Page 21 of Up In Flames

Will

B oyfriends. The word rattled around in my head every day since we’d decided what we were to each other.

It was like a shiny object I’d only ever heard about but hadn’t seen up close.

I kept picking it up, looking at it, and setting it down again.

I’d been a boyfriend before, but not a real one.

Not a boyfriend who had someone he wanted to be with. I’d been a fraud. A fake.

There was nothing fake about my feelings for Oren or my delight that he hadn’t given up on me. It had been a couple of weeks since I found him sitting in my hallway, and every day since was better than the last.

The doorknob rattled, and Oren slipped inside my apartment. I’d buzzed him in a minute ago and unlocked the door for him, then went back to the stove.

“Holy crap, it smells delicious.” He came into the kitchen, dressed for work, but with his tie hung loose and his jacket over his arm. He leaned in and kissed my cheek, his hand pressing into my lower back.

“I haven’t made it before, so here’s hoping it’s not terrible.”

“Nothing that smells this good could possibly taste bad.” Oren slid past me and draped his jacket on the back of a chair.

He slid the bag containing his laptop off his shoulder and set it on the seat of the chair.

He’d rolled up his sleeves already. The sight of his forearms shouldn’t entice me half as much as it did, but he was just effortlessly attractive.

“Want a taste?”

Oren raked his gaze over me slowly, from head to toe and back again. The corner of his mouth twitched in amusement. “Absolutely, I do.”

“Of the food.”

“Oh. That. I guess.” He rolled his eyes but stepped in close.

Grabbing a teaspoon from the drawer, I dipped it in the sauce and gently blew on it before offering it to Oren.

He looked me in the eyes, the heat between us always at a low simmer that could turn up to inferno levels in a blink.

Twin flames danced in his eyes as he opened his mouth and let me feed him the spoonful of sauce.

The moan he let out was sinful and sexy. My cock thickened in my pants. Uncomfortably hard, it ached where it pressed against my zipper.

“Well?” Tossing the spoon in the sink, I adjusted myself.

“I know I’ve said it before, but if you ever stop fighting fires, you could be a chef.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” I wouldn’t. Cooking was a pleasure to me. It gave me something to focus on. New recipes to challenge me. Old ones to comfort me. It let me take care of people because everyone needed to eat.

Oren tugged his tie a bit looser and pulled it off over his head. It joined the jacket and the computer bag at the table.

“How was work? Close any loopholes today?”

“Work was annoying. One of our clients is suing for breach of contract and it should be a slam dunk case, but there’s some archaic ass law that’s still on the books and they’re using it to try and get out of the contract without paying.

So it’s my job to dig through mountains of legal cases from eons ago to try and set a precedent. ”

“I’d rather fight a three-alarm fire. It sounds less tiring.”

“I’ll survive.” Oren opened the fridge. “Want anything while I’m in here?”

“A beer would be nice, thanks.”

He handed me a can of beer from a little craft brewery nearby.

For himself, he cracked open an orange soda.

Since the accident, he’d lost all appetite for drinking.

It didn’t bother him when other people did, but I think he didn’t like feeling like he wasn’t in control.

Or maybe it just brought too many ugly memories to the surface. Brains were weird like that.

“This is almost done if you want to freshen up.”

“Mmm. Good plan.” He leaned in and stole a kiss, the curve of his smile pressed against my mouth, an obvious sign of his happiness.

When Oren slipped into the bathroom, I hurried away from the stove.

Quickly moving his things off the chair and setting them in the living room, I gathered the candles I’d hidden and set them up in the middle of the table.

I’d prepared place settings ahead of time and pulled them out of the drawer I’d tucked them into.

Everything was bundled neatly and just needed to be rolled out onto the table and straightened up.

By the time Oren came out of the bathroom, the table had been set for a romantic dinner for two, complete with a flower I’d cut from the bushes out front and stuffed in a water glass. I’d thought of everything except a vase apparently.

“What’s all this?” He looked at the table, then at me.

“It’s dinner. Have a seat and I’ll get it plated.”

We could go out to eat together, but as friends. We could sit in restaurants as friends, and I’d have to try not to look at him like I wanted to eat him instead of anything on the menu. I’d have to be causal when everything I felt was the exact opposite of that. Intense. Eclipsing.

I grabbed the garlic bread out of the oven and arranged it on a plate. Garlic on a date was bad unless both people ate it, then it cancelled itself out. Besides, there were certain advantages to staying in, such as the availability of toothpaste.

With everything else ready to go, I served each of us a plate and sat down at the table, only to get up again and turn off the lights. The candles flickered when I sat down again. Oren had already grabbed a slice of garlic bread and dunked the crust into the sauce.

“This is nice.”

The compliment was genuine, but it still left me wishing I could give him more.

“You deserve nice.”

The corners of his eyes wrinkled when he smiled, which was another sign I knew I wasn’t completely sucking at this whole boyfriend thing. When Oren fake-smiled, it didn’t reach his eyes. I’d seen him smile like that with other people, but never with me.

“Do you have a movie lined up for after?” Mischief danced in his expression.

“And if I did?”

“I’d say that I hoped it was one I’d already seen because I won’t be paying much attention to it.”

I’d never before seen someone use a fork so erotically, but Oren slid the utensil into his mouth and held my gaze as he pulled it out slowly, his gaze heavy and full of promises, a glint of amusement appearing when I shifted in my seat.

He looked like he wanted to eat me alive.

I’d let him. I’d let him do anything to me, so long as it meant he kept looking at me like that.

Men had admired me before. I tried not to be vain, but I knew I was fit and decent looking.

Women liked me. Men liked me. But, for the first time, I felt I’d found someone who liked more than my smile, or my job, or how I looked in a pair of jeans, or out of them.

It might have been wishful thinking, but I didn’t think so.

Oren had been straight until he met me, and that knowledge did something to me.

It twined around my insides like an affectionate cat winding itself around someone’s legs.

All the men in the world that he’d met, and it was me he’d looked twice at.

The realization filled me with an effervescent joy.

When Oren looked at me, my insides felt like sunshine.

Maybe one day we could go on a proper date.

We could walk down the street holding hands and kiss in the back of a theater.

Eat dinner and play footsie under the table.

I’d been on dates before, but to begin with it was out of obligation.

You dated girls, you took them on dates.

You held their hands even when it felt weird and kissed them sometimes even though that was worse.

And you forgot to call them back and waited for them to break up with you.

When I got older, dates were things I went on to make my parents happy. It pleased them to think that I might find someone to settle down with. I stopped wanting to do it when I realized that I wasn’t only leading the women on, but also my parents.

But a date with Oren would be different. My chest ached with the force of wanting. It curled up next to my heart and squeezed.

“Will?” Oren’s brow furrowed. “Are you okay?”

Yes.

No.

Both? Could I be both okay and not in the same moment?

“I want to take you on a date. A real one… one out in public with people and food and maybe a movie.”

His worry softened into something else, something I couldn’t put my finger on.

“This is a real date. It’s you and me and food and maybe a movie.”

“But dates happen out there.” Panic? Don’t know her. All I knew was that I was suddenly sending this evening into a tailspin. But as always, Oren wasn’t spinning. Oren was solid and strong. Wise in ways he didn’t believe. Kind beyond words. Unfairly gorgeous.

He scooted his chair closer and put his hand on my leg.

“Dates happen where we say they happen. Yeah, maybe one day it would be nice to go see a movie with you and hold your hand in a dark theater. But it’s not a requirement.

I want to spend time with you, and I like being alone with you.

There’s a lot of things we can do when we’re alone that we can’t do in public. ”

I forced a deep breath into my lungs. “Like not watch a movie.”

“Like lay on your couch together and spend three hours just talking.”

It was what we did the last time Oren had come over. We’d made out after a while, of course. And then we freed our dicks from our pants and rutted against each other until we were breathless and sticky and not nearly satisfied enough to stop kissing and touching.

“I don’t want you to get bored of just hanging out here or at your place.”

“We can still be in public together, Will. Guys do shit together all the time. You play basketball at the firehouse with your little firefighter friends, and no one thinks you’re fucking them.

You and I hung out at the park that day.

We got our faces painted. No one cared then and no one will care now if we do things together. Friends do that.”

Friends didn’t ache when they weren’t touching. Friends didn’t look at each other the way Oren looked at me. The way I suspected that I looked at him. But sure. Friends did things together.

For the first time in my life, the closet started to suffocate me. Running out of oxygen. Out of space and time.

Oren leaned over, his hand sliding up my chest, making my heart skip a beat, my throat tighten, keeping all my emotions from spilling out.

And then he kissed me, soft but all consuming.

I hoped it would always be like this. That his kisses would always eclipse the world, make it vanish in his shadow.