Chapter 7
SEVEN
JAX
Like the masochist I was, I had Lukas send me the footage from the screen test, and I’d spent too many hours to count since then watching it or thinking about it.
It was almost an obsession now. But I couldn’t get it out of my head.
I liked the way Asher felt against me. The way he was willing to let me lead.
The way it felt like he needed me when he kissed me.
Like he needed something more than just a kiss but wasn’t sure how to get it.
And then there was the footage of him and Blue.
It was hard to deny that the two of them had dynamite chemistry.
They looked good together. Maybe even better than Asher and I looked.
But only barely. I remembered the way Blue kissed.
He had a way of making you feel as if you were the only person on the planet when he kissed you.
Like you were everything he’d been looking for, and he wasn’t going to let you go.
It was possible that I’d spent far too much time thinking about kissing, and I might have caved in and rubbed one out, but I’d have to put up with the raging boners until after the shoot.
It wasn’t corny to save myself, and were it not for the fact that they called it a money shot for a reason, I’d have had no hesitation in jerking my dick raw over thoughts of Asher and Blue and me together.
I thought I’d made headway with Asher the other day when we went for a walk. It was easy to talk to him, and I liked being in his company. And the kiss we shared after had been every bit as fantastic as the kiss for the screen test.
But Asher had gone silent after. I knew he was back at work because Lukas had mentioned his return. He still wasn’t his regular old self, according to Lukas, but he had confidence that things would smooth out eventually.
I wasn’t so sure. Asher had some pretty big feelings all tangled up inside of him.
I wanted to help him but wasn’t sure how.
There weren’t many people I could reach out to for advice.
I couldn’t look to Lukas, for obvious reasons.
Blue wouldn’t be any help. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help Asher or that he didn’t know how, but there was another layer to this that I worried Blue wouldn’t understand.
There was one person who’d never let me down and I found myself on his doorstep bright and early Saturday morning. Dad lived in a ground floor condo, his yard no bigger than a postage stamp, but he spent every weekend morning out on his back patio, reading a book and drinking coffee.
That’s where I found him, reading glasses sliding down his nose adding a few years to his face. I let myself into his yard through the gate and pulled up a chair across from him.
“What’s in the bag?” he asked without looking up from his book.
“I brought breakfast for us. Just some sausage and egg sandwiches.” Digging into the bag, I pulled the sandwiches out and set one in front of him.
“Saves me from having to eat my cooking. You’re a good kid, Jax.” Dad slid an old receipt into his book to mark his place, then closed it and laid it aside. He took his glasses off and rested them on top of the book then carefully unwrapped the sandwich.
As hard as Dad had tried, he’d never really mastered the art of cooking. Growing up, food had been edible at best. When I was old enough, I took over the job from him. Not that I was any better at first, but eventually I got the hang of it.
“What brings you by, kid?” Dad bit into his sandwich and let out a moan. “God, that’s good,” he said around a mouthful.
“Breakfast brings me by. I figured you hadn’t had anything decent in a while.”
“One, you’re lying. And two, you can lie to me all you want if you keep bringing me food.”
“It’s just some boy trouble, Dad. Nothing major.”
We were quiet as we ate. Dad, because he was too busy devouring his food to get a breath in, let alone a word. And me, because I didn’t know where to start.
Dad balled up his wrapper and dropped it into the bag. “It must be pretty big boy trouble if you’re coming to me with it.” He paused to take a sip of his coffee. “Well, lay it on me. Wait, before we begin, did you get anyone in this story pregnant?”
“What? No. What are you talking about?”
Dad gave me a half smile over top of his coffee cup. “I’m down with the lingo. I’m hip. I know that some boys can get pregnant.”
“I didn’t get anyone pregnant, Dad. Jesus.”
“Well, good. So as long as you didn’t kill someone, your problem should be easy to find a solution for. Don’t make a life. Don’t take a life. Anything other than that is easy to handle.”
“Are you high?” I asked him, smiling in spite of myself. I knew coming to Dad for any kind of advice would mean dealing with dad jokes. The predictability of it made me smile, and some of my tension eased. “No one is dead or pregnant.”
“Well, that’s a relief. You look terrible in orange.” Dad gave me another half smile. “Sorry, I’ll be serious now. Tell me all about the boy who has you tangled up.”
I let out a sigh. “Remember that guy who died a couple years ago. That friend of mine, Leo?” Thankfully, Dad kept his lips zipped and didn’t make any weird dad jokes, though I could see him practically bursting.
“His younger brother is twenty now, almost twenty-one, and he’s going to be filming with me. ”
It was times like this that I was grateful to have the kind of dad who didn’t care that I filmed porn for a living.
He was shocked at first, but then he’d seen the sense of it.
It wasn’t easy money, but it was accessible money.
It put me in control of my body and my future.
There was no way Dad could have afforded to send me to college.
In fact, I’d been able to help him get into his condo.
After all he’d done for me, it felt good to be able to help him.
“Is it his age? Because you’re not quite thirty, so twenty-one doesn’t seem like it would be too young.”
“It’s not his age. Anymore. I’ll admit that I only started to see him as someone other than Leo’s brother pretty recently.”
“So you’re going to film with someone you like? Is that a problem?”
“That’s not my issue. He’s hung up on Lukas in a pretty bad way, and I don’t know how to help him through that.
” And then there was Blue, and the way he’d lived rent free in my head for the past few years.
But I wasn’t about to tell Dad that the dick was so good I was still thinking about it three years later.
“Love is a bitch, Jax.” Dad took a sip of his coffee and was silent for a minute.
“Oh, you thought there was more? Sorry. That’s all I got.
Love is a bitch. You can’t make someone stop feeling something.
You can’t unfeel things for them. This kid is going to be hung up on Lukas until he stops being hung up on him, and there’s nothing you can do about that. ”
“So just… be his friend.”
Dad nodded. “Only if you want to be his friend for the sake of being his friend, and not because you think once he’s over Lukas, he’ll look at you next.
He might; he might not. But it would be a pretty shitty feeling if you thought someone was only your friend because they wanted to get into your pants one day. ”
“Dad, we’re going to shoot a scene together. I’ll be getting into his pants regardless, but I get what you’re saying, and you know you raised me better than that.”
“I know, but I wouldn’t be a good dad if I didn’t remind you of right and wrong. Is the shoot part of the problem? Because you could always back out.”
“It’s not that,” I told him. The scene wasn’t the issue.
The whole problem I was having was that I didn’t know why Asher would ever look at me again after he got to be with Blue.
First he was in love with Lukas and soon he was going to be with Blue, and I didn’t feel like I could compete with either of those things.
Logically, I knew that the friend zone was something dudes made up when they got pissy someone wouldn’t fuck them.
I already thought of Asher as my friend, and I had done so before now, but that day of the screen test really solidified his place in my mind as a friend.
A friend I could want more with. If he wasn’t hung up on Lukas.
And if he had any sense in his head, he’d fall for Blue next. He looked good with Blue.
Which I couldn’t think about while sitting at a table with my father. Nope. That was awkward boner territory.
“You know, kid, this would be easier if you had an actual problem for me to solve. You’re hung up on someone who’s hung up on someone.
It’ll happen, or it won’t. And as for his unrequited feelings or whatever for Lukas, there’s nothing you can really do about that.
Be his friend. Expect nothing and be grateful for whatever relationship evolves between you. Even if it’s just friends.”
I let out a sigh. He was right, of course.
But it didn’t stop me from feeling like I was always second best. Overlooked.
Maybe it was a leftover complex from being a too-skinny, kind of weird son of a single father who had always been picked last for everything until magically over the summer between grades eight and nine, I’d hit a growth spurt.
Asher wasn’t going to pick me. I could already see the connection between him and Blue every time I watched that footage.
I realized, with a little horror, that I was jealous of them and the way they’d looked together.
Jealousy wasn’t something I was used to feeling, and it could be a bad quality to have in this industry.
Jealousy could cause a lot of problems if people let it.
But jealous wasn’t the only thing I felt when I thought about Asher and Blue. There was curiosity too. I wondered what they’d be like during the shoot. If they’d remember I was there, or if they’d get lost in each other the way they’d done at the screen test.
It wasn’t Asher’s feelings I needed to worry about. It was mine.