“Business.”
Chuckling, I say, “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to actually partake in a conversation with me.”
In the dim light, I can barely make out his eyes rolling. “It might.”
His knee is bouncing up and down incessantly and he’s still picking at the skin around his nail. Everything about his disposition screams anxious, but I don’t get why. This is about the least intimate thing we’ve done together thus far. Why would he be more nervous now than he was in the hotel room last week?
Clearing his throat, he surprises me when he asks, “How’s Ryan?”
Their friendship seemed to end abruptly. I don’t know any of the details, just that one day, they were best friends, and the next, it was like they didn’t know one another anymore. I tried asking Ryan, but he never told me anything.
Letting out a dejected sigh, I reply, “I wish I could tell you.”
His head snaps in my direction, his gaze meeting mine for the first time since we got in here. “What do you mean? Why can’t you?”
This isn’t something I like to get into. In fact, my stomach twists into knots even thinking of saying the words out loud, but if I want him to open up to me, I have to give him the same respect.
“We haven’t spoken much for the last two years.”
He’s quiet for a moment.
The song changes to one I surprisingly know,Already Numbby Dayseeker filling the silence as I wonder if that’s the end of his inquisition. I can’t help but notice the rapid rising and falling of his chest. His breaths are shallow and quick, like his heart is pounding a mile a minute.
“What happened?” he finally asks in a hushed tone.
The thought of lying crosses my mind almost as quickly as I shove it away. “He caught me with an escort one night.”
He nods, reaching for the bottle of water on his desk. Uncapping it, he takes a sip before setting it back down.
“What happened between you two?” It’s a question I’m dying to know the answer to. They were so close. Always together. I know Bodhi’s home life wasn’t the best. There were nights they both thought we didn’t know he snuck into the house in the middle of the night.
“We just… drifted apart.”
Lie.
But I don’t press. Instead, I ask, “Did something happen between last week and now?”
That question makes him glance over at me. “Why do you ask?
Not exactly an answer.
“The man who came alive in my hotel room last weekend and the man sitting next to me now seem like two totally different people. Both of which I’m into, but still… did something happen?”
Bodhi laughs, but there’s no humor behind it. “You want to know why I was so alive last week?
Uh… “Yeah?”
Abruptly, he sits up straighter, folding his legs crisscross as he glowers at me. “Because before I left my house to meet you, I popped a molly, Jules.That’swhy I was so relaxed. I was high.”
I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, but that absolutely wasnotit. “You were?”
“Yes,” he replies on an exhale. “I was.”
“What was it like?”
He scoffs. “Like you’ve never done it.”
“I spent my twenties in law school and spent over the last decade as a Supreme Court judge. I can honestly say I have never done drugs.”
