably appreciate it, even—but I’m hurt and pissed off and a little bit lonely.
Or a lot lonely. I wonder what would happen if I sat outside Beau’s apartment until he got home.
“Nothing keeps my mind off Levi for long, not even Beau, but if you’ve got advice about how to make the mourning period fade, I’d love to hear it,” I say, throwing back more of my drink even though it’s turned bitter. “And if the three of you want me to promise I’ll be there to catch Beau, I can’t do that. I’m too busy falling right beside him.”
I leave too much money on the bar and don’t finish the Jack and ginger before I go. To their credit, neither Darren nor Riley tries to stop me, both of them probably smart enough to know I have nothing else to say. My drive isn’t a short one, and I consider at least a few potential detours, but I end up back at home, returning to wall colors Levi might have loved. The framed pictures of him, too—ones that have me curious now about how much Jake understands about my grief. After eating leftover chicken parm I don’t really want and taking a shower I don’t really need, I find a text from Riley assuring me I’m welcome at Trailhead with or without Beau, and one from Darren promising that Jake isn’t an asshole.
I think I know both of those things already, and while I appreciate that they’ve reached out, I’m not up for responding to either of them. My phone is in my hand though, and Beau should be home by now, and as much as I should probably be in a better mood before I text him, he might be the best way for me to get out of my head.
Hey
Hey back
I stop after Beau’s quick response, wanting nothing more than to have him next to me already, his entire body wrapped around mine, and maybe not only to keep my frustration away, but just so I can absorb how goddamn good it feels. I shouldn’t have said anything at the bar when I don’t think I’ve made my feelings all that clear to Beau, but my head and my heart and my entire fucking body want him, and my hand shakes with how simple and complicated that is.
When I take too long to answer, Beau tries again .
Everything okay?
I sigh. Yeah
Just checking to see if I made it home from work
I guess
But you don’t feel like talking
Honestly, I don’t know how to answer that when everything I’d try to say would be a mess of half-formed thoughts about photography and loss, but I need to respond one way or another, and I give him the best half-truth I have.
Not really
And then my phone rattles with Beau’s call, and I can’t help but smile.
“I tell you I don’t really feel like talking and you call anyway?”
“Needed to hear your voice long enough to figure out what kind of ‘don’t wanna talk’ I’m dealing with. Wasn’t sure if you were mad about tonight,” Beau explains. “But I can hang up now if you want me to.”
“Not mad about tonight. And I don’t think I ever want you to hang up,” I huff.
“Good to know.”
“Still not sure about talking, though.”
“Not a problem. What’s tomorrow night look like for you?”
So much of my schedule feels like a blur these days, but I know there’s nothing happening late enough to interfere with whatever Beau has in mind, and I don’t tend to book early morning shoots unless there’s a good reason for it. And I’m not sure it matters when I fall onto my bed and let the echo of Beau’s question carry me through a breath or two, everything about it making me honest when I’ve forgotten how to lie.
“I want to see you.”
“With or without an audience?”
For the first time, I wonder whether he got texts from Riley and Darren, too.
“Without,” I tell him. “Please.”
“Then pack a bag. I’ll be home by six-thirty. Bring whatever you want to drink. I’ll order food. We can relax, which might be good for both of us. Talking is optional, but that might be good for us, too.”
“You don’t think the years of ignoring my feelings and keeping my mouth shut have served me well?”
“No, and neither do you,” Beau says, so quiet about something loud, his pause heavy and not. “Does that mean you’re up for it?”
“You really want me to spend the night—without tequila forcing our hands?”
This time, Beau lets his pause sit between us for even longer, and I can picture him—and the perfect couch I slept on once upon a time—all too well. “I’m gonna ignore your actual question because we both know the answer, but I will say that packing a bag doesn’t mean you have to stay. It’s okay if we have dinner and then you go home.”
“What if I’m still like this tomorrow?”
“Then you’re still like this tomorrow. We’ll eat, I’ll hold you, and then we’ll figure out the rest.”
“I want that. I want you to hold me. It’s all I’ve wanted the past few days.”
The words are out of my mouth before I can decide I might want them back, and for all the ways Beau could tease me, there’s nothing about this moment that makes me think he will.
And I’m right.
“I want to hold you, too. And maybe we can work on makin’ that a little more of a priority.”
I agree, though I don’t know whether he can promise that any more than I can, and I do my best to be happy with plans for dinner while I fumble my way through a clumsy goodnight. Now, I only need to suffer through one more inexplicably frustrating day, and then maybe I can find a way to let some of it go.
The elevator still doesn’t work.
I have to take another deep breath before I knock on the door.
But I kiss Beau hello and make my way to the kitchen to drop off a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of wine without hesitation.
The tension hasn’t left my body, and I carry it with me everywhere, but however much he must have tasted it on his tongue, I hope he tasted an apology, too.
“Smells so good in here,” I say, peeking at the garlic bread and baked ziti warming in the oven. “Thank you.”
Beau slips his arms around my waist from behind, his mouth near my ear. “What’re you thanking me for? I didn’t bother to cook tonight, and you know it wasn’t all that hard to get someone to bring food to my door.”
“No, but you—” I trail off, my head falling back against his solid body, my arms covering Beau’s now and already dreading the moment we’ll both let go. “The thanks is for everything, I think. Dinner and holding on to me like this and letting me stay and being patient with me when we both know I’m about to fall apart.”
It’s predictable, I suppose, the way he uses his easy strength to turn me around, steering us away from the oven and against a countertop instead, caging me there until I’m as safe as I’ve ever been. He cradles the side of my face with one steady hand, and I nuzzle into the touch before my next heartbeat can ask me to, the fingers curled around my waist gripping me firmly enough to keep me from getting lost in it. My eyes meet his, Beau silently demanding as much, and then he opens my mouth with his tongue without waiting to lead us there from anywhere else.
The kiss is deep, but excruciatingly slow, Beau breathing life into me while he takes something for himself, and if my legs are close to giving out, it won’t matter when he’s holding me up. His certainty is everything I need right now, my whimper only underscoring that point, and he’s relentless in the way he chases the sound until some of it belongs to him.
Finally satisfied by something, or maybe just curious, he pulls away. “I’ve got you, and I don’t have to let go. The food can wait if you want to talk about something now.”
“And if I don’t want to talk now? ”
“Then I’ll make sure I’ve got you later, too.”
I kiss him again, but I'm careful to keep from drowning myself in it entirely, wanting—for reasons that make little sense, even to me—to do everything right tonight. To keep things in some sort of proper order because dinner should come first and then we can talk and then maybe Beau will want to kiss me one more time, even if I’m in a dozen pieces on his beautiful blue couch.
Even if I still haven’t figured out how so many parts of me broke.
But the alcohol should help with at least some of everything, and I take a step back to find the glasses I need now. Beau hands me a corkscrew and then watches me for another few seconds, smiling softly as though he’s been treated to a secret he won’t share, and then he moves to retrieve the bread and ziti, piling everything on our plates while I carry our drinks to the table.
I go back for both bottles, too.
“You know I would’ve had whiskey with you, right?” Beau asks. “Or I could’ve opened one of the wines I already have here.”
“Wanted you to have options,” I shrug. “And it’s my favorite red.”
“But you’re not drinking any.”
“I hope you love it.”
Beau stares at me a beat too long. “Might be inevitable.”
I feel my cheeks warm, and I take a bite then, and dinner is everything I need it to be, Beau keeping control of the conversation and making both of us laugh as easily as we ever have. It’s one of my favorite things about him, how naturally he shifts from serious to silly and back again, patient with me until it’s time to push, or teasing me until there’s something more important to tell. And maybe he appreciates that I follow everywhere he leads, even when I’m not sure I’m ready to go, and even if my gratitude never feels like enough afterward.
I’ve already thanked Beau once tonight, and I assume I’ll do it again, but I hope he knows it’s so much bigger than that. I’m so goddamn comfortable here, and I’m glad I get to stay, if only for the night.
“Everything was so good,” I say when I finally push my empty plate away. “My compliments to the restaurant’s chef.”
“They must know they have to up their game now that I’ve lured you here for a couple of home-cooked meals. Probably scared they’ll lose my business altogether.”
“Weren’t you cooking for yourself before?”
“Sometimes, sure. But this place is on my way home from work and I get as lazy as anyone,” he explains. “Now though—now I want to keep cooking for you. I always want to give you a good reason to come over.”
I pick up my glass and swirl the last sip of my liquor around while I tilt my head and look at Beau. “You really think I’m just here for the food—yours or anyone else’s? You can’t think of another good reason I’d want to come over? You don’t have any idea of what else you could offer me, even if we get shitty takeout every damn night?”
“Probably got an embarrassingly long list of ideas,” he huffs as he stands, clearing our plates and taking the few steps required to reach the kitchen. He begins washing the dishes immediately, mostly unnecessary except for the distraction it provides, and I delight in the minute I can spend watching him like this, flustered by the pure domesticity of it for reasons I haven’t tried hard to understand. I’m still staring when Beau turns off the water and can’t take his eyes off the plates in the sink. “You look like you’re doin’ a little better than when you first got here.”
“How would you know?”
“Hmmm?”
I drink the last of my whiskey, then get up with the glass in my hand, stopping at his side to set it down on the countertop and hand him a dishtowel, holding on a second longer than I need to.
“You said I look like I’m doing better, but you’re not actually looking at me. Everything okay?”
Beau finally glances up again. “Think that’s what I was trying to ask you.”
“Still not sure I want to talk,” I admit. “Not even sure what I’d talk about. It’s all pretty messy in my head.”
“Okay, but if you’re tense, I could—I mean, I did promise you a massage once upon a time.”
I just barely smile, feeling soft about it as my entire body warms at once. “Is that on your embarrassingly long list of ways to keep me coming back?”
“Pretty high up on it, actually.”
I pull the dishtowel back out of his hand and thread our fingers together instead, and then I wait, aware that so much of what happens next is up to me, but certain Beau needs some control over it, too. I squeeze his hand, and I think maybe I nod, but I don’t attempt anything more until he leans down to kiss me, his mouth open against mine long enough to draw a moan from both of us.
“Please,” I breathe.
With our hands still clasped between us and the last couple of dishes left for tomorrow, he leads me across the apartment and toward his bedroom area, a privacy screen folded and propped out of reach because it’s unlikely we’ll want to hide. The bed is perfectly made, and while I don’t want it to stay that way, I leave it alone and let Beau pin me against the closest wall, the contact making my body come alive damn near everywhere even when Beau’s hardly done a thing. Then I wrap my arms around him to keep him there, and his voice is low against my ear.
“It’s okay if this is just a massage,” he says, the idea almost laughable as we begin to grind against each other, neither of us fully hard yet but getting there fast. “Even if it’s a really fuckin’ sexy massage, it never has to be anything else.”
“I want it, though. Everything else.”
“Gonna want to hear that later.”
“Not now?” I ask, my head falling to the side so he can help himself to something dangerous.
“Don’t even have my hands on you yet.”
“I guess you probably aren’t planning to massage me while we’re both standing up, huh?”
Beau must smirk because I swear I can feel it against my neck. “Oh, I don’t know. We’re not so terrible at doing things while we’re both standing.”
“Fuck, I—no,” I gasp, my hips arching off the wall. “I guess we’re really not.”
There are plenty of reasons for us to pause and reminisce about a night we’ve never been able to forget, but far more reasons to leave it in the past and make some new memories now. Beau backs away for another kiss before he unbuttons my shirt, slow about it because he seems intent on setting a different pace tonight, and I don’t have the words to change his mind. As soon as it’s tossed aside, he goes to work on my belt, then my button and zipper, his tongue sliding against mine again when he pushes the pants over my ass and lets them fall down my legs. He leaves my boxers in place, and I haven’t decided whether that makes anything better or worse. A pathetic moan escapes me when Beau drops low enough to take off my socks, kneeling there for another several seconds without bothering to touch me more than that, brown eyes closer to black when he looks up and winks.
Then he pushes off the floor, moving to his bed to pull the covers away before he nods toward the space he's made. “Lie down on your stomach.”
It’s such a quiet command, but it doesn’t need to be any louder for me to obey, and I crawl across the cool sheets until I can press my body to them, relief a quick and all-encompassing thing. I turn my head to watch as Beau strips down to his boxer briefs, but when he leaves me alone for a moment, it’s so easy for me to close my eyes, the whiskey I drank with dinner enough to have me sinking into the mattress. I’m not in a rush to open them again, even when I can tell the lights around me have been dimmed, but I feel the bed dip where he’s joined me, fingers gentle as they comb through my hair.
“M'gonna do some actual work on you, because I think you probably need it,” Beau says, his mouth open against my neck. “But I’m also gonna kiss you a lot, just because I can.”
“Only kiss?” I mumble.
Beau’s laugh is light at my shoulder. “Doubt it.”
The click of a bottle comes next, and I can tell when his body heat isn’t quite so close, but then his hands are all over my back and my satisfied groan is immediate. The massage oil makes everything slick, but nothing Beau does falls victim to it, each movement well-measured and maybe choreographed a while ago. For a long time, I forget the way I’d been aching for anything else, and I only want to remember this. When his fingers are gone, his forearm is there instead, the pressure everything my tired muscles have needed, my tension melting away with each passing minute. He finds a dozen different knots—whether they were put there by the camera equipment I lug around or the strange mood I’ve been in for days is impossible to say—and he keeps his promise to work through them, the pain worth it when it slips into perverse pleasure.
Beau keeps his other promise too, the hair on his chest lighting several fires at once when he drags his body over mine, his beard another kind of burn as he kisses the back of my neck then slides his mouth down my spine slowly enough that I whine about it, caught between needing more of the massage and more of whatever he’s doing now.
Of course, he wasn’t asking me to make a choice anyway, and he pulls away to focus on a few more knots before he moves to each of my arms, then down both legs and up again, damn near professional in his approach except for the way he lets his thumb slip beneath the bottom hem of my boxers, teasing the skin of my inner thigh until I try to chase something he isn’t ready to give. It’s a little maddening and a lot perfect when he goes back to the careful control of his massage, and however much I think I lost track of time a while ago, it’s long gone now. Beau knows what he’s doing, and he knows what he’s doing , and his hands are fucking magic, and his tongue is better and worse than that. He’s firm when he digs into my lower back, and gentle when he nips just above the waistband I want gone, and then he kneads my ass. It’s possible the cotton taunts both of us, Beau frustrated by it before he gives up and slithers over my entire body again.
“Oh, fuck,” I manage, otherwise helpless when he covers me there and rocks against my ass.
He’s still only as undressed as I am, but his cock is positioned perfectly against me now, and a rhythm is easy to find, the tip of his tongue trailing along the shell of my ear. “Yeah? Enjoyin’ the massage?”
“Are we still calling it a massage?”
“Mmmm, has it become foreplay?”
I snort softly. “Pretty sure it was always that.”
“Probably,” Beau agrees, sucking at my neck as he continues to roll his hips, and for a moment, I wonder if he plans to have us both coming in our clothes again. Then he goes on. “You want me to back up and work on your shoulders? Or you just want more of this?”
“More of this.”
“More of only this?” he asks, nearly an echo of my own question a while ago.
“No.”
I say that, though the next slow slide of Beau’s cock has me rubbing my dick against the mattress, and when I tremble, I feel him catch some of it with a smile. I do what I can to get some control over my body, but then he’s moving again, shifting back far enough to wrap his hands around my hips and hold me still. Then his mouth is pressed to my boxers, biting my ass a couple of times before he exhales slowly over the same stretch of material his cock had just made home. That only makes him hungrier somehow, and Beau helps himself to everything within reach—my waist and my thighs and my ass again and again—warm kisses and a hint of pain leaving me tempted to roll over and take a few things of my own, but I don’t quite have it in me to fight anything that feels so fucking good.
Especially when he finally tucks his fingers under the waistband of my boxers and encourages me to lift my hips enough for him to tug them away, dragging them down my legs at maybe the most languid pace he’s set for anything since the night we were improperly introduced. The fabric teases the back of my knees and his touch slides through the shiver left behind, and then I’m fully bared to him, except for the ways I’m really not. I try not to hold my breath when I feel his fingertips just above my ankles, his nails torturously light when they scrape over my skin.
I’m too far gone to be ticklish, and suddenly very close to begging.
Beau’s palms curve over my ass next, and it feels like a break from a dozen other sensations, but then he’s using his grip to open me up to him, and time becomes some kind of liar. It shouldn’t be possible for me to note the press of his thumbs a second before the first brush of his beard, or to clock the warmth of his breath as something wholly separate from the wetness of his tongue, but I’m able to catalog each moment, then damn near sob about them.
“Don’t pass out on me now,” Beau says, his voice splitting another second into two, an open-mouth kiss making me writhe before and after. “Wanna be here for a while.”
And then he is.