THE REST OF FOREVER

Kate Aaron

Copyright 2012 Kate Aaron

Croft House

Croft House | Licence Notes

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact: Author@KateAaron.com

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover image by alleswilli at www.sxc.hu

KateAaron.com

WARNING: This book contains scenes of an adult nature.

Index

The Rest of Forever

About the Author

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About the Author

Born in Liverpool, Kate Aaron is a bestselling author of the #1 LGBT romances What He Wants, Ace, The Slave, and other works.

Kate swapped the North West for the Midwest in October 2015 and married award-winning author AJ Rose. Together they plan to take over the world.

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About this Story

The Rest of Forever was written for the Love is Always Write event, sponsored by the Goodreads M/M Romance Group. For more on the group and the event, visit their Goodreads page

http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/20149-m-m-romance

For Cheri

THE REST OF FOREVER

Kate Aaron

Copyright 2012 Kate Aaron

Croft House

Eight o’clock Sunday morning in the middle of February and I’m jogging around my local park. I hate Sunday mornings, and I hate jogging. So why am I here? Because he is: Paul Adams, my best-friend-forever, the guy I’m totally, heartbreakingly, nauseatingly in love with.

I know, I know, I’m a total cliché. What gay guy doesn’t grow up and fall in love with his best friend, right? I’ve read enough sappy romances in my time to know I’m not alone. There should be a support group or something. And in all those stories the supposedly straight (they’re always straight) best friend suddenly wakes up and realises he feels the same. Cue sunset.

Except my best friend isn’t straight. And, once upon a time, he did feel the same.

Not so sympathetic now, are you?

I was named Jackson by my mother in a fit of Gaelic traditionalism, that being her maiden name and her being an only child. I guess she didn’t want the line to die completely, and at least my dad stuck around long enough to bestow us with his name—Campbell—saving me from the ignominy of being christened Jackson Jackson. You’d think with ancestry like that I’d be all peaches ’n’ cream with a shock of curly red hair, but I’m not. Coal black, my hair is, like soot. So black it shines blue in the light and everyone thinks I must have dyed it. Guys fall over themselves to tell me they love it—black hair, blue eyes, skin pale as marble. Like a Disney prince, they say. They think I’m lucky: I’m not. I live in fear of going grey—at twenty-five, a possibility that gets more likely by the day—because I know when I do I’ll look like a fucking badger, and then I’ll have to dye it.

I quite like my eyes though, blue-green like the sea on a hot summer day. I just wish my lashes weren’t so damn long, like a girl’s, so thick you’d swear I was wearing mascara and kohl. To compensate I keep my stubble rough, not so long I look like one of the great unwashed but just a few mil, the second-shortest setting on my electric razor. I like it when guys stroke it, the soft scratchy sound it makes sliding over their palms. I like to rub my cheek across their chests, watch their nipples tighten.

A stranger’s body holds so many novelties; men react in so many different ways to being touched. I’m a pretty tactile person in bed. I love nothing more than pinning a guy down and finding out exactly what he likes. Nothing beats the feeling you get hearing a new lover’s breath hitch when something you’ve done surprised him in the best possible way. Not that most of the guys I’ve been with appreciate that. I suppose when you’ve left the bar at two and you’re in work at nine, time for playing is limited. Wham, bam, thank you man; you can’t stay I’ve got to be up early. Club sex is about scratching an itch, that’s all. Shame it took me almost ten years to realise that.

I was a precocious adolescent. Sometimes I sit and look at the old pictures from that time and wonder what the hell I thought I was doing. I suppose everyone thinks like that when confronted with memories of their fifteen-year-old self. At least I never kept a diary: imagine the melodrama that would have gone into that! It’s funny, but all through that period, fifteen to eighteen, as Paul and I discovered the truth about ourselves, each other, sex and men in general, I never looked at him that way. Never.

He was just Paulie, my best friend, the guy I’d known since pre-school. In my eyes he’d never changed from the kid I can still remember playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or crying because he’d fallen and hurt his knee. He was a constant in my life, the one thing I could always count on to be there.

The kids at school called us queer long before any of us knew what it meant, or how it really applied to us. Teachers knew better than to try to split us up, and our parents were pretty tolerant too, I guess. I remember the occasional conversation, Mum asking me if I had any other friends, or if I wanted them, but I never did. Paul was enough.

“Hey slowcoach, what’s up?”

My best friend’s slightly concerned expression startles me from my reveries and I realise I’ve stopped jogging. I’m fucking freezing. Rubbing numb, reddened hands together, I blow on my fingers for warmth, the air leaving my body in smoky plumes, snatched away by the bitingly cold February wind.

“Had enough?” Paul asks, bright eyes inquisitive. If I ever hear anyone say again that brown eyes are dull I think I’ll knock them out. Paul’s eyes aren’t brown, they’re bronze. Deep, shimmering, evanescent bronze.

“Jackie? You okay?”

I blink rapidly. Shit! “Fine, fine. Just tired.” I shiver as a trickle of sweat runs down my clammy back like ice in these low temperatures.

“Heavy night last night?” he asks, hooking an arm around my neck and leading me towards the park gates. I shake him off before I cave to the almost overwhelming urge to bury myself in his armpit and never let go. Not cool, Jack.

“Don’t call me Jackie,” I grumble, giving him my best “I’m mad at you” scowl. He grins back, eyes crinkling at the corners, perfect little white teeth standing neatly in a row. God, am I so far gone I think his dental work is sexy now? I don’t even think there’s a fetish for that.

“Whatever, Jackie.” He reaches out and taps my bicep playfully with a closed fist, branding my skin.

He’s called me Jackie since forever. Jackie and Paulie, that was us. If anyone else dared to try I’d kill them, but Paul’s different. As much as I protest I hate it, I don’t and he knows. I probably tell him five times a day to stop calling me that, but if he ever did I think I’d shrivel up and die.

Curtis hates it. He’s Paul’s boyfriend, they’ve been together almost a year and he strikes me as the jealous type. I suppose it couldn’t have been easy for him when I landed back in Paul’s life again six months ago after all those years apart, but I don’t want to make this easy for him dammit, I want him gone.

Looking at my best friend, smiling and chatting beside me as we lope down the quiet street, the guilt comes flooding back. Had I honestly expected Paul to wait for me? Why would he after what I said; after I moved three hundred miles away just to escape how he felt? It was a miracle he was even talking to me now. Who was I to come swanning back into his life after a seven-year hiatus and expect to pick up right where we left off?

We part at the end of the road, he to head back to the townhouse he shares with Curt, me back to my lonely little one-bed flat. I watch him jog down the street, marvelling again that the beautiful man walking away from me is really Paulie, my Paulie, the gangly lightweight I’d left behind when we were both eighteen.

The years have been good to him, that’s for sure. He’s filled out in all the right places, finally grown into his five-ten frame (still shorter than my even six feet), his chest broadened, the hint of a six pack lurking underneath his sweaty T-shirt. Yeah, there’s a reason I get up at six-thirty every Sunday to go running in circles like a fool. Wherever that tight, toned arse leads, I’ll follow, daydreaming about wrapping his slim thighs around my waist and staking a claim to the man who’s been mine since we were four years old.

Except he isn’t mine. Not anymore.

I step into my flat, stuffy and stifling after the frigid air outside. One good thing about living on the fifth floor: heat rises. I’ll never have to worry about my electricity bills—the storage heaters are essentially decorative. Stripping off, I pad naked to the minute wetroom the developers installed off the bedroom for the sole purpose of adding another five grand to the asking price. Like a one-bed flat needs two bathrooms. I shoehorn myself into the tiny space, elbows knocking the walls either side as I slide the glass door shut and turn on the shower, gasping as the water gushes scalding hot. A quick adjustment and it’s more bearable, but already my skin shows up red and blotchy, tingling in the sudden switch from cold to warm.

As I slowly soap my body, I suppose I’ve changed, too. The light smattering of hair dusting my chest hadn’t been there when I was eighteen, for a start. Sparse and short, like iron filings, and as black as the hairs on my head. My chest is more toned than it was back then, abs cut, stomach flat. I’m not the scrawny twink I once was, that’s for sure. I like to keep in shape and I’ve been going to the gym at least twice a week since I was twenty, even occasionally getting in a workout between cruising the cute guys and arranging hookups.

I admit, when I first came out—and for several years after—I was the proverbial kid in a candy shop. Sex with men is so easy if you know where to look. We’re honest about what we want, and about getting our needs met. At one point if I’d gone more than a day without getting my dick sucked I’d have considered it a dry spell. Everything had been simpler then.

I don’t think Paul’s ever been like that. I was the cocky one, always louder and more outgoing than him. When we were sixteen I dragged him to our first ever gay bar. We went every week after that, it was our Friday night thing. We were jailbait and we didn’t even know it.

Well, I was jailbait. Paul never seemed that interested. He’d hover in a corner nursing a warm bottle of beer, an inscrutable expression on his face as he watched me dance and kiss and grope an endless succession of attractive strangers. No amount of cajoling or teasing would get him out of that corner to actually speak to another guy. Not unless that guy was me, not unless I took pity on my shy, gangly friend and took him by the hand, placed his arms around my waist, and forced him to sway along with the music. Too late, I know now what that look on his face was. It was love.

***

“Jackie, can we talk?”

I stop packing and look over at my best friend. He’s hovering, wringing his hands over the open suitcase spread across my ageing single bed. I put down the T-shirt I’m holding and sit, patting the mattress next to me. He remains standing.

“What’s up?” I ask, unsettled by the anxiety rolling off him in waves, charging the atmosphere in my room.

His eyes flit over a poster of 5ive on my bedroom wall. They’re a cool band, and I’ve always had a little bit of a thing for J. Take me home, daddy. Paul, I knew, had a crush on Scott, the black-haired, blue-eyed frontman. Him and every other teenager on the planet. Not that he’d admit it because, y’know, boybands aren’t cool. Not at our age. The poster’s a hangover from my younger days but I can’t bear to take it down. I know Mum will, after I leave. She’s not the sentimental type: no fear of my room being turned into a mausoleum after I’ve abandoned her in her empty nest.

“Shouldn’t you be packing?” I ask to break the silence. Tomorrow we’re due to start our next big adventure: running away from our hometown to spread our wings in the big, bad city of Manchester. It feels like a whole world away.

He shakes his head a little too vigorously. “I need to tell you something….” He trails off and won’t meet my eyes.

“Paulie, you’re scaring me. What is it, has something happened? Have your parents said you can’t go?” The thought of leaving on my own terrifies me. I’ve never been on my own.

“Why do you want me to come?” he asks, all arms and legs and nervous twitches. He can’t seem to keep still.

I frown. “You’re my best friend. I thought we were doing this together?”

“Is that all?”

He looks impossibly sad, and I have no idea why. I stand up and go to him, rubbing my hands down his skinny arms in a gesture that’s supposed to be comforting. He’s shaking. “What else is there?” I ask, eighteen years old and dumb as fuck.

Long-lashed lids sweep over deep brown eyes and fan across his high cheekbones. He draws a shuddering breath. “What if I want more?”

“I thought we both did?” I laugh, surprised. “That’s why we’re going. Just think of all the cute guys we’ll meet—”

“With you.” The words ring through the silence that falls after he blurts them out. He swallows and repeats himself softly. “I want more with you.”

I know that I’m gripping his arms too tight but I’ve lost all control of my limbs. I freeze, horrified. There’s no way on earth Paulie just said what I think he said…. Is there? “What?” I manage to croak, hoping it’s all just some horrible nightmare. I want to pinch myself to wake up but I can’t move so I pinch him instead. “What?!”

A fat tear rolls down his cheek unchecked. “I love you,” he whispers. I barely hear him, I lip-read the words in dismay. Soulful cow eyes rise and finally look at me, fear and hope and longing and naked, shameless love.

I shake my head. “This can’t be right,” I stammer. This isn’t happening, not Paulie, not my best friend. I don’t want this, I don’t want his love, not like that. That love is for other men, men who, I already know, will take what they want and leave me, just like my daddy left my mum all those years ago. That love is a fairytale, a fantasy that never comes true. What Paulie and I have, it’s different; special. Friends don’t dump each other because they’re bored or someone cuter comes along. Friends don’t cheat or use or betray each other.

So why does his admission feel like a betrayal? I look back over the last God-knows-how-long and feel sick. Had he lied to me all that time? I think of sleepovers; the giggling, on-my-part-innocent explorations of each other’s bodies; the chaste kisses when we were drunk and dancing and euphoric, and I want to hurl.

His reluctance to join the dating pool I suddenly understand in a whole new light. My philosophy was simple—pick a man, any man. I barely remember losing my virginity, I was so out of it when it happened. I’d been terrified of it hurting, truth be told. Sober enough to make sure he used a condom, too drunk to remember his name or much of what he looked like afterwards. Paul’s not into that, and that’s okay. He’s boyfriend material, you can see it a mile off. Me, I’m the good time guy. So I let him do it his own way—or not, apparently—only teasing him gently for clinging so tenaciously to his V card. I mean, c’mon, we’re eighteen and guys, we’re supposed to be gagging for it. I guess I just always assumed Paulie was more of a girl in that way: he wanted it to mean something; he wanted it—God help him—to be special.

He wanted it to be me.

I think I moan: a horrifyingly weak little sound. Completely girly. He couldn’t have wounded me more if he’d stuck his hand through my belly and yanked out my guts.

For some reason he thinks that traumatised noise is a good thing. Still in shock, I’m pliant when he grabs me, apparently willing, and then his fingers are in my hair and his mouth is pressed to mine, cow eyes closed. My vision zeroes in on each delicate lash as it flutters and his lips brush against mine. I’m trembling but he’s steady as a rock, holding me firmly, as assertive as I’ve ever seen him. My eyes drift shut. Maybe I can do this, maybe I can pretend, give him what he wants and hope we can go back to normal again afterwards. Maybe kissing him will wipe away both our memories of what came before: maybe I can steal his words from his lips, take them back like he never said them to begin with.

His tongue darts out and tentatively touches mine, hot and wet and rough. I feel him sag as he makes a needy whimper in the back of his throat that leaves my blood cold. If we do this, nothing will ever be the same between us again.

I break away and stare at him, wild-eyed. His face is contorted, lower lip, wet from our kisses, loose and trembling. He’s falling out of the apple tree all over again, I know he’s going to cry but dammit I can’t make this better. We aren’t ten years old anymore, and I can’t think of anything funny to say to cheer him up. The half of me that’s still his best friend feels lower than a worm’s tit for doing this to him. The other half clings to its sense of outrage and betrayal in order to do what needs to be done.

I wake up sweating. How many times have I dreamed of that day in the years since? The look on his face, the moment I knew I’d destroyed everything we ever had. I was only trying to save it. He never understood why I did it, how scared I was of losing him if something were to go wrong. I never understood that the decision had already been taken from me, that the moment he confessed his true feelings was already make or break. My reaction was almost irrelevant.

I finished packing and the next morning I left, as I had always planned to do. All the way to the city on that hot, sickly-smelling train a ghost sat beside me. I looked out of the window so I didn’t have to face it. I told myself I didn’t need him, and pretended it wasn’t him I was looking for, half-expecting to see standing on the platform of every station we stopped at. I don’t know if I believed my own lies or not.

I lost myself in new surroundings after I arrived, which was easier to do than you might think. I’d grown up in a largish town that boasted two gay bars and a theme night at a club every second Thursday of the month. Moving to a place that had not isolated bars but whole streets, an entire village nestled along the banks of the canal running through its centre, was too much temptation. My days were spent enrolling at the uni, making friends with my classmates and the fellow students who shared my halls. My nights were an endless round of drinks and dances and men, never staying in any one bar too long, or with any one man, either. New friends were ten a penny, so who needed only one? Certainly not me.

Except I did.

Freshers’ ’flu, they call it. Everyone gets it at the start of a new term. Hundreds of people from all over the country stuck in the same stuffy auditoriums, breathing the recycled, air conditioned germs. My third week from home and I was laid low. Everyone was. The girls in my hall were unsympathetic to my plight, they just rolled their eyes and laughed. “Men,” they said, like that was a fucking answer. Didn’t they understand ’flu is lethal to guys?

Lying in my narrow bed, sweating and shivering, my head pounding, the world tilting at a crazy angle every time I opened my eyes, I dreamed of Paulie. Suddenly the one guy I’d been trying so hard not to think about was the only person I wanted to see. I missed him. He always took care of me when I was ill, playing nursemaid as Mum hovered, tongue clicking with disapproval while he ferried soup and cold compresses and honey and lemon to my sickbed. She said he coddled me: I know he saved my life on more than one occasion.

I know what you’re thinking: selfish bastard. I was, but in my defence, I was eighteen. It took that first bout of delirium to make me really stop and realise what I’d lost. I’d put off thinking about him, about how wrong everything had gone, about how much I was hoping, deep down, one day he’d show up and everything would go back to how it was before.

Loneliness engulfed me. I don’t think I’d ever felt it before—I’d always had Paulie. I tried to grieve for him, imagined that he’d died because in a way, to me, he had. I knew I was never going to see him again, and it tore me apart to know that he was out there somewhere getting on with his life, and he didn’t need me in it anymore.

He didn’t answer my calls. I texted but got no reply. When I phoned his home his mother lied and said he’d gone out. I know she lied, I could hear it in her voice. I could picture him perfectly, sitting on the stairs, whispering to her that he wasn’t in. Eventually his dad came on the line and told me never to phone them again. I sent emails but they bounced straight back. He was offline whenever I logged onto Instant Messenger. Remembering the hours we’d spent chatting through the night over the computer, the click click of the keys as I typed, prevented me from sleeping.

When I did sleep, fretfully, my dreams were haunted by the old-fashioned dial-up tone of the modem, high-pitched pings and static fading out into three words, barely whispered, falling from his lips.

I numbed myself with drink. It was so easy to do, every uni social was at the pub, every night there was a party to go to, and when there wasn’t there was the irresistible pull of the village, where I could lose myself in darkened rooms and flashing lights and hot, sweating bodies. It’s hard to feel anything much at all when the room’s spinning and the only things keeping you upright are the cold porcelain of the sink under your greasy hands and the hard points of ten fingers holding your hips.

I failed a class and Mum freaked. I mean seriously freaked. I’d never seen her really mad before but that day she put the fear of God into me. I can’t remember all the terrible things she threatened me with now, I think I blanked most of them from my memory, but I’ll never forget how that call ended. She’d shouted herself calm and I was clutching my handset, cowering like a child and hardly daring to breathe. “You know, Jack,” she started, her tone softer, “Paul’s found someone else. Maybe it’s time you moved on?”

I held that hot phone to my ear long after she’d disconnected the call, my knuckles white around the fashionably tiny handset.

I knew she’d thought we were a couple—everyone did. After a while it got lamer constantly trying to disabuse people of the notion and we let it slide. I read Hamlet in school, I know what people say when you protest too much. In our own way we were a couple, but without the sex. Maybe like old and married or something. We just skipped the honeymoon. I don’t think I realised, until that moment, how much I thought of Paul as mine. We were a team, the two of us, each one all the other needed. Almost.

Jealousy reared, livid, acid green. The idea of Paulie—my Paulie—with another guy made me sick. The thought of another man touching him, kissing him…. I’d never seen him with anyone else, I’d never had to confront how I’d feel if I did. Maybe if I had, if he’d taken my advice and actually pulled someone on one of our many nights out, I’d have known then what I know now.

Even then I didn’t know, even while I was tearing my room apart and sobbing myself to sleep. I was nineteen, and still as dumb as fuck.

I’m twenty-five now, and smarter. But now I’m too late.

***

“Still not found yourself a boyfriend?” Curtis sneered at me over his pint. Paul nudges him not-so-subtly with his elbow.

“Who says I want one?” I sip demurely at my JD and coke, ice tinkling in the glass as I tip it, sliding across my lips, a little frisson of cold. My eyes are glacial as I meet his across the table. “Besides.” I slide the empty glass back onto its coaster. “The night is still young.”

“Same old Jackie.” Paulie smiles affectionately in my direction, earning him a glare from his lover that he doesn’t notice.

Why am I here again? Another Friday night back in this dive of a bar I thought I’d escaped seven years ago. I was used to better than this: Manchester had spoilt me. I glance at the other patrons, an eclectic mix of old and young, all shoehorned into this place because of one thing we’ve got in common. Absently, I wonder how many of them I let fuck me when I was younger. I don’t see any familiar faces, but that means nothing. That tall guy, late thirties maybe, dark skinned, just teetering on paunchy, is he looking because he wants me, or because he’s already had me? Or the blond guy with the mean eyes at the table opposite. Or the skinhead just walking out of the gents. Or—

“I need another drink.” I stand abruptly. “Same again?”

Paul and Curtis exchange looks, glancing at their own carefully nursed pints. Fuck them both, I’m not normally like this. Not anymore. This place holds too many memories, not enough of them good.

I push my way through to the bar, cringing inside as guys try to make eye contact left and right. This place is small enough that I’m still considered new, even after six months. Christ, has it really been that long? I glance at the table where my best friend is laughing with the love of his life and something twists in my gut. I scowl as Curt catches my eye and pulls Paulie into a hot, wet kiss. I fantasise about smashing a bottle over his head while I wait to be served. Like he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing.

Why did I ever come back here? What was I hoping to achieve? I’d had friends in Manchester, a good job, a life. Did I really give it all up to spend my days playing the spectre at my best friend’s feast?

Maybe I should find a boyfriend. A nice, steady guy who adores me. Maybe, if he looks enough like Paul, I’ll grow to adore him too.

“What do you want?” The barman juts his chin at me, punctuating the question. What do I want? I can think of a dozen flip answers to that, but he’s probably heard them all before. I order my drink and gratefully snatch the glass when he offers it. Sobriety’s overrated.

Paul eyes me inquisitively as I slide back into my seat, little lines marring his perfect complexion. “You okay?” he asks softly.

“Never better.” I grimace as I swallow the too-sweet liquor.

“You drink too much.” Long lashes kiss his cheekbones. “I worry about you.”

“Where’s Curt?” I ask to change the subject. I know he’s taking a leak.

“Toilets.”

“Maybe you should have gone with him.” I wink and leer, fighting down the bile that rises at the thought of Paul and Curt together. Why do I do this to myself?

“That was always more your scene,” Paul responds, thin lipped.

I love that talking about sex still makes him uptight. If I try really hard, I can almost pretend he’s still a virgin; that he’s still waiting for me. The thought of having turned down the opportunity to be this man’s first—and only—lover hits me like a freight train and I wince.

“I’m not judging,” Paul says quickly, misinterpreting the cause of my misery.

“Why not?” I answer thickly. “You’ve every right.”

Curt comes back before he can respond, squeezing himself into the booth beside the man who should have been mine.

What does Paul see in him? I dispassionately examine the man now sitting opposite me. He’s good looking, I suppose, if muscles are your thing. A bit too meaty for my taste, something far too Aryan in his buzz-cut blond hair and piercing eyes. He’s not dumb, our Curt, he’s got my number all right. I wonder what we have in common that Paulie was attracted to us both.

Curt’s older than we are, early thirties, and holds a decent civilian post at the military base just out of town. It’s a mystery to me what they do there, but whatever it is pays well. He owns the home he shares with my best friend.

“We going after this?” Curt asks Paul, not quite quietly enough. He tips his almost empty glass. Hint hint.

Paul looks at me, worry etched across his handsome features. He really is breathtakingly beautiful. There’s nothing feminine about his short, neat hair or his chiselled cheekbones or rugged jaw, but still the urge to protect him is overwhelming. He’s my little boy lost.

“Don’t worry about me,” I say blithely. “If you two want to go, then go. I’m sure I’ll find something to do.” Like order a pizza and watch Shaun of the Dead for the hundredth time. I wink so they get the wrong idea.

“I’ll stay,” Paul resolves, instantly looking down and chewing his full lower lip. My breath catches, wondering what that lip would feel like pressed between mine. Then I remember I already know the answer to that. It feels like coming home.

Curt glares at us both sharply. “I don’t mind staying for another,” he backtracks. “I just thought you looked tired, babe.” The endearment and the soft kiss he plants on Paul’s temple are for my benefit, I’m sure. It’s like watching a dog piss up a tree.

I give him my best thousand-watt grin. “No, no, you go if you’re tired.” I stress the word so Curt knows I’m implying “old.” “I’ll make sure I bring Paulie back safe and sound.”

The look of pure hatred he throws me is startling in its intensity. I gulp but in the next second it’s gone, replaced by something wheedling as he tries to talk Paul into going home with him, like a good little boy ought. I drop my eyes and focus on my drink in a vain attempt to look nonchalant. Curt knows exactly how much I care. With every fibre of my being I hope Paul decides to stay with me, alone.

When I next look up, Curt has gone. Paul’s watching me, bronze eyes darting nervously, never meeting mine.

“You don’t have to stay.” The words almost choke me, but I have to say them. It’s irrational, I already know I’ve obligated him. My whole presence here is one great big obligation. Funny that I should be the one to guilt-trip him.

“I want to.” His smile makes my heart race. “Like old times.”

I give him a crooked grin and raise my glass. “Old times.” I try to lace those words with significance. Oh to turn back the clock, climb into my DeLorean and go bitch-slap some sense into my younger self, warn him what he’s throwing away. I wouldn’t do it, even if I could. I didn’t deserve Paulie then.

I don’t deserve him now.

“Let’s get you a real drink.” I smile, standing and easing my way around the table. As I pass him I stroke his cheek, a gesture that’s artfully casual. Paul’s used to it, I was always tactile. He’s asked me not to touch him in front of Curt, he says it caused a fight. Good, my inner home-wrecker thinks, but I respect his wishes. He deserves to be with a man who recognised how wonderful he was the second he saw him, even if that man is Curt. Even if it kills me.

I return with double vodka Cokes and a couple of shots for good measure. He protests and stalls, but he knocks them back the same as I do. With Curt gone it’s like teacher’s left the classroom, and chaos ensues. We’re seventeen again, high on life. All we need is each other. I grab his hand and drag him to the small, crowded dance floor, elbowing bodies aside to make a space for us. He presses close, hands loosely holding my waist as I lead us through a series of elaborate and ostentatious moves, a parody of our younger selves.

This is why I came back, this right here: the warm buzz of vodka, the thumping beat in my veins, Paul’s arms around me as we dance and laugh, mouths pressed right into ears as we bitch about the men around us. The smell of him surrounds me until I’m swimming in it, shampoo and cologne and laundry detergent and him, just him, encasing me, his slim fingers light on my hips, his stubble wonderfully scratchy against my cheek. This could be any Friday night of my adolescence except for one thing: I’m hard.

I never got hard like this dancing with Paul before. Then again, this is the first time we’ve danced since I realised that he’s the love of my fucking life. I keep nudging him back, holding his hips to keep our groins apart so he won’t notice. All I want to do is yank him forward and grind into him, watch his eyes widen and his pupils dilate as he realises. See if his body still responds to me in the way it once did, back in the days before I knew he was my whole world.

I realise I’m staring at his lips, projecting my hopeless desire for any fool to see. Luckily Paul seems oblivious, his eyes a little out of focus. He never did drink as much as me. I turn my head and close my eyes, pretending to lose myself in the techno beat of some obscure clubmix. Truth is, I’m already lost.

I don’t remember the exact moment I knew I loved him. No light pinged on, there was no eureka! in the bath. It gnawed at me slowly, building from the misery I felt that third week without him when I was laid up and wallowing in enough self-pity to admit I missed him like a limb. It was an ache that never really went away, no matter where I was or who I was with. No friend could ever be as close to me as Paul so I didn’t try to replace him, knowing in advance the effort would be futile, and I’d never trusted a lover with so much as my surname. There was no fear I was ever going to be swept off my feet by Prince Charming.

Someone knocks us and we stumble into each other, bodies pressed full-length together for a handful of seconds before we pull apart and I turn to berate the clumsy drunk. Paulie rubs a flat palm across my chest as he turns me back to him and my nipples sizzle at the inadvertent contact. I let him drop calming words into my ear, enjoying the texture and the timbre of his voice. Truth is, one look in his eyes and I was already calm, soft and placid as a kitten.

His high arched brow furrows slightly as he looks at the hordes around us. It’s late, almost closing time, and everyone’s drunk and obnoxious. I can see in his eyes he wants to go home.

“Come on.” I smile, holding out my hand. “Let’s get you to bed.” My breath catches as the old joke rolls off my tongue before I think. God, what that must have done to him when we were teenagers. I suddenly realise how much I must have hurt him, not once but over and over, and I hate myself with an intensity I never knew I had in me.

“You okay?” he asks, pulling me to a stop and drawing me close again.

“Fine,” I promise, kissing his cheek for being sweet enough to ask, sweet enough to let me back into his life after the shoddy, careless way I treated him.

“You sure?” he persists as we step into the night, the frozen winter air hitting our skin like a slap. He keeps hold of my hand as I hail a passing cab and we clamber into the overheated little tin can. I squeeze his fingers and give the cabbie his address.

We set off with a lurch that tumbles us into each other and we laugh and settle more comfortably across the back seat, pressed together, his head nestled sleepily on my shoulder. He’s still holding my hand.

“I missed you, you know.” I address the cab in general.

“I missed you, too,” he admits.

I think this is the closest we’ve come to discussing what happened since I came back. Curtis hardly ever leaves us alone if there’s a chance we might actually talk. Plus, y’know, we’re guys. We don’t communicate so good. Not verbally, anyway.

“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” I tell him, surprising myself. I thought I was done with the deep and meaningful. Vodka says not.

“I am?” he asks hesitantly.

“Of course.” I look at him, tipping his chin up with my free hand. “I was an idiot not to realise earlier. I should have grabbed hold of you when I had the chance and never let you go.”

“So why didn’t you?” he asks, plaintive.

I know the intercom’s on and the cabbie’s listening but I started this and I can’t back out now. Drama queen to the last, maybe I need an audience.

“I was scared,” I admit.

“Of what?” His beautiful face creases in a frown. “It was me, Jackie. I thought we could tell each other anything.”

“So did I.” I stroke his cheek sadly, thumbing the high arch of his delicate bones. “I was scared I’d lose you.”

“But you did lose me. You ran away.” He’s eighteen years old all over again, raw pain cracking his voice.

“I did what we always planned to do. You abandoned me.” I know this is my fault but I can’t keep the trace of bitterness out of my voice.

“You said you’d never love me,” he rejoins. “Never.” He spits the word.

I wince. I know what I said, and I know exactly what I’d give to take it all back. “I lied,” I confess quietly.

His body goes rigid in my arms. “What are you saying?” His voice is quiet and eerily steady.

Suddenly, I’m afraid.

I never though I’d be doing this; I never thought that love was for men like me. I don’t mean gay men, I’m not that self-loathing, but men like me: the fucked-up ones. I’ve never had a boyfriend, rarely even double dipped. Love wasn’t something that factored in my life, not even as an abstract. Not love like that. Not because I was scared of it, but because I thought it was something I’d always be incapable of feeling. I don’t do sentiment. The idea of needing someone so badly it hurts isn’t exactly aspirational. So much can go wrong: most relationships fail. People cheat, they leave, they lie. At least sex is honest.

I always thought I was an honest person. Right up to the day I realised I’d been lying to myself all along.

Admitting the lie was easy. Doing something about it was harder. I thought knowing the truth would take the force out of it, but the feelings only intensified as the years went on. I tried all the usual tricks to numb my aching heart—drink, clubs, sex. I went through lovers like some people change their pants. I moved house half a dozen times, walked out of jobs, went on holidays. Anything that gave me something else to think about when I was lying awake at 4:00 a.m.

I look back at the wide, open eyes staring at me, shining orange—black—orange as the cab rumbles through the light and dark of the street outside. I wish I could see him clearly, I wish I knew what he wanted me to say. It’s taken me six months to regain his trust: the last thing I want is to lose him all over again. I don’t think I’d survive.

“It was always you….” I stammer.

“It was never me,” he hisses. “Everyone else, but never me.”

“Not true,” I answer sharply. “Not in here.” I tap my chest.

He pulls back to look at me, eyes narrowing. “Why are you telling me this? Why now?”

I shrug helplessly.

“Can’t bear to see me with someone else, is that it? You don’t want me, but you don’t want anyone else to have me either?”

“It’s not like that,” I protest, but weakly. A part of me wonders if he’s right. Maybe I am that selfish, maybe I’m just so used to the idea of Paul being mine, loving me, that the rest of me is exaggerating how I feel about him out of spite.

I remember all the nights I’ve lain awake and cried over him and my heart slams high in my chest. If I’m lying to myself, it’s body and soul. Even in the darkest days when I thought it was hopeless, when I truly believed I’d never see him again, I tore myself apart with grief. That’s gotta be the most fucked-up version of selfish I ever heard. I wasn’t jealous, I was devastated.

“I didn’t know,” I confess.

“I fucking told you.” His face is twisted, snarling. Something primal in him rises to the surface. I know it’s defensive, I know he’s only trying to protect himself by shutting me out, but my inner caveman wants to rise to the challenge, claw and fight like animals, beat him into submission and drag him back to my den for a hot, rough claiming.

I don’t. Instead I crumple on the seat, boneless, spineless. “About me,” I clarify. “I didn’t know about me.” I don’t expect him to understand.

He blinks, disarmed. “But now you do?”

I nod sadly.

“What do you know?”

I look at him. He wants me to say the words. Actually say them out loud. My throat rasps like sandpaper and I swallow with difficulty. Knowing is one thing. What I’ll admit to myself, and what I’ll admit out loud to my best friend and a curious cabbie are two completely different things.

He sees my hesitation and his mouth sets in a grim line. “You’re full of shit,” he sneers as the cab lurches to a stop.

Instantly his hands are on the door, halfway out before I realise he’s moved. Blind panic overwhelms me and I dart forward, catching his sleeve and pulling him back. Our mouths are crushed together and his whole body’s rigid with shock but I have to do this, I have to let him know somehow that I love him. He softens in my arms and with a moan opens to me as I slide my hot tongue between his lips to taste him.

Too soon he breaks away, refusing to look at me as he stumbles onto the pavement and up the steps to his front door. I’m crouched on the floor of the cab, framed in the open doorway, and all I can feel is the heat of his mouth pressed to mine. He fumbles with the key and I hear the loud snick of the lock echo in the silence of the night. He steps into the darkened hall and the door closes behind him with a finality I find chilling.

Reluctantly I pull the cab door shut and climb back onto the seat, not meeting the inquisitive eyes in the rear view mirror as I give the driver my address. I lean my forehead against the soothingly cool window and watch the dark house as the car turns and drives away. In one of the upstairs rooms, I’d swear I saw a curtain twitch.

***

I crawl out of bed on Sunday with even more reluctance than usual. I’ve never liked getting up in the dark. I shower and pull on my jogging gear, dressing as slowly as a man awaiting sentence. My peers have already judged me and found me wanting.

The park’s empty when I arrive, the grass crisp and white with a late frost, my breath billowing in clouds around me as I stamp my feet and rub my numbed hands together at the gate, waiting. I know already this is futile, that he’s not coming, that this time I never will see him again. I can’t say I blame him.

The palest duck egg blue tints the sky like a wash as I accept the inevitable and begin my lonely circuit of the park. I used to enjoy running: the sense of freedom, the pleasurable pull of healthy muscles as they warm and work, endorphins kicking in as my body relaxes and leaves my mind free to wander. These days I try to keep my mind occupied at all times.

I fall into a rhythm, lulled by my even breaths and the regular slap slap of my trainers on the asphalt path. I nod at an elderly dog walker, skirting a wide arc around his yappy little Jack Russell. He nods back, sensing a kindred spirit. If only he knew.

I put my head down and carry on, wishing I’d brought my iPod—something to distract me. I try singing in my head but I forget the words to every song I start, my mind returning, as it has for the last twenty waking hours and several of the eight sleeping ones, to Paul: his face, his eyes, his lips. Especially his lips.

A rhythmic slap behind me heralds another jogger and I shift slightly on the path to give him room to get by unobstructed. He approaches quickly and draws level, but it takes me a minute to realise that he’s not overtaking. I look up and glance across, almost stumbling when I see my best friend flash me a dazzling grin and speed up. I accept the challenge in a heartbeat, increasing my pace to keep level with him, laughing as he speeds up again. In seconds we’re in a race, both running flat out around the long circuit which leads back to the main gates.

My muscles begin to protest at the furious pace we’re setting but somehow I know it’s important I win this, and Paul’s not cutting me any slack. The icy air stings my face, rasping uncomfortably in my throat as I gasp for breath. Lactic acid builds in my calves as I put my head down, racing flat out, but I ride the burn and refuse to stop. We’re neck and neck coming around the last corner and I put on a last desperate burst of speed, using my extra couple of inches in height to overtake him. He puts his head down, arms pumping wildly at his sides, but he’s already giving his all and my fingers close around the numbingly cold metal of the gates a full ten seconds before his.

We glance at each other’s flushed faces and laugh before doubling over to catch our breath. My legs are shaking as I lean my hands on my knees. Every breath is like a shard of ice in my throat and sweat cools rapidly on my flanks.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” I admit.

He shakes his head, incredulous at himself. “I wasn’t going to. I wasn’t sure you’d be here, either.”

We straighten up and look at each other. He gives me a lopsided grin that melts my heart, a small puddle of heat in my otherwise frozen body. His deep eyes soften as they look at me, and I know that everything I want is painted across my face. I can’t hide it anymore. I want him so badly my bones ache with it.

“We need to talk,” he says, and I know exactly what’s coming next.

Resigned to my fate, I nod slowly, head bowed. I don’t want to look at him when I hear him say he doesn’t love me.

“Not here, yeah?” He rubs his reddened fingers together. It’s cold, but that feels grimly appropriate. Maybe when he’s finished flaying me open and tearing my heart out I can pack it in the frozen earth to preserve it.

He leads me out of the park and down the street away from our homes. There’s a little café, greasy window fogged with humidity inside. A bell over the door tinkles as we walk in. We order coffee and grab a table in the corner, pushing the laminated menus aside, hands nestled around matching cups. A thin wisp of steam rises from my drink and my blotchy fingers redden and purple as I clasp the hot ceramic, the heat stinging my skin.

I listen in silence as he stops squirming and gives me the speech he’s probably been preparing since I kissed him. Curt’s been good to him; they’ve been together almost a year; he’s got a life and he’s happy with it.

“Do you love him?” I ask, masochist to the end. “Do you love him like you loved me?”

“That wasn’t love, it was a fantasy. I think I loved the idea of you: of us. What we could be.”

I call him on the lie.

“Do you love me?” he challenges, turning the tables. “Are you even capable of love, do you even know what it means?” He glares at me, nostrils flaring.

Am I capable of love? The words wound, but I can’t say they’re unjustified. I know what I was like back then, and I haven’t exactly gone out of my way to convince him I’ve changed. I’ve been too busy hiding behind the man I used to be.

Still, it hurts.

The pain that lanced through me at his words must have shown on my face because instantly he softens, a small notch dimpling his smooth brow and his eyes smudging at the corners. “Shit,” he breathes softly. “That bad, huh?”

I drop my gaze, focusing instead on my trembling hands. I anchor them around my cup with clawed fingers, but don’t dare lift it to my lips. My vision blurs and I blink rapidly, desperately trying to hide from the intensity of those beautiful bronze eyes. I don’t know how to do this, I’ve never had to hide before. Now all I want to do is run away as fast as I can, tend my wounds in private. I wish I could take it all back but it’s too late for that now, Pandora’s Box is open and what spilled out was me: my guts, my soul, my bloody, aching heart.

“Please,” I beg, my lips barely moving as I choke out that tiny, needy word. “It hurts.”

He leans across the table and grips my hand, almost unsettling the cup. I grip back, our knuckles white-on-red. I stare at our clasped fingers, wondering if the gesture is significant.

“I know,” he sobs, before dropping my hand, standing, and fleeing.

***

Two weeks with no contact from him and I’m a wreck, barely human. Outwardly I go through the motions of my sad, empty life, but inside I’m dying. Everywhere I go I see him, a symphony of parts—his hands, his nose or lips or ear. Every time a stranger looks back at me, frowning eyes that aren’t bronze; aren’t bronze at all. I thought I’d plumbed the depths over the years, that the gnawing ache inside me was something I’d learnt to live with, just an old wound that festered and occasionally flared. I know now my suffering hadn’t even begun.

I used to think “lovesick” was just an expression, until I cried so hard I retched. Kneeling on the cold tile floor of my bathroom, tears running down my face and my sides sore from sobbing, watching the remnants of the only pitiful meal I’d eaten in two days float in the bowl before me, I prayed for the first time in my life.

I don’t know who or what I was praying to, but I clasped my hands and I begged for peace. For one day without hurting, for one night of dreamless sleep, for even an hour free from hating myself for everything I’d done wrong. If not peace, then numbness. I longed for shock to take over, to go onto autopilot, to shut down and stop feeling, because feeling hurt too damn much. I’m not some angsty teenager and I wasn’t thriving off this, I was dying—just not quickly enough.

Then the call came.

I noticed the red light blinking on my answer machine when I got in from work on Friday, but it could have been there for days for all I’d paid attention. I hit play, finger hovering over the delete button in case it was a telemarketer—or worse, Mum, wondering why I hadn’t called. Curt’s gruff tones rasped out and I almost hit the button in shock. Scalded, I backed away and listened to the message. A party, he said, for his and Paul’s one-year anniversary. I had to be there, Paul was keen that I go. It was to take place the next night at the usual bar.

I shuffled to the kitchen, found a bottle of vodka, and proceeded to get very, very drunk.

I wake up on Saturday afternoon feeling like something took up roost in my mouth and a brass band is practicing in my head. There’s no way I’m going to that party—no way. How the hell can I sit there and make merry and celebrate the fact that the man I love is in love with someone else? Why the hell would Paul be sadistic enough to put me through it?

I crawl out of bed and stumble through the detritus of the previous night littered across my lounge, wincing in the bright sunlight streaming through the uncovered windows. I stub my toe and send a bottle skidding across the carpet, step carefully over my teenage photo albums, vowing to box them up and ship them to Mum’s as soon as possible, and hobble into the kitchen, where I consume about three gallons of water and my patented cocktail of over the counter painkillers, guaranteed to eliminate even the fiercest hangover.

I drag my sorry, self-pitying arse into the shower and stand limply under the hot jets, letting the water slowly rehydrate and revive me. My stomach growls queasily but holds, no doubt because there’s nothing in it to throw up, the twinge in my abdominal muscles informing me I already took care of that at some unspecified point in the early hours.

When I finally start feeling more human I scour my skin until it’s pink and glowing, wash my hair and brush the fuzz off my teeth. I towel myself roughly, smearing a hand through the condensation fogging the mirror to confirm that yes, I do look like shit warmed up, and pull on a pair of black boxers.

Stepping into my ruined lounge, I note with grim satisfaction the gathering clouds blotting the spring sunshine outside. Melodramatically pleased the weather at least is sympathetic to my plight, I expend the effort to clear up, grimacing as the glass bottles tinkle against each other in the bin. Screw the planet, the world doesn’t care for me so why the hell should I care for it? Recycling is for optimists.

As my pounding headache recedes into a dull background ache, another sensation crowds in, tightening my gut: remorse. I have no right to make Paul feel guilty for loving someone else, I threw that privilege away years ago. When had he ever been anything but happy for me when I ditched him to go get my brains fucked out by some gorgeous, anonymous stranger? At least to my face he’s always been nothing but a caring, supportive friend. Now the tables are turned I seem incapable of being anything other than a jealous, glowering prick. I’m the ugly sister.

No wonder he doesn’t love me anymore. Hell, it’s a miracle he even likes me these days. I’m not even sure I like myself.

I can do this, I tell myself as I open my wardrobe and eye my clothes. If he wants me there then the least I can do is show up. I fight down the rising bile which has nothing to do with the faint remnants of my hangover and select a pair of indigo jeans and my favourite dove-grey shirt, the one that makes my hair look blacker; my eyes bluer. I feel like I’m donning a suit of armour as I dress, numbing myself with the familiar routine. Just another night out.

I exhale deliberately as I study my reflection in the long mirror of the wardrobe door, smoothing my hands over my flat stomach, down the soft, brushed cotton shirt. God, how long has it been since I’ve been laid? I’ve been back here six months, which makes it… eight, no nine, maybe? The last encounter so memorable I have absolutely no recollection of it. After a while, they all faded into one meaningless, hurried fuck.

I don’t know at what point exactly I knew I was sick of it. At first I’d mistaken the hollow feeling inside me for boredom, a craving for more—something different, perhaps. I quickly learnt I wasn’t kinky. My body has no tolerance for pain. I tried groups, role-play, giving and taking. Poppers, paddles, porn… they all left me empty inside. Every experience felt like I was grasping for something, but I never knew what it was I was reaching for. I was a blind man, lost in the darkness.

Then a stranger folded me up in his strong arms and held me.

He hadn’t been anything special. Late thirties, heavyset and hairy like a big ole poppa bear. He’d been propped at a bar, mindless of the buzzing atmosphere around him, steadily drinking himself stupid. Something about him called to me, in the blurred edges of his downturned grey eyes, the way his full lips dipped at the corners. He was so sad, so alone. I reached out to him, wanting to touch the pain I could see so clearly written across his face and ease it, if only for an hour. He looked too strong and sweet to be so vulnerable and so unhappy.

His house was in the suburbs, a neat, boxy little thing. I glanced at the photos on the walls, the dresser, the windowsill, of him and another smiling, burly man, wrapped in each other’s arms. They looked so perfect together, so confident nothing would tear them apart. I didn’t ask and he didn’t tell.

I gave him what he needed and sank bonelessly into his black and tan sheets, letting the sweat cool on my skin before I would have dressed and left. I was too shocked to respond when his thick arm slid around my waist, pulling me into his broad chest. The mat of springy hair rubbed against my frozen back as my limbs locked. His lips grazed my nape, hot breath tickling my shoulder as he spooned against me. “Five minutes?” he asked, the barest hint of a plea in his voice. I tried to relax my neck enough to rest my head fully on the pillow beside his as the calloused pad of his thumb scraped against my belly in rhythmic strokes.

Unconsciously I folded my arm over his and gripped his wrist, holding him in place. He huffed contentedly and I felt his big body relax and settle as mine thrummed with anxiety and a desperate, painful longing. Fresh sweat broke out across my skin and I trembled in his arms as I finally realised what it was I’d been looking for. I tried to lose myself in his comforting embrace, but at every part where our skin connected I was reminded anew that he wasn’t the one that I wanted. Paul was all I could think about, his presence as tangible as if he were stood at the bedside, looking down on me. Pathetic.

From that moment on, I was done. The sweaty nightclub encounters, long since dissatisfying, now made me nauseated and left me emptier than I was before they were even initiated. My need for Paul manifested itself in physical symptoms, every cell in my body screaming for him until I couldn’t take it anymore: I had to come back, I had to find him and I had to find out if there was any hope for me, for us.

And now I know. There isn’t.

***

Only an hour, I promise myself for what must be the hundredth time. Still I hesitate at the bar door before, with an impatient stamp of my foot, I push it open and force myself to walk in.

The party is in a function room at the back and already in full swing. I glance around the sea of people, surprised to realise Paul’s so popular. One table is clearly filled with Curt’s work colleagues, all sat with military bearings in the corner, more subdued than the rest. I recognise some faces, friends and acquaintances from the old days and others I’ve met over the last six months. People wave and beckon me to various seats.

The happy couple are laughing and joking at a table near the head of the room, Curt’s arm slung possessively around the back of Paul’s chair. His gaze slides across to me and his lip curls in a sneer, something smug and unpleasant lurking behind his piercing eyes. God, I hate that man.

I force myself to settle on a table with a group of acquaintances and join in the rowdy conversation, limiting my bitter glances over the happy couple to one every five seconds. If I could just sit and stare, I would. Curt’s eyes frequently meet mine, something cruel hardening their edges, or maybe that’s just my clouded interpretation. Paul loves that man, I remind myself. I have to trust my best friend’s judgment over my own, I have to believe there’s something redeeming about him I simply don’t see.

Don’t want to see.

I force my attention back to my fellow partygoers, picking up the threads of conversations and making a concerted effort to join in. No need to make a show of myself. It’d only embarrass Paul. Paul, who hasn’t so much as glanced in my direction. I doubt he even knows I’m here.

At some unspecified point after my third or fourth drink the music stops and Curt steps onto a small dais at the end of the room, tapping on a microphone. Catcalls and whistles ring out as he waits for everyone’s attention. A speech. Fucking brilliant.

Friendly, eager hands push Paul to his feet and over to his lover. He glances nervously around the room, eyes Curt sidelong, a warning quirking his brow, and looks back at his table again. His gaze slides over me and he freezes, his shoulders stiffening infinitesimally. His nostrils flare. Shit, he had no idea I would be here. What the fuck…? Our eyes snap to Curt, who shoots another dark look in my direction before he turns his attention fully to his partner and begins speaking.

Cold lead sinks down my chest and settles in my gut as the room falls silent. Breaths hitch as Curt tells Paul how much he loves him and everything the last year has meant. As he drops to one knee the bottom falls out of my world. Choking on the too-thick air I stumble to my feet, hands blindly groping the table for support. Glass smashes, the people around me react angrily but I don’t care. I can’t stay, I can’t watch this, see Paul’s face light up, witness Curt place that ring on his finger.

No fucking way.

I don’t care what kind of a scene I make as I flee the room. My only thought is to escape, to run as far and as fast as I can and never look back. “Bastard,” I spit as I crash into the street. Curt set me up. The lousy, rotten, cruel, cruel bastard.

A couple stepping into the bar give me a wide berth as they pass. Rain falls in heavy sheets, quickly soaking me to the skin as I run down the street, mercifully masking my tears from the few people who hurry along, collars drawn up and heads bowed against the elements. I run blindly until I can’t run anymore and then I collapse in a darkened shop doorway, bury my head in my hands, and howl.

God knows what I must look like, a grown man, drenched to the bone, curled in a tight knot on the dirty pavement. I don’t care, can’t care, the only thing I know is that I’m hurting more than I ever thought possible and I want to die. How can I live knowing Paul will never be mine, that my last hope has gone? Why would I want that life? I struggle to catch my breath, gulping for air, the sound rasping against my bruised ribs as pain lances through my chest like I’ve been stabbed.

I clutch at the ache, wanting to tear it out, wanting to rip my shattered heart from my chest and fling it from me. My wet shirt plasters itself to my skin and I half-expect to see the russet bloom of blood soaking through as I look down. How can pain this intense not show a wound?

I sit there, shaking and trembling for what seems like hours, attracting curious, embarrassed glances from every random passerby. The tattered remnants of my ego eventually scrape themselves together and protest against the indignity, the shame, of being seen like this. I clamber weakly to my feet and start on the long walk home.

It seems to take forever before I finally turn into my street and my building rises up before me. My feet are hurting, wet socks rubbing against a pair of shoes still too new and stiff for this kind of rough treatment. Rain continues to lash down, trickling in rivulets through my short hair, dripping from the lobes of my ears and the tip of my nose, mixing with the warmer saltwater that burns my cheeks. I sniff loudly, wiping my nose on my sodden sleeve. When I’d left I hadn’t anticipated walking anywhere and hadn’t even brought a coat with me. In the darkness, my dove-grey shirt looks black. I’m probably going to catch a chill. With any luck, it’ll prove fatal.

Head bowed, I don’t see the shivering figure huddled on my doorstep until I’m almost on top of him. Paul shoots to his feet, as soaked as I am, his T-shirt moulded to the firm contours of his body, his hard nipples dusky shadows beneath the white material. I stare at him in shock.

“Where have you been?” he demands.

I can only gape in amazement, my mouth opening and closing soundlessly, synapses short-circuiting in my brain. “Why are you here?” I eventually manage to blurt.

“I’ve been waiting for you.” His brow pulls low, petulant. “I’ve been here for hours.”

I finally looked at him properly. He’s wrapped his arms around his chest, unconsciously rubbing his hands against his biceps in a vain attempt to warm them. His bottom lip trembles as a shiver overtakes him. The rain has clumped his short hair into thin spikes that lie furrowed across his scalp. His dark lashes are matted. He has never looked more beautiful.

Another violent shiver takes him and I come to my senses and usher him inside. He follows me up the long flights of stairs to the fifth floor, our jeans creaking stiffly at every step, shrunken and tight. I grab a couple of towels from the bathroom, wrapping one over my shoulders and passing him the other. He stands awkwardly in a puddle on my doormat, the towel hanging limp from his hands.

“Get dry,” I say gruffly, heading to my bedroom to find him a change of clothes. I peel off my shirt and fight my way out of the denim that has adhered itself to my thighs, leaving faint bluish stains behind. I pick up the towel I threw on the bed and roughly rub it over my hair and chest, shivering now I realise how cold I’d been.

A sound at the bedroom door makes me whirl around. Paul stands hesitantly on the threshold. My breath catches in my throat as I looked at him. He’s taken off the sodden T-shirt and dried his short hair. My eyes flit over his chest, greedily drinking in the sight of his hard pecs and toned abs, his nipples two tight rosy buds. My mouth waters to taste them.

I turn back to my wardrobe and wrestle for control of my body. My poor, hopeful heart begs me to believe he’s here to do more than berate me for ruining his special night and tell me we can no longer be friends.

“Jack,” he murmurs my name.

“Get dressed.” I throw an old T-shirt and pair of jogging bottoms at him. They might be a bit baggy, but they’ll do.

He catches the clothes and stares at them blankly. I rummage viciously through my wardrobe, looking for something to wear myself. I feel too exposed in only my underwear. It’s bad enough my heart has been stripped naked, without my body being that vulnerable, too. My skin tingles with awareness as he looks at me.

“Jack,” he says, more insistently.

I clench my fists to keep the shudder inside. Even the sound of his voice is too much to bear. Scarlet half-moon crescents mark my palms like stigmata. “Please,” I beg, not sure what I’m even asking.

He pads into the room, his bare feet rasping across the thick pile carpet. He approaches me but I push away from the wardrobe and pace around my bed, putting distance between us before I grab him and do something that he’ll regret. It was a mistake, now we face each other across the intimate expanse of sheets, half-dressed like this is actually leading somewhere.

“Why are you here?” I gasp, my breaths filling the silence that bridges the gap between us.

“For you.”

My knees buckle and I sit heavily, the soft duvet pillowing my fall. I angle my body, turning my back to him, my chin resting on my chest, one leg bouncing uncontrollably. I never knew Paulie could be so cruel.

“Jack, please, look at me.” He sits beside me, close enough I can feel the heat radiating from his body even though our skin doesn’t touch.

My fingers knot in the bedding, knuckles white. I clench my fists so tight my hands shake. I don’t look at him. I can’t.

“Jackie….” His fingers hover tentatively above my arm.

I tip my head to look at him over my shoulder. “What do you mean?” I ask. All I can hear are those two words whispering around my head, opening a floodgate of longing. For you. For you. “Why aren’t you with your fiancé?” I force the word out, my eyes squeezing shut.

I open them in time to see him wince. My gaze drops to his hands: naked fingers splayed across trim thighs. “He’s not my fiancé.”

Okay, that gets my attention. I turn around to face him. He must be able to read everything I’m thinking straight off my face, every needy, desperate, wishful thought. My eyes ask the questions for me.

“I never stopped loving you,” he confesses quietly, vulnerability shining in his wet eyes.

“But Curt—”

“I don’t love Curt. I could never marry him. It was you, Jack, it was always you.”

A cry lodges in my throat.

He leans forward, his body curled towards me, lips bare inches from my chest. My hand reaches out of its own volition and hovers, wanting to cup his face. To soothe away the fear and vulnerability etched across his features. I closed my eyes as my fingertips brush his skin, rubbing over satiny flesh and sharp stubble. For so long I’ve dreamed of his touch, how his hands would feel on my skin, how his lips would feel on mine. I never dared believe it was actually possible.

And yet here I am. With him. I can’t bring myself to open my eyes, fearful I’ll find it’s all just another fantasy.

“Please,” he whispers.

This is definitely not a dream.

I brush my thumb across his parted lips, his hot breath scorching a ragged mark, his open mouth an invitation I can’t ignore. I bow my head, studying his face though my lashes. A small moan escapes him as I touch my lips to the delicate skin stretched taut across his high cheekbones. He tilts his head and I slant my mouth over his, claiming him in a hot, desperate kiss.

He opens for me instantly, crushing his body against mine, nestled under my arm, so pliant, so docile, so perfect I want to die as pure emotion sweeps through me like a force of nature, obliterating everything but the touch and taste of him. A wanting, longing moan rolls in our mouths as we kiss, a sound that could have come from either of us, and we drink it down in equal measure, a part of us both, something denied for far too long.

Kissing Paul is like being kissed for the very first time. The memory of our other kisses—brief, tentative explorations—burns away in the searing heat of his mouth. Our tongues touch and sparks run through me, electric, lighting every nerve like sizzling tapers. The soft, moist heat of his mouth; the gentle curve of the back of his skull as I cradle it; the short scrubbing brush spikes of his hair sliding through my fingers: he overwhelms me, his scent and touch and taste and dear God, this is only our first kiss.

I draw him back to gaze at his flushed cheeks and bruised lips, heavy lids hanging low over sultry bronze eyes, pupils blown. His chest rises and falls in shallow staccato movements and I drop my hand from his face to let my fingers drift over the hard swell of his pecs and the concave hollow in between.

He inhales sharply as I find one tight pink nipple and brush my thumb across it, the small nub instantly hardening, a tiny peak of desire. I kiss his neck, languorously nuzzling and licking the delicate tendons, the strong muscles, the paper-thin skin behind his ear, while I continue to explore every inch of his firm chest and flat stomach.

A shiver runs through him as I scrape my nails against the tight denim encasing his slim thighs and I pause, realising he must be freezing in the sodden material. I need both hands to pop the stiff buttons so I slide to the floor, parting his legs and kneeling at his feet, eyeing him hungrily as the swollen material finally bends to my will and opens.

He leans back, reclining on his elbows and lifting his hips to allow me to rip the saturated second skin from him. I throw the jeans behind me and run my hands up his legs, fingers raking through the fine hairs that dust his shins and thighs, rubbing heat back into his cold, clammy flesh. I reach higher, finding the tight waistband of his damp briefs, beautifully moulded to the contours of his body, and slowly ease them down, unpeeling him.

His cock stirs sluggishly, balls retracted almost into his pelvis. How long had he been sitting in the pouring rain waiting for me? I know Paulie’s a grower but even soft he can do better than this. I decide to warm him the best way I know how, leaning my whole body forward, locking my eyes on his so I can watch every second of his reaction as he reads my intent. I’m not disappointed.

The groan that escapes his tight lips is almost pained as I slip his half-hard dick into my mouth and suck gently, exerting soft pressure along the whole length. He fights to keep his eyes open and trained on me as I slowly slide up and off, then back down again. His cock reacts instantly, hardening and thickening, stretching my lips and filling my throat, giving me more on every downstroke. I glide my hand between his legs to caress his balls, gently massaging them in their pouch, cupping them in my palm. They don’t descend much, but it’s no longer cold keeping them pressed high and tight to his body. He’s shaking, but I don’t think that’s down to the cold anymore, either.

He’s panting hard now, the muscles in his belly contracting rhythmically, a small preview of how his body will respond to mine when I take him. The image of him undulating below me, trembling with desire, stripped back to his barest essences as he comes undone in my arms, makes my heart stutter and my chest palpitate like I’ve run a marathon, and I have to stop and breathe hard to get myself back under control. I’m as excited and nervous as a virgin, but maybe that’s not so far from the truth: I’ve never made love to anyone before. We’ve barely started yet I know what we’re about to do is nothing like anything I’ve ever done in the past. This is different, it’s him, and it means something. It means everything.

I climb between his legs, pushing him back onto the bed, out of the damp patch left by his jeans, until his head touches the pillows and he wraps his arms around me as I settle on top of him. We kiss again, and it’s almost so good that I don’t want to do anything else, I just want to lie in his arms and kiss him and kiss him until the world ends. They can bury me here, put a plaque on the door to commemorate the miracle that happened in this unassuming little room, and pilgrims will travel to light candles and sing songs about us. Maybe I’m the pilgrim: I was the one looking for a miracle and right here, in my own bedroom, I finally found it.

My miracle opens his eyes and smiles at me, hope and longing and naked, shameless love. I smile back, keeping our faces close because I can’t bear to be any farther from him than I am right now. I don’t want to ever let him out of my sight again as long as I live. He slides his hands along my flanks, fingers drifting over the skin at my hips and I quiver, ticklish. His eyes light up at the discovery and he toys with me, teasing, a grin splitting his face from ear to ear. I bury my face in the crook of his neck and he torments me until I beg him to stop. He smoothes his palms over the sensitive skin, soothing the residual tingle, and I fall in love with him all over again.

He slithers his hands into the back of my waistband and pushes my shorts down, both of us wriggling awkwardly to remove the material without getting up. They bunch somewhere around my mid-thighs and I settle back against him, aligning our bodies. We both gasp as we slot together, as his velvety hardness presses against mine. It’s too good, the soft slide of skin as we gently rock our hips, mouths meeting and parting in a slow dance of lips and tongues.

I feel like I’m drowning in him; like my body is slowly melting and pooling and being absorbed, drop by drop; like we’re making something new out of each other, a bit of us both. I no longer know where he ends and I begin, if I’m touching him or he’s touching me, our bodies joined in the most exquisite surrender as I offer him everything that I am, and claim everything that he is. We belong to each other, I know that now, I’ve always known it, and I’m not afraid anymore because I know I’ll never lose him, and he’ll never lose me. This is it, for both of us. This is the rest of forever.

***

Six months later, we’re back in the same bar with our friends. This time, it’s Paulie on the dais with the microphone, Paulie who drops to one knee. And this time, I don’t run out.

###

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About the Author:

Born in Liverpool, Kate Aaron is a bestselling author of the #1 LGBT romances What He Wants, Ace, The Slave, and other critically acclaimed works.

Kate swapped the North West for the Midwest in October 2015 and married award-winning author AJ Rose. Together they plan to take over the world.

Blowing It Series

Blowing It

Balls Up

Dom on the Side

Free Men Series

The Slave

The Soldier

The Master

Puddledown Mysteries

The Dead Past

The Coward’s Way

The Poison Pen

Brian & Lexi Series

Ace

Match

Lost Realm Series

Blood & Ash

Fenton, the Loneliest Vampire

Fire & Ice

Storm & Strike

Standalone Titles

Strait Laced

What He Wants

The Rest of Forever

Four Chances: A Short Story Quartet

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