Chapter Nineteen Colin
Chapter Nineteen
Colin
Ten years ago
Los Angeles
“Curtain call!” a voice whisper-shouts in the dark hallway backstage.
I’m sprinting along with the rest of the cast. I died fifteen minutes ago in the third act, so while my fictional widow has been sobbing onstage and, I’m sure, drawing tears from the crowd, I’ve been peeking from the wings to see if I can spot Declan in the audience.
I never did find him.
But the moment I walk out onstage for my solo bow, I hear him. He’s somewhere near the front of the audience, hollering and hooting so loud I nearly die onstage for the second time tonight. This time from embarrassment.
I can barely make him out through the stage lights, but I squint down at where I think he is and give him a wide-eyed expression. It doesn’t stop him. He just keeps whistling and shouting.
After the curtain closes, my castmates crack up and poke fun at me for my very enthusiastic friend.
“Your not-boyfriend is very excited to see you,” Maeve says as she wraps an arm around my waist and hugs me closer.
“How do you think it went tonight? It was so weird knowing he was out there,” I say as we go to the dressing room together to change and take off this makeup.
“Are you kidding? You were brilliant and moved all of LA to tears,” she says, shoving me on the arm.
“Thanks,” I say with a tight smile. “So were you.”
“I know,” she replies with a quirky head tilt.
Maeve has been one of my best friends since she and I met in a production in London last fall.
We hit it off immediately. She talked me into moving to the States, and with how overbearing my mother has been, it wasn’t hard to convince me.
I’ve been living in her flat and got a part in the play almost immediately after moving here—on my own.
She’s hooking me up with her agent, and we’re even going to auditions together nearly every day we have off. It feels like my life is finally starting.
“What are your big plans with your not-boyfriend?” Maeve asks as she wipes the thick stage makeup from her face with a white cloth.
“I rented a place by the beach, and I think I just want to spend the week in the water, getting drunk with him,” I say.
“Mm-hmm,” she replies with a knowing smirk.
I’ve told Maeve everything about Declan, from the blow job in the pool to what happened last year in Dublin.
She knows how much I’ve been anticipating this trip of his out here to visit me in hopes that we finally take things to the next level.
I can open up to Maeve without shame or embarrassment.
With anyone else, I think I’d be humiliated to admit that I’m still a virgin at twenty-four and that I’ve been holding out for someone who I only see once a year and isn’t even my boyfriend.
Maeve thinks it’s romantic and not at all pathetic.
Once we’re all cleaned up, we make our way out of the stage door. There’s a horde of fans waiting, and flashes go off as she and I wave to those hovering around us. We sign a few playbooks and take some selfies before I notice the dark-haired man holding the obnoxiously large bouquet of flowers.
Maeve gives a little squeak of appreciation before disappearing into her Uber. “Have fun,” she calls out before the door closes.
“Wow,” I say to Declan as I take the flowers from him. “Thank you.”
“You were bloody incredible,” he bellows, his thick Scottish accent sounding so much thicker and more prominent since I’ve been living in America for the last six months. Just the sound of it makes me feel instantly nostalgic and happy.
He looks so good too. A bit out of place, but good. With his shaggy brown hair and slightly baggy clothes, he is exactly as I remember him. But missing him for these past eleven months just makes his presence now shine brighter. He is more Declan to me now than he ever was before.
I let the flowers hang as I pull him into a tight hug, lingering there for longer than appropriate.
“God, I missed you,” I say into his neck, and I feel him tighten his grip even more.
“I missed you too,” he mumbles.
I already dread the day he leaves.
“I’m so glad you came,” I say feeling oddly emotional.
He grabs the back of my neck and pulls me toward him until our foreheads are touching. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world, Shakespeare.”
I have to swallow down the stinging emotion building in my throat, quickly sniffling away any tears as he releases me.
“Let’s go get drunk,” I say with a smile, which has him cheering with excitement.
“That’s what I’m bloody talking about!”
* * *
Declan and I decide to skip the bars tonight and drink at the place I rented instead. It’s a condo right on the beach, so we take a six-pack of beer and a bottle of whiskey down on the sand and get drunk with our feet in the water.
He’s wearing nothing but a tight pair of black shorts, and I can’t stop staring at his abs and chest. Declan has always had a fit body, but his twenties have treated him very nice.
I feel like I have to work my ass off in the gym and keep a strict diet to maintain my physique, which isn’t all that impressive to begin with.
“I can’t believe you live in LA,” he says as he lies on his back and stares up at the stars.
The beach is quiet tonight, so it’s just us, and we’re mostly hidden by the jetty of rocks and plants from the houses on the shore.
I feel restless. I’m tired of waiting. I want to know this week if things between us are going to progress. I still want Declan to be my first, but if he doesn’t want that, I need to know now. I can’t be a virgin forever.
“I can’t believe you came to visit me,” I say as I shove his bare shoulder.
“What? You think I’d miss this?” he replies. “Shakespeare, there isn’t a place on this earth you could go that I wouldn’t come to.”
Everything gets quiet after he says that. I pick at the sand with nothing but the waves crashing to fill the void. I honestly wonder if he means what it feels like he means when he says stuff like that.
After a few tense moments, he turns toward me. “You’re my best friend, and I made a promise. We made a promise.”
“No one’s ever kept their promise to me before,” I mumble quietly. It’s a vulnerable thing to say, but this is Declan. I don’t have to worry with him. Nothing I say is a risk like it is with others.
“Yeah, me neither,” he replies under his breath.
It gets quiet again, and I feel like I’m crawling out of my skin. Just as I’m about to say something or bring up this topic that seems to be hovering awkwardly around us, he starts first.
“So you got an American boyfriend yet?”
My head snaps in his direction. “No,” I blurt out. “I don’t have any boyfriend.”
“Oh, come on,” he says. “You must have hot guys crawling all over you here.”
I scoff. “I don’t.”
“Nothing?” he asks.
Biting my lip, I look away. His gaze bores into me as I avoid his eye contact.
“I can see it on your face!” he shouts with a laugh. “Who was it?”
I shrug casually. “I hooked up a couple of times. That’s all.”
“Hooked up?” he asks, teasing me about my American slang. “What kind of hooking up?”
I turn toward him and try to bite back my smile. “I got a hand job at a New Year’s party.”
“Shelby!” he yells with a grin. “You slut.”
“I am not!” I argue.
“What else?”
Trying to remain casual, I add, “And I swapped BJs with a guy in my cast. It was nothing.”
“It doesn’t sound like nothing,” he replies.
His laughter turns tense and his smile starts to falter. Or maybe I’m seeing things.
So I add, “But that’s all. They weren’t that great, and I’m still a virgin, in the traditional sense.”
The waves continue to fill the silence as Declan cracks open another beer and takes a long drink. He appears contemplative, a look I’ve seen before. I wonder if he’s thinking about me with those other guys. I wonder if he’s jealous. Call it wishful thinking.
Then, from seemingly out of nowhere, he asks, “Do you remember that night in Ireland?”
I assume he’s talking about the night he crawled into my bed and sucked my dick, and to be honest, I’m surprised he’s bringing it up. Here I thought I’d have to be the one to start the conversation. “Yes, of course.”
“Did you like that?” he asks. “When I…”
“Uh…yeah,” I stammer with confusion.
“I’m not talking about sucking your cock, Shelby.
Of course you liked that,” he says as he rolls his eyes.
“No, I mean when I called you mine? I treated you like a thing that belonged to me. Did you…like that?” He won’t look at me as he speaks.
He just stares out at the ocean with a beer in his hand.
My cock twitches in my shorts at the mere mention of being his property.
“Did you?” I ask.
Finally, he glances my way. Staring into my eyes, he replies, “Yes.”
I can practically feel my pulse as the blood courses through my veins. After forcing myself to swallow, I answer his question. “So did I. I liked it a lot.”
“What the fuck does it mean?” he asks like we’re trying to figure out something mundane and ordinary instead of understanding a deeply rooted kink we both discovered with each other.
“I think it means…” My voice trails. “That I would do whatever you tell me to.”
“Anything?”
I shrug. “Within reason. Unless I really don’t want to.”
“And you’d like that?” he asks.
I’m shaking deep within my bones, a tremble of excitement and anticipation under my skin. We’ve never really spoken like this before. For so long we’ve danced around the topics of sex together and treated it like swapping favors. Like it’s just a normal thing friends do.
But now…we’re discussing something deeper. Something far too erotic to discuss so casually. If we go down this road, there is no going back.
“Yes,” I reply without having to even think about it.
He pauses for a moment; then he sticks his beer bottle in the sand and moves to stand.
“Get up,” he says assertively, and I move quickly, eager to obey.
Once I’m toe-to-toe with him, he doesn’t do anything for a while.
He just stares at me as if he’s appreciating me.
His eyes rake over my face and down my neck and chest.
There is an all-consuming desire within me to please him. To be what he wants. To be what he needs.
When he rests his fingers on my chest, I nearly gasp in surprise. And I don’t move as he slowly traces my pec up to my clavicle and over to my shoulder, then down my arm. Chills break out in the wake of his touch.
“I don’t like thinking about you with other guys,” he says quietly as he stares at my chest.
“Why not?”
“Because I do feel like you’re mine. And I don’t know if they’re treating you right or hurting you or taking advantage of you.”
I feel like I can’t breathe. This moment is too delicate. One wrong move will shatter it into a million pieces.
“I feel like I’m yours too,” I whisper.
His gaze lifts to my face and we stare at each other in the tense silence for so long, I forget what we were even talking about.
Then, out of nowhere, he lifts my arm and drives his shoulder into my stomach, hoisting me off the ground so I’m dangling over his shoulders.
“Declan!” I shout as I cling to his body. I might be a bit slimmer than him, but I’m easily as tall and probably weigh close to as much as him. And yet, he holds me as if I weigh nothing.
Laughing, he carries me to the water. I keep waiting for him to topple over with me on his shoulders, but he makes it all the way into the waves until they’re crashing up to his waist.
The water is cold when we both go tumbling in together, a mixture of howls and shrieks of laughter. The tide comes in just as I’m popping out of the water, and it barrels over me again.
Declan’s hands grip my waist, pulling me against him as we both stand up out of the water together.
“You prick!” I shout with salt water cascading over my face. Declan is laughing so hard it’s infectious, so then I’m laughing too. He flips his head back to get his wet hair out of his face. And we stand in a spot where we can touch without being barreled over every time a wave comes in.
“I couldn’t help it,” he says.
His hands are still on my waist, although I can easily stand on my own now.
He’s just holding me to hold me. I can sense his hesitance.
He doesn’t know how to proceed now, and honestly neither do I.
He’s touching me like he wants me, but he’s not sure what move comes next.
There’s no rule book for best friends who want to get off with each other.
“What is wrong with you?” I ask, putting my hands on his shoulders.
“I don’t like serious conversations. I’m sorry,” he replies with a smile. The only light in the sky is from the moon, and it’s so dark I can barely make out Declan’s face just inches from mine.
“It wasn’t that serious,” I say. “Now, I’m bloody freezing!”
“Come here,” he replies, tugging me toward him. Our bodies are flush against each other, putting our mouths just inches apart.
He slides a hand down my back and over my ass, sending shivers in his wake, until he’s lifting one of my thighs. I let out a small gasp, but I don’t hold back. Resting my arms on his shoulders, I wrap my legs around his waist, and he holds me as close as physically possible.
If he was trying to warm me up, it works. I’m not cold anymore. In fact, I’m burning up.
“Go ahead,” he mutters lowly as his gaze drops to my lips. “Do it.”
“Do what?” I whisper.
“Kiss me, Shelby.”
As it turns out, my favorite thing to do is obey him.
Without hesitation, my fingers slide into his wet hair as I bring his mouth to mine, kissing him hungrily.
I nibble on his lips and slide my tongue against his, tasting the salt water between us.
There is no restraint in me tonight. I want him and I want it all.