by L. A. Witt
Now that I was here, perusing the faces and butts to see if anyone looked attractively distracting or distractingly attractive, it occurred to me that this might not be the best way to get Michael off my mind. It was one thing to use sex to ignore my financial issues or whatever other drama had parked itself in my reality. It was an entirely different one to use sex I sort of wanted as a diversion from sex I really wanted. It was like killing a craving for expensive wine with that boxed crap they sell at the grocery store. It scratches the itch but mostly makes you think of what you’re not getting.
It worked once, though. Well, kind of. I couldn’t say I’d gotten Michael out of my mind that night, but at least I’d gotten laid. An orgasm was nothing if not a momentary distraction. A very momentary distraction. And at this point, I’d take what I could get.
But I couldn’t even tell the attractive men from the unattractive ones tonight. They all blended together. From the super-highlighted hair to the flashy shirts to the skintight pants, they blurred into one colorless, featureless scene devoid of what I was really looking for. There were no cowboy wannabes, no twinks, no my type or Seth’s type. Just a gray sea of drinking, undulating, dart-throwing not Michael.
Sighing, I turned back toward the bar. Who the hell was I kidding? This wasn’t a night when any warm body would take the edge off. It was Michael or no one.
No one it is.
I pushed away my barely touched drink, dropped a five next to it for the bartender, and left, but I didn’t go straight home. With the window down and the radio blasting, I drove around town. To the Light District. Up north by Tucker U. Down to the south end by East Centennial State University—East Cent, as it was called. I went by a few clubs that looked promising, if only for an evening of smooth jazz and cold beer.
No, too restless. Too wound up. Jazz could usually relax me—and there was plenty of it in this town—but tonight I was sure it would just remind me of how much I couldn’t relax.
I had to go home eventually. At around ten thirty, I gave up looking for a reason not to.
Michael’s car was in the driveway. His bedroom light was on, which meant he was awake but presumably alone. Hopefully with headphones, and his door shut, and completely oblivious to my return. Unless of course he’d changed his mind. In which case, I hoped he was well aware that I’d come home.
As I quietly climbed the stairs, I didn’t hear a sound besides my own footsteps. If not for the strips of light above and below his bedroom door, I wouldn’t have thought anyone was here at all.
I closed my own door behind me. Lying back on my bed, I gave in to the fantasies that had been bouncing around in my mind all night. Hell, all week. Ever since I’d met him, if I was honest with myself, and doubly so since I’d touched him.
Closing my eyes, I suppressed a groan as my cock hardened in my jeans. I reached for my zipper, but that simple motion brought a nearly inaudible creak out of the bed frame. I froze, sure that the creak echoed loud and clear into Michael’s room, painting him a mental picture of me lying here, hard-on and all. And if I moved, if I did anything at all, he’d see it, he’d know it, and he’d know why.
And on the eighth day, God created the shower so men like me could jerk off without detection.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and got up.
In the bathroom, I turned on the water, out of habit setting the temperature as high as I could bear it. It stung my skin, and I instinctively turned so the falling water pounded my tender muscles.
My shoulder ached, but it paled in comparison to the other ache that needed to be relieved before I could even think of doing anything else, so I ignored the pain, braced myself against the wall with my left hand, and stroked my cock with my right.
I’d had just enough of Michael to know what he sounded like, looked like, tasted like when he was as turned on as I was now. I’d memorized every moan, every growl, the way his expression bordered on one of pain when he was close to letting go. My hand mirrored his strokes, squeezing and releasing wherever he would have if he’d been in this shower with me, kissing me with a mixture of boldness and uncertainty. The helpless moans and throaty growls when he fucked me. Hands and mouth that couldn’t have been as inexperienced as they were.
God, Michael, I want you so, so bad….
My eyes rolled back, my knees buckled, and semen mixed with hot water in my hand. I released my breath and focused on holding myself upright. Don’t collapse. Don’t collapse. No bruised kneecaps on top of everything else. Stay up.
Eventually my legs stopped shaking. My vision cleared. I caught my breath and regained my balance. Hot water still rushed over my skin. My shoulder still ached.
And Michael was still in the other room. And I was still in here. I had the aftershocks of an orgasm tingling at the base of my spine, but it wasn’t enough.
It wasn’t nearly enough.
“JASON, WE need to talk.”
I set my coffee cup on the kitchen counter, slowly released my breath, and turned around.
Michael leaned against the doorway, one thumb hooked in the pocket of his jeans.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what we needed to discuss. After days on end of palpable tension, someone had to give in sooner or later and break the silence.
Setting my shoulders back, I met his eyes. “Okay. Let’s talk.”
His Adam’s apple jumped. “This arrangement, me living here, was supposed to take some pressure off both of us.” He fidgeted. “But it seems like it’s having the opposite effect.”
“Yeah, I guess it’s only made things worse.”
Michael nodded.
“So what should we do?” I asked. “You live here, and we’ve… well, the point is, what’s done is done.”
“Yeah.” He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “I think the best thing right now is to let that go and move on. It happened, but….”
I winced. “But it was a mistake.”
Avoiding my eyes, he nodded again. “Maybe this arrangement isn’t such a good idea. If we can’t live together without going crazy, then… maybe we shouldn’t.”
I lowered my gaze. Every part of me wanted to shoot that suggestion down and insist we could make this work, but….
“Maybe we shouldn’t.”
Michael shifted his weight. “Do you want me to stay?”
I looked at him. “I need you to stay.”
He swallowed. “But is my contribution to the mortgage really worth”—he gestured at both of us—“this?”
Who said anything about the mortgage?
“Look, I….” Deflating a little, I leaned against the counter. “There’s no easy answer to this. No, I don’t want you to go, but I also don’t want either of us to be miserable.”
“Neither do I.” He moistened his lips. “So what do we do?”
“We don’t really have a lot of options.”
“No, we don’t.” He locked eyes with me for a long moment. “I’ll start looking around for another place to live.”
What could I say to that? I couldn’t ask him to stay in this atmosphere. I sure as fuck couldn’t ask him to keep his kid in it.
“What happens if you do move out?”
He tilted his head. “What do you mean?” Then the pieces must have fallen together, because he straightened and added, “Between us?”
“Yeah.”
“Fuck, I don’t know.” He rubbed his forehead and blew out a breath. “I just need some dust to settle so I can figure out which way is up. What happens next, I…. There’s no way I can answer that right now.”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, I understand.” I wasn’t even sure what answer I’d wanted. Part of me hoped like hell we could find a way to see each other once we weren’t under the same roof anymore, that we could have something that wasn’t strictly platonic or professional. Part of me still heard the echoes of Wes walking out and couldn’t stomach the thought of Michael someday calling it quits for those same reasons. Maybe th
e best thing now was to fix my finances and my shoulder instead of setting myself up to lose someone else when he got tired of being at the mercy of my chronic pain.
I shifted my gaze away from him. “Okay. Well. When you find a place….” I swallowed. “Just, uh, keep me posted.”
“I will.”
The tense silence lingered for a few seconds. Then he walked out, and I exhaled.
Fuck. Eyes closed, I rubbed the side of my neck, kneading away the spreading tightness.
So that was that. Back to square one. I was once again faced with the prospect of holding up the mortgage on my own, but it didn’t induce the same panic it had before. I was worried, but… hell, if I couldn’t pay for the house, then the bank could have it and I’d move the fuck on. I was tired of fighting with an account balance for enough peace of mind to sleep at night.
Besides, there was no room in my brain for any of that right now.
Not with the prospect of Michael leaving.
When Wes left, it had been a relief. I loved him, I didn’t want him to go, but he took so much bullshit out of this house, the aftermath of our breakup had been akin to recovering from the amputation of a gangrenous limb.
Losing my roommate now meant more than just being saddled with a house and too much debt.
It meant losing Michael. And one way or another, sooner or later, Michael was leaving, and there was nothing I could do to stop him.
And that hurt way more than it should have.
Chapter 17
I FINISHED going over the club’s books around three in the afternoon. Earlier, I’d killed some time—anything to avoid the books—auditing the bartenders’ nightly inventory. Now there wasn’t a whole lot to do besides lock the place up and go home.
Which was certainly appealing, except that Michael would be closing up and heading home soon too. This was one of Daina’s custody weeks, so it would only be Michael and me. Just the two of us, which turned the whole goddamned house into a sexual powder keg.
I needed a beer. Beer solved everything.
Well, okay, it didn’t solve anything, but spending the late afternoon sitting in the sun with a cold beer beat the hell out of going home and climbing the walls.
Before I left my office, I sent Seth a text. I’m heading over to the Mountainview Pub. Want to grab a beer?
A few minutes later, as I was locking the back door, he replied. Fuck yeah. Got a walk-in, will be there in 1 hr.
At least I’d have some company.
One beer and ninety minutes later, the usually punctual Seth dropped into the empty chair opposite me.
I made a dramatic gesture of looking at my watch. “What happened to an hour?”
He groaned. “Oh my God. It was—” He paused to flag down the waiter, then faced me again. “A half-hour butterfly on the ankle turned into a ninety-minute-long ordeal.”
“Seriously?”
He nodded. “Her boyfriend kept telling her it would hurt, but she insisted that was where she wanted it. And she wasn’t afraid of a little pain. So it was about five minutes of tattooing, ten minutes of giving her a chance to catch her breath, five minutes of tattooing, and so on.”
The waiter appeared beside us. Seth ordered one of the local microbrews, one even I hadn’t heard of. Once we were alone again, he said, “I suggested she let me finish the outline today and then come back later for the shading. No way, she wanted it done today, because this was the last time she was getting inked.”
“Now, now, Seth,” I said. “Since when are you so unsympathetic with your clients?”
“Since she was keeping me from my beer!”
I smirked. “Okay, fair enough.”
Seth chuckled. “All right, so she wasn’t that bad, but today was a ‘gimme a damn beer’ day.”
“I know that feeling,” I muttered into my beer bottle.
Seth’s drink arrived a moment later, and after he’d taken a swig, he said, “So has Michael done anything for you?”
It was only by the grace of God that I didn’t wind up with a mouthful of beer in my sinuses. Coughing and sputtering, I stared at Seth. “I… what?”
“For your shoulder.” He lowered his chin, and one corner of his mouth rose. “What’d you think I meant? His blowjob skills?”
“Right, something like that.” I laughed, hoping Seth didn’t see any incriminating color in my face. “But to answer your question, yeah, he’s been helping a lot. The man’s a miracle worker.”
“Preaching to the choir.”
Of course, Michael hadn’t done anything for my shoulder in a while.
Maybe I should get a new acupuncturist. All the treatment without the unrequited lust. That was something else to look into while I searched for a new roommate.
“Jason?” Seth waved a hand in front of my face. “You all right?”
“Yeah.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Just… relationship bullshit, I guess.”
“What? That fuckwit giving you grief again or something?”
I shook my head. “No, I haven’t heard from him in ages.” Scowling, I added, “I think he’s pretty happy with his sugar daddy.”
“Fucker. I swear, he comes back to Tucker Springs, I’m going to tattoo ‘douchewaffle’ across his forehead.”
I snickered. “I’ll hold him down for you.”
“Deal.” He took a drink, then set the bottle down but didn’t let go of it. “So what’s going on?”
“Nothing a couple more beers won’t cure,” I said flatly.
“Uh-huh.” He adopted his famously ridiculous German accent. “Ze doctor is in. Tell me all about it.”
I blew out a breath, then pressed my beer bottle against my forehead. “Let’s just say I am losing my mind in that house.”
“Really? I figured Michael would be easy to live with. And his kid’s only there half the time.”
“Oh, he is. They are.” I lowered the bottle. “Dylan’s fine. It’s Michael.”
Seth furrowed his brow. “What? You two don’t get along?”
“We do.” I shook my head, staring at the table between us. “We definitely do.”
“Then…?”
“You know how when you’ve got a thing for someone, and—”
“Ooh.” He grinned. “Trying to live with Michael has got to be, um, hard. He is definitely something to look at.”
“Yeah. About that.” I picked up my beer again and, right before I took a drink, muttered, “And if I’d been smart, I’d have stuck to looking.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean now things are fucking weird.” I idly swirled my beer as if it were a glass of wine. With a bitter laugh, I added, “Should’ve seen that coming.”
Confusion deepened the crevices between Seth’s eyebrows. “I don’t….” Then he blinked. “Wait, what?”
And my heart dropped. The bottle in my hand almost did too. “Oh fuck.”
“You… and Michael….” Seth’s eyes slowly widened. “Are you telling me Michael’s gay?”
“But, I mean, my son doesn’t know. And neither does Seth.”
I barely managed to set the bottle down before I dropped it, and I let my face fall into my hand. “Shit. I am so sorry, Seth. I… wasn’t even thinking.”
“I’m sure I don’t have to ask, but you’ll be… discreet?”
Michael was going to kill me. Rightfully so too. Fuck, how could I be so stupid?
Seth’s chair creaked, and when I looked up, he’d leaned back and turned his gaze away, staring at the ground with unfocused eyes. Disbelief had etched itself into the creases on his forehead. If there was any man walking the planet who could understand why someone might not want to come out, even to a close friend, it was Seth, but he was definitely stunned, and he must’ve been hurt. And why wouldn’t he be? This wasn’t something he should have heard from me.
Fuck….
“I am so sorry,” I said again.
Seth waved a hand. “It’s not your fault. And I’m not, I
mean, I’m not angry. A little blown away, I guess.” More to himself, he murmured, “I can’t believe he never told me.”
“Christ,” I whispered. “Michael’s going to be pissed.”
“Look, the cat’s already out of the bag. I swear on my life I won’t say a word to Michael about it. But, I mean, what’s up?” He leaned a little closer, tilting his head. “You guys have a thing going or what?”
“Kind of.” Shame twisted in my gut. “We started, then we stopped, then we….” I shook my head. “Fuck, I don’t even know.”
Seth thumbed his chin. “Have you guys talked?”
“Repeatedly.”
He said nothing for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t imagine living together makes it any easier.”
“No,” I said. “Not at all. But that situation’s kind of resolving itself.” I pressed my cold bottle against my forehead again. “Michael’s looking for another place. My guess is he’ll be out in the next couple of weeks.”
“Wow. Damn.” Seth drummed his fingers on the table. His tone quiet and with a distinct absence of enthusiasm, he said, “Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
His lack of advice did nothing for the guilt in my stomach. Seth could usually offer insight like no one else; for a single man, he was wise in the ways of love and lust. But not this time.
We shifted the subject to more comfortable topics, but Seth didn’t relax. Whenever there was a pause, his expression turned distant, and whenever he laughed, it seemed halfhearted. I couldn’t decide if he was angry, hurt, or trying to absorb the information, and I didn’t ask. Call me a coward, but I was afraid to hear how badly I’d fucked this up on top of everything else. Especially with my gut wrapping itself in guilty knots.
After Seth had finished his second beer, he had to get back to the shop to finish a few things before calling it a night. I paid for his drinks, we shook hands, and he left.
As he walked away, I put my elbow on the table and rested my forehead in my hand. A sick feeling twisted beneath my ribs. Yeah, this would simplify matters.
Michael, I really want to sleep with you again, and by the way? I just outed you to your best friend. My bad. So, got any condoms handy?