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I don’t answer that because I don’t like my answer.
“Good night, Mr. Arnaud.”
“Good night, Jack.”
He gets in the elevator. We stare at each other until the doors close. I fight several powerful urges to close the distance, unchecked desire licking at my spine, but finally I’m able to breathe again. Loosening my tie, I unbutton the top button of my shirt. I think it’s safe enough to say our chemistry is undeniable. It’s unexpected and totally unorthodox for me, but it’s there, and it’s white-hot.
It’s hard to think of anyone I’ve been with that I’ve felt so drawn to, but it wouldn’t be the first time I wanted someone who was inherently bad for me. My first girlfriend, in fact—Ruby—was self-harming, borderline suicidal, and all my late night conversations with her precipitated my first major depressive episode. I’m not saying my faulty brain wiring is her fault, but the darkness in her sucked me right in until all I could see in myself was more of the same.
My parents forbade me from seeing her when they found me digging through their medicine cabinet looking for something to take my pain away. Ruby was eventually hospitalized.
Then there was a model I met when I first moved to the city. Her name was Stef, and she was bad news. Drugs and drama. She had literally no problem slapping me in the face when she was pissed and called the cops on me more than once. After the third time, I managed to get her arrested since her handprint was still on my face, and I haven’t heard from her since.
So yeah, Jericho was definitely a breath of fresh air. She’s like—regular dramatic, and I’ve never found any of her criticisms lacking merit. Sometimes, it’s like she sees right through me, which, not gonna lie—I kind of hope she sees through me tomorrow night and calls me out on what I’ve been doing. I won’t lie if I’m confronted. But blowing up a decent relationship for something that might amount to a depression-induced phase isn’t on my top ten list of things I want to do this weekend.
I might be the big dreamer in the family, but I’m still the oldest of five siblings which always made me kind of a stickler for rules, order, and fairness. I don’t like sharing, and I don’t like being told what to do, but more than anything, I don’t like fucking up, and it feels like all I’ve done for the last few years is fuck things up. But this is the first time I fucked something up when I damn well knew better.
I can give myself a pass for that first incident in Olivier’s penthouse. Tensions were high, I was at the end of my rope, whatever. But the second time—the one where I whipped out my cock—I’d known it was wrong.
Wrong on so many fucking levels.
But I still don’t think I crossed a major line until the day I took him up on his offer to sleep on his couch. That was the first time I legitimately felt like I was cheating on Jericho. The guilt weighs heavy. Is it crazy to think that sitting with both of them at dinner will help me figure out what to do?
Probably.
It’s a long night, and by the time I’m checking out with William, Olivier’s invitation to crash here is far, far more appealing than riding the train and looking my guilt in the eyes. But standing up Jericho isn’t an option. I may be the asshole who’s being unfaithful to her, but I’m not gonna be the asshole who ghosts her. I’ve been rejected too many times in the last few years to turn around and do that to someone who’s been nothing but supportive of me.
Her smile is bright when I step out onto 14th Street. Her light-brown cheeks have a flush of pink from the blustery wind, and her natural curls whip wildly around the soft angles of her face.
I make myself smile back. I make myself hug her back, too, when she throws her arms around me and sighs like it’s been a year.
She presses several cold kisses to my neck before pulling away. “Tired?”
“Nah, not too bad. Let’s grab some breakfast.”
We link arms and snuggle close. Without having to talk about it, we head for the diner two doors down from my building.
We usually do this about once a week. She takes a half-day, using her morning off to catch up with me over eggs and bacon, then she tucks me in at the apartment, takes a nap, and heads to her job before returning at five to spend the rest of the evening and night. Aside from the time after my birthday, we haven’t incorporated sex into that routine since before Thanksgiving when my depression took over again. When every day is an uphill battle just to make it to the next one, it’s hard to get it up, no matter how sexy and beautiful Jeri is. And she is.
She deserves the man I thought I was going to be. Not the guy I turned out to be. I hate it for both of us that we’ve wound up here: relationship purgatory.
Not that anyone looking at her would suspect that. She’s glowing. Like she couldn’t be happier to see me. We order our usual, and once I have my decaf coffee in front of me, I broach the subject of tonight. “How would you feel about a double date?”
Her brow perks up. “Is Silas seeing someone?”
“No. It’s someone I met up by work. Ollie and his girlfriend Elodie.”
“You? Made a friend? Drew, do you have a fever?”
“Haha, yeah, I know. Just sort of happened. Anyway, he’s going through a rough time, and I guess we bonded or something. So, what do you think?”
“Sounds great!”
Jericho loves people. New people. Old people. Rich people. Poor people. All people. She’s into Enneagrams, Clifton Strengths, rising signs, and all that shit. Everyone interests her, at least at first, but she’s more likely to like someone than not.
I met her through Christian and his girlfriend at the time. We’d been at some trendy new bar in the East Village celebrating Chris’s birthday, and Jericho had shown up in a black-sequined romper with spaghetti straps. I had immediately envisioned my mouth on her shoulders—kissing them, inhaling them, sliding straps from them.
We hit it off from the start, mutually attracted and equally horny. Like I said—breath of fresh air. I figured it would end up being a one-night stand, but since she knew Chris, she’d hung around the next day, and we’d ended up hooking up again the following night. After two weeks of panting, sweaty sex and long lazy days off spent on the couch bingeing The Crown, we casually slipped into boyfriend/girlfriend territory.
