Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
That night, Aaron stayed at my place until I started to yawn. We talked more about what we wanted, about what his condition meant for those things, and about our different comfort levels with different physical aspects of our relationship. We talked about lighter topics too—movies we wanted to see, a band that was playing in town, our jobs.
I wanted him to stay the night, but he explained that he didn’t have his medicine with him.
He returned the next morning with breakfast, and that night, we actually slept together for the first time. I’d never slept better in my life than I did with his arms wrapped around me and his body pressed against mine. We spent another day together, separating only when it was time for me to head into the bar for my shift. I hated leaving him, but unfortunately, we couldn’t stay in our loved up bubble forever. The world outside still existed, and it required our attention.
I had a skip in my step when I entered the bar. I greeted all of my coworkers with a smile and chatted with everyone as we got set up for the night. I noticed James watching me, and ten minutes before we were set to open, he pulled me into his office.
“You look like you’re feeling better,” he noted as I sat down in the same seat where he’d told me the story of him and Henry just a few days before. “I take it that means you and Aaron talked?”
My cheeks hurt from smiling so much, yet my smile somehow grew larger as I nodded. “We did. We’re still together,” I told him. “Thank you. For helping me through that, I mean.”
“Any time kid.” James studied me for a few moments. There was an unadulterated look of admiration in his eyes, and I couldn’t help shifting under the weight of it. I wasn’t used to people my dad’s age looking at me like that. I was more used to disapproving looks for not living up to their standards of masculinity. “I’m really glad you’re happy.”
“I am.” I sighed. “I don’t think I would’ve gotten there without you. The fact that you didn’t regret anything with Henry, even after how it all turned out? It made me think, and it kept me from running scared.”
He grabbed the bottle of whiskey out from his desk drawer. I watched as he pulled out two glasses and wondered if they were the same ones we’d drunk from last time. He poured two small portions of the alcohol and handed one over to me. “To bravery and choosing love, then,” he toasted. I clinked my glass with his and downed the small measure of whiskey. It burned it’s way down my throat in the very best way. “Okay, now get to work.”
I laughed and rose from the chair. I was almost to the door when James cleared his throat. I turned to see that same expression in his dark blue eyes. “Everything okay?”
“I just see a lot of myself in you,” he admitted. “Makes it hard to know when ideas I have are crossing the appropriate boundary between boss and employee.”
My curiosity piqued. I turned to face him better. “Only one way to find out.”
His chuckle filled the space between us. “Well, I was thinking about asking you if you wanted to come over for dinner one night. Bring Aaron. I’d love to meet him.”
“I would love that. I’ll check with Aaron, and we can figure out a day?”
The smile on James’ face when I agreed would probably stay with me for the rest of my life. I’d never seen him look as happy as he did in that moment, and I knew that even if Aaron didn’t want to come to dinner, I would. He’d been good to me since he’d hired me. He’d taken care of me. He’d listened to me. He cared about me, and I cared about him too. I just never realized that he might be lonely until that moment.
Every time I saw James for the rest of my shift, that smile was still in place.
It didn’t take much convincing to get Aaron to agree to dinner with James. He’d heard a lot of stories about my boss. He knew that I viewed him as a father figure, even if that wasn’t information that I’d shared with James himself. Maybe one day I’d find the words to tell him what he meant to me. Or maybe I’d just buy him a Father’s Day card and leave it on his desk and let him figure it out for himself. That seemed a bit more likely.
We planned dinner for a week later, and Aaron took great care in how he dressed. He said it was because he wanted to impress James, and I fell even more in love with him. He wanted to impress the person I viewed as a father figure. How had I gotten so lucky to find someone like him?
He even managed to make sure I left the apartment on time. We showed up at James’ house ten minutes ahead of schedule.
“I’m a bit nervous,” he admitted as he put the car into park.
“Why?” It was a stupid question. He’d already told me why he was nervous when he told me why he took awhile to pick out an outfit for the night. “I mean, don’t be nervous.”
His laughter filled the car. “That’s easier said than done. I’ve never met a boyfriend’s parents before.”
“I mean technically, you still aren’t.”
“Except that I am. James is like your dad, right? At least that’s how you think of him. So it’s the same thing as meeting your parents.” He went quiet for a moment before speaking again. “Besides, it’s not like you talk to your parents, right? So this is as close as I’m going to get.”
He had a point there. My parents weren’t in my life. James was.
Aaron’s parents were in his life. “Well, if this is basically you meeting my parents, you realize that means that I have to meet yours soon, right?”
A radiant smile exploded on his face. His eyes practically glowed with happiness. “Really? You want to meet my parents? Already?”
“It’s been six months. Besides turnabout’s fair play, right?” I noticed movement in a window and nudged Aaron. “I think James knows we’re here. Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
I drew in a deep breath. The next words hurt me to say, but I had to say them. Just in case. It wouldn’t be fair not to give him an out if he wanted one. “You can say you don’t want to do this. If you’re too nervous, I can go have dinner with James and meet you at your place.”
I’d just have to catch an Uber or something.
“No.” He shook his head and leaned over to give me a quick kiss. “I said I’d do this with you, so we’re doing this. I want to do this. Meet James and see more of your world.”
He quickly climbed out of the car, as if to prove it to me. Or maybe to prove it to himself. I wasn’t entirely sure. I followed him out of the car and led him up the path to James’ front door. It opened quickly after we knocked, which only confirmed that I’d seen movement at the window and James had been waiting.
I’d never been inside James’ house before. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t what I saw when I walked in. It was neat but sparsely decorated. The furniture was nice, but it would hardly be considered top of the line. The living room was simple, and when he led us into the kitchen, I saw the same aesthetic choices in there. Most of the decorations were framed pictures. There were a few of him and Henry. There were more of him and his brothers from various stages of life. There was even a framed photo from the bar’s Christmas party, his arm thrown casually around my shoulders as we chatted with another coworker.
Maybe the familial feelings I had for my boss were mutual.
Dinner smelled amazing, and it looked better when we settled around the round, wooden table. We loaded our plates with food. Conversation was stilted at first. Small talk combined with shoveling food into our mouth wasn’t the best combination for getting to know someone, I guessed.
We slowed down after a few bites, and Aaron asked a more questions about the bar. They were simple questions, easy for James to answer, but questions I’d never thought to ask him. Like why he’d chosen to buy the bar in the first place and some of his favorite parts of owning a bar. I could see Aaron and James both relax as the conversation began to flow. They seemed to get along, and I couldn’t be happier about it.
Conversation about the bar somehow led to Henry. James wasn’t as forthcoming as he’d been with me. I didn’t blame him. I’d seen the emotions in his eyes as he talked about the love of his life. I hoped I never saw that haunted expression staring back at me in the mirror over Aaron.
After Henry, the conversation felt stilted. I didn’t like it. I wanted the conversation to flow the way it had before. I felt obligated to make it happen. After all, these two men were only sitting around this table chatting because of me, because they both cared about me in their own ways.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t great at small talk.
I sighed, and Aaron’s attention turned toward me immediately. “You okay?”
I felt James’ eyes on me, but I couldn’t acknowledge him. Not with the worry in my boyfriend’s voice. I reached out and squeezed his thigh in what I hoped was a reassuring way. “I’m fine,” I told him. I could tell he didn’t believe me. I probably wouldn’t have either if the tables were turned. Everyone knew that I’m fine was always code for the opposite. Why had I chosen those words? Anxiety spiked in my gut another time. I was going to ruin this, somehow. “I’m just trying to think of something to say that isn’t small talk.”
“I could tell him bar stories about you,” James suggested. “All the embarrassing ones.”
“Oh, please. I want to hear those,” Aaron piped up, freeing my attention from him.
I turned to glare at James, and he looked completely unabashed. “Okay, so he started out as a barback,” James began. My glare was entirely ineffective. I was terrified of whatever tale was going to come from my boss’s lips. There were too many from my barback days to choose from. I’d been an absolute mess back then, eighteen and broke and trying to make my way in the world for the first time. “He’d never done any kind of bar work before, but he was determined. Unfortunately…” He grinned a wicked grin, “Well, he’s your boyfriend. You know he’s a bit clumsy, right?”
“I think that’s an understatement,” Aaron teased. “I’ve watched Adam trip over dryer lint.”
“Oh my god, that was one time Aaron!” The one and only time I’d allowed him to be around while I was doing laundry. I turned toward my laughing boss. “What he’s not telling you is that I didn’t trip. I slipped. On linoleum floor.” The lint on the linoleum had caused me to slip and fall straight on my ass.
“That’s not much defense,” James pointed out. “As I was saying… He was carrying a tray of dishes back to the dishwasher, and I hear this loud crashing sound. I go to investigate and I find him on his ass, surrounded by broken glasses and bleeding. Almost had to take him to the hospital.”
“Tell the whole story!” I demanded. He was leaving out a very important detail. Aaron and James laughed at my indignation, and I rose to defend myself. “There was a wet floor and no wet floor sign.”
Aaron raised an eyebrow at me. “You were in the kitchen by the dishwasher right? Or the sink?” I could see where he was going, and I wished he’d stop talking. Instead, he kept going on toward the obvious conclusion. “Shouldn’t you have assumed that the floor would be wet?”
“That’s not even the worst one.” James looked over at me. There was trouble behind his blue eyes as he stood up. “You two want a drink?”
“I’ll take one. Beer for both of us?”
“Please.” If James was going to humiliate me, then I was going to have a drink while he did it. It might make the whole thing less terrible.
James kept talking while he went to the fridge. “So, it was his first or second shift bartending. He’d been at the bar for two years? Three?” He looked at me over his shoulder, searching for confirmation that I refused to give him. I wasn’t going to provide more details to add to his story. “So two or three years, and this guy comes in. He’s hot as fuck. I was about to go do some paperwork in my office, but I stuck around. Talked to a few clients. Couldn’t take my eyes off of him.”
“Should have gone to your office,” I grumbled.
“But then I wouldn’t have seen what happened, Adam,” James singsonged. He popped the cap off of three bottles of beer and carried them over to the table in a manner befitting a bar owner. He placed one down in front of Aaron and passed the second to me. “The guy came over to order from Adam, and everything was going well. Until he got the drink ready, went to hand it to him, and the guy said something. What did he say, Adam?” I mimed zipping my lips, glaring even harder. I didn’t remember the exact words the guy had said, only the gist of it all, but I remembered the rest of the story as clearly as if it had just happened. Years hadn’t been enough to dull the humiliation. “It was something flirtatious, I could tell that. Adam ended up dropping the glass, spilling some brightly colored cocktail all over his white shirt.”
Aaron was shaking with laughter.
James continued telling stories, each worse than the last. My cheeks were on fire, and Aaron couldn’t stop laughing. He started tossing in stories of his own, about me and about himself. It made me feel a little better, him willingly jumping onto the pyre with me. It emboldened me to start telling tales about James and his brothers, things I’d witnessed at the bar.
Unlike me, he didn’t seem to feel a flicker of embarrassment about any of it.
The night pressed on. We had a few more beers, and I had that beautiful feeling of being loved.
Warmth settled over me, and I knew that this, right here, was what I wanted for the rest of my life.