-Chapter 18-
And what I say is not a matter of fact
I wish that I could take it all back
But I said that
And I wish I could take it all back
And I need some sympathy here
And I want a love to call my own
I want to take you in the back seat now
And slowly drive you home
—Did I Say That?, Meat Loaf
Terri's fingers snapped too close to Adam's face and he too snapped—back to the present with a jump—and finally looked at her. His eyes, wider than normal with how close her face was to his. The sounds of two men fucking in the other stall ricocheted through his mind. “He's popular with the mature... That will cost you a lot.” The memory was brief and simple, yet it lingered for the longest moment. What other interpretation was there for what they said?
A deep frown that aged him a few years told her to mind his personal space. She sat and folded arms on her chest with the look I've-seen-you-piss-your-pants-little-brat. She couldn't possibly understand. Not without living through it. She wasn't there. She didn't see all that he saw, or heard what he heard. Laser vision didn't work here. Still, her reasoning floated around his head.
Sometimes he got it, like it was the most logical thing in the world. And he'd say to himself that, maybe, the two men in the stall could be talking about someone else. They didn't mention a name, and Adam didn't stay at the bar long enough to see Kaiden finish his dance. Or they were, like the dirty dogs they showed to be, just voicing out a fantasy of their own.
His mouth opened a sliver, with the beginnings of the words that formed in his mouth. Words that were difficult to voice out—and hard to swallow.
What if he doesn't sell sex? What if...I committed an injustice?
The possibility poked at his chest. Like a guilt and a hurt mixed together. He chose to think his way out of those feelings, and he did successfully for brief moments. All things that were said, all things he remembered, he laid out to strengthen his defense case. In his mind, the skillful dancer peeled off piece after piece of clothing, swaying the right way to have all those men on edge, to drive them crazy. Every single one in the crowd salivating like beasts, lusting to be on him and in him. Crouching and ready to pounce if the beautiful creature got close enough.
But wasn't Adam the same? Didn't he feel it too, strong in his core like it was in his nature? And then he was the one walking out the club hand-in-hand with the young man, having made a juicy offer no slut could resist. “I'm sorry, but business is closed tonight...” And the poke came back every time. No matter how well he convinced himself that his logic held strong and solid, when in reality it was a colander with no more holes that could fit.
He wouldn't just give in anyway.
“I don't remember. It's been a month. You can't expect me to remember every little detail.”
She arched an eyebrow and pursed her lips. Nodded a bit. “True.” Propped her face on index finger and thumb. “But if you had asked him directly, you'd remember his answer for sure.”
He sighed heavy at her and averted his gaze. Keep rubbing that in my face. “Why wouldn't he say anything, then?” It doesn't make any sense. “If he wasn't like that, why didn't he say so from the start?”
“Because you're one hot piece of meat and gorgeous as fuck.” Matter-of-fact, actually. “Knowing you, I bet you made a macho display, with the 'I'm not a fucking faggot' billboard on your big forehead. Some men have a woman's intuition. Or just plain intuition, period. Maybe he knew you wouldn't have gone with him if you didn't have a boner as an excuse?”
Bluntness aside, his heart skipped a beat and an invisible smile danced along his jaw. If Kaiden didn't go with him for the money, then that meant he felt an attraction toward Adam. That was her logic, not his. “Man, I love your tongue. I could kiss you all night long if you let me.” He wanted to smile for some reason. It was so damn easy to dive in and think of all the things that would have been different if what she said were the truth. The smile didn't make it to his lips. So many questions. No answers.
Puzzle pieces started to fall in place, whether he liked it or not. Now the look of loss on Kaiden's face, as he ran his thumb through the money, had a meaning. The folded clothes. The envelope on top. All the little things that Adam had dismissed as unimportant or was too blind to see, flashed in an endless parade.
Kaiden didn't demand to be paid up front. He didn't make sure Adam could pay him the amount he offered. Didn't mention the money at all. Didn't snatch the envelope from Adam. Adam almost forced it in his hand. What once he took as a measured reaction of surprise for all that cash, he understood now as measured reaction to being insulted by having a hefty price tag put on that surreal thing they had together in that hotel room, a mile above ground level.
Where the fuck did I have my eyes on all this time?
In that moment he flew back in time. He let the Benjamins lay there, hidden and forgotten. He didn't interrupt their kiss, but took charge and did all he wanted. All the fantasies that, he accepted it or not, still kept him up at night. And Kaiden stayed. And they spent hours just with each other, and Adam knew, instead of wonder, how it all felt to him. Deep down he knew that's how it went, or how he had wanted it to be.
But that's not how it went the first time around. And It'd never. Because time doesn't run backward no matter how big he screwed up. In the end, Adam would have given Kaiden the money anyway. He'd have put distance, made it impersonal. Driven the smile out of those hazel eyes, and end up here just the same.
Adam's frown deepened. The sharp ache, an ember that ate around the hole growing out on his chest. Terri lifted her hands defensively, as if his own laser eyes could sear a curse on her skin. Her voice reached him like a distant echo. “I'm just saying. Think about it, hun. Would you have asked him to go with you if it meant that you liked him? And weren't just looking for a wild, all-night-long fuck?” She looked up and tipped her head in thought, and tapped a finger to her lips. “Well, you didn't have to fan out money for a one night stand.” She sat back and crossed her arms on her chest again. “No way around it...you're still an asshole.”
He had to snigger at her freedom to call him names, but any gesture of his lacked humor. “That sounds too convoluted. I doubt all that passed through his mind.” But what about all that passed through your mind?
Would he have made the move—whore or not? If Terri was right about that... It would have been another man whom Kaiden walked out the club hand-in-hand with that night, because Adam wouldn't have closed the distance if it meant that he liked Kaiden. Kaiden wouldn't have had difficulty finding company. Company that was most surely openly gay, like he was, and would have treated him like an equal, not like an experiment.
After knowing Kaiden's touch—the sweet scent that still lingered in his nose, and the softness and the care of the young man's hands on his skin—there was no way for Adam to think with a clean head.
I would have never met him.
Right now he wouldn't know how Kaiden's skin felt under his hand, his hot kisses scorching Adam's skin, or the contradictory way that his body became a live wire, while his heart stopped beating at the young man's presence. The velvet lining inside Kaiden's body would be a memory in some other guy's mind. None of that would be a part of Adam's memories now. And that, somehow, didn't sit right.
She shrugged. “What the hell do I know? I guess you'll have to go ask him directly.” She put her hand on his again and made him open it and hold hers back. Her warm smile, a recognition that she was getting to him. “That is, if you care to know.”
Did he care to know? He met her gaze and her eyes reflected back what she saw in his eyes: “Yes, you care.”
No, I don't.
He looked away and released her hand. “Terri, you're not looking at the real problem here. Where does the STD stand in your logic? I mean, ok, lets pretend he doesn't charge for it. He still went with me, like he would have gone with anyone else. He still had unprotected sex with me, like he surely did with others. And he got me infected.”
“You can't know that for sure.”
“Yes, I can! Fuck, Terri. How else can you explain it? I have sex with this guy who comes with me after I offer him a good amount of cash, then a month later I almost have a heart attack when the doctor says I tested positive. I didn't even hear to what until half an hour later because I went crazy on his furniture. I kind of expected it. Kaiden is the only one, the—only—one, I did without a condom.”
“So you know his name.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Seriously, Adam.” She shook her head and looked at him like a mother does to her child after he came back with a bad grade on a subject she knows he excelled at. “It's so clear to me. How can you not see it? You can get syphilis from oral sex too. Or did you wear a condom every time all your conquests blew you? Even if you did, even with a condom, the sore could have been on the skin that came in contact with the parts that weren't covered by the rubber. What if you got it before you even met him?” She turned his face to her. “Okay, lets say he is a dirty slut like you say. You still can't be so quick to put the blame on another, when you're not exactly a saint yourself.”
* * *
It wasn't like he needed a lecture on safe sex one-oh-one. Or that he didn't know all of those things she lectured him with. But there it was, the slap that he needed and came here to get. He wouldn't put it that way, or admit to it. Terri would have the time of her life if he did. “I can slap you some more if you want,” she'd surely say.
But truth is truth.
He had no more arguments to refute. His tongue was tied into a knot. Mute. Disarmed. Unmasked. He hunched over the table and covered his head with his arms to contemplate how much of an ass he had been. In his mind he repeated the words a million times—I'm sorry—to Terri, and ten times more to Kaiden. It hurt to remember his expression right before he kicked Adam out the hospital room. Back there, Adam didn't know he was going to regret his own words this much.
“Sorry. I didn't mean to blurt it out so harsh.” Her hand caressed his back, and it gave him comfort as well as deepened the feeling of loss. “I meant it, though.” I know. “You know I'll always take your side, but not only to tell you how awesome you are. I'll tell you when you're wrong too.”
Most of the things that troubled him weren't any clearer now than they were before. But his perspective had shifted. He will walk out this house having told someone all his dark little secrets. When he got there, part of him had wanted to talk to someone who would listen to him, the other part had wanted that someone to listen to the real meaning behind his words...to the things what scared him to the bones and required her super powers to bring out. And that's exactly what she did.
He admitted with his own mouth that he felt attraction to men since he was a kid. Terri knew, always, and was probably the only person who'd tell him to go for it. He didn't know how deep this attraction was. And she, shone the light that he needed in order to see.
She must have figured it out—because he didn't say it—that no man or woman had ever made him so hard, and so thirsty with need like Kaiden did, with next to no effort. She'd probably not use those exact terms, but she did figure it out anyway. He didn't know why Kaiden affected him so much deep inside. But in talking to her, he made a few discoveries that he wouldn't have otherwise. Kaiden had affected him from the moment he waved his hand to the audience, that night they met. With a hand tucked in his back pocket, aviator sunglasses on, and a swing of his head to move the hair away. Before the notion of “whore” came to Adam's mind, Kaiden had captured his gaze, and downstairs was not the only place that felt it.
Adam also made another simple discovery that changed everything. The scariest of all. He did care to know, and he wanted to know right now.