“Don’t try to psychoanalyze me, Chang. Oh, hey, did you follow up with Mary Muldoon? I saw her in the bakery this morning and she said she was thinking about adopting a Russian blue. She wanted me to examineit.”
Kathy ignored this redirect. “Julian, not everything goes right in a relationship, especially in the early days. When Rick and I got together, I was—” She shook her head. “Well, you know better than anyone what a mess Iwas.”
When Kathy and Rick got together, they’d been explosive. Every second day, Kathy would come in fuming about some Neanderthal behavior Rick had exhibited or crying over something he’d said. The next day, there’d be flowers on her desk, and a few days after that, fresh hickeys on her neck. Lather, rinse, repeat. I remembered because I used to tease her about itrelentlessly.
Now, I envied her. At least her drama had led to somethingreal.Meanwhile, I was steadily losing my mind, and in the end, I was pretty sure I was going to lose my best friend aswell.
My cock had gotten more action in the last week than it had in years. So much action, it started to get hard every time Daniel Michaelson spoke, moved, or existed in its vicinity, like he was Pavlov and it was the dog. Daniel was insatiableand I’d let myself believe that meant things wereprogressingsomehow.
But it was like every time we were together that way, every time we got physically close, he pulled back from me in other ways. I’d tried to tell myself I was imagining things, but I knew better. The fighting and kissing and fightingagain at the parade had been the last straw. I was not down to ride this roller coaster, not when I worried that every dip could lead to totalderailment.
“You want the truth? Here goes: I don’t know if Daniel and I are going to work.” I slammed the file drawer shut and turned to lean against it. “We’re very different people and we want different things.” As in, I wanted a relationship and he wanted… Well, actually, I had no clue what hewanted.
Kathy was silent for a minute. “Well, I’m sorry to hear it. But Jules, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing, right? Perfection doesn’t exist in relationships. It’s okay to fight, and mess up, and be dense and oversensitive at the same time. It’s okay to be bad at it at first, even if you were really good at the friendship thing before. The rules are different now. You have to figure out how to talk to each other. You have to ask the questions you think you already know the answers to.” She looked pensive for a minute. “Remember when Hen Lattimer came in here a while back withDaphne?”
I sighed. I didnotwant to talk about this. At all. “Which time? The man was in here weekly last month, convinced that Daph wasdying.”
“Right. Because she wasn’t eating the way she ate when Everett took care of her, and she was sleeping too much, and she sometimes ignored him. Remember what you toldhim?”
“I told him Daphne was a cat, and that’s what catsdo.”
Kathy smiled. “You told him to be patient and not to give up. That they’d get used to each other.” She raised one eyebrowpointedly.
I sighed. “You suck at extendedmetaphors.”
“I know!” she said cheerily, turning back to her computer screen. “Poor Julio. But I’m a mom now, so I have that mom-voodoo thing going on. Leeesten to me, Julian. Don’t giveup.”
* * *
Don’t give up.
Right.
I was pretty sure that only worked when there was a real thing to give up. Cautious retreat wasn’t giving up, it was the only way to save a doomed operation, which is what was happeninghere.
I stalked the length of Weaver Street with my head ducked down. The bitter wind stung my eyes and whipped random papers and hapless holiday decorations into a miniature tornado around my ankles, but I couldn’t stay indoors. I was filled with frantic energy that had no outlet; the knowledge that something had to change, and no clue how to changeit.
For the sake of our friendship, this fake-boyfriend-benefit-fuckery had to stop. I wanted too much from him. I wanted the real thing. And all that wanting was like a giant vacuum, sucking everything good from ourrelationship.
I’d joked in the past about the many kinds of Julian I sometimes was—awkward-Julian, professional-Julian, family-Julian—but I’d never been more totally and completelymethan I was with Daniel. With him, I’d always been my true self, and he’dlikedit. I’d never doubted that he liked it. Though it had rankled, a little, that he didn’t talk about his past, we’d had this little make-believe fantasyland where none of it mattered. His cabin in the woods had been our clubhouse, and we’d never let the real world intrude. Families were contentious subjects? Well, we simply didn’t discuss them. O’Leary was only mentioned in passing, and mostly as the butt of ajoke.
Then suddenly our clubhouse had been re-districted; now we were firmly, incontrovertibly grounded in reality, and all those topics we’d been able to ignore before had become conversational landmines that would explode with the lightest footsteps. I didn’t know how to talk to him anymore without triggering an uncomfortable silence. I didn’t know how tobewith him anymore, except for the moments when we were kissing and frotting and coming our brains out. I was becoming this meek, silent little creature, thisDaniel-Julian, and you know what? I fuckinghatedDaniel-Julian.
The worst part was, I could see so clearly in my mind what it would look like if we could just be together for real with none of these barriers in place. Daniel was everything I wanted in a guy. He made me laugh when no one elsecould, he took me seriously when no one elsewould, he let me talk with endless patience, and he gave me a fresh perspective on the world time and timeagain.
I loved being around him. I loved who I was when I was with him. I… loved him. That was the long and short ofit.
Plus, let’s be honest, he was the hottest thing on two legs. By far the hottest guy to ever grace the… how had Kathy put it? Theentiregreater O’Leary-Camden area. And the way we came together physically was powerful enough to birth tinystars.
It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough for me to feel these things in isolation—that was like trading one fantasy world for another. But at the same time, how the fuck was I going to give it up? Even if we could somehow rewind and become friends with no benefits again, how could I make myself stop lovinghim?
I was so lost in my head, I crashed, full-tilt, into someone walking in the otherdirection.
“Oh, shit!Shit,” I said, as bags of groceries fell to the sidewalk, along with the person I’d bumped into. “Shit, I’m sosorry!”
Parker Hoffstraeder looked up from where he’d sprawled on the sidewalk, shaking his head like he was trying to clear it. “Jesus, Jules. Is there a veterinary emergency at the Imperial I don’t knowabout?”
I glanced up and saw that I’d walked nearly the entire length of Weaver Street, almost all the way to the fairgrounds. I was standing in front of Parker’s bar, Hoff’s, which was across the street from Lyon’s ImperialMarket.
