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“Discussing stuff is hard.” He looks in your direction finally, his eyes still hidden behind his glasses. “I guess contracts are easier.”

“I can stop myself from feeling you up in public,” you say.

“It’s probably better for my image, too.

Maybe I should care about that more. You just need to tell me where the line is.

I want you to be comfortable. And I don’t want to, like, freak out any teenage girls.

The Graylings are kinda intimidating. I don’t need them coming for my head. ”

“I can’t promise that won’t happen anyway,” he tells you ruefully. “I meant it when I said my fans are amazing. Most of them. A small percentage are completely unhinged, and that’s why I pay for round-the-clock bodyguards. It’s not the haters that scare me. It’s the obsessed ones.”

“Don’t get off the subject,” you prod him gently .

Sterling sighs and looks around. The sky is flaming, layers of orange and gold extending out over the water.

Most of the other people on the Cliff Walk are watching the sunset as well.

Nobody is paying much attention to two men sitting close on a bench.

Finally, hesitantly, he pushes his sunglasses up atop his head. Seeing his blue eyes is a revelation.

“Like I was saying earlier, only part of it is my image,” he says. “I’m almost thirty. I can handle my fanbase knowing that I’m an adult in an adult relationship. More of it has to do with my own hang-ups. Have you ever heard of demisexuality?”

Mystified, you shake your head. “Demi-what?”

“It’s on the asexuality spectrum. Demisexuals don’t experience primary sexual attraction, like lust at first sight.

They only maybe feel sexually attracted after they’ve developed an emotional attachment, and sometimes not even then.

A lot of people don’t know what it means.

It wasn’t even defined as a term until 2006 or something like that.

Before that, people were just picky . Or had a really hard time forming relationships. ”

Your brain is struggling to process all that information. What it might mean, here in the real world. “Is that how you identify?”

“Yeah. I had a great therapist who helped me figure it all out over the last ten years. I didn’t lose my virginity until I was twenty-one, which is late for a gay guy.

I think that being famous definitely didn’t help, because I already have a hard time getting close to people.

And then so many don’t stick around for very long.

I haven’t had sex with a ton of people. I don’t want this conversation to turn into a whole deep dive on my love life.

I guess I just… wanted to explain, I guess?

You’ve been so patient and amazing that I didn’t see any need for it to come up, and we’ve been physically separated for so much of the last few months. ”

It’s a lot to take in. You can feel your brow furrowing as you literally have to work to take it all in.

But it makes a lot of sense. Most gay guys you have met absolutely love fucking and have high body counts.

You love sex too, but your own trajectory has been different, thanks to growing up playing football in the South and focusing so hard on your goals.

You explain all this to Sterling, who just listens with those ridiculously open, honest eyes of his. They’re so distracting that you are completely missing the sunset that was the whole point of this outing. It’s there in the background, big and showy and just as gorgeous as promised.

“I guess I need you to tell me what you want,” you say in conclusion. “Are you… shit. Do I turn you on? Like that?”

Sterling blushes . It’s fucking priceless. You wish you could get a picture of it.

“You do,” he says finally. “I really like you, Kai. It’s always a little weird for me when I start to feel attracted to someone. It’s not a straightforward thing. I’m sorry if I act like a weirdo. I do… want you.”

“I really like you, too,” you say. It feels inadequate.

Sterling turns toward you. His shoulder brushes your upper arm.

As the sun dips into the churning water, he tilts his face up and kisses you.

Once again, it’s not a hot kiss—his tongue stays behind his own teeth—but it still sizzles up your spine like a current, just the brush of his lips as he grips the space just above your kneecap.

Carefully, lightly, you wrap your arm around his shoulder and pull him close.

The cold sea breeze stings your cheeks, but the moment between you two is warm, languid and drawn-out even in the seconds after he pulls his mouth away.

“Let’s go back and have some dinner,” he says at last. The streetlamps on the Walk have winked to life. It’s almost dark. Sterling pulls his sunglasses back down anyway.

***

Sterling must be hiding a cook somewhere in the vastness of the cottage, because when you two get home, a dinner that wasn’t there before is ready in the kitchen.

There’s a covered pot on the stove at the lowest simmer, and two loaves of fresh, crusty bread wrapped in a dish towel on the counter.

A note written in pretty cursive lies atop the bar on stationery monogrammed with Sterling’s initials:

Wine and salad are in the fridge. :)

“Did Maeve do this?” you ask. It smells heavenly in the house.

Sterling laughs. “God, no. Maeve can’t cook to save her life.

I’m usually the one making her dinner. There’s a local lady who runs a teeny-tiny seafood shack down on the waterfront.

I love her food, but I don’t want to unleash chaos there in person.

She doesn’t deserve all that headache. So I pay her a lot of money to bring me dinner when I’m in town, and I direct all my friends to her place when they ask for recommendations. ”

You peek into the pot. Oh jeez, it’s clam chowder. That’s the amazing smell. The cream base is thick and peppery, flecked with juicy bits of clam and healthy chunks of potato and bacon. Your mouth waters.

“Aren’t there at least four things in here that you can’t eat?” you ask.

“Ten days ‘til the last set of shows,” he reminds you, coming up behind you and wrapping his arms around your waist. The contact electrifies you. He buries his face in your back, you hear the vibration of his voice through your t-shirt. “I get to cheat. ”

You are thinking that you could easily just skip dinner and fast-forward to whatever comes next, but, as usual, your gut has other ideas.

You end up devouring two full bowls of the chowder, which tastes like the essence of summer even in mid-autumn, and a full plate of the garden salad that was all prepped in the fridge.

The wine is an oaky Chardonnay, and between you and Sterling, you kill off almost two full bottles.

It’s dark outside the windows that look out on the front lawn, the lights of the street far away.

Your tummy is pleasantly warm and full from the dinner, and your head is buzzing from the wine.

From the sleepy smile on Sterling’s face, you’d guess that he’s feeling the same.

Apollo had sat beside Sterling’s chair for a while, but he’d long-since skulked off to a cozy doggie bed somewhere. It’s late.

Together, you clear the table and load the dishwasher.

Sterling scoops the leftover soup and salad into plastic containers and puts them in the fridge.

He laughs as you grab the second bottle of wine and lift it to your lips, inelegantly chugging what’s left directly from the glass neck of the bottle.

Once the empty has joined its fallen twin in the recycling, it’s just the two of you in the low light of the kitchen.

“Wanna take this upstairs?” you ask, the wine loosening your inhibitions.

Sterling opens his mouth to answer, but you cut him off.

“Only just anything you are comfortable with!” you add quickly. “God, I should have started with that. Sorry. And obviously, I know that I’ll be sleeping in my own bed. I respect your boundaries.”

He laughs. “I was just going to say yes . But thank you for all that.”

A warmth that has nothing to do with the wine fizzes up in your gut when Sterling takes your hand.

Nothing but the glow of moonlight illuminates the stairs.

If anyone else is in the house, they are either occupied or asleep.

It’s quiet and dark when the two of you make it up to the second floor, and then the little sitting room outside the split bedroom.

“My room or yours?” he asks, smiling over his shoulder.

“Yours,” you reply, simply because you are nosy and want to know what it looks like.

Sterling’s room, like the one across from it, exposes the interesting dimensions of the house.

His ceiling slopes dramatically from one side to the other, following the pitch of the roof.

The decor in here is also faintly coastal in design, but much warmer and more personal to his taste.

There’s a tester bed in light ash wood with an upholstered ivory headboard, the bed covered in a cream duvet with a furry throw and absolutely piled with ivory, taupe, and plum-colored pillows.

Cream-and-taupe medallions are embroidered on long curtains blowing open in the night air behind rattan blinds.

There’s a thick, soft beige area rug with a pile so deep that you sink in almost to your ankles.

Across from the bed, the wall is painted brick with a rectangular fireplace cut into it.

Someone has lit it, and the chill from the windows is counteracted by the warm lick of the flames.

He’s standing closer to the window, and a visible shiver goes through him.

“You let me know what you want to do,” you say, spreading your hands as if to double down on the point that you aren’t planning on starting anything without his consent. “We don’t have to even do anything. I’m psyched just to be here spending time with you.”

Sterling smiles crooked, just one side of his mouth turning up. “That’s very noble of you, Kai.”