Page 22 of Worth the Wait

“He wants to.”

“Do you not?”

Jack scratched under his ear. “It’s not that I don’t. I just don’t want things to change.”

“Do you think if you meet him, then it’ll be harder to be apart?” Joseph asked, daring a glance at Bowie.

“That’s part of it.”

“The rest, then?”

“Fuck, I don’t know. What if being with me isn’t what he really wants? Like, he meets me in person and he doesn’t like the way my feet look or he thinks I breathe too loud or something?” Jack ran through a mental checklist in his head that was enough to want to send him running to the door on Callum’s behalf.

“You’re making excuses,” Bowie said, waving his fork in Jack’s direction. “You one-hundred percent cannot insinuate that Joseph should follow me to Kentucky when you won’t evenmeetyour online boyfriend.”

“The two of you have probably been after each other since college. It’s a totally different situation,” Jack countered. “Just please don’t tell Landon. Or Verity.”

“Why not?” Bowie asked mischievously.

“Because they live in LA, and he lives in LA, and I don’t want them to push me to come out right now. I’m busy with work and there’s just shit I have to do here. I already told Callum August. I’ll tell Landon and Verity before then.”

“Callum?” Joseph asked.

Hearing Callum’s name on his friend’s lips left him feeling surprisingly warm inside. Like they had the potential to be friends with him and know him the way they knew each other. Well, not the way Bowie and Joseph knew each other, more like the way Landon and Jack knew each other.

“Callum,” Jack confirmed.

“And he’s into that shit you do?”

“He’s into that shit I do.” Jack laughed. “Anyway, Callum isn’t for public consumption yet, so let’s get back to the two of you and all the interstate penetration that’s been going on.”

Bowie groaned.

“Only since Bowie moved,” Joseph said.

Jack found that hard to believe, but he was happy to have the topic of conversation not be him, so he let them have it.

“Only since the move?” He couldn’t help but poke at it a little.

“The move,” Bowie confirmed.

Brunch went on, lighthearted as always, with Jack bidding Bowie a safe trip back to Kentucky and making Joseph swear to let him know when he decided about moving himself.

Jack spent the next couple hours after brunch wandering aimlessly around the city, not quite ready to go home and be alone yet. The truth of Joseph’s question weighed heavy on his mind. Maybe this August trip was a bad idea. If things went the way he suspected they would with Callum, then he wouldn’t want to come back to New York alone. He’d do everything he could to pack his sweet little bartender up and shuttle him back to New York the first chance he had.

Walking into his empty apartment, he made a quick Skype call to Landon and Verity, of course, to tell them about Joseph and Bowie; then he called Callum on the phone.

“Daddy,” Callum yawned into the phone after answering on the fourth ring.

“Did I wake you?”

“Hmmn? Yeah, s’okay though. Hi.”

Callum grumbled himself awake while Jack listened, his heart tightening with every little purr and stretch he heard on the phone.

“Watch a movie with me,” Jack blurted.

“What?”