Milo
I was not nervous.
I was not nervous.
Sure, it was officially the first day of what was supposed to be a date weekend with Elijah, which hit the top spot for greatest fantasy ever realized.
Even more than sleeping with him, which was also in the top three and I’d been doing that for a few weeks now.
..except for last night, despite it having been a few days.
Generally, he couldn’t keep his hands off me after the second or third day.
Which, of course, drove me crazy and stuck in my head.
If it wasn’t for the fact that we had a whole date weekend planned, I might have started worrying that it was a bad sign.
Not that I thought it was unfair for me to think that way.
Sure, I’d always casually wondered why he got returning customers like Eva, rather than going out and finding someone new.
Still, I’d just chalked it up to a mixture of him preferring to be with people he knew, even if they weren’t romantically involved, and that he probably knew what he was doing to make the women want to come back in the first place.
I was right on both counts, but now I knew firsthand how accurate the second explanation was.
Eli might not have been immediately skillful with gay things, but he was willing to learn.
It reminded me a little of how I’d been when I’d gotten my first taste of sex.
I’d thrown myself into just about every aspect of sex I could sink my teeth into.
Eli was much the same, except he also had enough years of experience with other people to be more meticulous about it than my younger self had been.
Eli might have been out of his element the first few times with me, but he had clearly been determined not to stay that way and had been successful beyond my wildest, sexiest dreams.
So if I was a little addicted to sleeping with him, I couldn’t really be blamed.
More importantly, I needed to make sure I was dressed appropriately with limited information.
I’d been told to dress nice, but not so nice that I needed to start writing vows.
So...okay, maybe the dress shirt was a little much, and the vest thrown on top was overkill, but, hell, I didn’t usually dress up all that nicely.
Honestly, I hated being all dressed up. I never understood why nice shirts had to have collars that threatened to choke the life out of you when buttoned.
But it was for Eli, so I would suck it up and well.
..I did look good, the blue shirt was one Eli had picked out for me last year, and it went great with my eyes and skin tone.
Yes, other people were better at dressing me than I was at dressing myself; I would own up to that.
I knew what colors worked with my complexion, though, and the noticeable gold trim on the vest was my choice because I could manage some things regarding fashion.
Maybe I’d gone a little overboard by swapping out the color of the tips of my hair to a blue that matched my eyes, but hell, I was happy with it.
That I’d turned to a professional to strip the previous color without frying my hair and then dyed it to the perfect color was a detail no one needed to know. ..mostly because it had not been cheap.
I had been told to dress nicely for dinner, so that’s what I’d done, and damned if I didn’t look good despite the partial monkey suit.
I took a few pictures of myself, sorting through them to decide which one I liked best. I contemplated whether I should use a filter and immediately dismissed the idea.
I rarely used filters in my pictures unless they were funny.
Even if a picture went up where I looked haggard or beat up, those still went up without anything to ‘pretty’ me up.
‘Good food and drinks?’ I slapped the caption onto the picture I chose and sent it.
I had been seriously slacking at keeping a presence online, at least a current one.
I’d noticed Eli had been posting for me, a couple of old posts brought back for engagement, but he’d apparently been keeping some stuff in his back pocket for times when I wasn’t as active.
There was content I remembered making, but we’d never posted, which meant he had kept it to use later, but at least now I had something to contribute.
Hell, depending on how the night went, I might have some stuff to post later as well.
And...maybe I would keep my phone handy to record things tonight if Eli was inclined.
My phone alerted me to a message, and at a glance, I saw my ride had shown up, and I quickly hurried out of the apartment before they left.
Eli had ordered the car, so I had to make sure it was the right vehicle before sliding into the back with a nervous greeting and settling in.
There was no stopping myself from trying to guess where the car was headed as we negotiated the traffic.
Not that I knew every place in the city, but it helped to occupy the next half an hour before the car pulled up to a plain-looking building.
Not one to second-guess someone who had already been given the address, I thanked them for the ride, confident that Eli had tipped them well before making for the only entrance on that side of the building.
I walked up and told the well-dressed host my name.
The lighting was low but not horribly dim.
The woman smiled after finding my name and led me through the restaurant with dark colors and wood throughout, which gave it a weird mix of cozy and ‘modern’ that I thought was overly done nowadays, but at least it wasn’t too much.
The booth where Eli was waiting was tucked into a corner.
He looked up, beaming when he saw me coming, and tucked away his phone.
The host left me at the table as Eli started to stand, and then he frowned, looking confused.
It took me a minute, distracted by his red shirt, which went great with his complexion.
My momentary relief that I hadn’t overdressed was overshadowed by the stirring in my gut at how good he looked.
That was followed by realizing why he looked so confused, and I laughed as I sat across from him.
“You don’t have to get up to wait for me to sit,” I teased as I looked around for a drinks menu.
“I wasn’t...well, okay, I was,” he admitted with a snort. “Not sure how it goes, going on a date with a guy.”
“As a rule of thumb, we homos don’t usually fall into the trap of expecting...gentlemanly behaviors.”
“Did you just call it a trap?”
“I mean, yeah. I’ve heard you talking about dating in the past. Half the time, you don’t know if the girl wants you to act like you’re in the fifties, or if you’re supposed to nix all that.
I haven’t gone on a date with a guy since I started dating, where someone might expect you to hold a door open, pull out their chair, or whatever other stuff still hangs around straight dating.
Once you’re a guy with a guy, all that goes out the window.
Sometimes they appreciate it, but it’s not a requirement. ”
“Good to know,” he said with a smirk, pausing when the server came up and introduced himself before telling us the drinks for the night.
That got my attention since it wasn’t a drinks list in the classic sense and was more limited than I was used to.
We mulled over our choice before the server left, and Eli cleared his throat.
“Not that I really need to know how a date with a guy goes.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, just how to go on a date with you.”
I snorted. “I’ll pretend you didn’t inadvertently insinuate that I’m not a guy.”
“Don’t start,” he warned with a frown that made me laugh again.
“I said I was gonna pretend,” I winked, leaning back when our drinks arrived at record speed. “But what would make dating me different than another guy?”
He took a sip of his drink, twitching his brow, telling me he was pleased with it before setting it back down. “Well, if we take out of the equation that I’ve never had a date with a guy before.”
“Which, for the sake of conversation, we will.”
“Right. If we do that...I don’t know, how do you go on a date with someone you already know well? Dates are usually for getting to know people, but what the hell am I supposed to talk about?”
“I think...we can just have a conversation,” I said with a shrug.
It was strange and new to me too, but where Eli had learned to deal with something unfamiliar or different, I had always been good at it.
Now that things between us were...well, I wouldn’t pretend it wasn’t weird, and I wasn’t still nervous that all this was about to disappear, but it had been around long enough for me to feel some comfort.
Enough to be more like my old self and not the nervous, constantly second-guessing wreck I was before.
“Kind of like how I should tell you that you should probably let me see you dressed up before you post it online?” he asked with a smirk.
“I guess that did spoil the surprise, didn’t it?” I wondered, pulling out my phone and seeing that there were, in fact, several notifications about the last post I’d made. Considering his co-ownership of the account, Eli had undoubtedly seen the post already.
“A bit,” he said, looking me over and smiling. “But that’s alright. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but no matter how good the picture or video is, they’ve never done you justice.”
I blinked at that. “Since when would you notice...before all this that I looked better in person?”
“I didn’t have to be attracted to you to know you’re a good-looking guy,” he said with a snort, eyes drifting around the restaurant. “And even if I hadn’t noticed, do you know how often I’ve heard people say something like that? I’ve always thought your overall looks got all the attention online.”
“Look, I’m cute, but I’m not ‘social media hot guy’ levels of cute.”