I drive up the porte cochere of Eric’s condo building and park in a fifteen-minute parking spot before texting to let him know I’m here. Admittedly, I feel kind of silly about tonight, sitting here dressed in a button-up and slacks, looking as though I’m getting ready to take Eric to the prom.

He’s wrong if he thinks I didn’t want to take the rest of the day off and spend it at his place, fucking, letting him fill me up, taking complete control and having his way with me.

But that isn’t how I want our first time sharing that to play out.

I want it to be special because this moment of tearing away that boundary represents the level of trust we have for one another.

And I do trust Eric.

I want him to be the man who gives that to me, just like I wanted him to be the first man inside me.

When he walks out of the revolving glass door, he’s wearing a button-up and tie, dressed up, like I asked him to when I texted him during work while I coordinated our date.

A date, a fucking date. Nice to have those, considering we spent so much of the early part of our relationship having to keep it all secret.

When he gets into the car, he’s smiling.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you this giddy before,” I tell him. “Is it because of the date or because you’re gonna get to come up inside me later?”

“A little bit of both,” he says as he adjusts the seat.

“You look sexy, by the way. I think I like you best when you dress up.”

“I’m pretty sure you like me best when I dress down.”

I laugh. “But seriously, you look really hot.” He eyes me peculiarly for a second, and I say, “What? I can’t compliment my date?”

“Oh, I’m your date now, am I?”

“Yeah, that’s right. My date to wine and dine.”

“I do whatever I got to do to get a piece of ass,” Eric says. But I can tell by the expression on his face he’s only giving me a hard time.

“Eric, there will be plenty of opportunities to give me a hard time later,” I retort, and he laughs.

“You’re feeling particularly clever this evening.”

“I have a good feeling about tonight. I give good date, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Oh, I bet you do,” Eric says.

I start the car, and as I’m driving out of the porte-cochere exit, I turn on the radio and push Play on my iPhone, which is resting in the dash mount.

Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting” starts up.

Eric bursts into laughter. “You fucking charmer.”

I remember when the noise of Kate Bush, which Eric calls music, first assaulted my ears. It’s just as bad now, but it’s worth every second as Eric sits beside me, mouthing the words, shaking a little to the music, reminding me of how our spark lit up on that dance floor in PV.

“Just so you know,” Eric says as we’re on our way to our destination, “I’m not letting you pay for everything. You can call me your date because you asked first, but we’re going to split this fifty-fifty. I’m a modern woman.”

He earns a laugh for that, and when I look to him, he offers a wink. I imagine his scruff against my face, against my body as he trails kisses down it. Like at lunch today, he oozes charisma and pure animalistic desire, which was one of the things that first ignited that lust between us—something I still can’t shake my nerves of.

As we arrive at the restaurant I booked reservations at, Eric snickers.

“What are you laughing about?” I ask him.

“I’m assuming you intended for me to be amused by the fact that you’re taking us to a Mexican restaurant.”

“It’s gourmet Mexican. Only the best for my guy. I’m thoughtful like that. I told you, I give good date.”

“It was very thoughtful to choose something that would remind us of how we met,” Eric says, but he’s not joking or giving me shit. He’s being totally sincere, which is nice.

We walk to the restaurant together, and the host seats us at a balcony table I picked out on the second floor, which looks out over Midtown.

“This is a nice place,” Eric says, glancing around at the decor. “Did you and Whitney ever come here?”

I scoff. “I’m not going to take you to some place I took Whitney. I used to actually see it on my way to flag football down the street.”

“I guess that’s where you and Ty would meet up,” Eric adds, as the mention stirs for him what it stirred for me.

This is a reality we can’t escape from—we had our fantasy already when we got to enjoy our time in Puerto Vallarta, and now we face the music and push through real life, where consequences for actions are all too real.

The waiter approaches and takes our drink orders. As soon as he leaves, I ask Eric, “When do you think Ty’s going to want to talk to us again?”

He shrugs.

“I keep checking my phone,” I say. “Keep waiting to get a message or a phone call. I know it’s only been a few days, but that’s a long-ass time considering we used to message each other all the time.” That familiar guilt rises within me. I shake it off. “Once we can all talk, once we’re all able to be around each other, I have to believe we can work through this.”

“I appreciate this, Jesse. It means a great deal to me how much you care about my son.”

“Ty’s always been a good friend to me. He’s been there through some of the shittiest things I’ve gone through in my life. Hell, he was there when my granny passed.”

“What?” Eric asks.

“Stan’s mother. She was a beautiful person, and a big part of our family when I was growing up. It happened while I was in college, while Ty and I were friends. She had a stroke…and that was it. There one minute, gone the next. The day I found out, I told him about what happened, and he dropped everything. Showed up at my place not an hour later and gave me a ride to my parents’, then hung around with me and my parents, letting us talk about Granny, get that off our chest. He ordered us pizza and got everyone laughing. That was how he was. I think that’s one of the first moments where I realized what a truly good person Ty is. He likes to act very laid-back and like he doesn’t give a fuck about anything, and he doesn’t let a lot of people in, but he’s not the only one who does that.”

Judging by the way Eric’s gaze sinks to the table, he caught my reference to his own nature.

I shake myself out of my state, feeling guilty for hogging the conversation, and like maybe this isn’t the sort of thing to discuss on our date night.

“Anyway, I guess we’d better look at the menu,” I say, which we do before the waiter arrives and takes our orders.

There seems to be something on Eric’s mind, because he keeps quiet. I figure it has to do with that stuff I shared with him…dumped on him, really.

“Sorry. I wasn’t meaning to make tonight about Ty. I was—”

“I’m glad you brought him up. And that you said all that. That’s not the Ty I know. Not the Ty he lets me see. Even with what happened when I went to talk to him, that shocked me. I didn’t realize that Ty could be that kind of man. In my mind, the way he lashed out that night when we told him what happened between us…that’s what I expect from him.”

“Well, Ty’s full of surprises,” I tell him.

“Apparently.”

“Yeah, my granny, Whitney…he’s always been there.”

“Were you really broken up about Whitney?”

“Why? Do I not act like it?”

“You don’t talk about her as though you were in love.”

“No, I wasn’t in love. I knew what we had wasn’t that, but I cared about her. I still care about her. Our breakup…it was like losing my best friend. Five years we saw each other, and then she wanted to move on, so all those things we did together, all that fun we had, in a moment it was gone.

“I have to admit, I felt…abandoned. That was the hardest part. I was planning on lying around the condo, sulking over it, but Ty called me to hang, and when I said no, I guess he could tell something was wrong, because he showed up at my dorm room with a Meat Lover’s pizza and a couple of beers. He said, ‘If you just want the pizza and not the company, then you’ll have to order your own.’”

Eric smiles.

“We spent the night throwing back beers and joking around,” I continue, “him getting my mind off it. And it really helped…more than he could know. Then he didn’t let me sit around moaning and groaning. He got me involved in the flag-football team. We’d go out drinking and on the girl chase.”

“The girl chase?” Eric asks. “Really? How did that work out for you?”

“Eh, not too great, because I was never really on the prowl, and honestly not that great for Ty either. We usually wound up shit-faced and Ubering back to one of our places. We’d order Chinese, and one of us would crash on the couch.”

“Okay, I know we’ve never talked about this, and you don’t have to answer, but I’m not going to learn you ended up making out with my son at some point, right?”

“Oh, God, no. There was definitely no hanky-panky going on between me and Ty.”

“You did not just say hanky-panky.”

“Yes, I did,” I confess.

“And here I’m supposed to be the old guy?”

“Get out your driver’s license, and we’ll see who the old guy is. I’m going to say hanky-panky if I want to say hanky-panky.”

Eric laughs, and I’m glad I could break the tension that’s been building from talking about Ty.

We let the conversation shift to more pleasant topics, catching up about work, about the new people I’ve met at the office, their friendliness, some of the characters that amuse me on a day-to-day basis, Sam included. Eric talks to me about some investments he plans on making this year based on things his accountant told him.

When the waiter arrives with the bill, my credit card on top, Eric glares at me.

“What?” I ask. “You didn’t really think I was going to the bathroom, did you?”

I’d slipped away for a few minutes to take care of it behind his back because this is me taking him on a fucking date, whether he likes it or not.

As I sign the check, Eric says, “You little bastard.”

But that smile forming across those beautiful lips assures me he’s pleased with my sneakiness.

“This has been a really nice date. I appreciate it, Jesse.”

“Our date isn’t over yet,” I tell him, and surely he must detect the mischievousness in my expression.