“Julian, no. Honestly, why would I be?” I scoffed. “Fake boyfriends don’t get jealous.” I took a step back and his hands dropped away. His face fell,too.
“I was kidding,” he said, turning away and grabbing those poor trees, which were steadily losing their flocking. “Jesus, Daniel. It was just ajoke.” He stomped away through the parked cars toward the tent, so I picked up the remaining trees and followedhim.
When he reached the edge of the parking area, he whirled to face me. His blue eyes sparked in the setting sun, and he could almost have passed for some kind of avenging angel… one who wielded a pair of flocked trees in place ofswords.
“And you don’t have to keep reminding me that this is fake,” he hissed in a furiouswhisper.
“What?”
“Every time you say boyfriend, Daniel—everyfuckingtime—you have to sayfakein front of it. Like, do you think I’m going to forget? Do you think I’d ever actually believe that any of this was real? Me? Withyou?”He laughed, but it was a miserable, scathing sound that didn’t sound like Julian at all. “Not fucking likely. The wonder is that anyone believed it could happen in the firstplace.”
I ground my teeth together. I knew how wrong we were for each other. Of course Idid.
“And you know what? If it eases your mind in some way, the guy texting me isn’t an old friend, he’s a Grindr hookup I had last spring wanting to hook up again. I was gonna say no, since I figured I’d be busy with you tonight, but maybe I’m kinda sick of your fucking attitude. Maybe Ishould—”
I have no recollection of how the kiss happened. I mean, it was all me. No doubt aboutthat. Jules was just standing there holding a couple gaudy twigs, looking at me like I was what happened when the devil and his wife had a baby, telling me about how he was basically gonna go fuck some other guy while I went home, and the next thing I knew, I’d thrown down the trees I carried and I… Well, I grabbed his jaw with both hands and attacked his face with all the finesse of an octopus in a cartoon latching his suckers into some poor unsuspectingvictim.
At least, that’s how itstarted.
But then Jules let his trees fall to the ground also. He lifted himself up on his tiptoes, and I bent down so I could wrap my arms around his waist and haul him against me, spreading my feet for balance as I lifted himup.
He was sowarm.God, so warm and vital andalive. He waseverything.He smelled a little like pine sap and a little like something citrusy and musky and delicious. My fingers slid up his back beneath his jacket, cold fingers unintentionally coasting along his smooth skin, and he pushed himself more fully against me. Christ, it was like it hadn’t beenhourssince I’d kissed him, butyears.
I set him back down on the ground, but only so I could lean into him, practically bending him back with the force of my kiss. And he gave as good as he got, his breath coming in furious pants against mylips.
Fuck.
How long would it take us to get back to Julian’splace?
A high-pitched whistle rent the air, along with teasing laughter. “Kiss him,Doc!”
Julian and I broke apart instantly, and the laughter only gotlouder.
“Aw, I didn’t mean to spoil your fun,” an old man in a Santa Claus costume said, wagging his eyebrows. “I was just encouragingyou.”
“He had a rum toddy before we left the house,” a woman dressed as an elf said apologetically, wrapping an arm around the man’s shoulders. “Come on, Jay. Time to go get ready for theparade.”
Jay chuckled and let himself be led away. Meanwhile, Julian watched me cautiously, like he wasn’t sure how I was going toreact.
I wasn’t sureeither.
HolyfuckI wanted him. But obviously, it wasn’t as easy as wanting. I wanted a hell of a lot of things. A successful career and a decent family and world peace and… I couldn’thaveany of those. I didn’t have the ability to acquire or maintain them. And I didn’t have the ability to keep Julian, either. I fucked up every relationship I had, or it fuckedmeup, or both. I couldn’t stand watching it happen again. I couldn’t stand having it happen withJulian.
I cleared my throat loudly. “You go ahead and take those to the booth. I’ll get the rest of the shit from the truck and leave ithere.”
Julian gave me a derisive look that called me a coward. Then he picked up the decorated trees and disappeared into the line ofbooths.
I tried not to think as I made trip after trip to fetch more decorations and lay them on the lawn. I tried really hard not to recall the hurt expression on Julian’s face, or the sinking feeling in my stomach when I thought about him andCurtis.
I brought the final batch of decorations to the booth when I couldn’t avoid it any longer. Julian’s mother had returned and greeted me with a warm smile, while her son made a very obvious effort to ignore me completely. I caught her looking between us, like she was wondering what had happened in the fifteen minutes she wasgone.
Tons, Mrs. Ross.Metric shit-tons of revelation, and none of itgood.
I needed space. I needed to draw breath without smellingJulian.
I debated the best way to extricate myself from this situation and deeply regretted that my truck was all the way back at my place. It wasn’t an impossible walk—maybe two or three miles—but it was getting dark, and the Camden Road was un-lit.
“Daniel,” she said, interrupting my deep contemplation of the dried grass and the toe of my boot. “I wasn’t able to fix Margo’s issue. Do you think you could come with me and take alook?”
