Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
Victor
Oh no, he doesn’t. Jason’s got this pained look on his face and I am feeling far too come-drunk to have his fears ruin our afterglow. “Jay,” I start. “Jason—”
He gives me a tiny smile. “It’s…okay for you to call me that.” He holds up an index finger. “Only you, okay? No one else.”
“Everybody’s gotta have a nickname,” I tell him with an easy smile back. I’m unreasonably touched, though.
He shudders. “Not me. Plus, you don’t have any nicknames.”
I laugh. “Oh, Leah and I had all kinds of nicknames for each other. Though, now that I think about it, she probably stopped calling me Schmickie long before she met you.”
“Schmickie?” Jason’s expression is a cross between horror and hilarity.
“Well, it started when we were kids with Vic, of course. Then she started calling me Vickie, though she was kind enough not to do that when we were around other kids.” Not that that stopped a couple of bullies in eighth grade from calling me the same, late eighties homophobia being what it was.
“Somehow that morphed into Vickie-Schmickie, then it was just Schmickie, and eventually everyone called me Schmick for a while.”
Jason blinks at me. “Uh, wow. I guess being called Jay is nothing compared to that.”
“Could have been worse.” Sticks and stones and all. I never minded when Leah called me silly nicknames because I knew it was out of affection.
“What did you call her?” Jason asks.
“Well, her name was a little harder to play with, but I got kind of creative, if I do say so myself. Lee-lay, Lee-lee to start. Somehow, I hit on Leezy-breezy and that got shortened to Breezy, then Bree, then Bee, and then Bumblebee obviously.”
“Obviously,” Jason echoes. He gets a faraway look in his eyes. “I remember you calling her Bumblebee sometimes. I never thought to ask why.”
“Yeah,” I say softly. The last time I called her Bumblebee, I’d just brought her dinner. Mac and cheese from the blue box, because she’d had chemotherapy earlier that day and that was her comfort food. Jason had choir practice, so it was my night to take care of Leah and put Kelsey to bed.
I made a big pot of mac and cheese, fed Kelsey at the kitchen island while she told me about her day at school, then brought a bowl to Leah, who was lying on the sofa under a blanket, watching the TV show Supernatural.
“Here you go, Bumblebee,” I’d said, and placed the bowl on the coffee table.
I teased her about her obsession with the Winchester brothers, we argued over some ludicrous plot point, then I took the bowl back to the kitchen when she fell asleep before the episode ended, put a lid over the less than half-eaten leftovers, then cleaned the kitchen until it was spotless and I ran out of tears to cry about her dying before my eyes.
That night, anyway.
I swallow back a lump in my throat and gesture at Jason. “Why are you all the way over there? We should get some sleep before the wedding festivities.”
Tomorrow is the wedding. We fly home two days later. The day after that, we go back to our lives, him in Brooklyn with his church and his choir, me in LA with my clients and my classes.
No strings. No expectations.
That's what he wanted. That's what I agreed to.
Jason looks at me like he wants to say something, but I turn over. “Spoon me, Jay.”
We've slept tangled together every night this week, and I've gotten used to the weight of his arm across my waist, the warmth of his breath on the back of my neck.
I'm going to miss it.
I'm going to miss him.
He huffs a sound of annoyance, but doesn’t chastise me for using the nickname.
He flicks the lamps off, gets into bed, and finally settles behind me, his warm chest pressing against my back.
He tucks his knees behind mine, snakes an arm over my side and under my arm, and spreads his warm hand over my chest.
“How many men have you slept with?”
The hell kind of question is that? I turn my head but I can’t see his expression in the dark. “What?”
He strokes his hand up and down my chest, idly plucking at my chest hair. “I’m just curious. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
It’s not that my sexual history is a huge secret, and it’s maybe fair for him to know my status, but he didn’t ask me before we fucked and now that horse has left the barn, so to speak. And he did wear a condom. “I don’t fucking know. I mean, I can’t really—”
“Count them?”
Okay, really? I wriggle out from under his arm and turn over to glare at him. “What kind of a slut do you think I am?”
His eyes are liquid in the faint light from the window and his damn kissable mouth forms a little O of surprise. “I didn’t mean…”
“To imply that I fuck around indiscriminately? You belong to a faith that views sex as something only heterosexual married people get to have, and only after they’re married.
Anything else is a sin. Including, by the way, what we just did.
And what we did the other night. Not to mention what we did fifteen years ago. ”
His eyelids shutter and he bites down on his lower lip. “I know,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound judgmental about your past relationships.”
I sigh. What the fuck am I doing messing around with a mostly straight Catholic man?
Will I be able to look back on this week with fondness?
As a nice memory of a fun couple of days of hot sex with a hot man who just happens to be my daughter’s stepfather?
Or will the torch I’ve been secretly carrying for my best friend’s widower finally burn the memories I have of both of them to ash?
“It’s fine, Jason. If you really want to know, yes, I can’t give you a specific number. Not because I can’t count them all, but because I just haven’t kept track like that.”
I drag a hand over my face. “I’ve been in a couple longer-term relationships, there’s been some friends-with-benefits situations, and I can usually get laid whenever I feel like it, which, honestly, hasn’t been all that often lately.
I was on PrEP for a while, but stopped taking it because anonymous hookups aren’t the thrill they used to be when I was younger.
I still use condoms. Any other questions? ”
I don’t mean to sound so sharp, and I feel a stab of guilt when Jason sits up and wraps his arms around his knees. I stretch a hand out and touch his lower back with the tips of my fingers. “Sorry, man,” I say.
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry for,” he says. “I’m the one who asked insensitive questions.”
“It’s fine, really, Jason. I shouldn’t have overreacted. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
Almost anything, anyway.
“I was just thinking…” he starts. I wait for him to finish, gliding my fingertips along his skin.
My eyes get heavy while he mulls over whatever he’s trying to say.
It’s been a long day, and between the emotional upheavals of my confrontations with Adrienne and Kelsey, not to mention getting off harder than I think I ever have, I’m suddenly bushed.
When the bed shifts as Jason turns around to face me, I blink my eyes blearily open. “Hmm?”
“Never mind,” he says with a half smile. “You’re right. We should get some shut-eye before the big day tomorrow.”
He kisses me, slow and deep, like we have all the time in the world.
We don't. But I kiss him back anyway, and try not to think about how much I'm going to miss this.
He lies down behind me and drapes his arm over me again. “‘Night, Jay,” I yawn, shimmying back against his warm body.
“Good night, Schmickie,” he says.