Chapter Twenty-Five
I was tired as hell at work the next day, but it was worth it. Fortunately, everyone was always dragging at the office because we had to be there so damned early, and Monday mornings were especially brutal.
During lunch, Sailo texted me as he often did.
Have to be at Wilde’s at 8—drinks at 5?
As if he had to ask. I always loved meeting him before work. Even if we didn’t have time to fool around—though we sometimes did—just seeing him was enough to make my day.
We agreed on a wine bar a few blocks from Wilde’s. Wine bars were a little hoity-toity for my taste, but the place was quiet and the drinks were decent, so at five o’clock sharp, I met him there. When I walked in, I immediately zeroed in on him at a high table near the back. He met my gaze, but only for a second, and the faintest smile just barely registered on his lips before it vanished without a trace.
My stomach tightened. That was unusual. But hey, he was entitled to off days just like the rest of us. Maybe he was tired, or he’d had a long day. So I tried not to worry about it as I crossed the floor and took the seat opposite his.
Neither of us said much. I ordered a drink. He already had one. After mine came, we still stayed quiet, and the longer that went on, the more restless I became.
Throughout my marriage, I’d avoided breaking uncomfortable silences. Too often “What’s wrong?” turned into a fight over something stupid. Looking back, it was my own damned fault for letting the quiet linger until the frustration had festered. She could’ve come to me when she was upset, but I should’ve seen the signs sooner too.
Though there was no changing the past, I could at least try not to repeat the same mistakes in the future.
Steeling myself, I put my hand over Sailo’s. “You okay? You’re kind of quiet tonight.”
He watched our hands for a moment. Then, slowly, he pulled his back and released a long breath. “I think we need to talk.”
My gut clenched. Those six words had been the start of my marital supernova, and nothing about his tone suggested that this conversation was going to be any more enjoyable. I wanted to reach for his arm, but the tension in his shoulders made me wonder if he’d recoil. “Okay. What about?”
“Us. What we’re doing.” He kept his eyes down. “Whether or not we should keep doing it.”
My throat tightened. “Should we?”
“Well, I…” Sailo looked away for a moment, fixing his gaze on something across the room before he finally faced me again. “Look, you’re a great guy. Really. And we’ve definitely had some fun together. But I think…I think I need to call time on this.”
“What?” My heart dropped into my feet. I sat up. “Sailo, we—”
“Listen to me,” he pleaded softly. “This isn’t going to work.”
“But…how can you know that? We just got started.”
“I know, and it’s…I mean, it’s a rebound, and things like that, they…” He pushed out a long breath and met my eyes. “I’ve had a few rebounds, and I’ve been a rebound a few times myself. Sometimes it works, but usually, they go too fast, they get too intense, and then they blow up.” His brow pinched slightly as he added, “And it’s your first time with a man. You haven’t played the field. How can you possibly know I’m what you want in a man?”
I stared at him. “How…I…”
“I’m glad I was able to introduce you to gay sex,” he went on. “I’m glad I was able to make your first experiences good.” He’d been rehearsing this, hadn’t he? “But that doesn’t mean this is going to last forever. And I can’t just throw myself into relationships that I know aren’t going to work. I’ve got a kid to think about.”
“I’ve got kids to think about too.”
He shook his head. “Mine is too young to understand relationships. He gets that I like men, and that his moms like women, but he’s way too young to get his head around this kind of thing.”
“What kind of thing exactly? I’m not following.”
Sailo pursed his lips and lowered his gaze. Then he said, “I don’t want him to get attached to you—to us as a couple—only to have me turn around and explain to him why you’re gone.”
“Why I’m gone?” I blinked. “You’re the one putting on the brakes here, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Because I have to,” he whispered. “I’d rather end it now than after we’re both in over our heads.”
Oh, it’s too late for that.
I blew out a breath. “This is so out of left field. I…I don’t even know what to say.”
“I know. And I’m sorry. I…to be honest, my first thought was that we didn’t need to stop. We could just, you know, take it back a step. But…” He swallowed. “I’m sorry, Greg. I’m not doing this to hurt you. I just… I need to protect myself. And my kid.” He set his shoulders back, as if steeling himself. “I can’t take the risk that I’m your red sports car.”
“My red—what?”
“Your midlife crisis. Your experiment. The red sports car you buy so you can have your twenties back, and you sell by winter because you realize…” He shifted, his features tightening as he looked away. “Because you realize how impractical it is, and sell your toy for something more mature and reasonable.”
I gaped at him, barely comprehending what he was trying to say. What he thought I felt about him. “Sailo, you were a fling and an experiment…maybe for the first week. It’s been different ever since then.” Hasn’t it?
He didn’t speak. I didn’t know what to say. Panic surged through my veins—what the hell could I say to stop this? How did I explain to him that this was like nothing I’d ever experienced? I couldn’t change the way I felt about him.
Maybe I was in over my head, but I liked it.
“We can’t keep doing this,” he said.
“Have I done something wrong?” I asked. “Is it… I mean, did—”
“No. No.” He put up his hands and shook his head. “Honestly, you’re a great guy. Anyone would be lucky to have you. But this… It’s just too fast. Too intense. It’s going to blow up in our faces.”
“Isn’t that what it’s doing right now?” More venom than I intended slipped into my voice, and I quickly added, “We can slow things down, can’t we?”
“I don’t think it works that way.”
I paused to collect my thoughts. After a deep breath, I looked him in the eye. “Look, I get it. I know rebound relationships usually don’t work, but sometimes they do. You don’t want to give this a chance to—”
“I don’t want to give it a chance to crash and burn like I’m ninety-nine percent sure it will.” He set his jaw and sat a little straighter. “The odds are just not in our favor, and I don’t want to get hurt like that again.”
“Sailo, I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I know you don’t. But, I mean, you said yourself you’re not sure if you’re gay or bi.” His brow pinched as he shook his head. “How can you be sure of what’s going on between us? You don’t even know who you are, Greg.”
“No, but I know I love you.”
We both froze. His eyes widened, and I cringed, instantly regretting the words.
“Shit, I—”
“This is exactly what I’m talking about.” He deflated a bit as he sat back. “We met, what, two or three weeks after your wife kicked you out after twenty-five years? And not only that, I’m the first man you’ve ever been with.” His eyebrows knitted together as he looked me right in the eye. “Do you really think something like this is going to last?”
“Is there any reason why it can’t?”
He exhaled hard, lowering his gaze as he reached up to rub his neck. “I’ve been someone’s rebound before. And I’ve been someone’s first before. It’s never ended well.” Sighing, he met my gaze again. “Being a rebound and your first? That deck is stacked against us. Has been from day one.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but Sailo continued.
“I was perfectly happy being your rebound and showing you what it’s like to be a man, but I don’t think either of us had any illusions about this turning into more.”
“Because I didn’t know it was possible to feel like this,” I said. “About anyone.”
Sailo flinched, breaking eye contact. “You’re not in love with me. You’re in love with your new freedom and with everything we’ve done together.” His lips were tight, his eyes pained, as he looked at me and whispered, “You’re in love with being alive again.”
“What? How the hell can you tell me what I’m feeling?”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose, sighing heavily. Lowering his hand, he met my gaze again. “It’s obvious from where I’m sitting. You’re infatuated with me because you’ve been able to have something with me you didn’t have before. But when you figure out that I’m too young, or you’re not over your ex-wife enough for a real relationship—where does that leave me?”
“Couldn’t any relationship blow up in your face? Or mine?”
“Of course.” He slid his thumbs into the pockets of his shorts. “But I don’t like to play unless I think the odds are at least slightly in my favor, and this…” He exhaled hard. “Look, I was okay with this turning into a relationship eventually, but it’s gotten too intense too fast. And that’s never a good sign. So, I need to stop before it crashes. Because I don’t want to be there when you wake up one morning, realize this is a rebound and a midlife crisis, and send me packing.”
For a moment, I couldn’t even pull in a breath. My brain frantically tried to make sense of everything he’d said in between panicking that he was ending things. “Do you really think that’s what’s going to happen?”
“Do you really think it isn’t?” He put up a hand. “We agreed at the start to take things slow and see what happened. And they’ve…happened a lot faster than they should have.” He grimaced. “Too fast for me to believe this has any kind of staying power.”
That hit me in the balls.
“Sailo—”
“I don’t doubt for a second that you’re sincere. What you feel… I know you’re not just blowing smoke. But you’re not in love with me. You’re in love with getting over your wife. You’d feel the same about any man who happened to be in my place right now.” He shrugged tightly, maybe a little apologetically. “And I just don’t want to wait around for you to figure that out and kick me to the curb.”
“So you’re kicking me to the curb?”
“I’m nipping this in the bud before we both get hurt.” He put up his hands. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry.”
“Sailo…”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I need to go.”
My throat tightened.
He reached for me like he was going to touch my arm, but then apparently thought better of it and pulled his hand back. Folding them tightly in his lap, he said, “This is going to hurt. And I really am sorry. I’m not doing this because I want to hurt you. But give it some time, and you’ll understand why I can’t stay, and why we can’t keep doing this.”
“My ex-wife said something similar as she was showing me to the door of my own house,” I said through my teeth.
Sailo’s brow creased. “This is kind of my point, actually. You’re not over her. And you’re not in love with me.” He inched away, paused, and then rose. “I’m really sorry. I have to do this, though.”
He got up and started to go.
“Wait.”
He turned around, eyebrows up, but didn’t speak.
I swept my tongue across my lips. “Are you really telling me this is all…me?” I tried to keep the anger and hurt out of my voice, but it was a struggle. “You don’t feel anything?”
Sailo met my gaze, and the intensity in his eyes nearly drove me back a step. “Don’t put words in my mouth. I never said I didn’t feel anything.”
Before I could make sense of it, before I could extract a response from my stunned brain, he turned again, and he didn’t stop this time. As he walked away, I stared at his back, my mouth dry and my mind reeling as I tried to come up with some argument to make him stay.
But nothing came. All I could think was what if he was right? What if this was just a midlife crisis? Maybe a rebound-induced need to reinvent myself from the ground up?
The door opened.
Closed.
And he was gone.
I slumped back against the back of my chair, all the breath leaving my lungs at once. My head spun as I stared at the empty glass and the empty seat and the empty space between here and the door.
No. No way. He was completely wrong.
Wasn’t he?
If I wasn’t in love with him, then what the hell was I feeling?
My heart sank deeper in my chest.
What if he was right? Sure, the attraction to men had been there all along, but I’d never been unhappy being with a woman. Was I just doing this to get over my divorce?
Was Sailo my red sports car? My much-younger rebound?
And if he was, why did it hurt so much to watch him go?