“That the friendship comes first. He and I had been attracted to each other for years, but I don’t think either of us would’ve ever done something about it.” I pause and choke on something too honest. “Well, I know he wouldn’t have.”
“So, what changed?”
“Trivia night and a motorcycle wreck.”
Beau hums thoughtfully. “So trivia’s the gettin’ to know each other better that you mentioned a minute ago, and then what—the night you thought he might be concussed, you slept with him?”
I finally turn at that, though he doesn’t give me much room for it, and I don’t expect him to. It’s familiar, his presence here, and for a moment, I let myself miss what we could’ve had if I’d been cut out for commitment. I let myself envy what he’s found so completely with somebody else. It’s been close to a year since Beau and Adrian got together, and I haven’t taken the time to care that it means this kind of closeness doesn’t belong to us anymore, but I do now. I hold on to his flannel and I look up at him and I fuckingcare.
He lifts his huge hand to my cheek, and I lean into the tenderness he offers because he cares, too. His thumb sweeps over my lips, and I stare at his before I remind myself to find his big brown eyes. I’m on my tiptoes before I really think about it, just trying to get closer or crawl inside the safety of his presence entirely. Then I drop back down because I’m exactly the kind of man who’d ruin everything with a single kiss, but Beau’s not.
The fact that he hasn’t let go makes me wonder whether he has a different kind of faith in me.
“I promised him we’d be friends.”
“So you said,” Beau murmurs, only moving to comb his strong fingers through my messy hair. “Don’t suppose you alsopromised to stop bangin’ random bargoers, hmmm? We all heard what Riley said about the keg room.”
My eyes fall shut. Whether it’s Beau’s touch or his words making me hide, I don’t know, but I’m slow to open them again. “I haven’t said anything to him about that.”
“What about WeHo hookups? Old friends in your phone?”
“Haven’t said anything to him about that, either.”
“But when did you stop fuckin’ ‘em?”
My head drops to his chest and I silently beg Beau to wrap his arms around me. He does, of course, Riley probably the only person he doesn’t regularly overwhelm with physical affection. His hand is still in my hair, and I let his heartbeat fill the time between his question and the answer I utterly fail to deliver.
“Jesus Christ, Darren,” he whispers. “You stopped a long time ago.”
“It doesn’t matter, babe.”
“You’ve gotta tell Jake. You’ve gotta tell him you’re in love with him.”
I look up again to stare into the endless warmth in Beau’s eyes. “It. Doesn’t. Matter. That’s not how friends with benefitsworks. The sex is amazing. Spending time with him without sex is amazing. None of that needs to get fucked up just because I got stupid.”
“So, you’re just gonna stay where you are and deal with the pain?”
“It’s better than breaking a promise to the man I love, isn’t it?”
The only other man I’ve loved flinches—I can feel itfrom head to toe—and then he grabs my chin and presses his thumb to my lips one more time, like maybe he can stop me from saying another stupid thing. It remains too intimate for what we are now, but for better or worse, I think it’s what’s left of everything we’ve been. My chest rises with the awareness of the mistakes I still have time to make, then falls with the certainty that I won’t make them, my mostly bare body meaning nothing to him when he has someone else at home.
“You pushed me away,” he says after another few seconds.
“Yeah.”
“You’re rarely close enough to anyone else to have to do that much. You make sure you can just leave.”
“And I do.”
Beau nods. Takes a deep breath. Smiles. “Jake’s gonna figure it out, even if you keep your dumb mouth shut. But here’s the funniest fuckin’ thing about it—I think he’s gonna stay where he is, too.”
When I hear from Jake later that afternoon, his texts have nothing to do with our friendship or anything else we’ve been up to. Instead, he apologizes for any trouble he might have caused with my father and asks me whether V, Riley, and I made a decision about which band to hire.
I suppose I could’ve told him about it if we’d stopped to talkwhile he was here, but there’s even more to say now. V had sent an update somewhere around the time I was eating a breakfast burrito or almost kissing my ex-husband, and Supine will officially start playing at Trailhead in mid-February.
Just like karaoke and trivia night, live music will be a weekly thing, but there will be a small cover charge for anyone arriving after a certain time. The hope is that some people will start drinking earlier and stay for the band, and others will pay the money and offset the bar’s costs. Adrian has already agreed to help me with the social media hype and general marketing, and I’m guessing he’ll take pictures of Supine for us, even if we don't ask.
V seems hopeful about everything. Riley seems—actually, I can’t quite tell how Riley feels. They were worried about me when they shouldn’t have been, but I remember the pressure of their hand on my shoulder, and I’ll have to remember to worry about them, too.