Aiden
“Don’t.”
That’s the first thing I say to Jed the next time I walk into The Foundry. I’m not there for a session, just a regular workout after clocking out of the office, but I spot Jed heading towards me as soon as I set my things down next to the free weights.
He stares at the finger I’m holding up and laughs so loud it echoes around the cavernous space. “I was going to say hello! Is that not allowed anymore?”
”No, you weren’t,” I grunt, picking up two heavy dumbbells from the rack. “We never speak of Saturday night again.”
He leans against a nearby pull-up bar and watches as I start a set of bicep curls. “Why? I had a delightful time.”
”I’m sure you did,” I grunt. “Plying me with alcohol and watching me embarrass myself.” I cringe at the slightly hazy memory of asking Jed to scent me in his car after the party, the headache long gone but the shame still painfully fresh.
I also think I might have called one of my uncles a goblin, but I can’t be entirely sure.
”You plied yourself with alcohol, thank you very much,” he grins. “And you weren’t embarrassing. You were adorable.”
I feel a pleased little thrill at his words but push it down with another bicep curl. I know he’s just teasing me, like he does to everyone. “Please fuck off.”
“You didn’t seem to mind me calling you cute on Saturday.” He raises an eyebrow, and I can literally feel the blood rush to my cheeks.
I lose count of my reps and drop the dumbbells with a harsh exhale. “I know you’re just trying to torture me.”
“I think it’s working,” he grins.
“I think it’s unprofessional,” I say, although there’s no bite behind it. “Shouldn’t you be teaching a class or something?”
He checks his watch. “Not for another half hour. That’s thirty whole minutes of let’s torture Aiden time.”
I shake my head, biting back a smile and focusing on racking my weights so I don’t have to look at him for too long, because every time I do, all I can think about is what he looked like fending off my dad’s jibes at the party, and how his arm felt around my waist, and what he sounded like when he came.
And from the way his eyes are glinting, I get the distinct feeling he might be thinking the same thing. The last part, at the very least.
Anxiety roils in my gut.
“Look, are we—” I start, unsure how to broach the subject without sounding like a complete amateur, but also totally incapable of carrying on like nothing’s happened.
Like I haven’t felt his cock pulsing on my tongue.
I drop my voice until it’s barely audible over the hum of the air conditioning, and finally meet Jed’s eyes.
“We got each other off in my fucking hallway, Jed. So can we just… are we cool? Or are things gonna be totally weird now?”
Jed laughs softly, taking a step closer and looking so unbothered it sort of pisses me off. It’s also ridiculously, frustratingly attractive. “Am I being weird?”
“No,” I answer truthfully, because he’s not being weird in the slightest. Which feels weird.
“Good. You’re being weird, but that’s nothing new.”
I roll my eyes, picking up the dumbbells again but not doing anything with them. “Okay, thanks for that.”
Jed tilts his head. “Aiden, if getting a mind-blowing blowjob five minutes before an important social event is enough to ruin a friendship, then I’ve been doing friendships wrong for a long time. It’s no big deal. We’re beyond cool.”
I breathe a small sigh of relief even as something small and dissatisfied niggles at the back of my mind.
Because maybe I wouldn’t have minded if Jed was slightly more bothered.
Just a fraction. Just enough that the words friendship and no big deal weren’t reverberating around my head like he’s just screamed them through a megaphone.
But that’s just Jed, I guess. It was kind of a big deal for me because I haven’t had any action in three years, but Jed is probably picking up omegas left, right and center.
Why wouldn’t he be? He’s hot, funny, easygoing, and as has become painfully obvious since I joined The Foundry—he doesn’t do dating.
So of course a quick hook-up wasn’t a big deal for him.
It was probably no different to any other Saturday night.
I was probably no different to any other omega.
The main thing is that we’re cool. I’m cool. Totally cool. I don’t have to find a new trainer, or another new gym. No awkward client/trainer interactions here, oh no.
We can just forget this whole thing ever happened, and carry on with business as usual.
“Which is just as well—we don’t want anyone picking up on any awkward vibes at the wedding,” Jed continues, breaking my train of thought as he fiddles idly with a stray thread on his t-shirt.
It takes me a long moment to process what he’s just said. “What?”
“The wedding. It’s next month, right?”
I frown, my shoulders aching from holding the weights at my sides. “Yeah. What’s that got to do with you?”
“Lucie invited me,” Jed says, giving me a wide, easy smile. “I couldn’t exactly say no. Are you going to do something with those weights or just let them hang?”
The blood drains from my face so fast I nearly drop the weights on my toes.
“Jed, no,” I say quickly. “No way. The engagement party was… messy. I got hammered, we nearly got caught out every time someone asked us a question, my dad was an asshole, and I am not dragging you through a whole weekend of family bullshit. I’ll tell her you’re busy. ”
The thought of Jed having to put up with another evening of passive aggressive family conversation makes me cringe all the way down to my toes.
Sure, he fended my dad off last time, but it’s entirely possible that Dad might turn his ire on Jed instead of me now that another alpha has threatened his usually unshakable sense of self-importance.
Although underneath the anxiety, a quiet, chaotic little voice in the back of my head whispers how good it felt to have him standing next to me all night.
To pretend that someone like Jed could want someone like me.
Jed takes the weights out of my hands and puts them back on the rack. “Sure,” he says cheerfully. “Let them believe you’ve got yourself an alpha who abandons you at important family events. Because that won’t give your dad any more ammunition to be a total douche-nozzle.”
I stare at him blankly. “How about you leave the sarcasm to me?”
“You know I’m right. And I’ll look fucking great in the wedding photos.”
And fuck, I do know he’s right. On both counts. I ignore the stupid spark of relief that flickers in my chest, even as I scowl.
“You’re the worst,” I say instead, and Jed barks a warm laugh.
“Is that a yes?”
I run my hands through my hair. “If we’re doing this, this time we actually need a game plan.”
“What do you mean? I think we did great.”
I give him a flat stare. “We fucking sucked, Jed. Every time someone asked us a question about our ‘relationship’ we both gave different answers.”
“Okay, you may have a point,” he concedes. “But our physical chemistry was—,” he mimes a chef’s kiss.
Heat fizzes in my chest at the memory of how good it felt being close to him all night; how naturally all the intimate little touches you’d usually see between an alpha and omega seemed to come to us.
“Sure,” I concede gruffly. “But we’re going to have to talk to people. Unfortunately, we can’t just hold hands all night.”
Jed quirks an amused eyebrow at me.
“Fuck off, you know what I mean.”
He chuckles. “Okay, so let’s grab a drink after your session this Thursday. You can tell me all about your childhood pets and how you like your eggs cooked and what shoe size you wear, and I’ll tell you about my deathly fear of snails and how I got the scar on my ass.”
“I don’t think either of those things are going to come up at a wedding,” I laugh despite myself, my stomach flipping idiotically at the thought of sitting in a bar with Jed, just the two of us.
“Yeah, but you’re curious now.”
And he’s right, again. I am curious; about what he likes and doesn’t like, his weird, irrational fears, his childhood and his food preferences and what movies make him cry. I’m so fucking curious it’s kind of pathetic.
“Need me to stop him terrorizing you, Aiden?” Max, one of the co-owners of The Foundry, booms from behind us, his hand landing heavily on my shoulder. “You’re meant to be helping the patrons, Jed, not distracting them. Especially our potential future omega heavyweight champions.”
I flash Max an appreciative look, feeling a twinge of excitement at his words, and he gives my shoulder a hard squeeze.
“I’m not terrorizing, I’m mentoring,” Jed grins, throwing the towel that was wrapped around his neck at Max, who snorts and catches it, giving Jed a sceptical look. “Okay, maybe I’m cajoling Aiden into a second “date”.”
“Oh, fantastic,” I say. “You’ve told everyone about our fake relationship. Great. Thanks.”
“Hey, it must be a pretty special fake relationship to get Jed to go on a second date,” Max rumbles with a chuckle. “One and done, that’s Jed’s policy. I don’t think he’s been on a second date since Friends ended.”
My stomach twists, whatever small, misguided spark of hope that had been lit a few moments ago snuffed out just as quickly.
Because Jed isn’t agreeing to all this because he likes me.
He’s doing it because it’s an easy favor for a gym client.
A few fake dates where he gets free food and gets to play the hero, with no actual commitment at the end of it. Just a fun story to tell at parties.
“Fake date,” I correct quietly.
“I’m an exemplary fake boyfriend, I’ll have you know.” Jed says, rolling his eyes at Max, although his grin falters when he notices the change in my expression.
I swallow, hard, shifting my gaze away from Jed and back to the weight rack. “Max is right,” I say, forcing some weak humor into my voice. “Stop distracting me so I can finish a fucking set.”
Jed’s lips turn down slightly, as close as I’ve ever seen to a frown on his face as he looks at me with a quiet intensity that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
His nostrils flare instinctively, like he’s trying to get a read on my scent, but I’m back to wearing blockers. Back to being blessedly unreadable.
“Yeah,” he says. “Alright. But I’ll see you Thursday for your session, and we’ll get our shit together at Duke’s after.”
“Sure,” I nod.
“Okay,” he grins, the intensity from a moment ago gone. “It’s a date.”
“Fake date,” I mumble, but Max is already dragging him away.
As it turns out, going for drinks with a hot guy after you’ve just spent an hour with him, working up a sweat and having his hands all over you as he corrects your form, makes it much harder for the primal part of your brain to differentiate between a real date and a fake date.
Or maybe that’s just me.
I tell Jed about my boring office job in administration as quickly as possible, although he does a good job of pretending to find my anecdotes about my unhinged coworkers more amusing than they actually are.
When I ask where he grew up, he responds with a wry “fucking everywhere” and gives me a potted history of all the places he moved to growing up with two parents in the military.
In fact, the more questions I ask, the more that seems to be a theme in Jed’s life; never standing still.
He worked what sounds like a hundred odd jobs after school, getting fired from half of them and eventually channeling all his energy into boxing until he went pro.
I want to ask him a thousand questions about his career, but he glosses over why it was cut short—something about an injury—and swiftly moves the subject on.
It’s… fun. Really fucking fun. Jed is as interesting as he is hilarious, and to my surprise I keep making him roar his loud, gleeful laugh even when I’m not really trying to.
One drink turns to two, which turns to three, and by the time the bar staff are not-so-subtly turning up the lights and mopping the floors, I think we’ve both forgotten why we’re even there, the conversation having moved so far away from what we’re supposed to be talking about.
After my next session, Jed simply throws my coat at me when I get out of the locker room, slings an arm around my shoulders and steers me to the bar.
And if I already looked forward to my Thursday sessions with Jed, before long our late-night mutual study sessions have become the absolute highlight of my week.
Over the next five weeks, we manage to build up a surprisingly encyclopedic knowledge of each other’s lives. Probably more in-depth than is entirely necessary for one evening of casual conversation.
I learn that despite his seemingly boundless energy, Jed can’t make it out of bed in the morning without a vat of strong black coffee, he has a not entirely surprising soft spot for gratuitously violent b-movies, and he’s kept every pair of boxing gloves he’s ever owned.
In return, I tell him about my burning hatred of cilantro, every one of the near death experiences I had on an ill-advised back-packing trip with my friends when I was eighteen, and even begrudgingly admit that I haven’t been able to sleep without white noise since I was a kid.
By the time the wedding rolls around, I have an entire mental dossier on Jed, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do with my Thursday evenings when this is over.
We also have our own fake backstory down to a science—first impressions, our favorite date spot, even where we were when we decided to be "exclusive". Jed’s first suggestion was that it happened on the top of a mountain, and that he was wearing a full, baby blue tuxedo.
I managed to talk him down, until we settled on it being on a hike, and we were both wearing jeans.
It’s foolproof. Airtight. Unshakeable.
So why, as I stand in front of my bedroom mirror trying to tame my curls into some semblance of an acceptable hairstyle, waiting for Jed to pick me up for the three hour drive to the hotel, do I feel like I’m about to throw up?
My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
Jed: Downstairs. Got the truck running. Want your alpha to carry your bags for you, sweetie-pie?
I huff a laugh and tap out a hasty reply.
Aiden: I can squat twice your bodyweight and you know it. Down in five.
Jed: And that’s why I stay ;)
I stare at the glowing screen and take a slow, steadying breath. We may have perfected our backstory, but as I head down the stairs, the way my heart flutters like a hummingbird in my chest is all too real.