String Theory

by Ashlyn Kane

  “Ari?” Kayla waved her hand in front of his face. “I didn’t break you, did I? You’re not regretting your life choices? Wondering how long before you can make a break for it? Because Jax won’t have a chance to kill you. I’ll do it first.”

  “No,” he said quickly, shaking himself. “Forgive me. It just… it seems like you know him well.”

  She leaned her elbows on the bar, affording him an ample view of her cleavage, should he wish it. He kept his eyes on her face. “I mean, I know him about as well as he’ll let anyone, except maybe Hobbes.”

  So Ari had been right to believe Jax was holding pieces of himself back. “Maybe you can tell me, then….”

  She dimpled at him and finished her beer. “Maybe. If it’s not too personal.”

  Ari lowered his voice. “Why does he play so many songs by female artists?”

  The dimple became a full grin. “Jax was a gender studies major in another life.”

  Before Ari could decide if she was serious, Jax slung himself around Ari’s shoulder and onto the barstool next to him. “Is Kayla telling lies about me?”

  Ari looked from Jax to Kayla and honestly couldn’t tell. “I have no idea.”

  “I’m a mystery wrapped in an enigma,” he agreed with an irreverent smile as Kayla passed him a beer.

  “You’re needed on the stage,” Murph corrected. “What’s-his-name’s request, remember?”

  “How could I forget? Guy leaves a hundred-dollar tip per musician? You better believe we’re gonna get that right.” He took a long swig of his beer, then wiped the condensation on his jeans. “I hope this guy knows what he’s doing or he’s gonna kill the mood for at least two songs.” He shook his head and loped toward the stage.

  Ari blinked, looking from Murph to Kayla and back.

  Kayla patted his arm. “I told you. The marrying kind.” Then she followed Jax up to the stage.

  Jax slid onto the piano bench opposite Naomi as Kayla twirled her drumsticks. “This next song is by extra special request from a regular. We don’t normally do this, but I actually heard him sing and can personally vouch that your eardrums are safe.”

  The crowd parted to allow a slender fortysomething with salt-and-pepper hair and a leather jacket and sunglasses over a Depeche Mode T-shirt to ascend the stage, where he grabbed a mic stand and set up between Naomi and Jax.

  Suddenly Ari understood what was going on—and Jax’s cryptic comment from earlier. It hadn’t happened often while he worked at the Rock, but it was always memorable. Sometimes for the wrong reasons.

  “It’s fine,” Murph said. “I make them fill out a questionnaire now.”

  Ari eyed him wryly. “Is there also a waiver?”

  But he didn’t have time to hear Murph’s answer, because Naomi started an upbeat synth piano that Ari immediately recognized as “Just Can’t Get Enough.”

  Well, that explained the T-shirt.

  It seemed that tonight, the only thing the Rock liked more than paid musicians going all out to entertain them was a member of the audience spending money to do the same. Depeche Mode Guy had a better singing voice than Jax and the energy to carry off a song that had a lot of repetition without seeming self-conscious, but for Ari, it simply wasn’t as enjoyable as watching Jax.

  Still, Ari applauded along with everyone else when he stepped off the stage near the end of it and knelt in front of a pretty, plump woman with crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes and she said yes.

  Naomi retrieved the mic before anything could happen to it, and then she and Jax caught eyes as she picked up her violin from its stand. At the same time, Murph, Bruce, and Rosa began to disperse from the bar, carrying loaded trays.

  “Thanks for your indulgence, folks,” Jax said. “The happy couple have asked me to invite you to celebrate with them. Servers will be coming around with shots of mastic. Let’s all raise a glass”—Jax seemed to have one too, and Ari suddenly realized so did he—“to putting a little love in your heart.”

  As one, the bar raised their shot glasses and tossed back the alcohol, which smelled and tasted strongly of pine.

  On the stage, Jax made a face at the taste of the liquor, then made a show of shaking himself and cracked his knuckles. “And now if the soon-to-be newlyweds would like to indulge us… a song for you.”

  He tipped his head at Rosa, who strummed a light, simple rhythm on the electric guitar. Jax and Kayla joined in a moment later, and Jax and Naomi took turns inviting the audience to “Kiss Me.”

  Ari desperately wanted to take Jax up on it.

  The newly engaged couple swayed together on the floor, faces pressed close together, holding hands by their chins as though they couldn’t bear to part. It was an emotional scene, but Ari could hardly tear his eyes away from Jax, who seemed to have gone soft around the edges. It looked as though he was glowing in the spotlight.

  Maybe it was just the mastic.

  As the evening wore on, Jax returned to the bar and Ari every chance he got, and Ari became certain of one thing. He wanted everything with Jax that he’d been denying himself, and he wanted it now.

  JAX BOUNCED off the stage at eleven and practically fell into Ari’s lap. “My shift is over,” he murmured into Ari’s ear.

  Ari squeezed his arm and said, “Collect your things and come back to mine?”

  “Yes,” Jax breathed. “I have my bike. Meet you at yours?” He shimmied out of Ari’s embrace—was Ari handsier tonight?—and hurried to the back room, grateful that he’d thought to throw extra underwear and pills into his bag, just in case.

  Ari was waiting by his car when Jax pulled up and parked his bike behind the bumper, out of the way. He held out his hand, and Jax took it and followed Ari upstairs.

  Inside, Jax put down his bag, turned to Ari, and caught him in an exploratory kiss, so unlike any kiss from Ari before. Jax twined his arms around Ari’s neck and opened his mouth, eager to see where Ari would lead him.

  It turned out Ari wanted to lead him in a very slow shuffle across the apartment, to touch Jax everywhere, over his clothes, and then carefully remove each item.

  By the time they were both naked, Jax was panting and desperate. He looped his legs around Ari’s waist and pulled him down into a kiss. “Oh my God, please say you’re gonna fuck me again.”

  Ari didn’t answer aloud, but his actions proved more than reply enough.

  “Oh my God,” Jax moaned several minutes later, his head lolling on the pillow, when Ari finally pushed inside.

  Hovering between his legs, Ari tangled their fingers together and leaned in for a long, slow kiss. Jax pushed into it and tried to buck his hips up into Ari’s cock, but Ari used his weight to pin him.

  Gasping, Jax pulled out of the kiss and ran his lips along Ari’s cheek. “Please.”

  Ari would not be swayed. He kept his movements slow and steady.

  “Oh my God,” Jax gasped again on another excruciating thrust.

  Ari pressed their foreheads together, their eyes locked, and fucked him until Jax couldn’t remember any words, until he was shaking and coming so hard he thought he might never recover.

  After, they lay together in a tangled heap as they touched and kissed, neither of them ready to break contact. Ari rolled them to their sides and kissed Jax long and slow again. He pulled back and pressed their foreheads together.

  “I,” Jax said, “have no idea what got into you tonight, but feel free to get into me like that again anytime.”

  Ari snorted. “Noted.” His eyes were fond, though, and he cupped Jax’s face and swept a thumb along the cheekbone. “And nothing in particular got into me this evening. But I’ve been wanting to do that.”

  A slow grin stretched Jax’s face. “Yeah? Well. Anytime.” He wiggled closer, wanting more contact, and with a little nudge, he got Ari onto his back and rested his head on his shoulder. “Seriously. That was awesome.”

  “Good to know,” Ari whispered as he tangled his hands in Jax’s hair.

  They
couldn’t stay there forever, though. Cleanup was needed. Jax pulled Ari into the shower, and they soaped each other under the steam.

  “Can I ask,” Ari said as he washed Jax’s back, “what this means?” He trailed his fingers over the tattoo on Jax’s ass.

  “Oh, it’s the Greek letter phi. In math it’s a stand-in for a universal constant.” He shot a look over his shoulder. “Like pi.”

  “And what constant does phi represent?”

  Jax turned so they were face-to-face. He soaped up Ari’s chest, playing some with the hair, and turned into lecture mode. “Well, numerically speaking, it’s one point six one eight et cetera. You might’ve heard it called the golden ratio?”

  “That sounds familiar.”

  Jax nodded eagerly. “It’s just so…. Okay, so say you have a line, A, and you break that line into two separate lines, B and C, so that line B multiplied by phi is equal to line A—you with me?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Well, the remaining bit of the line, line C? If you multiply C by phi, then you will get the length of line B.”

  “Oh. How unusual.”

  “And you can keep doing it! And it appears everywhere in nature too, the ratio of the spirals in a snail shell and so on.” Jax beamed, pleased that Ari seemed to be following his mini lecture. “And when I say it’s everywhere, I mean it’s everywhere. It’s in music. Like, you can write music using it, sure, but it’s also just in there, you know? Like some pop songs, when you find that high point, that crescendo, and multiply the time marker by phi, you get the song’s total run time!”

  Ari listened with his head cocked to the side and a small smile on his face.

  “Am I rambling too much?” Jax asked. “I know not everyone finds math this fascinating.”

  “No,” Ari said, wiping at Jax’s forehead. A line of shampoo suds that had been headed for Jax’s eyes fell to the shower floor, and Ari nudged him into the spray to rinse it off. “I like listening to you.”

  Jax closed his eyes and let the water wash away the rest of the bubbles, grateful for the excuse to close his eyes. He didn’t know what had changed with Ari, what he’d seen in Jax in the past few hours that he hadn’t seen before, but something was different. The way he was treating Jax was different. Not that he’d treated Jax poorly before, but there was something to this newfound tenderness. It was dangerous and seductive.

  A man could fall in love.

  “You’d be the first,” Jax quipped after a too-long pause.

  “I doubt it.” With a gentle hand on his waist, Ari pulled him out of the spray again. “Considering how busy the bar is every time you lure me there.”

  He didn’t sound displeased about being tempted, and when Jax met his eyes, they held no trace of teasing.

  “That’s different. That’s people paying me to sing what they want to hear.” Jax knew he was a lot to handle. His interests bounced from one extreme to the other, many of them only for a few days, and Ari wouldn’t have been the first to find that annoying.

  “I can hardly blame them for that either.”

  Ari was too much for Jax’s ego. He wanted to believe his sincerity, but it was a lot all at once, so he pressed a kiss to his chin. “Bed?” he suggested. “I’m beat.”

  It was true, after all.

  “Bed,” Ari agreed.

  They lay down in a tangle of limbs and blankets and pillows. It should have been uncomfortable, Jax thought, except he was exhausted and couldn’t do much except close his eyes. Ari turned his head just enough that his cheek brushed Jax’s crown, and that was all Jax knew.

  Chapter Eleven

  A WEEK passed in the blink of an eye, and the next followed suit and brought November with it. Ari regretted not seeing Jax as often as he might, but with Jax’s work schedule and Ari well past his original deadline, they often didn’t have time for more than a phone call or some text messages.

  When he felt especially pathetic, he put away his music and went to the bar, where Jax’s wide smiles and unabashed love of good fun and pop music drew him out of his funk even before Jax was able to take a break to spend with him.

  Sunday through Wednesday soon became his favorite nights of the week, since the bar closed early and he could claim Jax to himself for a few hours.

  Unfortunately, by the time his weekly family dinner rolled around on Saturday, Ari had already decided he’d much rather spend his evening with Jax.

  There was a logical response to that, of course. If he told his parents he was dating someone, surely they would want to meet him as well. Jax would be invited to dinner, or more likely lunch, since his working hours would prohibit him staying much past an evening meal. But Ari didn’t know if he was ready to share Jax.

  Besides, his parents were… his parents. And Jax was Jax. He had no doubt that his mother had only suggested he try online dating so she’d have a natural opportunity to put forward her own candidate when it failed. He’d have to be careful about how he introduced them.

  It was with this in mind that Ari parked in his parents’ driveway—behind an unfamiliar Audi—and let himself inside.

  “Ari, is that you?” his mother called when he closed the door behind him.

  Ari hated yelling through the house, so he took off his shoes and followed her voice. “Maman?”

  “In the courtyard!”

  The leaves still on the trees were brilliant red and orange, but today the weather was fair. His parents sat outside at their patio set, under the wide cantilevered umbrella, with a spread of lavash, feta cheese with grapes, watermelon, and fresh herbs laid out on the table. A large pitcher of water with lemon and cucumber sat next to it.

  But it wasn’t only the unusual appearance of appetizers that brought Ari up short as he stepped onto the patio.

  His parents weren’t alone.

  “There you are!” his mother said warmly as she gestured him forward as though she hadn’t planned an ambush. “Come and meet everyone.”

  By everyone, Ari assumed she meant the middle-aged couple casually holding hands on the table and the younger man who, from his features and age, was obviously their son.

  He should have seen it coming.

  With no way to back out without being inexcusably rude, Ari forced himself forward and greeted the guests. “Salam,” he said belatedly, offering his hand first to the older man. “As you must have guessed, I’m Ari.”

  “It is good to meet you, Ari. I’m Armin, and this is my wife, Jaleh.”

  Ari shook her hand as well and inquired after their health.

  Then, of course, there was nothing to do but face the elephant in the room.

  “And this is our son, Sohrab.”

  Sohrab looked slightly abashed to be meeting Ari this way, but they shook hands and went through the social prerequisites without either of them actually dying of mortification.

  “Armin worked with me at the hospital,” Ari’s father said before Ari had even sat down. Oh good, they were already at the “look, an eligible gay man from a good family” portion of the evening.

  Ari smiled politely and offered everyone refills of their water glasses. Then he poured his own. “Oh?”

  “My husband is a cardiologist,” Jaleh said proudly. “Sohrab is finishing his residency in oncology.”

  Trust his parents to attempt to set him up with a doctor. What did they think was going to happen when Ari went on tour? A doctor couldn’t very well follow him, and he was gone for months at a time.

  Not that it mattered in this case, since Ari was not interested in dating anyone who wasn’t Jax, no matter how accomplished or—he could admit it—attractive. “Very impressive,” Ari said evenly, meeting Sohrab’s gaze. “You must be very dedicated.”

  Sohrab smiled. “I’ve always wanted to follow in my father’s footsteps.”

  Ari froze with the most pleasant expression he could muster, wondering if Sohrab’s insult was intentional. Neither Ari nor Afra had elected to follow medicine, despite not-occas
ional prodding when they were growing up. Eventually their parents had accepted that they would pursue their own interests, and they were supportive. But Ari knew they were still disappointed—and that some would see it as shame.

  Awkward.

  “Well,” said Ari’s mother, “I am sure your parents are very proud of you, just as we are proud of our children.” She shot a look in Ari’s direction.

  He wished he didn’t doubt her sincerity—that the glow of pride under her look wasn’t tainted under the suspicion that her praise was aimed at Sohrab, hoping he’d see Ari as worthwhile. Feeling miserable and guilty for being so uncharitable, Ari pushed those thoughts away and sipped his water.

  It didn’t take long for their parents to send them off together. “Ari, we need chai, but that’s so many cups to carry. Sohrab, why don’t you help him?”

  They stood awkwardly in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil.

  “So,” Sohrab broke the silence, “shall we address the elephant?”

  Ari blew out a breath. “I suppose we must.”

  “I’m not against a dinner date,” he said with an encouraging smile.

  Embarrassed, Ari flushed and rubbed at the back of his neck. “Actually—I mean not that you’re not, but I….” Why was this so hard?

  “Ah, there is someone else. And since I’m here, your parents either don’t know or don’t approve.”

  “Shit. Sorry.” He cast a glance at the windows and saw all four parents still seated outside. “I haven’t told them yet. It’s new, and as you may have guessed, they’ll have opinions.”

  “Really? I wouldn’t know what that’s like.” Sohrab’s lips twitched.

  Casting his unexpected ally a dry look, Ari pushed away from the counter and began collecting everything he needed to serve chai. “Quite. It’s new enough I’m not sure he’d be able to deal with… overbearing, meddling Persian parents.”

  “Ah,” Sohrab said all too knowingly.

  Ari wondered if he’d faced a similar struggle when dating men who were culturally Canadian.