Chapter Eighteen

Julian

Maya was already at the table when Julian arrived, two menus untouched in front of her, sunglasses pushed up into her hair even though they were sitting inside. She had that particular look she got when she’d been holding something in all morning and was about thirty seconds from letting it out whether or not anyone asked.

“Okay,” she said, before he’d even sat down. “I need to vent, and then I promise I’ll ask about your disaster, because I know you have one. You always have one lately.”

“Charming greeting.” Julian slid into the booth across from her, dropping his bag beside him. “Go ahead. Vent.”

Maya had been his closest friend since college. Since a mandatory freshman class had somehow turned into years of unending late night phone calls venting to each other about anything, terrible foods and apartments and enough shared trauma bonding that Julain genuinely wasn’t sure who he’d have been without her in his life. She worked for nonprofit fundraising meaning she mostly spent her days sucking up to rich people, charming them relentlessly for causes she actually believes in.

Everything in her life runs smoothly except for one blind spot and it has a name.

“It’s Theo”, she said, already confirming it before Julian had to ask. “He texted me yesterday, at 1am she looked at the ceiling. “ He wanted  to know if I was awake. I was, obviously,  because  I’m always awake when he decides he wants to talk to me, which is somehow only ever at one in the morning or when he’s had a bad day and needs someone to make him feel better about it.”

“And you went.”

“He said he missed me”. She rubbed her hands over her face. “We talked for hours. We  had sex, we made love, we fucked. It was epic Julian We laughed so hard I cried. He said I was the only person who actually understood him.” She dropped her hands, and her expression cracked slightly .  “And then, this morning, out of nowhere, he asked, “Do you ever think we’ll end up attending each other’s weddings?”

“That’s”… He didn’t know what to say. 

“I know how it sounds.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“You were absolutely going to say something, you get this face.” She pointed at him. “This face. The concerned-friend 's face.”

“What do you even respond to that?”he asked dumbfounded. Julian held up his hands in surrender.. He’d watched this particular cycle play out for almost a year now, Theo pulling Maya close with  phone calls and confessions and intimacy  that felt like love and then saying or doing the most diabolical stuff the next moment, never quite committing to anything that would require him to say what they actually were to each other. Maya was smart. Maya gave excellent advice to literally everyone else in her life. And Maya was, when it came to Theo, apparently willing to hold a phone all night waiting for someone who couldn’t be bothered to define the relationship in the morning.

I love him,” Maya said quietly, which was, for her, an enormous admission. “That’s the stupid part. I actually love him, and some days it feels like he loves me back so much it’s terrifying, and then some days I don’t exist to him at all, and I can’t figure out which version is real. Maybe they’re both real. Maybe that’s just what he is.”

“Or maybe, Julian started gently taking both her hands in his. “It’s easier to be vulnerable and give someone everything they want at 2am in the dark where there’s no accountability attached to it.

It cost him so much to say it in daylight because it means something.

Maya looked at him for a long time and cracked a smile. “That’s annoyingly clever for a man whose romantic life is currently a house on fire.

“What can I say, I contain…”

“You contain a mess," she interrupted, stealing a fry off his plate. Speaking of. Tell me about the mess, all of it.”

He sobered up immediately.

He gave her the abbreviated version. The almost kiss, Preston’s interruption, the way Ethan acted this morning and the words that had landed like something physical. Maya’s expression shifted from amused to genuinely angry somewhere around  “whatever fantasy you’ve built.”

“He said that to you?”

“Word for word.”

“I will fly to Manhattan and fight a billionaire.”

“You live in Manhattan.”

“I will fight him locally, then. Immediately.” She shook her head, some of the anger settling into something softer, more concerned. “Julian. I say this with love. You have now had two men in one week make you feel like garbage for wanting something honest. That’s not a coincidence, that’s a pattern, and I need you to notice it before it becomes a personality trait.”

“Richard didn’t make me feel like garbage.”

“Richard’s the one you're having dinner with again tonight?”

Julian felt his face warm slightly. “Yes.”

Maya’s eyebrows climbed. “You're blushing”

“No I'm not” he slapped his cheeks.

“It's okay you know” She reaches across the table and squeezes his hand, more gently than the teasing a moment ago. “I say this with love, Jules. You deserve to go to dinner tonight and just be there. 

“I know.”

“Do you, though?”

He doesn’t have an answer for that, and Maya, mercifully, lets it go, steering them toward safer things, her sister’s baby shower, a work gala she’s dreading, whether the restaurant is going to bring more bread if they ask nicely. By the time they split the check and hug goodbye on the sidewalk, Julian feels  lighter than he did walking in, which is, he supposes, most of what lunch with Maya is actually for.

—

Dinner with Richard is easy, the way it always is with him. Low candlelight, conversations that feel light, none of the electric, unstable tension that seems to follow Julian everywhere he goes with Ethan. Richard asks about his week and actually means it, and Julian, against his better judgment, gives a vague run down of his work and how far he's going with the manuscript, excluding the whole mess with Ethan.

Their conversation drifted from work to sweet nothings. He truly felt better with Richard present.

They walk back to Richard’s apartment afterward,  Julian insisting. The night is mild, the city humming its usual  hum around them. Inside, the windows hold the skyline in long glittering strips, and Richard pours them each a drink neither of them finishes, and somewhere between the second unfinished drink and the low music he puts on without asking, he leans in..

This time, Julian doesn’t stop it.

Their mouths met without any urgency,  soft, exploratory, tasting of sweet red wine and each other. Richard kissed like he had all night, like there was nowhere else to be.

They moved to the bedroom without speaking. Richard undressed him piece by piece, folding each garment and setting it on the chair. Julian’s skin prickled under the attention from the simple fact of being handled with care. When Richard’s shirt came off, Julian reached out, palms sliding over the older man’s chest, feeling the steady beat beneath.

Richard guided him onto the bed, following him down. Their bodies aligned naturally, Richard’s weight a sweet anchor. He kissed Julian more deeply now, still taking his time. He kissed Julian’s throat, the hollow of his collarbone, the line of his sternum. Julian’s fingers threaded through Richard’s hair, holding when his hot mouth lapped at his stiff nipple. He didn't know when he moaned out loud shamelessly. That gave Richard the go ahead. He sucked, licked, kissed and ravished both his nipples making Julian almost jump off the bed. Every touch was deliberate, it made Julian dizzy with  lust.

Richard’s hand finally  wrapped around Julian’s cock, stroking him with slow pressure. Julian’s hips lifted into the touch without thought, his breath catching as Richard’s thumb circled the head, spreading the bead of precum. Julian reached between them, fingers closing around Richard’s thick shaft, feeling it pulse hot and heavy in his palm. They stroked each other kissing sloppily, the rhythm building gradually, each man focused on the other’s pleasure.

At some point Richard reached over for the lube and condom on the nightstand, slicing his fingers before pressing one gently against Julian’s hole. He worked it inside with patience, adding a second finger when Julian relaxed around him, scissoring slowly to stretch him open. Julian’s cock twitched against his stomach, leaking steadily as Richard’s fingers found that spot inside him that made his thighs tremble.

When Richard finally positioned himself between Julian’s spread legs, the blunt head of his cock pressed against Julian’s entrance. He pushed in gradually, the thick shaft stretching Julian’s rim, filling him inch by inch. Julian’s breath came in short gasps as Richard bottomed out, his cock buried deep. They stayed like that for a moment, Richard’s weight pressing Julian into the mattress, their bodies joined completely.

Richard began to move with long, rolling thrusts, his cock sliding in and out of Julian’s tight heat. Each stroke dragged against Julian’s prostate, sending sparks of pleasure through his body. Julian’s legs wrapped around Richard’s waist, pulling him deeper, their bodies moving together in perfect rhythm. Richard’s hand found Julian’s cock again, stroking him in time with his thrusts, the dual sensation building toward something intense.

Julian came first with a loud moan, his cock pulsing in Richard’s grip as ropes of cum painted his stomach and chest. His ass clenched around Richard’s shaft, the rhythmic contractions pulling the older man over the edge. Richard buried himself deep as he came, filling the condom with hot spurts of cum, his face pressed to Julian’s shoulder as he shuddered through his release.

Richard stayed inside him for a moment, then eased out carefully. He kissed Julian slowly for a moment, sharing every breath. After some time, Richard cleaned them both with a warm cloth from the bathroom. He pulled the covers up and settled beside Julian.

Later, when Julian rests his head against Richard’s shoulder, and Richard’s fingers tracing an idle, absent pattern against his arm, some small, stubborn part of Julian’s mind drifts toward a different office, a different pair of hands, a moment that was interrupted before it ever got the chance to become anything at all. He hates that part of himself a little, lying there. He hates that good, easy, uncomplicated things like this with Richard  apparently aren’t enough to quiet it.

This is what I actually want, he tells himself, firmly, the way he’s been telling himself all week. This. Simple. No door slamming in his face.

He almost believes it.

Richard stirs beside him sometime later, propping himself up on one elbow, studying Julian’s face in the low light with an expression that’s, for once, entirely serious.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Mm.”

“I like you, Julian. More than I probably should, given how new this is. I’d like to find out what happens if we stop pretending we’re just being friendly. Would you want to actually do this? I mean actually be with me. He says it plainly, without the usual charm wrapped around it, which somehow makes it land harder.

Julian’s chest tightens, a complicated knot of gratitude and guilt and something he doesn’t have a clean name for. Richard is offering him exactly what he told Maya he wanted over lunch, something honest, something uncomplicated.

He should say yes.

“I want to say yes,” Julian says, and means it, mostly.

“But?”

He turns his head, meeting Richard’s eyes properly. “You deserve someone who isn’t doing math in his head while you’re asking him something like this.”

Richard studies him for a moment, something knowing and a little sad passing behind his expression, and then he smiles, easy again, and reaches over to brush a strand of hair off Julian’s forehead. “Take your minute,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere.

Julian lets himself be pulled back against his shoulder, and lies there a long time after Richard’s breathing evens out into sleep, staring at the same stripe of city light on the ceiling, turning the question over and over without landing anywhere close to an answer.