My statement hangs in the air for a long moment. I’m not sure what answer he was expecting, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t it.
And I’m pretty sure I could never explain to him why it’s so difficult to restrain myself from telling him to pull over so I can touch him again. More than just my hand on his shorts, I mean. We don’t even have to have sex. I just…like the way he feels against my skin, and I like the way I feel when I’m touching him.
The silence is uncomfortable as hell, though. I try not to be conspicuous about watching his face—both because he’s gorgeous and because I’m watching for tells that I’ve overstepped a boundary or something.
Finally, I speak. “I hate blackjack.”
“Uh.” He eyes me. “Okay?”
“I was in the casino to play baccarat and Texas hold ’em. The only reason I was at your table was because of you.”
Adrian’s thin black eyebrows jump, and he glances at me again. “What?”
“I saw you when I was on my way to play poker. And I… I had to stop.” I laugh at my own stupidity and stare out at the desert. “All that booze, and I still couldn’t work up the nerve to flirt with you.”
The muscles in his thigh relax slightly under my hand, the tension beginning to melt away. “Really?”
“Yeah. If anything, I’m even more attracted to you now than I was then because I know you. I mean… I don’t know much about you. We only really met a few days ago, and… You know what I mean.”
Adrian nods wordlessly.
“I do know that you’re willing to take in a complete stranger and help him get back on his feet,” I go on. “And that you’ve never once made me feel like the loser I’ve convinced myself I am. The fact that you strip or fuck for money? I genuinely couldn’t care less.”
He relaxes a little more. “I know. I can tell. You…don’t look at me any differently than you did before you saw me dance.”
Oh, I do. But not the way you think.
“So, does that answer your question? About why I didn’t grab your ass?”
Adrian gives a soft laugh, and he puts his hand over mine on his leg. “Yeah. It does.” He pauses. “For the record, I didn’t think you were like the other guys. Thinking I was a piece of meat. I just get a little more defensive about it than I should.”
“If it were me, I’d probably be a lot more than a little defensive.”
Another quiet laugh, but with a lot less feeling. Staring straight ahead, he takes in a breath. “The guy I was seeing… the dentist. He…” Adrian gnaws his lip. “It wasn’t just that he didn’t want people knowing he was with a stripper. He didn’t want his wife to know.”
I flinch. “Ouch.”
“Yeah. I made the trip out to see him three times, and the last time, his wife came home from out of town a day early.”
“She catch you guys?”
Adrian nods. “And while she was throwing a fit and threatening to destroy him in divorce court, he just kept telling her over and over that I was a hygienist he’d met in school. Like, he could get over being caught in their bed with a man, but admitting he was with a prostitute—one he wasn’t even paying—was too much.” He rolls his eyes. “I left and didn’t look back, and couldn’t give two shits how things played out with his wife. I was just pissed because that was the second time I’d found out I was someone’s side piece.”
“That’s always brutal, isn’t it?”
“You’ve had the pleasure?”
I groan.
“Really?”
“Yep. Before I met my ex, I had a thing going with a colleague who I’d see at conferences and whatnot. Thank God one of my coworkers caught on and kindly pointed out that he was married.”
Adrian grimaces. “Anyone ever tell you not to fish off the company pier?”
I chuckle. “If I hadn’t fished off that pier, I never would’ve done any fishing at all.”
His expression turns serious. He’s quiet long enough to overtake an eighteen wheeler that’s going way too fucking slow, and then he asks, “So you really didn’t have anyone outside of work?”
I shake my head. “Not when I lived and breathed my job, no. And no one ever told me that if the job went away, the people went with it.”
“So you know what not to do the next time around.”
It gives me pause to hear how he says that. How the next time around is a foregone conclusion for him. Like he just knows and accepts that I’m getting my shit together and I’m going to be okay. I wish I had his optimism.
But I just say, “Yeah. I do.”
We reach Los Angeles during peak traffic. Of course, traffic is always hellish in this city, but certain times—like six o’clock on a Friday evening—are worse than others. I offer to switch and drive us through the worst of it, but Adrian handles it just fine. He’s a pretty chill driver. Probably a result of not spending his formative years weaving through gridlock and trying to set other cars on fire with his mind. A traffic jam isn’t nearly as stressful for someone who doesn’t have years of road rage in his bone marrow.
There’s a motel near LAX that’s not one of the glitzy expensive places but also isn’t one of the scary cheap ones in a bad neighborhood. We made a reservation last night through a travel site and got a decent deal on it. I try not to think about where I would’ve stayed if I’d been coming into town in my old life. Granted, I’d have been staying at my own fucking condo in West goddamned Hollywood instead of renting something out by the airport, but if I’d been a hypothetical tourist, I wouldn’t have been staying at a no-name motel, and I sure as shit wouldn’t have downgraded a king room to a queen to save thirteen dollars.
But here we are.
Adrian drops his bag on the floor at his feet and sprawls across the queen size bed. “Oh my God. I’m so glad to be out of the car.”
I put my bag on the dresser beside the TV. “I thought you liked road trips.”
“I do.” He rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. “But there’s still nothing better than getting out of the car at the end of the day.”
“Fair point.” I ease myself down onto the bed beside him and drape an arm over his stomach. “Thank you again for driving. Riding shotgun with you was much more appealing than playing seatmate roulette on a Greyhound.”
Adrian laughs, lowering his hands, and he rests them both on my arm. “Thanks for letting me tag along.”
“Letting you? Please. You offered to help. I’m grateful as fuck, believe me.”
“I know, but…” His smile turns a little shy. Then he slides closer, shifts onto his side, and puts his arm over my waist. “To be perfectly honest? I wanted to spend more time with you.”
“Seriously?”
He nods, a faint blush blooming in his cheeks. “I do want to help. Really. But there might’ve been some selfishness in there too.”
“I won’t tell if you won’t.” I tip up his chin and press a soft kiss to his lips. “Especially since I’m really, really glad you’re here.”
He smiles, then pulls me in for another kiss. Neither of us is in any hurry to pull apart, so we don’t. After a moment, I ease him onto his back, and we both sigh as my hips settle between his legs.
I lean down to kiss his neck, and he murmurs, “If we’re going to do this, I should really grab a shower first.”
“Mmm, a shower sounds like a good idea.” I let my lips skim along the edge of his jaw. “Maybe I should join you.”
“Maybe you should.”
The storage unit door rolls up and clangs into place, echoing through the entire climate-controlled hallway.
Inside are boxes. Stacks and stacks of boxes. Most of them are labeled in black Sharpie—textbooks, clothes-biz, DVDs.
My stomach sinks a little at the sight. This is going to take fucking ages, and there’s no guarantee any of it will bring in any money. Definitely no guarantee it’ll be enough to put a dent in my situation.
Though, if memory serves, there are still some electronics in here. I did take the sixty-inch plasma screen out of the condo before the bank reclaimed the place, didn’t I? And I’m pretty sure there’s a set of my grandma’s china in here somewhere that might be worth a little bit. Isn’t like I’m ever going to use it.
“So.” Adrian scans the boxes. “Where do we start?”
“At the front, I guess.” I pull down one of the DVD boxes. “I don’t imagine these will go very far. Even the Blu-Ray. But I guess it might be worth dragging them into a pawn shop.”
He wrinkles his nose. “You’ll get about a buck for the whole collection from a pawn shop. You’re way better off putting them on eBay.”
“Yeah, except a pawn shop will give me money today. eBay? That might be a week or two.”
“So we’ll take some other stuff to a pawn shop. But these? Definitely couldn’t hurt to list them individually. Even if you get two or three bucks apiece, it’s better than what a pawn shop would give you.”
I give the box the side-eye.
“I have my laptop with me, and my phone takes decent photos,” he says. “I could list them while you’re at your interviews tomorrow.”
My stomach tries to fold in on itself at the thought of those interviews, and I tamp down that particular breed of anxiety. “Okay. Sure. That could work.” God, I’m going to owe him so big after all this is over.
Adrian drags the box out into the hall, sits cross-legged on the floor, and starts going through the DVDs, snapping a photo of each cover as he goes. While he does that, I pull down one of the boxes containing business clothes. Talk about a dodged bullet—during an especially low period, I’d almost donated these or just tossed them out on the curb. Somehow, enough optimism had crept in that I might need to go to a job interview, and I’d kept a few suits, ties, and dress shoes. I’d even had the foresight to keep it at the front of the storage unit just in case I needed to grab a suit on a moment’s notice.
They’re all folded neatly, and if I let them hang in the bathroom after I take a shower later, the steam will sort out any stray wrinkles. I think the room has an iron anyhow. If it doesn’t, maybe housekeeping will let me borrow one.
I take the box down to Adrian’s car and slide it into the backseat. When I come back, he’s reading the blurb on one of the DVD cases.
“You have a lot of horror movies,” he says without looking up.
“Just wait till you find the box with all the war movies. In fact, that might’ve even wound up being two boxes.”
He lifts his gaze, and his eyes are lit up like a kid on Christmas. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. You into that kind of thing?”
“Hell yeah. I snuck into the theater three different times to watch The Hedge.” He chuckles as he puts the DVD—Carrie, I can see now—onto the neat stack beside his hip. “The manager was pissed because she didn’t want kids seeing that one.”
I reach for a box but pause. “Wait, you were a kid when The Hedge came out?”
“Mmhmm.” He glances up from pulling out my copy of Last House on the Left. “I was in sixth grade. So…twelve, I guess?”
I groan and turn to get that other box.
“Why?” The smirk is palpable in his voice. “How old were you?”
“When The Hedge came out?” I put the box down with a heavy thud. “I must’ve been…” I try to put my finger on where that movie was in my timeline, but finally settle on, “Okay, how old are you now?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Then I was twenty-four when it came out.”
“So you’re thirty-nine?”
“Mmhmm. Trust a blackjack dealer to be able to add that in a split second.”
He just laughs. “You don’t look it, by the way.”
“Hmm?” I twist around, and he looks at me through his lashes before shifting his attention to photographing the cover of the DVD in his hand.
“You look younger.” He puts the DVD aside and leans over to get another out. “I would’ve guessed you were… I don’t know, early thirties, tops? After you said you’d been working in your field for sixteen years, I figured you weren’t, but I wouldn’t have guessed otherwise.”
“Oh. So the gray doesn’t give me away?”
“You don’t have that much gray.” He glances at me, then looks again and holds it a moment longer. “Nope.” He shakes his head. “Not much.”
“Well, at least I have something going for me.” I open the next box and find some of my casual clothes. That’s a hard thing to look at. I don’t necessarily remember packing and labeling each box that’s in this storage unit, but I distinctly remember this one. It’s hard to forget a demoralizing moment like realizing you need to box up your everyday clothes because the only place you can keep them is your storage unit.
They gave me a deal on this unit, cutting me a huge discount if I paid for two years upfront. So I had because…why the hell not? I’d had no idea at the time that this would eventually be the only place on earth where I could keep any of my belongings. Or that there’d ever come a day when I’d need to come through those belongings so I might scrounge up enough cash to scrape by for a few weeks until a job came along.
“Max?”
I jump and turn around. “Hmm?”
He watches me, head cocked a little. “You kind of zoned out. You okay?”
“Yeah.” I force a faint smile and then face the box again. “Lot of memories. That’s all.”
He doesn’t press.
“So. How does it look?” I stand in front of the foot of the bed and spread my arms, modeling the navy blue suit.
Adrian’s leaning against the headboard with his laptop on his knees, and he looks at me over the screen. A grin spreads across his lips that makes my heart race. “I like it.” With a wink, he adds, “Shame you don’t want it getting wrinkled.”
I don’t even try to hide the shiver, and he knows it.
Still grinning, he gets back to work.
Clickety-clickety-clickety.
His hands are flying across the keyboard. He’s been listing my DVDs on eBay for the past hour, and he’s found his groove—he’s fast.
While he’s doing that, I’ve gone through the box of business clothes and pulled together a suit for my interview tomorrow. I also found a blue tie to go with it, and I weave around all the other boxes—the half dozen or so we hauled back with us—to the bathroom.
Though my days of wearing shirts and ties feel like eons ago, the muscle memory is still there. I quickly put on the tie, slide the knot to my throat, and adjust the collar. Then I tug at my sleeves, brush off my lapels, and button the coat.
Apparently I’ve lost some weight since the last time I put this thing on. Not just from being on the street, either. The waistband on the trousers is loose, and the jacket doesn’t sit quite right. Nothing a belt can’t help in the short term and a tailor can’t fix in the long run, but it feels odd. This is a suit I used to wear like a second skin. And now it doesn’t feel right.
I look myself up and down in the mirror. When I meet my own eyes, the tie seems to be getting tighter even though my hands aren’t on it. I tug at the knot, but the air still seems thicker than it should be.
Heart thumping, I rest my hands on the counter’s cool edge and hold my own gaze.
I don’t know who I am anymore.
I’m looking at a man I saw every morning and every evening for sixteen years. Suit and tie and confidence. That guy’s not quite right against the background of a butterscotch-colored shower curtain and the chipped mint green tile wall under stark fluorescent lights, but he’s me.
He was me.
The last time I saw this face was in a hotel bathroom of an entirely different caliber. I was in my gray suit that night, still not entirely sure why I needed to be found dressed like that, but unconsciously insistent that it was the right way to look. When I’d looked at myself, I’d seen this guy—the advertising executive who’d lost his way and would leave precisely nothing behind except a hard drive full of ad campaigns and travel invoices at a firm who’d probably already forgotten his name.
I swallow, my throat pushing against the loosened tie. I swear I can taste the bitterness of the pills, and at the same time, the sour acid after I’d heaved them up.
The moment between swallowing the pills and throwing them back up isn’t one I’ve thought about until now. It’s not that I’ve forgotten it. Blocked it out, maybe. Ignored it. Pretended it was a dream or something I saw in a movie.
But no, it was real.
I took the pills too fast, and one stuck itself to the back of my throat. The bitterness and the burn were too unpleasant to ignore, even though I knew it would be over soon, and I went into the bathroom for some more water to wash it down.
One gulp of water dislodged the stupid pill.
Then I looked at myself like I’m doing now.
And I froze.
This was all that would be left of me. A suited and booted failure who couldn’t even say “I lost my job, but at least I…” because there was nothing to finish that sentence. At least I, what? Fucked a few guys who were distant memories now? Accumulated a bunch of crap that would all be auctioned off because I didn’t have one single person to leave anything to in the will I never got around to writing anyway?
In the space of seconds, my determination to see things through didn’t go away. Instead, it was eclipsed by the fierce and terrified need to throw the freight train into reverse.
I’d spun, dropped to my knees, and jammed my fingers down my throat until I was absolutely sure my stomach had nothing left to throw up.
In the present, my knees start shaking. The memory is so visceral, I steal a glance toward the toilet to make absolutely sure I know how far I need to go to if I suddenly need to puke. I grip the counter’s edge, which is warm and damp from my hands.
Less than two weeks ago, I had, for all intents and purposes, pulled the trigger.
I should be dead.
My reflection blurs. I swipe at my eyes, too overwhelmed by too many emotions to give even one of them a name. It’s that feeling like I’ve nearly been in a catastrophic car crash and missed disaster by the skin of my teeth. That shaky, dizzy, queasy feeling of my heart pounding faster than it should be able to as I nose off the road and try to take stock of what happened and how in the world I survived. A million emotions, all at once, heightened by the disbelief that I’m alive to experience them.
“Hey, do you know if you have the first volume of—” Adrian stops speaking the instant he appears in the doorway, a DVD in hand. His gaze is locked on me. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I wipe my eyes again, not that it helps. And my hand is shaking, and I’m so obviously not okay, but I silently plead with him to take my word for it.
He sets the DVD on the counter and slips an arm around me. Without really thinking, I put mine around his shoulders, and he just fits so perfectly against me. Once we’re settled into a gentle, foundation-rattling embrace, he asks, “What’s wrong?”
I squeeze my eyes shut, and the warm trickle down my cheek has got to be a dead giveaway. Still, I try to tell myself he might not have seen it.
No such luck—he gently wipes it away.
I catch his wrist and press a kiss to his palm. His fingers relax into a caress, and even after I let go, he keeps his hand there.
Finally, I open my eyes and look at us in the mirror. “I was just thinking. About what I almost did in Vegas.”
He tenses so subtly, I wouldn’t have noticed if he weren’t fitted against me like this. “Killing yourself, you mean?”
It’s my turn to tense. “Yeah.” I swallow the lump in my throat and hold Adrian close to my chest. “It’s just…kind of terrifying to think how close I came to going through with it.”
He holds on a little tighter too. For a while, neither of us speaks. He doesn’t ask for gory details or explanations. He’s just here, as if—for the second time—he knows I need him right now.
Eventually, he whispers, “I’m not sure how much it helps, but…I’m really glad you didn’t.”
I press a kiss to his forehead. “Me too.”
Adrian lifts his chin, and our eyes meet. I brush a few strands of black hair out of his face so I can see his beautiful blue eyes. He’s not wearing makeup this time, but the blue is still vivid as ever.
I don’t think you will ever understand how close I came to missing this.
And I don’t want to break down and lose it. Not now. He’s here, gazing up at me like there’s nowhere else in the world he wants to be, and there’s nowhere else I want to be either. I’m just grateful beyond belief that I’m here at all.
So I slide my hand into his hair and kiss him.
Adrian melts against me, lips parting so one of us—I’m not even sure who—can deepen the kiss. He doesn’t taste bitter or sour. He just tastes like him. There’s a hint of citrus from the Mountain Dew he was drinking earlier, but even that is unmistakably Adrian because I was there when he was drinking it. I never liked that stuff, but damn if I’m not getting high off it this time because Adrian.
He breaks the kiss and cradles my face. Apparently another tear got loose, and he wipes it away before he presses another kiss—soft, tender, and brief—to my lips.
When our eyes meet again, he says, “Seeing you like this doesn’t turn me on or anything, but…” He swallows. “I kind of want to take you into the other room. Like now.” The sudden intensity in his eyes brings goose bumps to life all over me.
“Why’s that?”
He strokes my cheek with the pad of his thumb. “So we can fuck until you understand how much I want you to stay alive.”