Page 55 of Stray for You

I shimmy out of his grasp and turn over to face him in the bed, staying far enough away that I can see his face. I expected satiation, peace, contentment, but tension tightens the skin around his eyes and mouth.

“If you don’t want to, you can say so,” I say. “It won’t hurt my feelings. This is just a visit. If it’s done after this week, that’s alright.”

The tension pulling his face taut cinches. From this close, it would be impossible to miss the flinch that flickers through hisfeatures.

“Is something wrong?” I ask.

“No,” he says, “just…”

“Just what?”

Julian seems to gather himself, collecting words in one big jumble that bunches up behind his tongue.

“Do we need to keep doing it this way?” he asks. He rushes on before I can squeeze in a question. “I mean, if it’s working for both of us, does it need to stay this way? The distance is a lot, but I’m sure we could figure something out. I have money. I can travel back and forth as much as we need. Maybe I could see if my company has a West Coast office or something. I don’t know. I’m just saying that the possibility is out there if we wanted to … to take this seriously, you know?”

Silence drops between us like a stone plunking into a still pond. Every ripple makes his words echo in my head and washes away all that languid contentment.

“Julian, I’m not sure we could… I mean, the distance is so much. You can afford it, but I can’t, and that’s not really fair.”

“I don’t care,” he says. He scoops up my hands, squeezing them between our chests. “I’ll pay for it. My money isn’t good for anything back in New York anyway. All I do is work and pay for my overpriced apartment.”

I shake my head. “I couldn’t let you do that. It’s not fair.”

“I don’t care about fair.”

“Well, I do. It would feel like we aren’t equal partners if you had to carry the cost of everything on your back.”

“We can solve that,” Julian says. “We can sort it out. When you’re a famous musician you can pay me back.”

He attempts a smile, but it lacks its usual dazzling intensity. I keep trying to deflect and watch his frustration grow with every counter.

Finally, his patience snaps.

“What is this really about?” he says.

“What?”

“Cam, come on,” he says. “What’s the real problem here? I know you’re holding back. You’ve been holding back this whole time. I thought this week might change things, but I’m starting to doubt that. So what’s the actual issue? Please, I need to know. I need to know why I’m … why I can’t have you.”

I swallow, throat suddenly dry. I wasn’t planning to tell him this ever, least of all after a night like this. Then he continues.

“I ran into your mom at the supermarket today,” he says quietly, like a confession. “She was surprised to see me.”

“You ran into Mom?”

Fuck, thatdefinitelywasn’t part of the plan. In fact, I intended to keep the two of them as far apart as possible.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know she’d be there. She actually spotted me first. I … I didn’t tell her. I gave her some vague excuse instead. It seemed like … like you didn’t want her to know that I’m here. Is that true?”

My worlds collide all at once. I thought I could keep these two spheres separate, thought I could live out a stupid fantasy for a week then go on like it never happened, but it seems fate conspired against me.

If fate is kind…

The walls of my little apartment close in around me. There’s no more deflecting this, no more pretending I can maintain the partition between Julian and my life. He’s here. He’s all over my apartment, my body. It’s a matter of time before that spills out to touch my real life.

Why did it have to be my mother, though?

“Fine,” I say in a burst. “Fine. Yes. It’s… Yes, I didn’t want her to know.”

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