Impossible Things (Star Shadow #2)

by Bolden, Beth

“Yeah,” Diego said, and that was definitely Benji’s dick twitching under his hand.

  “It’d be a good way to go. The best way, probably.” Benji licked his lips. “But probably not the best venue.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure that any moment now the driver’s gonna roll the partition up,” Diego joked, even the though the partition had been up since they’d climbed into the car—and Diego had climbed onto Benji’s lap.

  Benji threw his head back and laughed, and Diego might have been dislodged from his new favorite perch, but he hung on to those broad-as-fuck shoulders and couldn’t help but enjoy the friction.

  “Are we still on for tomorrow night?” Benji asked seriously. “Because that might be a little better venue.”

  “My house. Eight PM. I’ll cook.”

  “You’re going to cook?” Benji questioned.

  Diego leaned down, tucking his head into the curve of Benji’s neck. He smelled so good, like herbs and freshly chopped wood. A strange combination he never would have dreamt he’d enjoy, but on Benji, the smell was irresistible.

  “I can cook, you know,” Diego murmured into his skin.

  “I’ve just never been lucky enough to have you do it for me.” Benji stroked his back, all the way up and back down, with one of those big, strong, capable hands.

  “Maybe you’ll even get luckier, tomorrow,” Diego said, barely resisting the urge to grind down again, reminding them both exactly what he was referring to.

  “I thought you wanted to take things slow.”

  “I do,” Diego said, even though he was rapidly discovering that going slow was an extremely overrated concept—he wanted Benji so much, despite the fear. “Slow doesn’t mean glacial.”

  The car rolled to a stop and Diego dismounted as gracefully as he could from Benji’s lap. He caught the flash of disappointment in Benji’s eyes, and couldn’t help but be reminded again that he’d always believed that, if things ever progressed past heated looks, he’d have to coax Benji past all his reservations.

  But it turned out that Benji was totally fine getting down with a guy. Even had experience.

  What was he going to say when he found out that it was Diego who was silently, sort of, freaking out? Not just because this was finally happening, but because he didn’t know what the fuck he was doing?

  The driver opened the back door. “Mr. Gonzalez’s house, sir,” he said. Benji shot him a swift hot look in lieu of a goodbye kiss—he might trust Cora not to spill their secret, but clearly not the driver—and Diego slid out of the back seat.

  He watched the car depart back down the hill toward the gate, and as soon as it was out of sight, he pulled out his phone.

  Leo answered on the second ring. “I was about to text you, actually,” Leo said instead of anything resembling a normal greeting. Typical Leo.

  “About what?” Diego asked.

  “I wanted to remind you that Benji is one of my oldest friends, and I might have to kick your ass if you were mean to him. Were you?”

  “Was I what?”

  “Mean to him!” Leo said with exasperation. “He went rushing over to your house two days ago, and I’ve barely gotten him to say anything about what happened afterwards.”

  “So, really what you’re saying is that you thought I might be less close-lipped than Benji, which is why you were going to text me in the first place.”

  “Maybe,” Leo said after a long moment of hesitation.

  “No maybe. You were going to text me to get some good band gossip.” Leo and Benji might be the longest friends in Star Shadow, but the ten years he and Leo had been friends wasn’t exactly anything to sniff at either—and Diego knew Leo far better than he was probably comfortable with.

  “I’m just worried about Benji,” Leo whined, and then added belatedly, “And you too, of course.”

  “Of course,” Diego retorted dryly.

  “Seriously, though, you know I . . .”

  Diego had known Leo long enough to identify the long rambling rant he was about to go on—all designed to convince Diego to confess what Leo wanted to know.

  He had every intention of telling Leo everything he wanted to know, no persuasion necessary, so he interrupted him.

  “What are you doing tonight?”

  “Tonight?” Leo sounded surprised. “I don’t know . . . nothing, I guess. Caleb’s at a meeting.”

  “I’m coming over,” Diego said, “and I’ll tell you anything you want.”

  Because Leo was Leo, he was instantly suspicious. “Really? Why?”

  “That’s not important,” Diego said, but it kind of was. He just didn’t want to confess his own big gay freak-out on the phone.

  Truthfully, he didn’t want to confess it at all, but circumstances had made it unavoidable.

  “Fine,” Leo said petulantly. “Bring beer.” And he hung up the phone.

  Diego pulled his Tesla out of the garage and stopped at the corner market on the other side of the gate, buying a six-pack of what he knew was Leo’s favorite brand of beer.

  Twenty minutes later, he showed up at Leo’s door, and shoved the six-pack into his stomach as he stepped around Leo.

  “Wow, nice to see you too,” Leo grumbled as they headed into his kitchen. It was a hell of a lot neater these days, now that Caleb was back, and probably insisted that Leo do his dishes before he ran out of cereal bowls.

  Diego leaned against the counter and eyed Leo steadily as he cracked open a beer and slid it over to him, then opened his own. “You told Benji why I was avoiding him.”

  “Maybe a little. I mean, I didn’t know, because you hadn’t told me, but it was a pretty good guess. I was right, wasn’t I?”

  Diego shrugged. “Maybe a little.”

  Leo made a face. “I would like to remind you that you’re the worst.”

  “I thought that was Benji.”

  “It’s flexible, and right now, since you and Benji are closer, I can easily imagine it would jump from him to you. Easily.”

  Diego frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  “So it’s true? You guys are closer? How close? Like super-duper close?”

  “Cheek to cheek,” Diego said wryly, which wasn’t really all that far from the truth, actually. They had totally been earlier tonight.

  Leo placed a hand over heart and said, very dramatically, “Don’t tease me like that. My heart can’t take it.”

  Except they both knew Leo’s heart was unbelievably resilient. After all he and Caleb had gone through, his heart would have to be incredibly tough.

  “So you are going to tell me what’s going on, right?” Leo asked when Diego didn’t say anything, just kept peeling off little pieces of label from his bottle of beer.

  “You can’t tell Benji any of this,” Diego warned. “Like not a fucking word. And you’d be the only person who knows, so I’d know it was you, if he found out.”

  “Pinky swear,” Leo said.

  It was hard not to roll his eyes. Sometimes Leo really was still sixteen years old, perennially stuck in the moment Caleb had walked into his house for the first time.

  “I’m . . . I’ve never . . . not with a guy. And not with anyone but Vicky.”

  Leo’s jaw dropped. “You’ve only had sex with your ex-wife?”

  “Yeah.” Diego kept picking at the label. “I wanted Benji, and I never wanted to settle for less. And that felt really fucking romantic, until I realized tonight that he’s going to expect me to have some experience—even he has some!—and I’m not going to. And that’s going to be weird and awkward.”

  “I’m sorry,” Leo said. “I’m still stuck on that you’ve only had sex with one person.”

  This was exactly why Diego didn’t share that information with anyone. “Why?”

  “I don’t know, you look like that. Like a cross between one of those really old statues and a supermodel. And I know how many groupies have tried to get you into bed over the years.”

  “Yeah.” Diego knew his voice
was ripe with disgust. “Exactly.”

  “Do you . . . are you even interested in sex?”

  “With Benji, yeah. With some random person, no.”

  “Hey, that’s cool,” Leo insisted. “Don’t take my surprise for judgment. You do you, that’s perfectly fine. But Benji is gonna freak out when he finds out that you’ve been basically waiting for him.”

  “The whole point is he isn’t going to find out,” Diego retorted.

  “Right, right, that’s why you’re here. For . . .” Leo hesitated. “For . . . sex advice?”

  Inwardly, Diego cringed. Sometimes he wished that Leo wasn’t quite so good at figuring out what he was trying not to say. Except this time, it was exactly what he was trying to say. He shrugged, awkwardly.

  “Huh, okay. Sex advice.” Leo paused. “You could always go watch porn, you know. Very educational, some of the films I’ve seen.”

  Diego didn’t want to blush, but he didn’t know how to stop it. It just spread across his cheeks and he felt just how hot they’d flamed. “Believe it or not, porn really isn’t my thing.”

  He could see how much Leo was struggling to control his surprise—no doubt afraid that Diego would interpret it as judgement, instead of just pure, unadulterated shock.

  Yeah, a guy who didn’t watch porn. A guy who didn’t have sex who also didn’t watch porn. He knew he was a rarity, but he also just didn’t enjoy it. He’d tried. But he’d found he always got distracted from his orgasm when he started wondering about the logistics. As soon as you started wondering where the fuck that magically appearing lube had just come from, porn was automatically less sexy.

  “Do you . . . you do . . .” Leo trailed off.

  “Jerk off? Yeah. I do.”

  “But not to porn,” Leo stated.

  Diego gripped the edge of the counter. He did not want to tell Leo what he used in lieu of porn. He tried really hard not to be ashamed of what he enjoyed, but even Leo’s friendship had limits. “Can we get back to the advice part of the conversation, please?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m just . . . I have to know. Do you just . . . fantasize? Mentally?” Leo asked.

  “Yeah, I guess you could call it that.”

  Something unholy gleamed in Leo’s eyes “Oh my God, you fantasize about Benji when you jerk off. That’s what you don’t want to say.”

  “Sometimes you’re a little too perceptive,” Diego grumbled.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t tell him, but wow, that’s sort of crazy romantic and actually kind of sexy,” Leo admitted. “I’m not going to push, but maybe, someday you should tell him. I know him, he’d want to know.”

  Yeah, maybe after they’d had sex a hundred times and it wasn’t awkward or weird anymore, it could be something Diego might share. But right now, tomorrow night? Forget about it.

  “About that advice.” Diego stressed the final word of his sentence.

  “Oh yes. Well, what did you want to know?”

  “I’ve done some online research,” Diego admitted. “Not porn, but like instructional websites. And of course, it’s not like I haven’t thought about it.” He even managed a wry grin, which he was proud of himself for. “Or experimented, personally.”

  Talking about this felt impossible. He’d wondered if Leo could be emotionally sensitive to discuss it kindly, and he’d almost gone to Caleb instead, but he and Caleb were still trying to figure out their new friendship again, after so long being separated, and in the end, Diego had trusted that Leo would have his back.

  “So you know the basics, then.”

  “Basics?”

  “Consent and lube,” Leo said impatiently. “Those are imperative. Anything else, well, anything else goes. Like you said, it’s not like you haven’t thought about it. Maybe a little more than Benji, though I’d wager he’s got a dirty imagination buried under all that Boy Scout preparedness.”

  Diego had sort of been hoping so.

  “But what should I do?” Diego asked. “I don’t know . . . how does it usually go?”

  Leo shot him a very frank look across the counter. “I guess you wouldn’t know, because you’ve only slept with Vicky, but here’s the thing—the big truth about sex. It’s different, sometimes completely and utterly different, partner to partner. Sometimes every encounter feels different. And that’s okay, it’s whatever you two feel like doing, and how you do it is always completely up to you. There isn’t any right and wrong. As long as you’re honest and communicate, there’s no reason to be apprehensive.”

  Diego was sure he still looked skeptical, because Leo just laughed, and continued. “Trust me, you’re not going to do anything that Benji won’t love. He adores you, you know. Practically worships the ground you walk on. You could probably take your clothes off, and he’d be okay just looking at you for hours.”

  That sounded suspiciously like what Benji had said earlier today, about Diego being a work of art. Truthfully, he didn’t really want to know what Benji and Leo talked about, when the subject turned to him.

  “Okay,” Diego said. He didn’t feel one hundred percent better, but he did feel a bit better.

  “I mean, I’m assuming you didn’t want me to teach you to deep throat using a banana, right? I didn’t really get the impression you were after the more practical side of advice.”

  Diego laughed. “No, no, thank you. I’m good. I think I could go my entire life without watching you do that.”

  “I mean,” Leo said, reaching for the banana in question and miming giving it a blowjob, “it could be fun, and also instructive.”

  Diego shot him a hard look. “Or not.”

  But Leo just shrugged and started to peel the fruit. “Your loss.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Diego looked up and Caleb was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, a perplexed expression on his face. He must’ve caught the last thirty seconds of their conversation.

  “Oh, I was just helping Diego out,” Leo said airily, reaching up and throwing his arms around his boyfriend’s neck.

  Could you, Diego thought, still use the term boyfriend, when they seemed like so much more? They weren’t engaged, at least not yet, but he’d never met a couple more in tune with each other. Even when shit had been going to hell five years ago, they’d been the partnership example he’d always wanted for himself.

  Truthfully, the partnership example he’d always wanted for him and Benji.

  “You were helping him out by . . . giving a banana a blowjob?” Caleb questioned, after kissing Leo thoroughly.

  Caleb looked over at Diego, who just shrugged. Honestly, Leo had done way weirder things with far less of an excuse, so Caleb probably wouldn’t read anything into it.

  He wouldn’t ever assume that Leo was teasing Diego by offering blowjob lessons.

  “So does this mean you and Benji . . .” Caleb asked in his slow, deliberate drawl.

  Sometimes Diego wouldn’t be surprised if he found out that Caleb and Leo shared the same goddamned brain.

  “We’re figuring it out,” Diego said.

  It wasn’t like he wanted to keep it a secret from their friends—but things were at such a critical stage. One wrong move and the good stuff wouldn’t ever happen, after all. And Diego, who had waited so long for Benji to figure out what he wanted, wasn’t sure he could handle the disappointment.

  It wasn’t quite so clear-cut that it was Benji for him or no one, but it felt that extreme sometimes.

  “I’m really happy for you guys,” Caleb said, sounding incredibly sincere. He reached out and squeezed Diego’s shoulder. “You deserve to find happiness.”

  “What have you guys been up to?” Diego asked, even though he was pretty sure he already knew the answer.

  Fucking like rabbits, now that the pesky tour wasn’t getting in the way.

  “Uh,” Caleb said, and Leo giggled next to him.

  “We’ve gone jogging a few mornings,” Leo said, nudging his boyfriend with his hip. “You really enjoyed trying
to outrun the paparazzi.”

  Caleb’s glance down at his boyfriend was unbearably fond, and not for the first time, Diego almost felt like he was intruding on this imperfectly perfect bubble of love that they’d created. “It wasn’t very hard, I was more than a little worried a few of them might actually pass out.”

  “Yeah,” Leo said, rolling his eyes. “My altruistic boyfriend. Went out and distributed bottles of water to the pack that’s bloodthirsty enough to try to follow us. Way to discourage them.”

  Caleb smiled. “I think the pace was probably enough to do that.”

  “Benji went with me one morning,” Leo said slyly.

  Diego had a feeling that was the day he’d come over to his house, dressed in running clothes, and had demanded to know why Diego was avoiding him.

  The day everything between them had finally, irrevocably changed.

  “Yeah,” Diego said. “I think that was the day you decided to interfere in our relationship.”

  “You should be thanking me,” Leo said with a scoff, but they were both smiling at each other.

  “I gave you the dirt, you should feel plenty appreciated,” Diego pointed out.

  Caleb shot a pouting glance in Leo’s direction. “You know what’s going on?”

  It wasn’t like Diego had expected Leo to keep all his secrets from Caleb. After all, they practically shared a brain, and not sharing might be difficult.

  “They’re working on it,” Leo said sternly.

  “Well, let us know when you’ve worked through it,” Caleb said with a glimmer of a grin dawning over his handsome features. He shoved his hair back, the coppery threads of it gleaming under the lights. “We’ll want to congratulate you.”

  “Yeah, I can do that,” Diego said, and couldn’t help the grin that overtook his face. It wasn’t an if any longer, it was a when.

  ———

  The next day, he ordered groceries, cleaned his already-clean house, and then, because he was tense and more than a little nervous, sat down at the piano.

  When they were touring, the thing he usually missed most about being home was playing on a really nice instrument. The keyboards he had for concerts were top of the line, but they weren’t the same as a grand piano with the feel of ivory keys under his fingertips and the magnificent resonance that echoed through his great room with its soaring two-story ceiling.