16. Ethan #2
“Hi,” he said, his eyes darted to my boxers; the only item of clothing I was wearing. They returned to my face so fast that I almost thought I’d imagined it. “Want to join me? The stars are beautiful.”
I hesitated. Should I? I wanted to, but was it weird? Was it wrong?
“There’s plenty of room,” Rami said, like he could sense my indecision. “And I’m decent. Well, I have my underwear on.”
Underwear that would undoubtedly hold up about as well as mine in the hot water.
He took another sip of wine, never breaking his gaze from mine.
“I’ll just get myself a glass.” I thumbed over my shoulder.
“Let me,” Rami said, putting his glass down.
“Oh, you don’t have to—” My protests died as Rami braced his powerful arms on the edge of the hot tub. In one graceful move, inch after inch of beautiful dark skin was revealed as he levered himself out.
“Fuck,” I whispered to myself as I hungrily tracked the droplets chasing one another down his pecs. Over the contours of his abdominals. Right into his happy trail.
I caught myself before looking any lower, forcing my gaze up to the stars. “You’re right. They’re very beautiful.”
I waited for Rami to say something. He must’ve seen me looking at him. Thankfully, he just laughed softly before disappearing indoors.
Pull yourself together, Ethan. Yes, he’s a model, but that doesn’t give you the right to ogle him.
I took the opportunity to slide into the hot tub. Carefully. Slipping and whacking my head on the tiles would be a shitty way to end the day. Kind of fitting though, considering everything else that had happened.
Not everything was shitty, I reminded myself as I let the hot water soothe my tense muscles. The photo shoot went well. And there are worse places you could be right now.
Like alone on your sofa, wondering when Dave will finally get home.
I closed my eyes when I heard footsteps approaching.
I’d already proven I couldn’t be trusted where Rami was concerned.
That in itself was weird. I’d never felt such a deep attraction to someone before.
No other models had inspired this kind of response in me.
But given everything else weird that had happened recently, this was right at the bottom of the list.
“I’ve put your wine on the side,” Rami said. There was a ripple in the water as he joined me. “Let me know if you can’t reach it.”
“Thank you,” I murmured before reluctantly opening my eyes. Rami was sat opposite me, his face placid. “Not just for the wine. For all of this.”
“This is what friends do. They have your back when everything goes to shit.”
A friend. It was funny how much I missed having those. Without my diagnosis hanging over me, there was nothing to stop me having one. Having Rami as my friend.
“Thank you, Rami.”
He grinned, then took another sip of wine. “My pleasure.”
I sighed, swirling my hand through the water. “I’m guessing you’d like to know what went down.”
“Only if you want to talk about it.”
Did I? “I think I need to.”
Rami put down his glass, giving me his full attention. I tried not to notice the way he spread his arms out along the sides of the hot tub. Nor how the size of him meant he took up more than half of the tiny pool. “Then I’m listening.”
I tilted my head back to rest on the edge. Staring at the stars, I thought about where to begin. “I met Dave when I was twenty. I was a student at the University of Southampton.”
“How’d you meet him?”
“In a club,” I said, chuckling to myself. “Back in the days when I actually went to them.”
“Not a fan now?”
I hummed. “It’s not that I’m not a fan…more that I don’t really have anyone to go with.”
“But you did back then?”
My throat bobbed as the stars grew foggy. “I did, yes. I had…god, just the best group of friends. But after I met Dave, we drifted apart. My fault, not theirs. Never thought I’d be the kind of guy whose life revolved around his boyfriend, but apparently I am.”
Rami stayed silent, so I rambled on. “Didn’t help that we moved to LA not long after graduation. The gaps between our phone calls became longer and longer. And you know what? I was glad.”
“Why glad? Because you felt guilty about how things were changing?”
“That was definitely part of it. But mostly…I think it’s because I kept lying to them. I made it sound like I was living the best version of my life. Like I was happy. Like everything was perfect with Dave.”
“But it wasn’t.”
I shook my head. “No. Far from it.”
Rami was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry, Ethan.”
That had me lifting my head. “What are you apologising for?”
There was an emotion shining in his eyes that I couldn’t quite place.
“I’m just picturing you in a new city, in a new country, far away from everyone and everything you know, thinking you were making the best decision but realising that wasn’t the case.
It… Fuck. I hate to think of what you went through. ”
“You might want to buckle up for this next part, then,” I said heavily. “Because that’s the high point of the story.”
Now Rami was the one staring at the stars above us. “Fuck. Okay. Hit me with it.”
Despite the conversation, I found myself smiling softly. Rami was one hell of an empathetic man if he felt this strongly about someone he barely knew.
“Fourteen months ago, I had a seizure.” My mind flashed back to that time.
The confusion. The fear. The utter panic.
“At the time, I didn’t even know what was happening.
I was on a shoot, the first one I’d managed to secure in months.
Barely got ten shots off before everything went black.
Next thing I knew, I was in the back of an ambulance being carted off to hospital. ”
Rami’s head lowered to meet my gaze. “Epilepsy?”
My throat bobbed. “A brain tumour.”
He went very still.
“Everything happened very quickly after that.” My shoulders tensed as memories continued to assault me. “When they finally had a diagnosis…well, it was as bad as it gets. Stage four cancer in multiple organs. They gave me eighteen months.”
Rami didn’t speak, but his eyes were burning as he watched me talk.
“We flew home almost immediately.” I skimmed my fingers over the surface of the water in the hope of distracting myself. “Dave quit his job. We gave up the lease and came to London.”
“You needed the NHS,” Rami murmured in understanding. “And London has the best cancer hospitals in the country. You decided to fight it.”
“Yes,” I said simply. “Do you think that was wrong?”
“Fuck no. Whatever you choose to do in that situation is the right decision. You have to be brave to have treatment or to choose not to. If anyone judges you for whatever you opt for, they aren’t worth having in your life.”
“You’re right,” I said in surprise. “I never looked at it like that, but I will in future.”
“In future? Sorry, I’m a little confused. You don’t…you don’t seem sick now. Are you?”
“That’s the strangest fucking thing,” I confessed. “A few weeks ago, I had chemo. Afterwards, I was expecting all the usual side effects, but there was nothing.”
“Is that not a good thing?”
“It’s a weird thing. It threw me. I convinced myself that it meant I was having a final rally or something. That the treatment had stopped working entirely and death was waiting just around the corner.”
Rami rubbed a hand over his jaw. “I’m guessing that wasn’t the case?”
“No.” I let out a slightly hysterical chuckle.
“I went into hospital for my usual tests before my next round of chemo and they called me back in for more. When they made an urgent appointment with my consultant, I thought that was it, that they were going to recommend hospice care because there was nothing more to be done. But you’ll never guess what happened instead… ”