Chapter 18 Deacon
DEACON
Isaac has a great espresso machine. I make us cappuccinos once we’re dressed, and he compliments his once he has a taste.
While I’ve been occupied with learning his machine, I was able to tell him about the things Gray and Bailey have mentioned about my relationship—or lack thereof—with Evan.
I also explain about how attracted I was to my last roommate and what a disappointment that turned into.
I also fill in a little more detail about the kind of life I had on weekends before he came along.
Once I’m on the couch with him, he asks, “Do you think if we hadn’t had a good date that you would have noticed Evan differently eventually?”
I don’t do well with hypotheticals, especially when what’s happened has already happened. My brain can’t subtract Isaac from my life now that he’s in it. “I don’t know.”
I don’t love having to blurt out to people that I’m autistic.
Most smart, intuitive people clock it after an extended conversation with me.
They don’t always come out and ask, but I can always tell when they shift into making accommodations.
They’ll simplify their questions, show fewer signs of impatience, and ask over and over, “Does that make sense?”
I fucking hate that question. Because the answer is usually yes, I’m not a fucking toddler. Do you hear yourself?
However, in this case, I want Isaac to know.
He has a decision to make, and knowing might make it easier for him, especially after the conversation I think we’re about to have.
“Questions like that are hard for me to answer,” I tell him.
“I’m autistic and I have ADHD, so the way I process information is a little different.
I can’t imagine not knowing you, so asking what if when I only know about Evan’s feelings because of you makes it hard for me to answer. ”
Isaac frowns, studying my face, and I let him. “I hadn’t picked up on that.”
“No?”
He shakes his head and reaches out to brush a lock of hair off my forehead. “All right. Well, you’ve told me what everyone else thinks of you and Evan. What do you think about it?”
I blink, surprised he doesn’t have more questions, but I can move on if he can. Gladly.
“I wish I knew, but he keeps pushing me away or leaving. I was hoping to talk to him this weekend, too, but now I don’t know.”
“You don’t want to talk anymore?”
“What I’m saying is I was wanting to see if there was any chemistry, but being with you…”
“We have a lot,” he says.
“That’s probably not enough for you, though, right?” I ask.
“It’s a great start.”
“Which could end after one conversation with Evan if it ends up he does want more with you,” I say.
“I’m not really in a place where I want to choose between the two of you. Especially not after this weekend.”
Isaac’s diplomatic answer is gratifying, but it’s not the same as being sure about where I stand with him. “But you are going to talk to him, right?”
“I will. And just to be clear, if the two of you have unfinished business, I understand if you want to explore that.”
“Just to be clear…” I repeat.
“I’m not saying you should have sex if it’s not something you’re interested in. I’m saying if you did hook up, I wouldn’t hold it against either of you.”
I’m nodding. That’s more or less what I thought he was gearing up to say, but I’ve seen how Evan reacted to the new development between me and Isaac.
He’s a mess. He’s missing work. He’s cried.
He’s left town… “Look—I’m not sure Evan would appreciate all this outside pressure I’m getting to try and make out with him to see how it feels. ”
“Oh, Jesus, I hope that’s not what this sounds like,” Isaac says.
“What else would you call it?”
“I guess in my brain it’s hard to fathom not wanting to hook up with Evan.”
That draws a small smile from me. “You’re a sucker for that ass, aren’t you?”
“Fuck, you have no idea.” Isaac rubs a hand over his face then takes another sip of his drink. “Does it bother you that I have a thing for him?”
“It’s more than a thing,” I say, “and it only bothers me because I like being with you, and I was excited to see where it would go before I talked to Evan.”
“I was too,” he says. “Before I found out Evan’s got feelings for you.”
“But nothing’s happened between him and me,” I say.
“I care about him, and I don’t want to hurt him.”
“But he’s already hurt,” I argue.
“And I want to fix it,” Isaac says.
“By giving him a chance with me?”
He scowls. “That sounds terrible. No. You’re not mine to give him. But I do want to tell him he’s got a chance with me, and by the way, I don’t want to stop seeing you. Okay, that sounded worse.”
“If you want to see both of us, I can do that for a while, but I’m gonna need a decision at some point.”
Isaac groans. “Why? Why does it have to be one or the other?”
The question blindsides me because not only was I not expecting it, but it’s got me imagining a way different scenario than the one where eventually Isaac and Evan walk down an aisle together.
A scenario that my dick gets ahead of itself with.
This whole idea of seducing Evan just to see if I like it takes on a whole new layer when I add Isaac into the mix. “How would that work?”
“It probably wouldn’t,” he admits. “But it’s like the one way everyone gets at least half of what they want.”
I run a hand through my hair, tugging the strands slightly to try and distract my cock. “I’ll let you bring that up with him.”
Isaac laughs. “You’d be into it, though, wouldn’t you?”
Yes. I fucking would. Isaac’s sex life is my new obsession, and whether he’s fucking me or someone else with me, I’d be very, very into it. “Pretty sure you already know the answer to that.”
Isaac reaches over to palm the growing bulge in my pants. I catch his head and plant a kiss on him. He responds with an open, eager mouth.
Apollo greets me when I get home early in the evening.
I had no way of knowing when Evan would be back, and I have mixed feelings about it.
The kitchen is clean, and the apartment is quiet except for the click of Apollo’s nails on the floor and his low, snuffling sounds as he sniffs me while I pet him.
I’m a little hurt by the fact that Evan skipped town after I more or less told him my life story, but I’ve gathered his parents are always asking him to visit, and I guess with the mess we’ve got happening here, dealing with his dad seemed more pleasant.
I’m wondering how Apollo went on the plane when Evan comes out of his bedroom, and it’s the first question out of my mouth.
“He stayed at Sam’s.”
My head jerks up to look at my roommate.
He’s barely in the living room, and he’s wearing short gym shorts that show off nearly every inch of his sculpted legs and a black hoodie.
His hands are jammed in the front pocket, and his hair is a mess.
“Why?” I ask, feeling another wave of disappointment crash over me.
“I didn’t want you to have to deal with him. I figured you had plans for the weekend.”
“And Sam didn’t?”
“Sam has a dog,” he says simply.
“And?”
“And—he already arranges his schedule around a pet, and it seemed easier to ask him to deal with one more than ask you to rearrange all your plans.”
“I would have.”
His smile is grim. “I know. But I wouldn’t.” He snaps his fingers to get the dog’s attention. “Come on, buddy.”
“Wait—where are you going?”
“Just my room,” he says.
“Hold on a second,” I say, louder than is called for. “Can we talk before you lock yourself in your room. You’ve been gone all weekend.”
He blinks like he’s not understanding something.
It’s not Evan’s fault that he doesn’t know the something Isaac said to me today unlocked the roommate fantasy floodgates.
I can’t tell if I’ve been repressing or avoiding them until now, I just know that once they started, Evan might as well have been on the couch with me and Isaac this afternoon.
I halfway expected to turn to the side and see his dick there, waiting to be sucked when I was plunging deep into Isaac’s ass again.
And then when we flipped around so he could finish inside me, I came again to the image of Evan straddling me to sit on my face.
His thighs in those slutty short shorts are bringing up all kinds of filthy thoughts, so I force myself to meet his eyes.
I get that I have permission to explore whatever here, but not from the person who matters.
After the amount of sex I’ve had in the last forty-eight hours, I shouldn’t be so horny, but that’s never been the way it works with me.
The more I get, the more I want. I hyper focus. I binge.
“What do we need to talk about?” he asks.
Fuck, I don’t know how to answer that question. I don’t want to talk. “Have you heard anything more from Millie?”
“Other than seven unsolicited nipple pics, no.”
“She’s sending you pictures of her tits?”
“Manon’s. Sorry. Dog nipples. She wanted me to see how puffy they’re getting.”
“Gross,” I say.
“Yeah. Made for an interesting jump scare every time I opened my phone.”
“Have you eaten?”
He waves a hand between us. “I don’t need you to feed me. My stepmom stuffed me full enough for a week.”
“Is she a good cook?”
“Yeah,” he says. “You’re better, though.”
“You don’t have to say that.”
He shrugs. “Fine. It was just a compliment.”
I give him what I hope is an apologetic look.
“Thank you. My grandmother taught me. I hated it at first, but eventually it got to be one of those things that helped me focus. My parents would never eat anything I made. I heard my mom telling my sister once not to either because I probably used sugar instead of salt. Shit like that.”
Evan looks shocked. “What?”
“Autistic means stupid to some people.”
“But your parents?”
I shrug. “They weren’t big fans of how I turned out. They kind of checked out once I was diagnosed. Started working on having better kids.”
“Jesus.”
“Yours like you, though, huh?”
He grimaces and blushes. “Um…yeah. You could say that.”
“Is there more to it?”
“I’m their only child. They’re kind of obsessed with me.”
“Wow.”
“It was great until they got divorced. Then there was this awful custody fight and they’re still like—‘pick me, pick me.’”
“Pick you for what?”
“Extra time. Holidays.” He gestures toward the stove. “Whose pot roast is better. Everything.”
“Whose pot roast is better?” I ask.
“My mom’s.”
I smile.
“Anyway. Tangent. I have some things I need to work on, so…”
That reminds me. “How’s the software coming?”
“Good.” He sounds more confident than he usually does when he talks about it.
“Can I see?”
He hesitates. Then, “Uh…sure. I have it pulled up. I’ve been working on it since I got back.”
I put my keys on the island and drop the duffel I took to Isaac’s on the couch as I cross the living room and follow Evan into his bedroom. Apollo lags behind me. Evan sits down on his bed and gestures at the computer on his desk.
I don’t sit in the chair, instead leaning down and scrolling through the code on the left side of the screen. It’s clean and precise, the background of the master calendar at the core of the app. “Looks great,” I say after a few minutes.
“Thanks,” he says.
“You’re getting good at this.”
“Okay, you’re right. I get it. It is hard to take a compliment.”
I turn and look at him, standing straighter. He’s sitting on the bed with his legs crossed, showing so much thigh, I glimpse his groin creases. Snapping my gaze back to his face again, I force myself to manufacture a smile.
“You can sit.” He pats the mattress about two feet away from him. As I take him up on the offer, he keeps talking. “The calendar is super solid. The scheduler needs some work on the UI end, but the background is running the way it’s supposed to.”
“Have you talked to the copyright people yet?”
He points at the monitor. “I sent them that piece, but they keep giving me a hard time about not wanting to copyright it under Polytech. Isaac’s gonna have to email them, I guess.”
“I was with him this weekend,” I say.
“I figured.”
“We talked about you.”
He holds up both hands. “I don’t want to know. It’s gonna be weird enough having to go to work tomorrow.”
“He really wants to talk to you.”
Evan nods. “I know. He texted me, too.”
I don’t know when he had time to do that, but I’m not surprised. “Are you gonna hear him out?”
“He’s the boss,” he says.
“I hope you will,” I say. “And not just because he’s your boss, but because he cares about you.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I guess because you still seem upset, and I don’t feel like you need to be.”
“Can I ask something super personal?” he asks. “Nothing to do with your sex life, I promise.”
“Sure,” I say.
“What are emotions like for you?”
“Oh.” That’s a stunningly hard question. I would have much rather he asked about my sex life. Sex makes sense. Emotions never have. “I guess they’re more physical than mental.”
“How’s that?”
“Like I feel things—my heart speeds up or slows down. My stomach flips around sometimes. I’d jump if I saw dog nipples on my phone, too.”
He laughs weakly.
“But I don’t always connect what I’m feeling to the emotion in a moment.
Like there’s a wall up between the sensation and the words.
The thoughts. I don’t know. And in terms of complex emotions like anything beyond good or bad or scared or upset, I process it a lot in my notes.
Song lyrics sometimes resonate if I hear the right song at the right time. Is any of this helpful?”
“You said I seem upset, and I guess I’d say it’s more complex than that.”
“Anything complex makes me upset,” I say. “I’m getting better, though. My therapist does a lot of training with me to get me closer to pairing what I’m physically feeling with a word.”
“Does having a word for it help it make sense?”
I grin because that’s always been the crux of it. “Not really.”
“I didn’t think it would. I have all the words right there ready to be slapped on an emotion like fucking water bottle stickers, but it doesn’t change the fact that I can’t get the lid open.”
“Because of all the stickers?” I ask.
He laughs. “Maybe.”
“I don’t know why that makes sense, but it kind of does.”
He sighs and scoots back on the bed, lying on his side.
“What’s in the water bottle?” I ask.
“Understanding. Inner peace? I don’t fucking know.”
“What do you do when you can’t figure it out?”
“Depends,” he says. “Code. Walk the dog. Take a nap.”
I frown and look over my shoulder at him. “That’s it?”
He holds my gaze. “More or less.”
“I feel like you’re leaving out something crucial.”