That wasn’t judgment, it was a carefully targeted probe. But it did the job just the same. “The end of October. It wasn’t a habitual thing.” He shoved his hands under his legs so he wouldn’t reach for one of the fidget objects on Theresa’s desk. “There was a snowstorm, and our flight out of Winnipeg got canceled, so we went out to a restaurant we’d both been wanting to try.”
“That sounds nice.”
That sounds like a date, he heard. Well, it hadn’t been. “The food was really good, and the cocktails were too. We didn’t get drunk,” he hastened to add. “But somehow we got to talking about sex.”
“Work colleagues do talk about sex sometimes,” Theresa said. “Depending on their personal boundaries and the rules of the workplace. It’s not automatically verboten.”
“Technically I think it is, for us.” But that was neither here nor there. “Anyway. I guess specifically we somehow started talking about his sex life with his ex. Which I guess was, um, unfulfilling.”
“He must trust you a lot to tell you something like that.”
Aubrey opened his mouth to refute that, but then paused. Even Nate had seemed a little surprised he’d confided that. And if he’d told anyone else, well, surely someone would have picked upthatgauntlet. “Yeah, I guess he does.” He shook his head and returned to the story. “Anyway, you know me. Nate is hot. I noticed. He said that, and I basically heard, ‘I dare you to do better.’”
That was one of those things he was supposed to be working on in therapy. But even though his failure in this case had led to him needingmore therapy, he couldn’t regret it. He knew how good he’d made Nate feel, at least physically. Maybe better than anyone else had ever made him feel.
Too bad that wasn’t enough.
“I’m not going to ask you if you did do better,” Theresa said, because it didn’t take a trained therapist to spot Aubrey trying to find an opening for a brag.
“We agreed it was going to be a one-time thing. It’s… you know, that’s my MO, and I sort of told Nate he should get back at his ex by having a lot of hot unattached sex. He seemed pretty keen on the idea.” Aubrey bit the inside of his cheek to distract himself from a sudden flash of Nate on his side, writhing under Aubrey’s touch. “I didn’t realize until afterward that that wasn’t whatIwanted.”
Theresa took her feet off the desk and folded her hands on it instead. “Are you saying you’ve developed romantic feelings for him?”
Aubrey flashed back to dinner last night, sitting with Nate at the dinner table as his parents cleared the dishes—because that was the rule since Nate and Aubrey did the cooking. Looking at him in the candlelight. He’d bought Aubrey an apple pie because he felt bad for not knowing Aubrey’s favorite beforehand. He didn’t have to do that. He didn’t have to find ways to show he was considering Aubrey’s wants and needs, but he did. He did it as naturally as breathing.
“Yes.” His heart was beating too fast, and his chest felt tight.
Theresa got up and filled one of the plastic cups next to the cooler with water. She set it on the edge of her desk where he’d be able to reach it and then sat down again. “Do you need a break?”
He shook his head and reached for the glass. A few careful sips of water helped.
“All right. So you have romantic feelings for Nate, and you agreed that your arrangement was a one-time occurrence. But it sounds like it happened again?”
“It was an accident. I mean, not ‘oops, he tripped and fell on my dick’ sort of an accident. We just both went out to hook up at the same bar, and it was easier to go home together than with someone else.”
Not to mention Aubrey hadn’twantedto go home with anyone else once he realized he could go home with Nate. But he was pretty sure Theresa got the point.
“Well, you probably don’t need me to tell you that continued casual sex with someone you have romantic feelings for isn’t the best choice you could make for your emotional health.”Oh gee, you think?“So one thing led to another, and eventually you got caught when Nate asked you to pretend to be his boyfriend? Did he give you a reason?”
“The divorce, basically.” It sucked how fast Aubrey had gone fromYes, he just got divorced, I can fantasize without guilt!toShit, he just got divorced, so he’s not ready for a serious relationship. “He’s pretty Midwestern in his sensibilities, and his parents are the same. Sweet, but… casual sex just isn’t in his makeup, as far as they’re concerned. He said they’d think he was having a midlife crisis if they knew the truth.”
“That must have hurt.”
Yes. God, yes. He tried to push it down at the time, but how often had someone thrown around those words about him? Hell, he had been afewguys’ midlife crisis, hadn’t he? Young, a little swishy, a lot flashy, confident, athletic, and undeniably masculine. He’d punched the cards of more than one bicurious thirty-to-fortysomething. But he was more than that. He wanted to be more than that.
“Well, it didn’t feelgreat.”
Theresa waited for Aubrey to remember he wasn’t allowed to use sarcasm as a defense mechanism.
“It hurt,” he said quietly.
She crossed her legs, but the calculated nonchalance didn’t lessen the impact of her next words. “How do you think Nate would feel if he knew that you’d agreed to do this for him even though it hurts you?”
“I think, if he knew what he’d asked of me, he’d be upset with himself for asking and angry with me for saying yes.” Nate was too kind to knowingly hurt anyone like this.
Theresa uncrossed her legs again and put her hands in her lap. “Aubrey, you deserve better than a relationship, real or imagined, that hurts you. And I think you know that Nate deserves to know that he’s hurting you too.”
Aubrey’s stomach twisted. It wasn’t like he hadn’t known what she’d say, but that didn’t make hearing it easier.
