9. Alexei
9
ALEXEI
M y dad is afraid of me. Not because I’m particularly scary, but because I hold a level of control over his life. Because of what he and my mom put me through, I hold clout and status that most children don’t. I became their parent figure at a young age, and because of it, our power dynamic shifted. Biologically, he’s my dad. Fundamentally, we’re just family. Father and son with no father and son roles. Simply put, he’s afraid of letting me down, doesn’t think he has any right to tell me what to do, and often tries to hide his pain from me because I’ve already experienced so much of it.
While there’s a petty part of me that thinks, ‘Yeah, you deserve this role,’ there’s an even bigger part of me that never wants him to hide from me just because he’s protecting me. I want to protect each other. I want to be his haven and his rock, just like he is mine now.
“We can go again,” I tell him over breakfast in our ridiculously massive kitchen fit for a family of thirty-three instead of the two of us who barely cook.
“No. It’s okay. I’m fine.”
He’s not fine. He gets weird this time of year. It’s a built-up highlight reel of his teen years: meeting mom, having fun, doing drugs, having me. Then he loses a few years. They’re scrubbed from his memory bank because his brain wasn’t healthy enough to hold on to them during the worst parts of his drug use. But he remembers May 17th. A cursed day on two accounts.
My birthday.
Mom’s death day.
Twelve years apart.
It’s four days from now, and Dad’s doing his usual agitated mess thing. So, since he won’t admit he wants to go, I’ll make it about me.
“I want to. It helps to visit her grave once a year.” We go every single year, but he always makes a thing out of it beforehand. I take a bite of muesli and dairy-free yogurt, watching him. It honestly does help me to go. It reminds me that my slight fear of abandonment isn’t for nothing, that she left us because of a disease, not by choice.
Relief falls into Dad’s eyes, lifting them. He nods, knowing that I’m doing this for his benefit because I hold very little love and almost no fond memories of my mother. To her credit, she mostly sobered up enough during pregnancy that I wasn’t born with a laundry list of health issues, but that postpartum depression hit hard on an unstable sixteen-year-old new mom, and it was straight to the needle after that. There wasn’t a single time in my life when I knew my mom sober. Not even once.
So, I don’t care about visiting her grave for myself. I don’t get sad about her death anniversary, and I feel no guilt for still being excited about my birthday, even though it’s usually boring. It’s my day. The only one I get. But Dad cares, and I care about him. He cares because he was a teenage dad who didn’t know how to care for a newborn, let alone a strung-out teen mom with untreated depression and mental health conditions. He didn’t help her, couldn’t help her, and barely kept me alive most of the time. So, we go visit her grave so he can put his guilt to rest until it creeps back up on the next May 17th.
“Okay,” Dad says. “You should try these.” He nods at the cardboard box of a hundred cookies. “They’re actually pretty good.”
“I had one. When Gage showed me his room.”
There it is. That look. The one that got morphed because of our power imbalance. Dad wants to tell me not to date a newly recovering addict, but he won’t tell me that because he has no say and knows it.
“We’re friends.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all he wants.” For now.
“I trust you, Alex. It’s Gage who is… still a bit unstable. You shouldn’t have to live through what I already put you through again.”
“You make it sound like he’s going to relapse.” I finish my breakfast.
“I hope he’s not, but there’s always… just…” Awkwardness. It’s so fun because I don’t feel it, but everyone else does. I wait him out. “Do you like him like that?”
While I’m usually pretty careful with what I get attached to, I pinned myself to Gage immediately after my fake hatred wore off during breakfast. It’s not because he’s tall, dark, and handsome with a nice ass and gorgeous brown eyes. It’s not because I’ve dreamed about what it would feel like to hold on to his hair while his mouth is wrapped around me. It’s not because he interests me, makes me giddy, or makes me comfortable.
It’s because he sees me and isn’t trying to change me. He pokes fun at my quirks without actually having a problem with them. That’s friendship. True friendship, even though it’s new. But… boyfriend material. That comes from the way he makes me feel so comfortable under his attention that I’m uncomfortable in the comfort because I’ve never experienced it before. No one, not my parents, former friends, past crushes, colleagues, classmates, or distant family members, has ever sat in a room with me and been content in my judgmental silence. That’s what attracts me to Gage.
And since I’m not the type to get embarrassed by my own thoughts, I’ll mentally admit it. It’s soulmate material. I feel it. Everyone, including my dad, will think I’m crazy because I barely know the guy, have hardly touched him, haven’t seen his body or learned about his actual needs, but I sense it. Deep in my gut and throughout my whole metaphorical heart.
Gage Rossum is my soulmate. I just need to be patient until he figures it out.
Told you I’m an old-fashioned kind of romantic. Turns out I’m the werewolf and fae type of romantic. Soulmates exist, and I found mine.
“Yep,” I answer Dad, grabbing my bowl to rinse.
“Does he know that?”
“What, like I’m subtle?” I snort.
Dad laughs softly. “You are the most sure of yourself person I know, Alex. But you’re also the strongest. I don’t want you to have to be strong for him all the time. Someone needs to be strong for you, too.”
I look at Dad over my shoulder. That’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me, and it means a lot coming from him. “I know you don’t always feel it, but you’re a person. You know that, right?”
He quirks a brow.
“You see yourself as an addict. You see Gage as an addict. But you’re both people.” I dry my hands. “It’s possible to fall for a person who happens to be an addict. It’s only one part of who they are.”
“And you have no fear about that one part of who he is?” he asks.
“Some,” I admit. “My fear mostly stems from you. I can’t lose you like we lost Mom.”
Dad’s eyes soften, and he stands. “You know, sometimes I think you turned ninety-five when you were seven. How did you get so wise?”
“It’s my old soul.” I smile at him. “That was created for the single purpose of belonging to Gage’s soul. And vice versa.”
He smiles, eye-rolls, laughs, and nods all at once. “He’s the one, eh?”
“Just need him to figure it out.”
Dad grips my shoulder, feeling weird about it. He doesn’t move his hand. “He seems smart.”
He also seems like a compulsive liar, a self-doubter, a confused man, and a wayward soul. Fate plays tricks in funny ways.
“It’s… you made this?” I ask Gage, looking at him over the top of his laptop.
He’s leaning back on his bed, ankles crossed, tossing a bottle cap in the air over and over again. “Yeah. Originally, like five-ish years ago. Ran off Etsy before that, but I updated it at some point. Can’t remember when.”
Effortlessness frustrates me. Gage has a beautiful website, a thriving business, a loyal customer base, and judging by his online store’s analytics, a ninety percent occurrence of recurring buyers. They buy the same products each month and year, even though he puts minimal work into updating them. And he charges too much, but people are still buying it. He’s bringing in way more money than I thought he was, and he… barely does anything.
“I can see the steam building,” Gage says, knocking his knee against my hip. “Let me have it.”
I try to hold it back, but he gave me permission. “You are lazy. You set up an amazing business with products that people want, and then you fucked off and stopped caring. People with your mentality shouldn’t be this successful. You should earn the success and work hard at it. Or at least work hard at setting it up and maintaining your frequently bought products. Bundles, a mailing list, loyalty programs, special offers, new products. All that. Yet you sit here and say you ‘made some digital products, and now they sell themselves’ while pulling in more money than the average salary of three people combined. And you aren’t even proud of your success. I don’t like you right now.”
Gage tosses the bottle cap, and it goes high above his head. When he reaches to catch it, his shirt lifts and my attention sinks to his abs. How does a drug addict have abs? He hates sports! He barely walks faster than a distracted toddler! God, he’s infuriating. His skin tone is tanned, he has the sexiest little pleasure trail I’ve ever seen, and fuck him for having a V!
I glare at him. “I hate you.”
He catches the cap and sits up. We’re facing each other, chests close, hips side by side. He licks his lips, and I’m a fool for bracing for a kiss—hoping for one—because it doesn’t happen. “I do care about it. Now, anyway. I know it’s all been pure luck up to this point. Which is why I want you to help me fix the site. I’m hiring you.”
“Well, I charge a lot for website maintenance when the website belongs to an asshole.”
He chuckles, showing me his teeth. Nice teeth. Again, how does a smoker have such nice teeth? They should be yellow and stained, but they’re pretty white and mostly straight. “I have to pay an asshole premium?”
“Double asshole premium. One count for your lack of effort, and one count for your physical appearance, which also took no effort. Oh, and there’s a douchebag tax for just being a general douche.”
“Fees are getting pretty high.”
“You can afford it.” I point to the annual income numbers on his website stats.
“You’re worth everything I have to give, Alexei.”
I’m swooning. And mad about it. He’s not supposed to say such sweet things after telling me he won’t be with me because he will actively ruin my life. And he makes it worse when he turns the laptop, tucks his head in close to mine, and clicks right into his business bank account like he’s not private about banking information.
There are big numbers on the screen, showing his account balance, but all I’m thinking about is how he’s radiating warmth that is travelling straight to my dick, and he smells like cigarettes, and I hate him for it because cigarettes have suddenly become an aphrodisiac and that’s just absurd!
The laptop tilts.
Because. Of. My. Boner.
I’m a little mortified, to be honest, but I own it. When Gage looks, notices, and then meets my eyes with a sexy grin, I say, “Coincidences are exciting, and compliments are a turn-on. Sue me.”
He leans in. Grinning. Casual. Tempting. I’m gone for it, hoping he does something about it while knowing how bad of an idea it is. My morals are getting all skewed, and that should be a red flag. I’ve lost my damn mind!
“I have so many compliments to give,” he says, voice rough and perfectly abrasive. “Fuck, Alexei, I have so many compli—” He pulls back. I’m almost drooling and he looks scared. “Shit. I’m sorry. I should not be flirting with you.”
Yes. Yes, you should. “You will. Eventually.” I look right into his deep brown eyes, trying to subliminally inform him that he’s my soulmate.
“Don’t let me hurt you, Alexei.”
“Give me more credit, Gage.”
“Alexei.”
“Gage.”
His tongue swipes his lower lip and mine mimics the motion. We’re six inches apart, both breathing like we share his bad lungs, resisting a temptation we both want to give in to but are too afraid to submit to. I don’t want to push him, and he doesn’t want to ruin me. We need to learn to trust each other first.
Luckily, I’m awesome at pretending I’m patient.
“There’s also a non-flirting fee. Once you start giving in, I’ll bring it down in ten percent increments.”
“You’re so expensive not to flirt with,” he says.
“I know. So, to be financially smart, you should consider starting.” I’m still sporting a woody, but it’s manageable enough to ignore. I rip my eyes away from his with great effort, clear my throat, and say, “Okay, your home page could use a little work to showcase the newest products.”
“The ones I haven’t made yet?”
“Yes, those ones. So, you do that. I’ll do this.”
I’m not easily distracted, but focusing is hard when I know what kind of abdominals sit under that sunset orange t-shirt.