Nate let him recover. It was pretty obvious he’d never felt that bone-deep, soul-deep connection that came from the kind of intimate sex you could only have with someone you loved. It was natural he’d feel vulnerable, and equally so to need time to process.
So he kept his mouth shut and quietly dealt with the condom, leaving it in a wad of tissues on the nightstand. Tissues were not going to cut it for the two of them, but he wasn’t going to nudge Aubrey toward the shower before he was ready.
“Nate,” Aubrey said finally.
Ah. His brain had finally rebooted. “Hm?”
“There might be something to this whole commitment thing.”
Months ago Nate might have bristled. By now he could recognize when Aubrey was deflecting attention from his own vulnerability. Instead of taking offense, he kissed Aubrey’s forehead. “I’ll have to take your word for it since I don’t have a basis of comparison.”
Finally Aubrey raised his head and a single eyebrow.
“I tried to have a casual hookup once, but it worked out,” he elaborated wryly.
Aubrey smiled and put his head back down. “I’m glad.”
“Me too.”
WITH THEshow undergoing a series of seemingly arbitrary changes, Aubrey suddenly had a lot of time to himself while Nate attended hours upon hours of meetings.
“I wishI’dgotten fired,” Nate joked one night when he came in the door at eight. They hadn’t been filming. He’d had seven solid hours of meetings.
You could retire and be my kept man, Aubrey almost suggested, but that would lead to a serious conversation he wasn’t ready to have, and Nate was already exhausted.
“Shower or bathtub?” he asked instead, and afterward they spent a pleasant half hour watchingThe Mandalorianon Disney Plus, because Aubrey was a closetStar Warsbuff and Nate loved Baby Yoda.
Unfortunately, Aubrey was finding that the longer he went without telling Nate the truth about Vegas, the more difficult it was to broach the subject.
In a twist of events Aubrey never could have predicted, he called his mother for relationship advice.
“Mom, can I ask you something?”
“Please do. Your cousin is a wonderful woman, but I am entirely too old to be expected to partake in bachelorette-party drinking games.”
Aubrey laughed. “Come on. You love it.”
“Oh, fine.” He could hear her amusement. “I could drink any two of them under the table. I just don’t go in for lime Jell-O shots. Tell me all your problems.”
“Well, they didn’t start over Jell-O shots.”
“I am already intrigued.”
He sat, then stood again, suddenly nervous, like… like a high schooler about to come out of the closet or introduce his parents to his boyfriend for the first time. “The thing is….” He held his breath, hoping the need to expel it would make it easier to say the words. “I met someone.”
Dead. Silence.
Well, Aubrey hadn’t expected that. When it stretched on for more than a few seconds, he said tentatively, “Mom? Did you hear what I said?”
“I—I heard you.” There was a sigh of air and the sound of shushing fabric, like she’d been so surprised she needed to find a fainting couch or something. “You met someone, you said. In a… romantic context?”
Why was she being so weird about this? Aubrey was suddenly uncertain. He’d been sure his whole life that it was his promiscuity his mother had taken issue with, but what if that had been a cover? “That’s usually what the phrase means, yes.”
“Oh.” Now he had a whole new reason to be alarmed.Oh no.He’d jokingly told Nate his mother would probably weep tears of joy if he told her they were together. He hadn’t expected it to betrue. And he certainly hadn’t expected the waterworks to begin before he even told her it was solid, family-values Nate who’d swept him off his feet—or maybe checked him off them.
“Oh, Aubrey, I’m just—so happy.”
He swallowed around a suddenly too-tight throat. “Me too, Mom.”
