Chapter 14 - Isaac
ISAAC
As much as I enjoy letting Evan take me through my schedule line by line, I am capable of following it on my own without any prompts.
Therefore, when he doesn’t show up to work on Thursday and I find an emailed “not feeling well today” in my inbox, my schedule is the first place I look to decide when I have time to check in with him.
If he’s sick, I’ll have some soup and medicines sent over. If he’s taking a mental health day, I’ll send chocolate and maybe set him up with a spa appointment. After ten, I’m pretty booked, and I don’t want to send anything to his place too early if he needs to sleep in.
My meeting with the Green team is at two, and after that, I’ll be able to call Evan and make sure it’s nothing serious.
The teams more or less run themselves, all managed by Tina and Jeff, my two VPs, both of whom worked their way up to their positions over the last three years.
Since they report to me directly, I don’t interact much with the teams themselves, and the fact that I didn’t even know Deacon was one of my employees when we met on our date was a big wake-up call that I need to be paying more attention.
Evan had a point about the employee survey.
When people don’t feel like they have a connection to upper management, they feel under appreciated and have lower job satisfaction.
Deacon is twenty-eight, so he’s not old, but Green team is young, and immediately I see that he’s got his hands full.
Three anxious-looking women and two extremely nerdy men file into my office before Deacon appears in the doorway, and damn, the man can fill out a doorway.
He looks massive compared to everyone else.
He’s not wide, but his height absolutely stands out.
He gives me a subtle nod before introducing everyone and taking a seat. That’s pretty much all he says the entire meeting, letting his team have the floor to tell me what they’re working on, and—like I’ve been asking everyone—what they want to work on next.
This is the most vocal group I’ve met with so far.
They’re brimming with ideas, and each one is better than the next.
Everyone’s working on an app, it seems. They chatter excitedly for nearly an hour before I give them all my blessing and thank them for taking the time to come in.
As they’re leaving, and as I hoped, Deacon lingers.
I give him some cover by asking for a moment to talk alone.
I’m not planning to seduce him. I wouldn’t feel right about it. Even when things started between me and Evan, he made the first move. Granted, not one word out of my mouth was trying to discourage him, but we were alone in the building, it was nearing midnight, and inhibitions were low.
“Quite the crew,” I say as Deacon moves into a seat closer to my desk.
“Thanks for hearing them out. They have a lot to get off their chests.”
I grin.
And then he hits me with, “Did you know Evan is my roommate?”
My eyes pop open wide, and I go still, momentarily stunned. “Um. I didn’t.”
“He is.” He gestures toward the door where Evan’s empty desk sits outside. “I take it he didn’t come in today.”
My stomach turns unpleasantly. Something’s happened.
I’ve fucked up. I need to apologize, I know this, but I don’t know where to begin.
Images and flashes of Evan grinding on my lap yesterday in this very chair fill my brain.
They’re intermingled with the muscle memory of the steady pulse of Deacon’s cock inside me the night before.
I rub a hand down the side of my face and let out a breath. “You and he had dinner last night.”
Deacon nods.
“He told me he was afraid his roommate was going to ask him to move out.”
That gets a deep scowl. “I would never do that. He’s a great roommate.”
I take a long breath afraid of what’s coming. “What was dinner about?”
“I told him I was seeing you. Just in case I ever wanted to have you over—if things kept going the way they’ve been—I wanted him to have a head’s up.”
“And?” I ask.
“He said I should give you a head’s up, too. I didn’t disagree.”
I’m willing to be very honest here. I only need to know where I should start. “How much did he tell you?”
“He told me you had sex yesterday. And that was a regular thing you guys do.”
Deacon’s delivery is somewhat flat. His expression stoic. I can’t tell if I’m supposed to apologize or explain. Or both.
“I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you,” I say. “If I’d known you lived together, I would have said something.”
He takes that in. “I figured.”
My hand moves from my jaw to rest on my heart. “He knows I’m dating,” I say uselessly. “What happens here is just sort of…”
I don’t know how to describe it. Fun isn’t the word. It hasn’t been fun for me in a long time. Casual also doesn’t do my own feelings justice. “A habit,” I wind up saying. It’s true, but not the whole truth.
“He was upset when I told him I liked you.”
“And you?” I ask. “Are you upset?”
Deacon frowns. “About you having sex with him?”
“Yeah.”
“No,” he says. “This is new, and we both had lives before we met. We never talked about being exclusive.”
“Still…” I say. “When it’s close to home like this…”
“I’m not upset,” he reiterates.
“But Evan is?” I mean, I guess it’s obvious, right? He’s not here. Fuck.
“I honestly couldn’t tell what he was upset about. I got the sense it had more to do with me, but I’m not great at reading situations where emotions are involved. Are there emotions involved?”
“I…well…I’m not sure how to answer that.”
“Is he the one you’re in love with?”
I loosen my tie. “Did I really say in love? I have a hard time believing I would put it that way.”
“It was something along those lines.”
I sink further into my seat. “I do remember saying it was complicated.”
“Anyway,” Deacon says. “We thought you should know.”
I take a moment to let all of this settle. Eventually I ask, “How do you feel about it now?”
“Which part?” he asks. “Because you’re right. Complicated is a good word for it.”
“Any part,” I say.
“I felt okay about it until he got upset with me.”
“Do you want me to talk to him?”
“What would you say?”
I sigh. “I have no idea. I don’t like the thought of him being upset. Are you two close?”
“We’re roommates,” Deacon says without any additional qualifiers.
“Okay…”
“We’re not home at the same time all that often, and I…it’s not always easy for me to open up to people.”
I wouldn’t have guessed that. However, this conversation is definitely the most awkward one we’ve had. I wonder if that’s because there’s a desk between us. We do fine when we’re up close and personal.
“Does this change things with us?” I ask.
He runs his hands down the arms of his chair. “I don’t want it to, but that’s not only up to me.”
“I need to talk to him,” I say even as I’m tearing straight down the middle.
“I get it.”
“Deacon, I don’t want to stop seeing you.”
“I don’t want to stop seeing you, either.”
“But yes, I have feelings for him.”
“And you still haven’t told him.”
“I will.”
“And then what?” Deacon asks.
“I meant it when I said I don’t think anything’s going to come of it.”
He shifts in his seat, settling his hands on his thighs and tapping his fingers. “But if something does?”
I stare at him for a long moment. “Can I ask you to be patient with me?”
His brows draw together. “Of course. I do want to keep seeing you, but if you need to take a break to figure things out—”
“No,” I say quickly. “I don’t want a break. I mean—I know I need to figure it out and get clear on where I stand with Evan, but I really want to give this a chance.”
“So, if that means dating us both…?”
I don’t see that happening. It’s much more likely Evan will want nothing to do with me anymore, and I’ll drown all those sorrows in bed with Deacon.
However—I also have no issues seeing two men at once, as long as everyone’s on the same page.
I’m not sure how to say that, though. “Would you be okay with that?”
“Look…I just want to date you. The logistics don’t really matter to me.”
Is he serious? Did I win the boyfriend lottery, and no one told me?
“But let me know how you’re feeling after you two talk,” he adds.
“I can do that.”
“I’m gonna head home soon. If you’re gonna call him, now would be a good time.”
“Can I see you later?” I ask.
He stands. “Call me. I’m planning to stick close to the house tonight. Like I said, and I’m not sure you caught this, he seems like he’s more upset with me than with you.”
“Why is that?” I sort of caught it, but it made very little sense the first time and even less now.
“If you don’t mind, I’m gonna stay out of it for now. I want you two to figure out your end, then I’ll try to decide where I fit in.”
With me, I want to tell him. There’s no doubt in my mind about that. He belongs with me. This is too good. Too mutual. And it’s way too soon to give up. But he’s right. I have a lot of cleaning up to do on my side of the street before I have any business making promises. “Thanks for the heads up.”
He nods. “Hopefully, I’ll see you soon.”
“You will,” I tell him.
He gives me what I would call an attempt at a smile, and leaves the office.
Picking up my phone, I scroll to Evan’s number in my contact list. We text often throughout the workday, and I’m tempted to start there. With a quick “Can I call you” text. That would be easy to ignore, though, and a phone call is—however awful—more personal.
I put the call through. He answers on the third ring.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Evan.”
“Oh. Hi.”
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
“Um…okay, I guess. Did you need something?”
I suck in a deep breath. We’re off to a great start. I recognize his tone. Evan and I get along well, in general, but there are times where we fall into a pattern of communication that sounds a lot like an old, annoyed married couple. Hazards of proximity, I guess. “I talked to Deacon.”
He sighs heavily. “I heard you do a lot more than talk with Deacon these days.”