Chapter 29
29.
Rafi didn’t fall asleep until well after dawn, and not because of the banger beyond his bedroom walls.
Things aren’t changing for me, because I’ve wanted to do that for fifteen years.
That being kisses that rewrote the very concept of kissing. That being douse Rafi’s soul with sex-gasoline and set it on fire.
Ash had been attracted to him for the entirety of their friendship. Really? The idea was like the sun, too bright and too huge to look at directly. Rafi couldn’t imagine himself as an object of unrequited affection. Typically, he was the one directing his boundless love at some slightly bewildered target. He knew that when those feelings weren’t returned, it was one of the most painful things a human could endure.
Now, waking up alone the day after the party, Rafi wasn’t sure if he could believe any of it. Ash had seen him at his best—on days of triumph and kindness and grace. But also at his worst—being childish or dumb or hopelessly naive. The idea that Ash harbored feelings for him through all of that didn’t fit with what Rafi understood desire to be. Which made him feel stupid. But most of all, the last twelve hours just made him feel confused. Horny, and confused.
What did this mean for them? For their future? What happened now?
Was Rafi supposed to text? Or wait for Ash to text? His thumbs hovered over his phone’s keyboard, but all he could think about was Ash, spinning him around and kissing him with more intent, more need, than Rafi knew possible. The smell of his musky-sweet skin. The way he tasted. The rhythm they found after their initial stumbles. The kind of passion you feel only with the right person.
Ash was the right person. It felt like the end of a good mystery novel, when all the pieces click into place.
Or, Ash had been the right person only in that moment. A few cocktails deep, at the bacchanalian holiday party, after Rafi had spontaneously spilled his guts.
Maybe it was a one-off for Ash. One he was already regretting.
Rafi gave up on crafting a text, and that seemed ominous. If he couldn’t manage the simplest form of communication, how the hell were they supposed to move forward?
—
The only person in the kitchen was Jin-soo, working on their laptop, typing a bit slower than usual.
It was early afternoon, and the house had mostly been returned to its pre-party state by the cleaners who’d already come and left. Only a few indications of last night’s blowout remained: A black lacy thong hanging jauntily from the Christmas tree topper. A mysterious stain on the carpet in the family room. The faint scent of weed, mixed with something deliciously sweet.
“What smells so good?” Rafi said, by way of greeting.
Jin-soo pointed to the oven. “Pancakes, and bacon. Birdie cooked before she went out.”
“Perfect.” Rafi grabbed a plate. “Want some?”
“Sure.” Jin-soo eyed him through their oversized glasses. “Hungover?”
Rafi nodded. “You?”
“Martin Short invented a cocktail in my honor. The Jin-soo Jingle.” They shook their head like someone who’d seen far too much.
Rafi served them each a short stack with a side of crispy bacon. He slid Jin-soo’s plate over. “You’re going home for Christmas next week, right?” he asked. “What’s it like with your family? The holidays, I mean.”
“Not like this.” Jin-soo twirled a hand to indicate the decorations, greeting cards, and enormous tree in the corner of the family room. “My mom gives me a hundred dollars to buy my own gift. I always get her the same face cream and my dad the same socks. We eat takeout in front of the TV from the one place in our neighborhood my dad thinks is better than my mom’s cooking.” Jin-soo tipped their head, as if picking through an odd assortment of memories. “One year carolers came to the neighborhood, so we switched the lights off and pretended we weren’t home.”
Rafi chuckled. “That is different. I guess we must seem a bit…” He searched for the word. Sappy?
“Nancy Meyers on acid? You do,” Jin-soo deadpanned. “I’ve never met a family who hugs so much. It’s weird. My mother’s way of showing affection is force-feeding me, then criticizing my weight.”
Rafi let out a soft laugh, but he could tell this was a tender subject.
Jin-soo picked at their pancake with nails bitten down to the quick. “And they’ve never gotten their head around the whole nonbinary thing.”
“I’m sorry,” Rafi said, awash with empathy. “That must be so hard.”
“It’s not the best. At least your mom makes an effort. Even if sometimes she gets it wrong.” A faint smile. “When I first told her I was nonbinary, she asked me, in all seriousness, what I had against binders.”
“No!” Rafi slapped his forehead.
The front door opened, Jecka’s and Birdie’s laughter announcing their return.
Rafi wasn’t ready to face one of Birdie’s joke-filled inquisitions, not with so much uncertainty churning inside him. He slipped off his stool. “Gonna bounce,” he whispered, and hurried out the back.
—
Outside, heavy gray clouds hung low and moody. Too cold to stay outside without a jacket, so Rafi headed down the cobblestone path to the greenhouse. The elegant glass building was just visible from the back patio, past the trees that surrounded the pool. Maybe he could find a little peace there.
Inside, a dozen orchids with delicate, spacey flowers had been freshly potted. The air smelled like green, growing things. Rafi wandered the aisles of leaves, letting his mind float into the past.
Ash dissecting a frog in tenth grade science because Rafi couldn’t stomach it. Summers by the lake, rubbing each other’s backs with sunscreen. Ash taking pictures of Rafi and his girlfriend at prom. Weekends in New York or D.C. or Philly, catching up over Thai takeout, talking until dawn. And all their texts and memes and FaceTimes, calls where they shared everything, and nothing was off the table.
Nothing except the most important thing of all.
Things aren’t changing for me, because I’ve wanted to do that for fifteen years.
Someone opened the greenhouse door. “There you are.” Ash sounded relieved.
Ordinarily, Rafi would spin around with a smile, a joke. But now he didn’t know what to say.
Ash was in jeans and his navy Shakespeare & Company sweatshirt. The bags under his eyes suggested he hadn’t slept at all. Still, he managed a cautious smile as he approached. “Raf Attack.”
Instinctively, Rafi winced.
Ash noticed. “What?”
Raf Attack was his kid name, from a past that he wasn’t sure existed in the same way. It was too complicated to put into words. “Nothing.” Everything. “How are you?”
Ash looked thrown. Rubbing the back of his neck, he let out a short, confused laugh. “I’m okay. How are you?” he asked, each word tentative. “How are you feeling, about last night?”
A superstorm of emotion and memory raged inside Rafi. Ash pushing him against the bedroom wall, groaning into that epic kiss. The delicious scrape of his stubble, the hard heat in his pants.
The way Rafi couldn’t craft a basic text this morning. The way he didn’t know what to say now.
“I don’t know,” Rafi replied, honestly.
Air drained out of Ash, shrinking him to half his size. “Yeah. Sure. No, I expected— Once you sobered up…” He jammed his palms into his eyes. “Obviously I shouldn’t have done anything, and now—” He let out a breath. “I should probably head back to London. We can talk after Christmas. We’ll be okay, Raf—”
“London?” Panic shot through his system at the idea of Ash walking out, flying away. “Dude, I don’t know how I’m feeling because…well, I just don’t know what all that meant. I don’t know what happens now.” Rafi summoned his courage, ignoring his self-doubt. “Is it true you’ve had feelings for me? This whole time?”
Half of Rafi wanted Ash to confess it’d all been a Rudolph’s Regret–fueled misunderstanding. But the other half, the braver, bolder half, wanted something different.
Ash shrugged, rocking back on his heels. “I had, like, a little crush. Wasn’t a big deal.”
“Oh.” Rafi felt a crunch of disappointment even as he mimicked Ash’s blasé nature. “Sure.”
A moment passed. Then Ash raised his eyes to Rafi’s sheepishly. “That’s a lie. My crush wasn’t little. Most of the time.”
A bubble of conflicting emotions popped in Rafi’s chest, sending him spinning in five different directions. Words started tumbling out of him. “Why didn’t you say something, why didn’t you do something?” How easily he could recall a thousand intimate moments—watching TV, getting coffee, making food. Sleeping in the same bed.
Ash met Rafi’s incredulous gaze. “Because,” he said slowly, “I’d rather be the friend you love than the ex you hate.”
The logic was sound, if absolutely heartbreaking. “I hear that,” Rafi said. “I feel that. No matter what happens, we have to stay friends. I cannot be the ex you hate, either.”
“So, that’s what you want?” Ash was listening closely. “To stay friends?”
Rafi considered it, his gaze arcing up. “It might be easier. Safer.” His gaze landed back on Ash. His heart was doing some sort of Olympic-level bar routine. “But it’s not what I want. I’ve started having…feelings for you. Feelings I’ve never had before. Feelings I can’t unfeel.” He frowned. “If that makes sense.”
Ash nodded. His face was calm, but his cheeks were splotchy, his chest rising and falling fast. “So last night wasn’t a ‘rebound-related meltdown’? A ‘holiday fling’?”
“No.” Rafi took an urgent step forward. “ No. Last night happened because…” He inhaled a lungful of air, summoning the truth. “…I’m attracted to you. Not just physically. I like you.”
An amazed smile raced over Ash’s lips. His cheeks were bright red. He had to clear his throat before he spoke. When he did, his words were soft. “I like you, too.”
The surreality of all of this whirled around Rafi’s head, unfiltered words falling out of his mouth. “But…but I’m not even your type!”
“What’s my type?”
“You know.” Rafi waved a hand, recalling the many, many boys he’d met or glimpsed in the background of their calls. “Underwear models and tattooed philosophy students.”
Ash let out a laugh. His hands were in his pockets, and his eyes were glowing gold. “You’re my type, Raf.”
Those four words leveled Rafi. He clutched the edge of a wooden bench. Outside, a snowstorm had arrived. Fat flakes the size of rose petals drifted from the sky. Inside the greenhouse it was humid and warm, the green of the plants so alive against the slate-gray clouds.
“Can we start at the beginning?” Rafi needed to hear it. “The whole story. Everything you haven’t told me.”
“Everything?”
“Everything.”
“Okay.” Ash inhaled a slow gulp of air, then finally started to speak. “At first, I didn’t realize. When we first met, I just thought that’s how friendship felt.”
Halcyon days of adventuring in the woods and swimming in the Ashokan Reservoir. Laughing until they felt sick. Conquering each day like kings. A quote from Stand by Me, a shared favorite, summed up the feeling: I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?
“Back then, my feelings were something I co-existed with,” Ash said. “They didn’t upset me. They made me feel…normal.” He paused, his gaze climbing up Rafi’s body to land on his face. “That changed when we were sophomores. I realized that thinking about you constantly, wanting to spend every minute of every day with you: it wasn’t platonic. For me, anyway.” Ash’s eyes pulsed with low, heavy heat. “I thought about kissing you. Touching you.”
Only now could Rafi recall teenage Ash getting distracted, soft-eyed, in the middle of one of Rafi’s stories. Blushing for no reason in the locker room.
“But you were my best friend.” There was an edge of desperation in Ash’s tone. “My family. I couldn’t risk losing that. And for most of that time, you only dated girls. By the time you were seeing Axel…”
“You were in London,” Rafi finished. It’d always bugged him why Ash seemed more ambivalent than thrilled that Rafi had a boyfriend.
Ash nodded. He pressed his lips together, seeming to come to an internal decision. “Why do you think I moved to London, Raf?”
“To spread your wings and soar without a safety net.” Rafi recalled Ash’s own answer, given a week ago.
“Yes,” Ash said warily. “And. To get over you. The idea that we’d end up together.”
Rafi’s mind flashed to hugging Ash goodbye at JFK. Why do you have to leave? Rafi had asked when they finally broke apart. And Ash had given him a strange half smile, more sad than happy, that now Rafi finally understood. “I had no idea.”
“I know. I figured it was safer that way.” Ash raked a hand through his hair. “I didn’t fully comprehend how much I’d missed you until I was back in your bedroom. I thought I might be over you, but…well…”
Rafi spoke without thinking. “Last night we attacked each other like carnivores at a meat buffet.”
Ash blushed, chuckling softly. “Yeah. We kind of did, didn’t we? I’m sorry about earlier in the night. I freaked out when you said that thing about a fling.” He frowned, looking annoyed at himself. “I didn’t do anything with any of those guys, obviously. I don’t know why my knee-jerk reaction was to get so slutty.”
“Because,” Rafi replied in mock seriousness, “you are very hot.”
Ash laughed. A teasing smile lifted his lips. “Flirt.”
The word lit Rafi up. Flirting with women made Rafi feel tongue-tied. The idea of flirting with Ash made him feel like he’d just discovered his tongue for the first time.
It would take awhile to absorb everything Ash had just laid out. But the anxiety he’d been feeling all morning was gone. In its place was something different. Curiosity. Excitement. Hope.
Rafi nudged Ash. Ash nudged him back. Not how they used to touch each other as friends.
They couldn’t change the past. But the future? That was yet to be written.
Rafi reached for Ash’s hand. It was heavy and warm. Slowly, so slowly, Rafi spidered their fingers together. Laced and unlaced them, touching the back of Ash’s hand with his thumb. Ash’s thumb did the same, stroking his skin, sending showers of sparks up Rafi’s spine. The greenhouse was quiet as both men stood staring at their interweaving fingers, mesmerized by exploration.
Ash’s voice was low. “I really liked kissing you last night. Sorry if I was a bit, um, eager.”
Rafi would never forget the way Ash had pushed him up against the bedroom wall, crushing their mouths together. The hottest experience of Rafi’s life. “Please, kiss me like that again.”
Ash paused, looking tempted before dropping their joined hands and shifting back. His words were careful and measured. “I don’t want to rush anything. You just broke up with Sunita. You just proposed to Sunita.”
“Who?” Rafi was joking but the meaning was real.
“You’re really over her?”
“At the risk of sounding like a sociopath, I really am.” Rafi gazed at the man whose face he could draw in his sleep, daring to tell him the terrifying, liberating truth. “You’re the only one I want.”
Ash let out a stunned, grateful breath. Tentatively, he raised one hand to Rafi’s cheek. Ran his fingers through the soft hairs of Rafi’s beard.
The movement filled Rafi’s body with light. Instinctively, he tilted his mouth up.
Ash held Rafi’s chin between thumb and forefinger. His gaze flickered around Rafi’s face. Lingered on Rafi’s lips, which were parted, breath coming quick. Ash’s voice was a murmur. “Are you sure?”
Each of Rafi’s internal organs liquified simultaneously. His answer was a pant. “Yes.”
Ash leaned in closer. Close enough that Rafi could smell his breath: minty toothpaste and coffee. Rafi let his eyes drift shut.
Their lips touched.
Rafi had long held an egalitarian notion that kissing a man and kissing a woman was essentially the same—we’re all just people, after all. But kissing a man was different. Being kissed by a man was different. Ash was taller than any boy he’d been with. Strong and dominant, but also soft and eager. Which made Rafi feel desired in a wonderful new way.
They sank into a kiss, luxuriant and slow and hungry. Rafi brushed his tongue against Ash’s, the sensation hot and wet and holy fuck. In response, Ash’s mouth opened wide. His best friend began kissing him with such single-minded focus, Rafi felt it down to his toes.
He felt it everywhere. Intoxicating strength flared up from his low belly, radiating into every cell. Rafi grabbed the back of Ash’s head, a fistful of his hair, kissing him rougher, deeper. Stubble and muscle and heat.
A call sounded from the back of the house. Birdie, yelling into the snowstorm. “Raf? You out here? We need help salting the driveway!”
His sister’s voice tipped Rafi back into the present. He broke away, backing up a step. “Yeah, here!” he called back shakily. “Just a sec!”
The back door banged shut in reply.
He swiveled to face Ash, feeling bashful and happy and insanely horny. “So, what’s happening here? What are we doing?”
“Um, I don’t know.” Ash laughed, the unexpected smile bursting forth like sun through clouds. “I can’t think straight.”
“Amen to that.”
Ash glanced in the direction of the Inn. “I think we should take things slow. Don’t you?”
“First time for everything.”
Ash slapped Rafi’s butt. “I’m serious. I don’t think we should tell your family.”
Rafi imagined informing his sisters. Their hysteria and questions and warnings. He was definitely not ready for all that yet. “Right. So we’re still just friends?”
“Just in front of the others. Until we get the chance to be alone and…talk. More.” Ash’s gaze dipped to Rafi’s mouth.
A fist of heat clenched hard in Rafi’s abdomen. “I can’t wait to talk all night long.”
Ash huffed a laugh, but his eyes were glazing, his hands sliding to cup Rafi’s cheeks, his lips moving close.
Birdie’s voice sounded again. “ Raf! ”
Rafi let out an annoyed groan. “ Coming! ” he called back.
Ash refocused, reluctantly dropping his hands and turning for the greenhouse door. “Let’s go. Birdie sounds ready to—”
“C’mere.” Rafi grabbed Ash’s sweatshirt, tugging him back into one of the ferns. This kiss was different again. With Rafi at the wheel, it was more awkward, teeth bumping through their smiles, both guys stepping on each other’s sneakers. It was quick, only a stolen moment, but in the too-short few seconds, Rafi felt everything. Desire, thick as the humidity. Lust, sharp as a knife. And something more tender and secret and true, written on Ash’s breath as his lips broke away.
Oh, Rafi could definitely keep this a secret. Piece of cake.