Page 13 of Up In Flames

Will

T he first day back at work after my confession, I kept waiting for everyone to comment something to me.

About how I was different now, but the changes in me were only on the inside.

On the outside, I was the same Will Dorsey.

Nothing had changed, not that they could tell.

Inside, I felt different. Something me had shifted. It was subtle at first.

It started out as a warm, relieved feeling, like stepping into a cozy house and only then realizing how cold you’d been.

For the first time, someone knew me. Knew the thing I held closest to myself.

And he hadn’t rejected me. I’d always feared that coming out meant rejection, meant not being accepted.

Oren accepting me didn’t mean that everyone would, but someone had.

If I’d thought I was comfortable in my skin before, it was nothing compared to now.

I felt invincible. Oren knew I was gay, and he was fine with it.

I’d told him more than a week ago, and nothing between us had changed.

We talked every day. Less when I was on duty, but even when he was at work he found a spare minute now and then to shoot me a meme or a text about something he thought was interesting or funny.

His newest obsession was sending me pictures of food and asking me to cook it for him.

It was supposed to be all in fun, but I’d secretly been looking up Beef Wellington recipes after he sent me a few pictures in a row with drooling emojis.

It didn’t matter to me that Oren was straight.

I wanted to make him happy. He was my friend, and after what he’d been through, he deserved a bit of happiness.

We didn’t talk about the accident anymore.

He found out what he’d wanted to know and then we’d moved on from that subject.

There was a lot of unpacking he had to do about it, I guessed, anyway.

I’d never been through something like that, but I’d been there when lives were irrevocably changed.

It wasn’t something most people could process in a single conversation.

Wellington, as it turned out, wasn’t as hard as I feared.

My first attempt came out looking like the dog’s dinner, but the second one had turned out much better.

Instead of inviting Oren over for dinner and making him navigate public transit, I loaded everything into containers and tucked them into an insulated bag.

Twenty minutes and every red light in town later, Oren met me in the hallway outside his apartment.

He was dressed in sweats and a slightly too-tight tee, but clearly he’d been working as evidenced by one pen clipped to the collar of his shirt, another tucked behind his ear, and the ink marks on his hand.

“Well, this is a nice surprise.” Oren’s smile grew when he saw the insulated bag. “Dinner?”

“I’ve been working on a new recipe, and I need a guinea pig.”

“Then you’re in luck because I’ve been working all day and could use a break.”

“It’s Saturday.”

I followed Oren into his apartment. The kitchen was right off the entrance, so after I toed my shoes off, I went to the counter and started unloading the food.

Oren grabbed plates and cutlery for us. “Is this a ketchup kind of meal?” he asked.

“God, I hope not. But I guess we’ll find out. What are you doing working on a Saturday, though?”

“It might shock you to know that my firm is a very busy place. But also that I have zero social life. Making friends never was my strong suit, and in law school, not only was I too busy for friends, I already had Byron and Rita. I didn’t need anyone else.”

“Well, if it makes you feel better, you’re the only friend I have that I don’t also work with.”

Oren’s smile disarmed me, and I nearly fumbled the container holding the Wellington.

“It actually does.”

My stomach did a happy little flip. Making Oren happy made me happy.

My crush was officially out of control. I knew it before I came over.

I’d had crushes before, but none of them had inspired me to learn to make Beef fucking Wellington because of a couple drool emojis.

None of them had ever stolen my breath with a look or made my pulse race by simply brushing against me accidentally.

None of their approval had seemed necessary to my continued existence.

And as time wore on, my crushes faded away like a sun-bleached photograph.

Not Oren. The longer I knew him, the more I wanted to know him. The more I was around him, the deeper I cared. I was falling for him. Hard. It didn’t matter that he was straight. My heart kept ignoring that fact. Much to my eventual detriment.

I hadn’t yet figured out how I was going to handle being halfway in love with Oren and continuing to be his friend.

I couldn’t even pursue getting laid because the only man I could think of was Oren.

My dating apps had sat untouched for weeks, and I didn’t see myself going back to them anytime soon.

Not for as long as I was hung up on Oren.

“Is that…” His voice wavered. “Did you make me Beef Wellington?”

“Well, you sent enough drool emojis to drown my phone. So I took a crack at it. This is Wellington 2.0. The first one was more like Frankenstein than a Wellington.”

“Frankenstein’s monster, you mean. Frankenstein was the doctor.”

“Fucking lawyers.” I grinned and bumped my shoulder against Oren’s. When we were together, it was like my body found different ways to seek out his touch. I tried not to be obvious about it, but sometimes it happened automatically, like my body sought him out without the permission of my brain.

“I still can’t believe you made me a Wellington.” Oren met my gaze then glanced away, suddenly looking sheepish. “Is it alright if I confess that I’ve never had it, so I don’t even know if I’ll like it.?”

A laugh tore out of me, and I plunked a piece of it onto his plate, then another onto mine. “That’s fine. But, really, it’s beef. What’s not to like. And we never know what we like until we try it, right?”

“Right.” Oren tugged his gaze away and cleared his throat. “Right. Ah, this looks amazing.”

Opening the rest of the containers revealed mashed potatoes, gravy, and a side of roasted carrots. We filled our plates, and Oren directed us to the living room. The dining room table was currently covered in lawyering stuff. Books and papers surrounded his laptop.

“What are you working on?” I asked, motioning to the sea of legal stuff.

“Oh, I’m trying to close a few legal loopholes. It’s not that thrilling, I promise. Not half as thrilling as spending the day making this. Holy shit, it smells unbelievable.”

“Thanks.” Balancing my plate on my lap, I slowly cut into my Wellington, and I waited for him to do the same. I watched, holding my breath as he cut off a piece and popped it into his mouth.

The moan he let out made my cock twitch to life. His eyes fluttered shut, and he let out another happy-sounding noise. It should be illegal to make sex sounds while eating. Or at least frowned upon more than it clearly was.

“Will… oh, my God. This is...”

The look on Oren’s face made it clear he was truly enjoying himself. It was hard not to picture him underneath me making those noises. That face. That open expression of rapture. It was obscene.

I was obscene.

“Try a piece,” he urged me, and I tore my eyes away from him and concentrated on getting a bite onto my fork. Did he notice that my hands trembled? That I could scarcely breathe around him sometimes because the want was so ferocious? I felt his stare on me while I tried my first bite.

“Holy shit,” I said through a mouthful of food.

“Right? You outdid yourself. This is amazing. If you ever want a career change, you should become a chef.”

I shook my head. “Nah. I like cooking too much to turn it into a job. You know what I mean.”

Oren laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a hobby that I liked enough to worry about losing enjoyment if I turned it into a job.”

“Is working the weekend alone in your apartment your hobby, Oren?” I popped another bite into my mouth.

“That and jerking off.”

It was funny. Truly. And if Oren thought my sudden coughing fit was brought on by a laugh that made a piece of Wellington lodge in my throat, then he’d never know that it was the way I instantly pictured him naked and writhing under his own touch, then under mine.

And he’d never find out because I was going to die.

Coughing a couple times, I reached for a drink but realized there wasn’t anything handy to wash the food down with. Making a fist, I pounded on my chest and that’s when Oren’s laughter died.

“Will? Shit.” The plates disappeared from our laps, and then he was hauling me to my feet. His arms wrapped around me from behind. His grip tightened on me

and then I felt the first plunge of his entwined hands as he squeezed me. The first squeeze did nothing.

“Shit. Shit. Don’t worry, Will. I got you.”

Oren did it again. It hurt far more than I expected it to.

Especially because by this time I was getting no air.

Black spots swam in my vision. Then Oren did it a third time.

He squeezed me so hard and so sudden that the piece of food flew out of my throat and landed… somewhere. It didn’t matter where.

Breathing was a wonderful thing. I sucked in great lungfuls of air, gasping and coughing when I did. Oren was still swearing, but less frantic now.

“Sit down before you fall over.” He steered me to the couch, and I sat down gratefully, suddenly aware of how close to death I’d been. If I’d been alone, I wouldn’t have made it.

He appeared at my side a second after I’d had that terrible thought and pressed a drink into my shaking hand. “Take small sips.”

He rubbed a hand up and down my back. I loved that he didn’t mind touching me. I needed his touch. His presence reassured me that everything was okay when it had almost not been okay.

A few sips and some more coughing later, my appetite was thoroughly ruined, but Oren was still glued to my side.

“How do you feel?”

The furrows between his eyes had never been deeper. His eyes shone, and I saw my own fear mirrored back at me. I’d been through a lot of shit, but usually it was me pulling people out of danger.

“Like I choked on the whole cow.” My throat hurt and my voice came out raspy, which might have been sexy if it hadn’t been so traumatizing.

“But you’re okay? Right?”

I took a deep breath, slowly, just in case it triggered more coughing. But other than my sore throat, I seemed to be fine.

“Yeah. I think I’m okay.”

“Good.”

His gaze held mine and it was like I could see him think. Like his eyes were windows into what was going on inside him. Gears turned as his mind whirred at a million miles an hour.

His hands moved to my face. His fingers slid through my hair, thumbs against my cheekbones, and then his mouth was on mine. Soft, but urgent, like he needed to kiss me but feared breaking me… or feared doing it wrong.

He didn’t have to worry about that. Nothing had ever felt so right. I only realized that I hadn’t kissed him back when he pulled away. His eyes were wide, but he didn’t let go of me.

“Oh—” A sound of wonder puffed out of him.

Oren was straight, but that didn’t stop me from closing the distance between us and kissing him like he wasn’t.

I slanted my mouth over his, relishing the way his breathing hitched, the way his fingers twitched in my hair, the way he gave himself over to the kiss.

Our tongues twined together, tentatively exploring. Savoring.

If nearly dying got me a kiss from Oren, I’d go through it a million times. It was worth it.