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I rinse out the last glass, set it aside, then face Tye. “The BDSM world felt a lot different when I was a kid. It felt like a secret. It felt special … like it was just mine and no one else’s.”
“Yeah, exactly,” agrees Tye. “And now—”
“Now, everything feels like someone else’s.” I chuckle. “That’s commercialism for you. They find something enough people like, then steal it away from them, turn it into something else, and sell it back to you.” I nudge him. “But that doesn’t have to be how it is. Art isn’t always commercial. What we accomplished is something deeper, like we’re … reclaiming it as our own. Don’t you feel it, Tye?”
“I do. Which … is what brings me to … a … thing I wanted to, um … talk to you about.”
My stomach clenches up.
I think I’ve been dreading the conversation we’re about to have since the moment we stepped foot in the gallery.
He’s about to professionally break up with me. State his desires to work with other people. Tell me about some opportunity to move away to France and work with an artist I’ve never heard of.
“So?” I prompt him. “What is it?”
“I … I was hoping we might …” Suddenly, he pushes away from the counter and puts himself in front of me. “I was wondering if I might stay here for a while and collaborate on a new project.”
I stare at him, uncomprehending.
“Stay here …?” I echo back, dumbfounded.
“This sounds really awkward. Sorry. And a bit random.” He runs a hand over his buzzed head, laughs at himself, then shrugs. “I’m being kind of presumptuous, inviting myself into your place like this. I’m not meaning I want to move in or anything. It’s just …” He lets out all the air from his lungs in a sigh of dreamy delight. “It’s not just me who’s on fire. We both are. I can see it in you, Dante. We’ve got this thing going on, and it’s making me feel a sense of purpose.”
I don’t even know where to begin. “I figured you might’ve been … about to say the opposite.”
He squints at me, confused. “The opposite?”
“You’ve made so many connections tonight. I thought you were about to tell me you wanted to work with other photographers and … move off to France or something. I mean, you’ve always been welcome to work with others. I don’t own you. You are your own person, and … I knew the day would come that I’d have to send you off, let you go, watch you fuckin’ blossom or some shit.”
He puts a hand on my chest. “Dante, I think you’re giving me way too much credit. I guess there’s a possibility I could work with others in the future, but … I’m not forgetting who took those photos of me. I’m not forgetting who made me, who gave me my dreams, who unlocked me.” He lifts his eyebrows up, his pretty irises sparkling with so much beauty, I’m fucking captivated all over again. “You and I have so much more work to do before any of that. Dante, I’ve got ideas. I know you do, too. I need to be here with you to explore them, don’t you think? We’ve got to be together. We … We only just scratched the surface tonight. Besides, it’s such a long commute from my parents’ place all the way here. And … I did say I want to move out of their place someday to start my life. And also … well, you’ve got so much space here …”
As if answering him, that one word “space” seems to echo into every corner of my apartment.
“I’m not asking to move in,” he clarifies. “Even if that’s … sort of what I’m doing.” He blushes, then rushes into his point: “Dante, we need to take this to the next level.”
And just like that, he’s switched my heart right back on.
He’s got a way of doing that.
“This …?” I wag a finger between his chest and mine, eyebrows lifted. “You and me …? To the next level?”
“Yeah. Us.”
“Us … in what way?”
A knowing look crosses his face. His lips curl. “Professionally. Sexually. Creatively … whatever it is we’ve got going on between us. Yes. We need to take … this … to the next level.”
A grin breaks over my face. “Then let’s take it to the next level, boy.”
“Is that a ‘yes’? Are you saying ‘yes’? I need you to be clear about it,” he then insists, his eyes turning hard. “You know how I am.”
Oh, I know how he is. I know what he wants. I am quickly realizing that I’m the exact thing I wish I had when I was his age.
Maybe we’re not so different after all.
I take him by the waist and pull him against my body. “Yes,” I say, then put a firm kiss right on his soft, inviting lips. “Yes,” I repeat between kisses, laying them all over. “Yes, yes, fuckin’ yes.”
