Page 27 of Consumed By Desire

I can’t take much more of the distraction. Tonight’s the night I’m planning for it to happen again.

JJ’s staring out the window when I get back, lost in thought. Of course he is. We sit and drink in silence while I try and decide what to say. It’s nice just hanging out not doing anything. I shouldn’t disrupt it.

I can’t help myself. “Do you remember,” I begin. “Back when we first met.” I stop short and swallow hard. Unexpected nerves come out of nowhere and threaten to overwhelm me.

As much as I want to, maybe this isn’t something I can talk about. Action’s always better anyway.

I busy myself with opening another beer. I’m about to offer one to Julian when I notice that he’s only about half through his first one. I’m a lot more wired up than I should be. I take a long drink and try to mentally slap myself into shape. Get it together, Blair.

“Sure. What about it?” Julian asks me. “Something in particular on your mind?”

“Oh, you know. I was just thinking of things. Nothing really, just in general,” I falter.

Julian fixes me with his intense gaze. Not surprising, since I sound like an idiot. I blink and look away. He’s too sharp to let it go. Since he walks around so often with his head in the clouds, his thoughts completely filled with whatever project he is working on, it’s easy to forget that JJ knows me just as well as I know him. He notices a lot more than he lets on. I shouldn’t have said a word.

I clench my beer bottle tightly, trying to come up with some way to change the subject and failing miserably. Which is pretty disconcerting since I’m never at a loss for words. I can always find something to talk about with absolutely anyone.

“Not nothing,” Julian says. For a second I wonder if he can somehow read my mind or guess what I’m remembering. No. Not possible. It was one time in all of our years together at college. I could be thinking about anything. There’s no way he can guess. It probably meant nothing to him. He likely never so much as gave it a second thought, or even forgot about it after it happened. The total opposite of me.

He takes a thoughtful sip of his beer before setting the bottle back on the coffee table. Stretching his arms wide, he folds them back behind his head as he leans back against the sofa. I can’t resist checking him out, what with his broad chest on display like it is now.

No doubt about it. JJ’s one handsome man with a killer body. It was obviously a mistake to move in with him. There’s a real danger that he might catch me checking him out one of these times.

I still try to play it cool. I’m waiting for him to say something while I keep drinking. I’m halfway through the bottle by the time he does.

“What’s on your mind, Logan?”

I draw a blank as his direct question makes me start to sweat. Racking my brain frantically, I try to think of something I can talk about. Anything. My mind won’t cooperate. It’s like one of those nightmares where you’re in an exam and you can’t remember anything you were sure you knew five minutes before. Except this is real. I can’t come up with a single thing about college beyond what’s been burning into my thoughts every night and every day, ever since we moved in together.

I shrug. “Nothing much. Just thinking about how far we’ve come since college.”

“True,” JJ agrees. “We’re exactly where we aimed to be. This is it. Everything comes down to what we’re going to pull off in the next few weeks. It’s make or break time.”

“Exactly. That’s what I’m talking about,” I say. It’s not, but who cares. I don’t know what I was thinking. Except that with Asher out for the night, I wanted to be alone with Julian. I thought tonight would go a lot more smoothly than this.

I must’ve been crazy to think that something would happen like it did that time in college when JJ and I both got super drunk. I’ve never been that wasted before or since. Same with Julian.

I don’t know what was different about that particular night but we started early and didn’t stop.It was right in the middle of exams. We both looked up at each other in the middle of studying.

“We have to get out of here,” I told him.

“Bar’s open,” he said. “We should go.”

So we did. Yeah, we certainly did. It was hours later that we staggered back to our dorm room and collapsed together.

That’s when things happened that I never expected. Things that I had only thought about up until then.

I’ve tried so hard to put that night out of my mind. It’s just a memory I should leave behind. Neither one of us said a word about it afterwards. It was as if it never happened. As if that one time didn’t completely shift my world.

It’s not that I hadn’t thought about guys in that way before. I absolutely had.

The fact that it was with Julian made all the difference.

Lately that night’s been on my mind so much that I can hardly stand it. Obviously I have no idea how to go about making something happen again. I might’ve had some attraction to other random guys now and then, but not enough to make anything happen.

I want Julian so much I’m tongue-tied.

I did try to join the gay club scene to get this craziness out of my system. I could never let myself pick anyone up. I couldn’t take that final step. All I could think about was Julian, and that I wanted much more than just sex as far as he’s concerned.

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