Page 26 of Watch Me

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David, my best friend for almost forty years, can read me like a book.

It’s not just that he knows me so well. He’s shrewd. He didn’t build his empire simply by being a sex-loving guy who’s up for anything. He built it on sharp business acumen, knowing how to read people and understand what they want, and his perceptive relationships with his investors.

That’s why my guard goes up the next day when he asks me if my son’s found out I’m in love with his girlfriend yet. There’s no hiding anything from David.

“Well, ah…” I scratch the back of my neck and search for my words. “Actually, Tate’s moved out.”

His mouth drops open in a pantomime of shock. “And the girl?” His dancing eyes tell me he’s already guessing at the answer.

“Still here, but,” I add quickly, “it’s his fault.”

I fill him in on the spectacle of Tate’s cheating and explain that I don’t think she should have to leave because of Tate’s actions—and leave it there for now.

“Dude.” He eyes me with glib, suspicious knowing.

“Yeah.” I nod, pretending I don’t notice the way he’s looking at me like he’s inviting me to confess. “It’s complicated.”

It’s a beautiful summer night, and we’re sitting on my back deck drinking beer. David takes a long sip of his, looking up at the sky with that smile still tugging at the corner of his mouth, and I know he’s pretending to bite his tongue when he isn’t going to. I pretend I don’t notice and look up at the sky too, looking for the faded pinpoints of stars, here and there, so difficult to see against the glow of the city lights.

Finally, David puts his bottle down, rests an elbow on the table, and points a finger at me.

“You are fucking her.”

I’m shocked to hear the words come out of his mouth and draw my chin back in feigned outrage, but the mere suggestion sends blood rushing to my dick, just like every thought about Zoë seems to make me hard. I draw my brows together in a frown as if I disapprove of what he’s implying and say severely, “For God’s sake, David, she’s Tate’s girlfriend.”

My friend knows me too well to be fooled by my show of indignation. “Ex-girlfriend.”

I shake my head. “Christ.”

Still smiling, he takes another sip of his drink and says nothing.

“Oh, fuck off, David.”

“You are going to fuck her,” he predicts with absolute certainty. “And that,” he says, grinning widely, “is fucked up.”

It’s hard to hide the truth from someone who knows you better than you know yourself. If there’s anyone I can tell about my feelings for Zoë, it’s David. I know he won’t judge me. I’m only reluctant because once I tell him, it’s out there—it’s real. But there’s no denying it anymore, anyway. It’s already real.

“I can’t,” I confess quietly.

For once, he doesn’t speak. He waits for me to explain myself.

Of all the things that have bonded David and me—an interest in running, a phase of drinking craft beer, a love of science fiction movies—the deepest bond is our shared interest in kink and sexuality.

We can’t talk about these things with our group of friends, who find the fact that David owns a sex club titillating enough on its own.

But certain experiences have taught us that we can be fully open with each other in this arena—or maybe, considering the way David lives his life, it’s only me who had to learn that I could trust David with the secrets of my sexuality. He doesn’t make any secret about his own.

It started when we were twenty, drinking in a dorm room with the one girl we both liked. She drunkenly stated that she wanted to fuck both of us, there and then, and it didn’t take much convincing for us to agree. The fact that it turned me on to watch David fuck her more than the feel of her mouth around my dick confused me, but David was so cool about it the next day. There was no discomfort or shame.

“We should do that again,” I remember him saying.

And I wholeheartedly agreed.

It became easy for us to talk about sex and proclivities. The deeper my kinks went, the more interested he was—as if he were a sociologist, feverishly logging a mental list of kinks he hadn’t even considered yet.

He was interested in my voyeuristic tendencies to an almost academic degree, determined to understand and help fulfill them. In our fourth year of college, we set up an elaborate scene where he seduced the girl I liked and let me hide in his closet while he fucked her. It was counterintuitive, but watching her with someone else was ten times more erotic than being with her myself.

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