Chapter 26
26.
The dance floor was a nightmare. Slumped against the wall, Rafi couldn’t tear his eyes away from the painful sight of Ash enthusiastically grinding with two ripped, shirtless underwear models like they were live streaming on OnlyFans. Now that was a vibe.
How had he ended up…here?
Oh, that’s right. He’d ruined everything.
After his pre-party toast with his sisters, Rafi had gone to look for Ash in their bedroom, wanting to catch him before guests started to arrive. Ash was fiddling with his hair in the mirror above the mantel. On seeing Ash’s outfit, Rafi stopped in his tracks. “ Dude. ”
Ash was wearing a tailored maroon velvet jacket. It fit him perfectly and looked both sharp and soft. Black dress pants hugged the curve of his butt. Add on a bow tie and smoking slippers, and Ash Campbell looked like a movie star ready for his own premiere.
Ash chuckled and cast an approving gaze over Rafi’s party look, lingering on his face. “I really like the scruff.”
Rafi’s almost-beard. He scratched his chin self-consciously. “Don’t know if I’ll keep it.”
“You should.” Ash walked closer and skimmed his fingers down Rafi’s unshaven cheek. Ash’s gaze brushed Rafi’s lips before meeting his eyes. His best friend’s voice was hushed. “Looks cute.”
Cute. The compliment fueled his growing state of nerves, a combination of bewildering excitement, sharp anxiety, and the disorienting sensation he was seeing things clearly for the very first time.
The entire day had felt more vibe than not. Their eye contact seemed loaded, longer than usual. The more Rafi thought about it, the more Ash seemed like the ultimate catch.
Yes, Rafi had resolved not to say anything, but that decision no longer seemed relevant. He didn’t know what it meant or what would happen; all he knew was this was a vibe. More important, this felt right. Desire shoved self-control out of the driver’s seat and grabbed the wheel.
Ash swiveled to face the mirror over the mantel, checking his hair one more time.
Rafi cleared his throat. “Have you ever thought about…”
Ash glanced over his shoulder, waiting for Rafi to finish.
“I’m just trying to figure out if something is…” Rafi tried to swallow. The air felt stiflingly hot. “Is there something…here?”
Ash’s gold brows dipped in confusion. “Where?”
“ Here. ” Rafi tried to gesture between them. “With us.”
Ash looked around the room, smiling in a slightly confused way. “Like…a ghost?” A look of understanding. “Did you watch The X-Files again? Raf, we’ve been through this. There’s no real-life X-Files—”
“I’m not talking about The X-Files !” Rafi was sweating, almost trembling, and yet, he couldn’t stop. What if this was their moment? Their chance? “Over the past few days, I think I’ve started seeing you in a…different light.”
Baffled, Ash glanced reflexively at a lamp.
Rafi inhaled the deepest breath he’d ever taken. “I’m just getting the sense that maybe there’s something here. Chemistry, a vibe. Between you and me.” The words were magic and terror and a dizzying, giddy high.
Ash’s expression redefined the word dumbfounded.
Rafi couldn’t stop talking. “Friends to lovers? Pretty sure that’s a thing.” His certainty that this was a good idea was waning terrifyingly quickly. “Just look at, um, Bert and Ernie.”
“Bert and Ernie?” Ash stared at Rafi like he was dangerously unhinged. “The muppets ?” He ran a bewildered hand through his hair. “Where is all this coming from?”
“The other night? Our double feature?” Rafi’s heart was pounding so hard he thought he might pass out. “Our legs. Were touching.”
Ash squinted, cocking his head, trying to remember. He wasn’t pretending. He truly didn’t know what Rafi was talking about.
The truth hit Rafi like a wrecking ball. It had all been in his head. All of it. He was back in Philly, on bended knee, in front of all his co-workers, the person standing across from him looking like a surprise recipient of electroshock therapy.
He’d done it again.
“Forget it. I’m obviously having some rebound-related meltdown.” He cast around for something, anything, to walk this all back. In sheer desperation, Rafi made his voice jokey. “It’s not the holidays without a holiday fling!”
The confusion and shock and wonder chasing one another around Ash’s face condensed, instantly, into hurt. “A fling?” The words were quiet. “You think that you and I should have…a fling?”
“Yes? No.” Tears were close. Rafi had completely lost control of the conversation. “Maybe?”
The laugh that left Ash’s lips was ice-cold. “A fling.” His voice was taut as piano wire. “We’re not having a fling, Rafi. Not tonight. Not ever.”
Ash moved past him, opening the bedroom door. Louis Armstrong’s jazzy Christmas classic— Have a yule that’s cool! —spilled in, along with the chatter and laughter of the first guests. Ash paused, taking a long breath. He shook his head, just once, and met Rafi’s gaze. In his eyes: pain. “Enjoy the party,” he said, and then he was gone.
—
Things went downhill from there. Guests clambered to tell Ash how much they’d missed him the past two years, how fantastic he looked. How was London? A fashion editor? So glamorous! But Ash didn’t seem as interested in answering these questions as he was in flirting with every good-looking queer boy at Belvedere Inn, talking and laughing and beaming his light on everyone, while completely ignoring Rafi. Every smile, every touch, a knife in his heart. Yes, Rafi would do a deal with the devil to Eternal-Sunshine-of-the-Spotless-Mind their conversation in his bedroom, but Ash’s behavior seemed designed to actively hurt or shame Rafi. Ash, whose greatest friendship betrayal had been streaming the final season of Young Royals without waiting for him. Was this Rafi’s biggest betrayal of Ash? Stupidly misreading their interactions, or, worse, projecting his own pathetic rebound energy on his oldest friend?
—
Eventually, Rafi fled the sweaty dance floor for his bedroom, sinking into one of the leather club chairs. Disappointment and shame wound around his ribs, crushing him like a python. Why did he always have to be his own worst enemy?
The bedroom door opened.
Rafi tensed, readying himself to dismiss a random partygoer looking for a bathroom to puke in or a bed to screw in.
It was Ash. Shirt untucked, hair askew: the portrait of a man taking a breather from the best night of his life.
“No models in here, sorry,” Rafi muttered, turning back to the fire.
Behind him, Rafi heard Ash shut the door and tentatively pad over to take a seat in the other club chair, spine as stiff as a cutting board.
Rafi wasn’t one for the silent treatment. “Having fun out there?”
He hated how bitter his words sounded. If anyone should be angry here, it was Ash. Rafi had just single-handedly detonated their friendship.
Ash let out a pained breath. “It’s not the holidays without a holiday fling, right?”
Inwardly, Rafi kicked himself. “That was something Birdie said and I just repeated it like a fucking moron parrot. Of course I don’t want a fling with you, that’s absolutely insane. I thought maybe something was changing.”
The thumping bass of the dance floor was audible even with the door closed, but Ash’s attention was only on Rafi. “For you?”
Rafi nodded. And then, because Ash was still here and because the tension was as thick as Christmas custard, Rafi dared to push. “You too?”
Ash let out a long, uneven breath. His cheeks were growing red. “Not exactly.”
“Oh.” Things weren’t changing for Ash. “ Oh. ” So Rafi had read this all wrong.
People described the sting of rejection. It didn’t sting. It was suffocating and heavy, like being buried alive. Death, right now, would be a relief. “Well, this is absolutely mortifying,” Rafi mumbled.
But Ash didn’t move. “What do you mean something’s changing?”
Rafi took a deep breath, wanting this embarrassing inquisition to end while also feeling masochistically compelled to spill his guts. “I mean, maybe I’m seeing another way of being. One in which I’m…sort of…into you.”
“It’s been fifteen years, why now?” Ash asked, so quickly it seemed he’d been waiting to ask it all night.
But Rafi didn’t have a good answer. “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about these big questions—where I am, what I want. And we’re so close, and you’d finally come back from London, and things felt different. I thought maybe”—he forced himself to meet Ash’s eye—“what I wanted was you.”
Ash didn’t respond for a good five seconds.
Then ten.
Twenty.
Rafi couldn’t take it anymore. He was overcome with the need to escape. The room, the party, the country, his life. “Forget it.” Rafi was on his feet, heading for the door. “If you care about me at all, forget about this entire night and I’ll never—”
“ No. ” Ash grabbed Rafi’s arm, spinning him back around. Before Rafi knew what was happening, Ash was kissing him.
Everything else dissolved and there was only this: Ash’s lips, lush and warm, pressing urgently, breathlessly, into Rafi’s own. Ash’s mouth. On Rafi’s mouth. Not in a sloppy, drunken way. In an assured and powerful way. Rafi registered the sensation of lifting up, losing gravity. Of something untamed breaking free in his chest. And then, Ash pulled back.
As if waking from a dream, Rafi opened his eyes to see Ash anxiously scanning his face, checking for a reaction.
Rafi’s brain wasn’t able to process much more than: That. Again.
The instinct was so immediate, the newness so raw, the sound of his body so deafening, Rafi went nonverbal.
Ash was breathing hard, looking jacked with adrenaline. His eyes darted between Rafi’s own. “Raf, I—”
Rafi grabbed the lapels of Ash’s blazer and yanked Ash to him.
Relief and hunger surged onto Ash’s face. Their lips crushed together. In a blur of movement, Ash had Rafi backed against the bedroom wall, one hand braced by his head, the other grabbing Rafi’s shirt. His tongue pushed into Rafi’s mouth.
This kiss was pure passion; it wasn’t anything like the kisses Rafi had known before. They’d been gentle breezes. This was a hurricane, ripping up the earth, tossing brick walls with ease, exposing everything.
Ash came up for air, panting and windswept; he was in the storm, too.
Rafi couldn’t breathe. Every cell in his body was rolling heat, smoking lava. He stared up at the man who’d just redefined everything he’d ever known. “Holy fucking Christ.”
Ash ran his thumb gently over Rafi’s lips. “Things aren’t changing for me,” he said, “because I’ve wanted to do that for fifteen years.”
The words were such a shock, Rafi was barely able to register them. All he wanted was Ash’s mouth on his, as hot and urgent as the pounding of his own heart. He pressed himself closer, stretching up on his toes, lifting his chin.
With a growl, Ash dropped his head and everything collided again: mouths, lips, tongues. This kiss was even wilder. An act of creation, the fucking big bang. Ash held Rafi’s jaw with a hand that felt like the size of a bear paw, kissing him with such authority, Rafi’s legs shook. The prickly sensation of Ash’s stubble kept scraping against his cheek, and if he’d died before feeling this, had he even lived?
A groan of need that sounded a century old escaped Ash’s throat. The sound reverberated into Rafi’s mouth, and its desperation, its sheer need, made Rafi feel powerful. His mind was a mess, but his body knew what to do. Rafi grabbed a fistful of Ash’s hair, a fistful of his blazer, yanking him closer. They staggered, mouths still connected as they knocked over a side table, crashing against the dresser, tripping over the carpet until it was Rafi who had Ash pinned against another wall.
Rafi pressed their hips together. Through the fabric of Ash’s pants, Rafi could feel the distinctive shape of Ash’s hardness, matching his own.
Rafi forgot who he was. They ground against each other, both hard as stones. The shock waves of pleasure were so acute and intense it felt like pain. Rafi was on the brink of losing control, everything rushing to an unmanageable point.
Ash pulled back, his lips swollen, panting for breath. “Wait, wait.”
The words landed Rafi back in the room. His heart was slamming against his ribs, gushing electric blood through his veins. The room was thumping with a bass line—oh god, they were still at the holiday party.
He and Ash. Had just made out.
No—he and Ash had just invented making out.
All he could do was stare at the man who was staring back at him, equally stupefied. Their suits were both wrecked, hair destroyed, lips puffy, eyes wild. Ash had scratch marks on one cheek (Jesus, had he done that?).
Ash touched his own mouth, blinking. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “that escalated quickly.”
Rafi let out a stunned laugh, which almost became a sob. Not because he was sad. Because every emotion he’d ever felt was surging through his body in a frenzied river of pure feeling. It was the moment you flip on a light and everyone you’ve ever met screams, Surprise! Wonder, chaos, confusion, joy. He opened his mouth, but what was there to say? Thanks for destroying me sexually for everyone else, forever?
Disoriented, Ash ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up at the ends. “I didn’t plan on…” He pointed back and forth between them.
“I didn’t plan on…” Rafi imitated the gesture until they were both pointing back and forth at each other like a couple of lunatics. Each word felt like a dumb brick. Rafi’s erection was the size of a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade float. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I don’t know anything anymore.” That, actually, felt accurate.
Something like a smile flung itself at Ash’s mouth before he batted it away with bewilderment. “Did that actually just happen?” Ash seemed genuinely unsure. “Did we just…” He gulped, Adam’s apple bouncing.
Rafi’s blood was still singing, each nerve ending fizzy. Without taking his eyes off Ash, Rafi nodded. “What happens now?” Rafi asked.
Ash’s gaze dropped to Rafi’s mouth. Yearning bloomed on his face before he scowled and shook it away. He, too, was still hard. “Look, obviously, I want to do that all night long. But I think we should slow down.” His full lips pursed. His eyes were the color of molten lava. Ash raised a finger. “I’m…”
Rafi had zero idea what he was going to say: Going back to the party? Going to kiss you again anyway? A little teapot, short and stout?
“…going to stay at a hotel,” Ash finished.
“What?!”
Ash moved to retrieve a duffel bag, stuffing it with clothes. “We shouldn’t sleep in the same bed.”
Rafi was totally lost. “Why not?”
Ash cut his gaze at Rafi. As if the look transferred an image, Rafi pictured Ash hovering over him. Groaning. Gripping the sheets.
They shouldn’t sleep in the same bed tonight because if they did, they would fuck.
Rafi broke into a sweat.
“I need some time.” Ash zipped up the bag with shaking fingers. “To process. What just happened.”
What just happened was they didn’t so much cross a line as carpet-bomb that line out of existence. Rafi didn’t know if leaving meant that Ash didn’t want to do it again, or that he did. Rafi didn’t truly know what he wanted, either. His legs gave way, and he sank onto the bed. “You don’t need to go to a hotel. Just crash in the Barn. There are beanbags and blankets and a shower downstairs. For after all the yoga my mother doesn’t do.”
Ash shouldered the bag. “Okay.” He crossed to the door, opening it. A Prince song strutted in. I would die for you, yeah; Darlin’, if you want me to. Ash paused. Came back to where Rafi was still sitting on the bed, staring up at him. Ash took Rafi’s chin in his thumb and forefinger. “Jesus,” he murmured, almost to himself. “You’re so fucking cute.”
Cute. They were back to where all this started.
Still holding his chin, Ash lowered his mouth to Rafi’s. Rafi closed his eyes. His best friend’s lips were pillowy and warm. Not a kiss of feral passion. A kiss of care. His stubble grazed Rafi’s own, a lovely scrape of rough whiskers and soft skin. They were kissing goodbye, as if that’s what they’d always done. A soft groan reverberated up Ash’s throat and into Rafi’s mouth. Their tongues touched for no longer than the length of a breath.
And then it was over: Ash was pulling back, dropping his hand. The kiss couldn’t have lasted more than five seconds. But in those five seconds, Rafi felt things he’d never felt before. New sensation, new emotion. Rafi kept his eyes closed, wanting to savor this glittery new feeling. The door shut, muting the party mayhem.
When Rafi opened his eyes, he was alone in his childhood bedroom. But nothing about it looked familiar, at all.