“I don’t have space in my garden for you.” He hugged the tree. “But some day if no one else buys you, I’ll come back. I promise.”
Now I was as upset as he’d been over the sideboard. I snapped a pic of the tree before putting my hand on the rough bark. We walked back toward the entrance, only buying some coriander and basil in pots. I wished I could have bought the tree for Remy, but there wasn’t enough space for it in my garden either.
“Now I’m really hungry.”
We stopped for burgers and fries and ate them outside the fast food joint on a bench.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to have a home with a huge garden where we could plant that gum tree?” It probably didn’t make sense because we each had a home and one of us could move in with the other.
“That’s been on my mind for ages, but somewhere with enough space would be horrendously expensive.”
I nodded because what could I say? Property prices in the city and elsewhere were soaring, and for most people, wages were not keeping up.
“Remember what you said earlier?” My mate dunked a fry in ketchup.
“Ummm, can you narrow it down and give me a hint?”
“About what we could do after the auction.”
Oh, he wanted to go back to bed. Our eyes locked, and without saying a word, we picked up the rest of our food and raced for the car. We were laughing as we put on our seat belts, and I roared out of the parking lot. Remy licked ketchup from his fingers and offered me the last fry.
I clamped my teeth on it and bit his finger too. He didn’t cry out but one glance at him and his flushed face and parted lips told me he liked it.
“Now I’m hungry for something else.” My mate reached over and unzipped my fly.
Shit, I almost slammed into the car in front. I was tempted to pull over and yank my cock out but didn’t want to get arrested, so I put my foot down when the light turned green. The drive home had never seemed so long.
18
REMY
I spent the night tossing and turning, unable to get comfortable. And to make matters worse, I kept falling in and out of dreams where I lost my mate. It wasn’t a case of recapturing a dream or having the same one on repeat, either. Each time it was a new scenario, and they all ended the same. Hari was gone, walking away because he was mad… at me… and I deserved it. I hadn’t marked him yet, and he couldn’t get past that.
Of course, it was the one night we weren’t staying at each other’s house because I had a really early teleconference and he had a delivery. Every time I woke up sweating and reached for him, my heart pounding in my chest, he wasn’t there to reassure me. Each and every time, there was a split second when I thought the dream was real. Pure, freaking agony.
When my alarm finally told me getting up and out of bed was my only option, I felt no more refreshed than I had when I went to sleep. I’d been exhausted yesterday, too. Not simply normal tired. Weird thing was, work-wise and around-the-house-wise, it had been a pretty normal day. There’d been no reason for me to be dead on my feet like that.
In the hopes of waking up a little more, I kept the water in my shower slightly cooler than normal. All it did was annoy my koala, who was missing his eucalyptus steam, and had me shivering. I was still just as tired as when I stepped in.
Somehow, I managed to be in front of my computer in time for the meeting. Barely. It was an overseas one, so it required a lot of concentration. The translations were done with a text bar on the side of the screen and away from the numbers they were sharing. Keeping up with who was saying what and making sense of words that were misspelled due to fast typing while looking at the charts was nearly impossible on a good day, and this wasn’t a good day. Not yet, anyway.
The good thing was that by the time it was over, it was late enough in the morning for me to call my mate. He’d be up but not quite at work yet. Gods, I needed to hear his voice.
“Hey, you’re calling. Is everything okay?” We talked or texted all the time, but it was usually a text first.
“Ish. I didn’t sleep well, and I wanted to hear your voice. I missed you last night.”
“Same. So very same.”
“Come over for dinner?” We hadn’t made any plans, and my koala needed to know when we would see him next
“You sound exhausted, Remy. How about I bring dinner over to you instead of cooking?”
“I’d argue with you, but that sounds all kinds of perfect.” My computer started beeping; another video call was about to start. “I gotta go. Talk to you later.”
My stomach started acting weird halfway through the next meeting. It made sense. My stomach was never great on days after I didn’t sleep, and I hadn’t eaten yet to counteract it, giving me a double whammy.
I threw some bread in the toaster and put the tea kettle on, knowing that it was better to have some mint tea than to attempt coffee when my stomach was yuck. I didn’t even get the butter on the toast before I was racing to the bathroom and emptying my stomach of what little was in there. I felt remarkably better afterward and went back to work like nothing was wrong.
