Ex-Daredevil

by Zoe Lee

  But he surprised me, like he always did, and I was almost embarrassed that he could still do it. He took his time joining in, beyond answering direct questions, as if he had to assess the people around him and figure out if he wanted to engage, then how to engage.

  With a look at me, one hand casually on my ankle where I sat cross-legged next to him, he chose to engage, using the sharp, sarcastic wit and sophisticated dry tone I loved. He knew how to give and take shit, knew when to laugh and let things slide, and he paid attention to what everyone said, asking easy questions that let us tell our stories to him.

  He didn’t even pin me with a cool, disappointed look when Barley was retelling one of his favorite stories about me, which happened to involve BASE jumping in Norway.

  By the time one of the other PAs suggested going out to the pool, I was drowsy with satisfaction and happiness, but I got up with everyone and headed out. It was like an arctic tundra going barefoot across the snow-dusted path from the sunroom to the heated tiles bordering the pool, all of us swearing. We knew better than to run when we could slip, but we all sat down and plunged our freezing feet into the hot pool right away.

  I grinned as Eliott got there last, having walked calmly like he didn’t feel the weather.

  “Want to?” Eliott asked me, his eyes bright with how well it was going.

  “Give me a minute with him, then I’ll toss him in,” Barley said.

  “Sure,” Eliott chuckled, “take your time.”

  He circled the pool to the deep end, where he took off his thermal gracefully, his body curved, highlighting the muscles of his ass and the delicate width of his shoulders.

  “God damn, son,” Barley rumbled.

  I tore my eyes off Eliott and found Barley looking at him appreciatively. Gasping, I shoved my hands over Barley’s face, trying to block his line of sight. “Stop it!”

  “No, the boy’s hot as hell, Gav,” one of the other guys agreed.

  Eliott was on the diving board now, his smooth, olive-toned torso gleaming, lean muscles taut as he stretched his arms over his head and jumped off the diving board.

  “Who knew he was so hot under that unfitted thermal?” marveled one of the other PAs as Eliott broke the surface, tossing his hair, the movement so quintessentially masculine to me. “And he can carry an intelligent conversation too! Lock it down, Gavin.”

  “Mind your own business,” I said, getting to my feet, “and stop eyeing my man.”

  I stomped off, while those assholes catcalled Eliott, and jumped into the pool.

  Chapter 30

  Eliott

  The next two months glided past like a dream. Nothing substantial or noticeable had changed in my life for years and years, and now so many things had, all because of Gavin.

  I had a boyfriend, and we challenged each other, switching off trying to outdo each other, with nights and weekend mornings exploring our desire and kinks. Everyone I worked with knew, other than the senior partners who didn’t mingle or know much about us until we were up for partner. It was strange to find it had unlocked a level of friendship with my coworkers I’d never experienced before, and I owed it to Gavin. They couldn’t get enough of him because he danced in with treats and flirted, tossed around concert tickets and backstage passes, and had Barley sing their praises to Mr. Zajac.

  My evenings were busy more often than they were empty. At least half the times I caught up with Camdon, Gavin came too. His larger-than-life, hilarious stories of life as a rock star’s personal assistant were always a wonderful foil to the heavier day to day of our work lives. But he never tried to overshadow what we shared, just let us slip into his bright, happy world for a few hours. Quincy read every book he suggested, and the night Gavin, Camdon, Quincy, and I played pool together was the best date I’d ever had.

  Christmas Eve, we met up at a wine bar, our time limited because we were each spending all day tomorrow with our respective families. It may have seemed strange that we’d been together since July but we weren't going to holiday things together. But we’d talked it over and we were so happy in our bubble that we didn’t want to toss in families yet. Holidays weren’t always easy and Gavin said his family was overwhelming, while one of my sisters was having a tough time and I didn’t want our happiness to get her back up.

  All night, Gavin was in an exceptionally silly mood, using the tip of his ponytail to give me a fake mustache, stealing bites of my garlic bread while it was between my fingers, taking a dozen photos of us where I was no doubt stoic and he contorted his face into wild expressions. High energy was not an unusual state for him, and the only reason it wasn’t completely charming was that he couldn’t come home with me and bring it to bed.

  Just when I was about to try to entice him to forget dinner, he clasped my hand.

  “Time for presents,” he declared. “I want mine first, please!”

  I stole a kiss before I handed him his gift bag. He tore into it happily, then pulled out the present and examined the box, a little sweet smile unfurling before he looked over at me. “This is really cool. I’ve never made jewelry before and I love leather. And beads.”

  Groaning at the innuendo, I warned him, “If you won’t come back to mine tonight, then don’t tease me like that. Or at least hold off until Sunday when we have all day.”

  “Couldn’t help it,” he said without a hint of remorse, then twisted to dig around in his messenger bag for my present. He came up with a thin, flat rectangle in adorable wrapping paper with Christmas trees and wreaths playing musical instruments.

  His fingers toyed with the green bow as his expression got a little serious. “Eliott. Before you open this. I was thinking about this while Barley and I were looking at wardrobe options for a photo shoot. I won’t force it and make it my third Daring Date,” he pushed despite his words to the contrary. “But I think you should wear paisley or a bracelet. Buy a red throw pillow or a new set of dishes with sparkles on it. I don’t know. Just… check in.”

  It was such a sharp change from the silliness that it took me a second to catch up to him, feeling blindsided and a little manipulated. “Have you been extra-fun tonight just so that you could try to slip that in there at the end and hope I was too happy to get mad?”

  He scowled, cheeks flushed with the heat of the cozy bar, and insisted, “If your mom says you should kiss a woman once every five years, then I bet she’d say it’s just as important to check if you’re still loving your fashion and your job! I just wanted to say.”

  “Well I already told you, I will or I won’t, but it’s my business,” I snapped.

  His eyes flickered before he shook his head. “You’re right, what you wear and how you decorate your condo is your business. Even if it’s too monochrome, I don’t get any say over it. But your happiness is my business, too. You promised me you’d think about it, but you’ve never brought it up since that talk and I thought seeing it from another angle might—”

  With a sigh, I held my hands up. “Just give me the present already.”

  As I unwrapped it, I felt his gaze on me, gauging me, and when I saw the gorgeous green tie, I couldn’t help but make a pleased sound, stroking over it with one finger.

  “It’s the same color as your eyes and it’s solid,” he explained quietly, “so it’s perfectly appropriate to wear at work, if you wanted to. And you can tie my wrists up with it.”

  An unwilling laugh slipped out and I shook my head. “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  When an upbeat little smile quirked his mouth, I grabbed his face and shook it.

  The smile widened, then he kissed me until my fingers tingled. Of course, he had to get the last word in, so he quipped, “It can be your New Year’s resolution!”

  When I got home an hour later, I got ready for bed, then stretched out under my blankets and started thinking about things I’d buried over ten years ago.

  It had been a few years since my last boyfriend, a nice accountant who wore suspenders and took me out for I
ndian food. We spent most of our time sitting on each other’s couches, working and reading the news. We didn’t argue about politics or debate the last good book we’d read, and neither of us had tried to change the other. It had looked like all of my relationships since Peter, a steady pairing of two like-minded people who lived quiet, small lives. It had been healthy and supportive, and I had been content.

  At the time, it had been just what I’d wanted—what I’d thought I wanted.

  But these months with Gavin had opened my eyes to the insidious laziness and fear underlying my reasons for choosing that type of man, that type of partnership. It explained why those relationships had slowly drained until one or the other of us had broken things off. There hadn’t been fights, and there hadn’t been attempts to shift gears to friendship, because there hadn’t been enough there, nothing substantial or meaningful between us.

  With Gavin, I wanted him, plain and simple. I wanted his challenges and the subtle discomforts it brought to me. I wanted the pleasure our minds brought each other that we expressed through our bodies, the exploration and the power ebbs and flows, and the playfulness I hadn’t experienced during physical intimacy before. I craved his affection for my boringness—and I also craved how he invited me to take jaunts to the wild side. It was a contradiction that was fascinating and satisfying, because that push and pull had endless permutations, and all of the ones we’d gone through so far had been so damn exciting.

  But his concern over the things I’d put aside after Peter was different than all of that. His opinion was the opposite of Peter’s; he had been encouraging me to embrace my flamboyance again if that was who I truly was. If it were malicious or contemptuous, then I would have broken up with him immediately. And yet, it felt like a critique, like he meant that I was wronging myself because I was in denial over the kind of man I wanted to be.

  Did it only feel that way because I was so defensive? Was I so defensive because I wondered if he was right? If he was right, then what should I do about it?

  I believed that people evolved over the course of their lives, influenced by what happened to them, what happened to their friends and families and the world, and by finding new things. I had always accepted my parent’s philosophy that nothing was immutable or fated, although I had also always thought of myself as more fixed and more boring than that. Was I just discovering, or just starting to see because of Gavin’s influence, that I might me more mutable than I’d previously believed?

  I rolled onto my stomach, burying my head between my pillows and whining.

  Giving up, I resolved to talk to my friends about what was going on in my head during our next monthly meetup, and then I forced my thoughts to stop racing, for tonight at least.

  I’d forgotten that this month’s meetup was actually New Year’s Eve, but I wasn’t going to let my resolution waiver. Gavin had always spent the holiday with his cousins, who told him they’d cut off his hair if he canceled entirely. So he was hanging out with them and then coming over to Local Beats at eleven-thirty. That meant I’d still have plenty of time to talk to my friends and ask advice before we got too deep into cutting loose and celebrating.

  Energized, I went into Local Beats, the nightclub where we always met and always rang in the New Year, and headed for the coat check. Everyone else got there right after, and Sam went to get our first round while Asher, Camdon and I headed up to the rooftop bar. The others—Lucas, Camdon’s family, Sam’s best friend, and a lot of the other regulars at Camdon’s parties—went right for the dance floor, giving us some time alone together.

  We always started on the rooftop, where there were a bunch of braziers to keep us warm, so that we could dish and bitch, as Sam called it. After a couple of hours, Sam and Camdon usually went to dance and Asher and I would find Ray, one of the club’s owners, and talk politics. Lucas would bounce between us, just as happy in both places.

  Tonight, despite it being New Year’s, started out the same. We settled at a table, the fairy lights strung up overhead jerking wildly in the winter wind, and talked about our jobs and teased Asher about wedding planning. Sam ranted about his last five hideous hookups. Camdon was worried that his boss wouldn’t be able to get an arrest warrant issued for a major case he’d been helping build for a long time, not that he could tell us details.

  When there was a natural break as Asher came back with another round, I took a deep breath and said, “I think I need some advice.”

  “Is this about your hottie boyfriend?” Sam asked excitedly. “Yes, tie him up.”

  Camdon palmed his face and dragged it down, making a gagging noise.

  “The sex is spectacular, thank you very much,” I said haughtily.

  But then I sighed, slumping a little. These men were the only ones who had really been in my life when I’d been flamboyant, when I’d been with Peter, and when I’d changed after our breakup. They’d been there with me day to day, and I’d never tried to hide anything.

  “Gavin knows about Peter.” I flicked my eyes over to Camdon, whose face screwed up in apology behind his wine. “He keeps prodding at me to reevaluate the things I… left behind after the breakup. I know he’s encouraging me to be me, but it gets my back up.”

  “Are you pissed because all of that’s in the past?” Sam asked.

  “Or because he might have a valid point?” Camdon muttered.

  “College was a long time ago, Eliott,” Asher said. “Everyone grows up. Some of that sucks, like wearing ties at work and not staying up until two in the morning every night. Some things we swore we’d never do turn out to be pretty fucking awesome. Do you really want to be who you were at twenty again? And is that really what Gavin wants you to be?”

  I fiddled with my watch. “I don’t know.”

  Camdon laughed and claimed, “That’s why you’re so pissy about it. You always know.”

  “Don’t laugh at me,” I snapped. “You did a lot of the same things I did.”

  “I can’t walk into a courtroom with my nipples sticking out because there are barbells through them!” Camdon cried, waving at his chest. “That didn’t change something fundamental about me. It does suck that there’s such a narrow definition of what we have to look like at work to be professional and to be taken seriously. I never understood why black, white, blue, and gray seem to be the only serious colors. It’s easy for Gavin to say you should wear whatever you want when no one gives a shit at his job. In fact, if he dressed like you, then he would have the same problem you’d have if you showed up to work in, I don’t know, a yellow polka dot shirt or something. No one would take him seriously.”

  “He’s not talking about your work clothes, though, is he?” Sam asked. “Or, not just that? He’s talking about your very neutral home decor and how you dress outside of work.”

  “Yeah.”

  Sam clicked his tongue and said, “Look, Eliott, I know Peter fucked you up, and those scars are legitimate. And you know I think your clothes and your house are pretty plain and not artsy or adventurous. But you don’t really believe that you’ve chosen those things because you’re afraid someone will judge you and say you’re… too gay, do you?” He shook his head and gestured impatiently at the four of us and the club around and beneath us, which was a mixed straight and queer crowd. “Nothing about your life is closeted or shameful. If you wanted to wear a yellow poka dot shirt, I think you’d just fucking buy one.”

  “Gavin’s gotten into my head about all of this and now I’m not so sure,” I grit out.

  “I know I said some dumb shit while I was on painkillers,” Camdon mumbled, his apology awkward on his face. “I said I miss your old colorful clothes and piercings and, yeah, that’s true, they were awesome. But what I really meant is—”

  He grimaced, allergic to feelings like always, and we all waited, Asher looking smug as hell like he always did when Camdon had to express himself.

  “Goddamnit, all I meant was when you got to the hospital, you looked like you had been having f
un. And while I do not give a flying fuck if you wear black or rainbows, I do think you were living on the safe side when it came to dating. So many… forgettable guys. And it seems like you’re really, you know, happy with Gavin.”

  Sam held out a cocktail napkin for Camdon. “Are you going to throw up?”

  “Fuck off! I’m going to dance now,” Camdon declared, clapping my shoulder before practically running for the stairs.

  The three of us looked at each other and then I scoffed, “He has the balls to make fun of my past relationships? He’s been dating a guy for years he doesn’t even take on dates!”

  We all laughed, though it wasn’t actually funny that Camdon’s relationship with his boyfriend was weird and closeted and we saw them together maybe twice a year.

  “Feel better?” Asher asked.

  “Camdon might have had a point,” I conceded. “But never tell him I said that.”

  “It is nice to see you so happy,” Sam had to jump in like a sap. “So just tell Gavin you really thought about what he said and you don’t feel like your taste has anything to do with scars from Peter anymore, but that you really appreciate that he’s been worrying about it.”

  “But also, buy some fucking clothes with colors,” Asher added, deadpan. “And get us some shots. You know everyone down on the dance floor is already doing them.”

  Chapter 31

  Gavin

  I was eating Indian food at one of the delicious places on Devon Ave. with my cousins when my cell started buzzing. I ignored the first few, since Barley was a crazy person who sent each sentence as a separate text and was probably just wishing me Happy New Year.

  “We should order tee-shirts,” my cousin John suggested.

  “Anyone know of a good inappropriate pun about rock climbing?” I joked.

  “How can you even think anything’s sexy while your junk is squeezed into a harness?” my cousin Kale laughed at me.