by Emma Lyon
It was a nice gesture. A we’re in this together message, even if it wasn’t real. And it was something boyfriends would do, which was probably all that Zach was thinking about.
I didn’t care that it wasn’t real. It didn’t even feel weird when I put my hand in his and Zach interlaced our fingers together. I was just grateful for the warmth of his hand giving me the courage to look at Bryce up on the dais in his dove gray suit.
Objectively, Bryce was as good-looking as ever. His hair was a little shorter than he used to wear it, but he was otherwise the same. An image flashed of him lying naked in bed with his hair tousled and mouth curved in the sleepy smile he always had first thing in the morning, but it was like watching a movie reel of someone else’s life.
Two years together, laughing and fucking and occasionally arguing, like all couples, until Bryce went home one winter break and came back engaged.
An old flame, he’d told me. Someone he’d reconnected with and realized was the one. I’d known Bryce was bisexual, that he’d dated women before, but I’d realized then that I’d never had a shot; that with Bryce’s political aspirations, his ideal one would never have a cock
It had been a shock. Because while the signs had been there—and they definitely had been, once I’d thought back with more time-distanced eyes—I didn’t see them then, because I hadn’t wanted to.
The fact that Bryce rarely wanted to go out in public as a couple. That I’d never actually been to Bryce’s parents’ house, though our families knew one another and I’d met them before. When they visited, Bryce had called me a “friend.” That even when we started working on my father’s campaign together, Bryce kept some distance between us when others were around. Our relationship had consisted mostly of hanging out and sex, which I’d been perfectly content with at the time, not realizing that it was all I was ever going to get from Bryce.
Viewing him now, fidgeting nervously up on the dais as the quartet shifted into processional music and the bridesmaids started down the aisle, it was like watching a stranger.
Maybe Bryce really loved Hope. I’d met her once, when she’d picked Bryce up after a campaign rally, and she’d seemed nice. Maybe she really was the one for him, and it wasn’t Bryce chickening out of having a long-term, public relationship with a man.
Either way, Bryce had made his choice, and it wasn’t me.
What the fuck am I doing here?
Cassie would be so proud of me for finally asking the question.
I didn’t remember much of the ceremony. When it was over, and everyone had been ushered into the banquet hall, Zane put his hand on my back and leaned in to murmur, “I’ll grab us a couple of drinks.”
I owed Cassie an apology. Hiring Zach was the best idea ever.
Not to mention he presented a very nice view from the back as he made his way up to the bar. Not that I was staring at his ass, though I noticed quite a few others were, male and female.
I tore my gaze away only to come face to face with Bryce.
I’d been hoping to avoid talking with him directly. After he and Hope had greeted everyone in their newly married state, he seemed to be making the rounds.
“Lane, I’m so glad you made it.”
I heard what he didn’t say: No hard feelings, right? Because inviting me had been about Bryce assuaging his guilt. Telling himself that it had all worked out for the best and everyone was happy.
Since I wasn’t in the mood to be vindictive, I said, “Congratulations. It was a nice ceremony.”
Bryce smiled. “Thanks. All Hope’s doing, of course. I was just along for the ride.”
I wondered if Bryce expected me to join in on his conspiratorial chuckle, like some kind of shared guy thing, then I felt a warm presence next to me and a glass of clear liquid was pressed into my hand.
“Sorry it took so long.” Zach put his arm around my waist and eyed Bryce politely.
Noticeably flustered, Bryce drew back and said, “Uh, hi?” He probably hadn’t expected me to actually bring a plus one, and certainly not one as hot as Zach.
“Oh, sorry. I’m Zach.” Zach moved his arm from my waist to shift his drink to his other hand, and held his right hand out to Bryce, who took it after a moment. “Lane’s told me a bit about you.” He somehow made it sound highly unflattering while still being polite.
To his credit, Bryce recovered smoothly. He really would make a good politician. “I’ve known Lane a long time. Funny, he’s never mentioned you.”
Zach winked at him. “It’s new. But pretty spectacular so far.”
Bryce stared at him a beat. His smile had disappeared. “Glad to hear it. Good seeing you, Lane. Give my best to your father.”
As he moved off to the next guest, I lifted my untouched glass to my lips and drained it dry.
“What a prick,” Zach said, not quite sotto voce enough.
I snorted and nearly choked when the alcohol kicked in. It had been straight vodka. I rubbed the back of my neck, where all the tension from the encounter had coalesced in a tight knot. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
Zach eyed me over the rim of his glass. “I’ve been wondering that myself.”
There’d been a certain catharsis, though, in watching Bryce get married. All the hurt I’d been carrying since he’d told me about the engagement felt more distant now, as if it had happened to someone else.
Suddenly, the thought of sitting through dinner and dancing and the rest of it was unbearable, even with the prospect of an open bar.
So, when Zach said, “Do you want to get out of here?” I didn’t have to think twice before answering, “Hell, yes.”
6
Zach
I knew it had been a good idea to get Lane out of that place as soon as we slid into the back of the Uber and Lane sagged against the seat as if a year’s worth of tension had drained out of him.
“Where are we going?” Lane asked, when the driver turned the opposite direction from the city.
I settled back in my seat and pulled my tie loose. “It’s a surprise.”
Lane didn’t question it, though he didn’t seem like the kind who typically liked surprises. I figured he was so drained by the experience of watching his ex get married that he was willing to go along with anything right now.
Sitting through that wedding ceremony, feeling Lane’s tension through our joined hands, I’d resolved to do whatever possible to bring some kind of joy to the evening. Lane deserved a whole hell of a lot more than what he’d gotten for sitting through that wedding.
When the driver turned down a long drive with a few farmhouse-type outbuildings to one side, Lane sat up in his seat. “You’re not taking me down here to kill me, are you?”
“Nope,” I said, when the car stopped at the end of the circle drive at the edge of a field spotted with fire pits glowing in the growing dusk. “The food might, but you’ll die happy.”
I got out of the car and waited for Lane to come around to my side. “What is this place?”
“The best barbeque pit around,” I said, surveying the place with relish. “See if you can find us a couple of chairs by one of the fire pits, and I’ll grab us some food and drink.”
Food consisted purely of the place’s signature pork barbeque sandwiches, and drink was a very small selection of bottled beer. I hoped Lane wasn’t picky.
I did have a moment of uncertainty, after paying for and putting two of the sandwiches on a beat-up, cafeteria-style tray and grabbing two bottles of Rolling Rock by the neck, that this was a bit too low-brow for Lane. But when I’d located him in one of the Adirondack chairs in front of a fire pit, an empty chair next to him and side table in between, Lane sat up at my approach and said, “That smells amazing.”
“It tastes even better,” I said, putting the tray down on the table and handing him one of the beers. Lane didn’t even mention the lack of a glass, just raised the bottle to his lips and took a long gulp from it.
I tore my eyes from the view of h
is throat swallowing and settled in the other chair. Lane had taken off his jacket and draped it over the back of the chair, removed his tie, and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt. He looked relaxed and messy, exactly what I had been going for.
I shrugged out of my own jacket and loosened my tie. The air was thick with wood smoke and barbeque. We were vastly overdressed for the place, and even with the sun down it was hot enough that I wished I were in a t-shirt and shorts instead, especially with the fire going. But the beer was cold, and the pork barbeque, when I bit into the sandwich, was as orgasmic as I’d remembered.
“How’d you know about this place?” Lane asked, before taking a bite from his own sandwich.
“A classmate knows the owner and hooked us up last year,” I said, after I’d chewed and swallowed, and grabbed a napkin from the stack I’d put on the tray to wipe my mouth. “A group of us used to come down when we could. It’s a hell of a drive from the city but worth it.”
Lane seemed to agree, because he fell silent after the first bite. I waited until he’d swallowed before asking, “You said you were a grad student. What are you studying?”
“Political science.” He wrinkled his face self-deprecatingly. “Shocker, right?”
I shrugged. It made sense to me. “Planning to follow in your father’s footsteps?”
“God, no,” Lane said. He grabbed one of the napkins to wipe his fingers. “This is the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten, by the way. But no, I have no interest in being a politician. I’m more into the back end of things. The numbers, the theory.”
“Huh. Sounds….”
He smiled. “Boring? Yeah. Sometimes it is. But there’s a lot that can be done behind the scenes. Politics are so fucked up these days, you know? And not just on the front end.”
I wondered about the expression on my face, because Lane sighed when I didn’t respond. “You think I’m some naïve idealist.”
“I mean, maybe. But that’s not a bad thing. We have to have a few of you around, right? Or else the rest of us will depress the world with our cynicism.”
Lane cocked his head. “You don’t strike me as a cynic.”
I took a sip of my beer, realizing I wanted to know what he did think of me. “What do I strike you as?”
He considered me. “I’d say you’re a pragmatist with subtle notes of optimism.”
“Is that like full-bodied with subtle notes of cherries?”
His eyes raked me up and down. “Nicely bodied, anyway. But I’m guessing no on the cherries.”
Arousal swept through me, warm and languorous and shivering with pleasure. My dick swelled in too-tight pants. I shifted in my chair, hoping the blanket of dusk was enough to hide my hard-on. “You’d be right.”
Lane took another long sip from his beer. When he lowered the bottle and his lips shone wet in the firelight, I realized how very much I wanted Lane Garrett.
You can’t have him. Not tonight, anyway.
Max would have my ass. Not literally, because from I could tell, Max was straight, but he would definitely fire me for it. And I needed this job.
Besides, just because Lane was flirting didn’t mean he was interested. A lot of clients flirted shamelessly precisely because they knew it wasn’t going to lead anywhere. All the fun and none of the emotional risk. It was a lot of what I enjoyed about it myself, which probably didn’t say a lot about me. Lane was likely just letting himself enjoy the evening and the company, without any more meaning than that.
I cleared my throat. “So, you’re an idealist political science grad student who likes to go to ex-boyfriends’ weddings. What else should I know about you?”
“One wedding. But not much, really. I have a younger brother. My parents are still together. I’m a Pisces, but I have no idea what that means.” He took another sip of his beer. “How about you? Any siblings?”
“Two older sisters.” I really needed to check in with them soon before I got another angry voice mail from my oldest sister about my lack of contact. “It’s as awful as it sounds. When they weren’t using me as their dress-up doll, I was the drummer for their short-lived, teenage garage band.”
Lane cocked his head. “Drummer, huh? I bet you made the girls swoon.”
I grinned. “I was eleven, but sure. Though by then I already knew it was the boys I was after. As for the rest of my family, I have way too much of it. When I go home, it’s non-stop visiting hours. Everyone’s invested in everyone else’s life. It’s a big reason why I moved down here after undergrad.”
“Do you miss them?”
I shrugged. “Sure. Though my mom texts me every day whether or not I respond. Then my dad texts me asking why I haven’t replied to my mother. Then I get a voice mail from my sister asking why I’m shutting everyone out when they haven’t heard from me in twenty-four hours. So, they don’t give me much chance to miss them.”
It wasn’t as bad as I was making it out to be—it would freak me out more if they stopped, though a breather sometimes might be nice, too. I looked over expecting Lane’s amusement, but instead saw a hint of envy.
“These days I talk to my dad’s campaign manager more than I do him. My mom checks in with us every few days, but she’s pretty wrapped up in his campaign, too.”
I wondered if it would be prying to ask, then figured Lane had been pretty open about it so far. “What was it like growing up like that? With a dad in Congress, I mean.”
He took his time answering. “All right? Honestly, I didn’t know anything different. And he still made time for us. Maybe not all the soccer games, but at least half of them.” He finished off his beer. “Want another?”
“Sure,” I said, feeling the effects of the alcohol and the heat sink in as I watched him head over to the beer stand with its giant coolers. He was all lean grace, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to expose strong forearms, the back of his pants showing off a spectacularly taut ass.
If it hadn’t been for the fact that Lane was paying me, I would have said this was a damn-near perfect date.
When he came back with two beers and handed one to me, cold and damp from the ice, I pressed it to the inside of my wrist, welcoming its cooling-off effects. Tension buzzed under my skin, and I was very much aware of Lane sitting next to me, long fingers playing with the label on his beer, which had started to peel off from condensation.
“If I forget to tell you later, thank you,” Lane said. He glanced over almost shyly. “This has been…well, not at all how I’d expected today to go.”
I could have said, Just doing my job, or Happy to help, or any dozen meaningless responses that had nothing to do with how I felt sitting with him in the glow of the fire pit, drinking cold beer on a hot summer night.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
7
Lane
Zach was silent on the ride home while I drifted on alcohol and the accumulated effects of the day, wondering if I was imagining the something between us. Zach might be a natural flirt, but I’d caught him checking me out more than once, and I thought there’d been definite interest on his end.
Then again, I thought Bryce and I would be in it for the long haul, and look how that turned out.
The easiness from before had shifted to awkward by the time we got out of the Uber and Zach walked me to my door. I jingled my keys in my pocket, tension ratcheting up to unbearable levels until I blurted out, “Do you want to come in?”
I regretted the words as soon as they came out of my mouth. Zach scrunched up his face. “I can’t. Sorry. But can I give you my number?”
Wordlessly, I fished my phone from my pocket, unlocked it, and handed it over. Zach typed in his contact info and passed it back.
“Good night, then,” I said.
“Good night.” Zach waited until I unlocked my door before turning back down the hall to the stairs.
I went in, closed the door, and leaned back against it.
My stomach was knotted with tension and mortification but mostly
want. Of course Zach had declined to come in. He’d probably thought I was soliciting him. What had I been thinking?
I headed to the kitchen, got a bottle of water from the fridge, and drained half of it in a few gulps. Between the heat and the beer, I was more dehydrated than I’d thought. Leaning against the kitchen counter, I finished the rest of the water more slowly, thinking about the fact that the best night I’d had in a long time had been with someone I’d paid to go out with me.
I looked down at my phone, and before I lost my nerve, shot off a text to the number Zach had put in. Thanks again for tonight. I had a great time.
I chewed my lip, staring down at the words, and nearly jumped when Zach’s reply came through. Anytime :).
Anytime. What did that mean? Was he just being polite? Did he mean it literally?
Taking my phone into the bedroom with me, I began to shed my clothes. Before I could stop myself, I typed in, What are you doing right now?
A few seconds passed, then, Riding home in the back of an Uber. What are YOU doing right now? :)
I’d gotten myself into this; no sense playing coy now. Getting ready for bed.
Another long pause as I watched the three dots bouncing on my screen. Really.
My dick, which had been half-hard most of the ride home, came back to life. Yep.
Tell me when you get there.
Fuck. I pressed the heel of my hand against the bulge in my boxers to calm down, then slid in between the sheets of my bed.
I’d never done anything like this before, but then I’d never gone to an ex-boyfriend’s wedding with a fake date I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about before either, so it seemed to be a night of firsts. Nestled in bed, I pushed a hand under the elastic of my boxers to stroke myself, shivering at the friction. With my other hand, I typed, Here.
Another pause. Are you getting yourself off?
Just seeing the words and imagining the look on Zach’s face as he typed them nearly did me in. I slowed my hand on my dick, not wanting to come yet, and barely managed to type, Yes.