Page 73 of Diamond Ring
“Maybe we should practice that.”
“Practice what?”
“You telling me what you want.”
“I want—” Jake begins, and Alex braces himself for another gentle rejection, an intercession of Jake’s hand between them, interrupting the moment. “I want you to kiss me.”
Alex does as he’s told. A soft kiss, maybe worse for it, like an agreement. Jake’s eyelashes fold carefully on his cheek; his hands stroke Alex’s sides. Gentle like he can’t bear to be more than that.
Jake slides his fingers up Alex’s neck, lifting the cable of his necklace. “You wore it.”
“Felt lucky.” Though that has the shape of a lie. “You asked me to.”
Jake kisses him again, a deeper kiss, and hums when Alex rubs two fingers under the chain of Jake’s necklace.
“I want to see you in this,” Alex says.
Jake pulls back slightly. “I’m in it right now.”
“I meant only in it.” Another pause, and Alex waits, his pulse a ticking clock. “If this is”—Alex interrupts himself, kissing Jake again in case it’s for the last time—“if this is just a hookup, then we shouldn’t do it.”
There, said as plainly as he can. Even if it’ll mean ano, a hope he’ll have to retire along with his baseball career.
Jake smiles slightly. “I don’t think we’re good at being nothing to each other, do you?”
Alex’s voice gets caught somewhere between his lungs and his throat. Because if this isn’t nothing, then it’ssomething, which is infinitely scarier.
“We should probably keep it casual,” Jake adds. A word at odds with how they’ve ever been with one another. At odds with how Jake kisses him, an un-casual sort of kiss. Jake’s hands settle on his shoulders; his mouth parts under Alex’s. He gasps when Alex encourages him onto his lap, Jake’s legs on either side of his until he fills Alex’s field of view: the weight of his ass and the slide of his necklace chain and the way the living room light renders his eyes the grayish side of green.
He kisses Alex’s jaw, then moves over to his ear, taking his earlobe between his teeth. It feels like nothing, like the scar tissue that’s always there, except for how Jake bites him gently and traces his earlobe with his tongue.
“I’ve been thinking about that for a while,” Jake says.
“Since when?”
“That time at the bar.”
“That was the first week we met.”
“Like I said, a while.”
And Alex has to kiss him again, a kiss that doesn’t lead anywhere, except Jake on top of him, a slow grind together that shedscasualas easily as Jake pulls off his shirt.
His necklace is as Alex remembers it—an ostentatious pendant that hangs to his sternum on a chain Alex got for him. It’s slippery as Alex runs his fingers over it, enjoying the vibration of Jake’s shiver, the heat in his eyes.Casual.
Alex’s fingers find their way under the chain, encouraging Jake back down, and they kiss for long enough that Alex is about to ask him to stay, when Jake pulls back. His mouth is red, hair ruffled from Alex’s hands. “I should go,” Jake says.
Alex gets a familiar pang of disappointment. “If you want.”
“I need to re-ice my arm. And my meds are at my apartment.” He unseats himself from Alex’s lap, though doesn’t get farther than the nearest couch cushion, sprawled, necklace a glitter at his throat.
When can I see you again?Alex doesn’t say, because they’ll see each other the next day at the ballpark.
Instead, he picks up Jake’s shirt from the floor, examining it for microscopic specks of dust. “Let me get you one of mine.”
Thirty minutes after Jake leaves—wearing one of Alex’s old Seattle Pilots shirts—his phone buzzes.
Jake: Got home
