Chapter Seven
Noah balked. Complete tongue-flapping-out, eyebrows-waggling, hands-shaking, near-panic-attack recoil. And he knew panic attacks.
“My...experience is not a joke.” He managed to get the words out, managed to sound affronted instead of freaked out. Or tempted. And that would be the worst—if Adrian knew how very, very tempted he was, when it was obvious Adrian’s enthusiasm was nothing more than a ploy to get him to talk.
“Sorry.” Adrian looked suitably contrite. “I shouldn’t tease you. Not that I wasn’t a little bit serious. I mean, I was expecting to get massively laid this trip, and that so didn’t happen. So if I can help you out...”
“You and Trent didn’t...have relations?”
“Man. We have got to work on your sex vocabulary. No. As it turns out, arguing is not an aphrodisiac for me.”
“I can imagine.”
“Can you? Because that’s the ten-million-Villager-credit question here.” Adrian’s voice was light, but it wasn’t unkind.
“Why is this so fascinating to you?”
“Hot guy, of literary inclinations, who may or may not have experience in relations.” Adrian made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “Heck yes, I’m fascinated. You, my friend, are one intriguing puzzle.”
“You really think I’m hot?” Oh curse his stupid tongue.
“You own a mirror, right?” Adrian smiled slowly. “Or do you need me to catalog your smoky eyes and your hot beard and your tasty—”
“Never mind.” His skin felt dry and flaky, as if he’d stayed out for hours in Grand Wash Canyon in the middle of July, as though he might be headed for a perma-red face. The few times Noah really considered his appearance all he saw was too much hair everywhere but on his head, where a receding hairline had shown up in the last year or so. He kept his hair long and fluffy enough to disguise it. He had too-wide lips and a too-narrow face and eyes that never seemed quite awake or happy enough. He had no idea what part of his appearance constituted hot.
He traced the jacquard pattern of his comforter with a finger, avoiding Adrian’s eyes.
“I guess I don’t see how a guy as attractive as you could possibly remain a virgin so long. I mean I get that your ex-fiancée was super religious and wanted to wait—”
“I. I was the one who wanted to wait.” It was a silly thing, but even after all these years, he felt he owed Sarah some modicum of truth—the truth he’d never been able to articulate back then. “She thought I was sweet and old-fashioned, but it wouldn’t have taken a lot to convince her to spoil the honeymoon.”
He could still remember her kisses, her roving hands on him, the questions in her eyes whenever he stopped her attentions. And the guilt. Oh lord, the guilt over the fact that her touch and her lips did nothing for him. The feeling washed over him again, the sick dread of not getting aroused over stuff his friends talked about in hushed whispers.
“Why? I’m not trying to be judgmental here—just curious. Why not take her up on it?”
A rage swept through him, a swift current through the skinny little slot canyon of his self-control. Adrian’s “just curious” made his hands grab fistfuls of the comforter.
“Why do you think, Adrian?” Noah’s voice was louder than he’d ever heard himself and both dogs fled the bed. “Because maybe I was gay and had no real interest in sex with her?”
“Oh.” Adrian’s voice was all soft and surprised. “I didn’t know if you could actually say the words.”
“What? That I’m gay? Has that been the point of all your probing questions? Some sort of exercise to get me to confirm I’m gay? I was pretty sure the books would have clinched it for you, but I’m happy to have provided hours of amusement.”
“Easy.” Adrian patted his arm, stroking like Noah was an angry pony.
Noah felt like one too. He never argued like this. He’d promised himself long ago that he would never turn into a loud, ugly man like his father. Instead, Noah made a point of leaving conflicts before they got heated. He fled uncomfortable emotions. For Pete’s sake, he’d broken up with his fiancée in a delicately worded letter.
But something about Adrian blew past his every defense, made him want to engage. In fact, he wanted Adrian riled up too. None of this “calm down” nonsense.
“It’s all a game to you, isn’t it? The pathetic thirty-five-year-old closeted virgin and his sad little life. Something you can laugh about later when you tell your friends about getting stranded.”
Adrian laughed at that, a harsh, bitter sound that echoed the slashing winds outside. “I am so not telling my friends about getting stranded. You’re not the pathetic one. You’ve taken some sort of noble vow of chastity or whatever. Me? I can’t seem to get a boyfriend who wants to be in the same state as me. And trust me, I’m not telling my coworkers that the guy I met in our forums abandoned me.”
“You met Trent in the Space Villager forums?”
“Yeah. He was a big fan of our videos. He’s a programmer too, and he was always leaving compliments on my Code Review videos. You know, the things we toss up on Twitch or YouTube talking about problems with game development. And he was one of the people who sent us gifts—”
“One of? Multiple people send the programmers gifts?” Noah couldn’t keep the skepticism from his voice.
“Not just the programmers. The customer support people. Robert, our founder. The guys in marketing and promotion. The whole team gets an endless stream of free food and little toys. You have no idea how rabid the Space Villager fans are.” Adrian sounded more than a little proud of that. “We’re already the most popular space MMORPG game with the biggest fan base and we don’t go live for another year.”
“And Trent was one of these rabid fans? I mean, I gave money to the crowd funding drive and I’ve visited the site a couple of times, but I’ve never been tempted to send a bagel or a bobble head.”
“Trent sent me a Nerf gun to torment my team with. I thought it was cute. Anyways, we always thank our backers and supporters on air in the videos, but I mangled his name. He messaged me, and one thing led to another...”
“And next thing you were driving across country together?” Noah wasn’t a total idiot. He could fill in the “another thing” blank with plenty of hot chat sex, and his starving imagination didn’t need the specifics.
“Next thing I’m stranded with only the clothes on my back with this hot professor guy...” Adrian smiled slyly at him. “But anyway, the whole virgin thing? Not nearly as humiliating as my week, let me tell you. You want to be the one who’s going to have to request a new company laptop?”
“Point taken. And it’s not some noble oath.” Noah settled back against the pillows, fighting urge gone and in its place a strange calm—a sense that it was time to finally say certain truths aloud.
“It’s not?” Adrian took his cue and leaned back on the pillows, rolling on his side so he could see Noah’s face. And no, that wasn’t disconcerting in the slightest, being put under observation like an interesting snail.
“Well, maybe it started out that way. I knew I was gay in high school, but my faith told me it was a sin. I went to a conservative college, in part because I didn’t trust myself at a more liberal school. I thought maybe I could ignore that part of me. Then my friendship with Sarah seemed like fate—like I could marry her and everything would be okay.”
“But it wasn’t,” Adrian guessed, blue eyes sympathetic. In the window behind him, snow continued to drift down in lazy sheets, creating the sense of the two of them alone on a snowbound planet, one where Noah could share things he ordinarily locked away.
“It wasn’t that I didn’t love her.” Noah tried to find words to describe the mess his emotions had been back then. “I did.”
“You loved her too much to hurt her.” Adrian was too darn perceptive.
“Exactly.” Noah sighed. “I broke her heart, and I went off to graduate school convinced that as long as I never acted on the gayness I was doing the world a favor—”
“That’s so sad,” Adrian said. “To cut yourself off like that.”
“Well, I thought it was what I deserved after treating Sarah so badly. But gradually...” He trailed off, not sure he could say this next part.
“Something changed?” Adrian leaned forward, and it wasn’t his eagerness that made Noah want to continue as much as the promise in his eyes that he wasn’t judging him.
“I got Ulysses and he was kind of...therapeutic for me. I started hating myself a little less.”
“Oh man. I get that. A few months of taking care of Pixel and I didn’t feel so much like the perpetual screwup my family thought I was. Unconditional love will do that for you.”
Noah’s chest did a weird fluttery thing, and he had to wave his hand to lessen the sensation. “Yeah, well other things weren’t going so well. I was in my final year of the doctoral program and I had all these official functions to go to, and every place I interviewed with did group interviews and formal receptions and...I don’t do well with crowds.”
“I think I got that you’re not exactly a people person from the first,” Adrian teased. He rubbed Noah’s thigh again. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“There is when you want a tenure-track job. It got so bad that I was having panic attacks before flying out to interviews,” he admitted.
“Hey, don’t feel bad. I have panic attacks over flying even when it’s a vacation. I have to either drink or pinch some of my mom’s Xanax to make it through.”
An invisible knot released in Noah’s back. Adrian would get this. “I didn’t have a mom with a pharmacy in her purse. But I went to student health to see if I could get something, and they made me see a psychologist first.”
“That’s smart.” Adrian patted Noah’s leg. “Nothing wrong with getting some help. Unless, of course, the doctor made you feel worse?”
“No, nothing like that. But the doctor said she could tell that I was burdened by something. And of course, I wouldn’t tell her what—”
“It might have helped,” Adrian said gently.
“It might have. But I couldn’t say the words aloud. But I think she might have guessed.” Oh the shame he’d felt back then, feeling like he might be on the verge of being found out. “She gave me this book to read. All about self-love. And it was full of new-age stuff—”
“Hey, I was raised on all that new-age psycho-babble.” Adrian’s tone was all defensive. “My mom reads self-help books for relaxation.”
“Well, she would probably love this title. But it made me realize that I couldn’t spend the rest of my life loathing myself—”
“Damn right.” The purple lock of Adrian’s hair jumped with the force of his words.
“And I started trying to...accept my gayness. I still wasn’t anywhere close to coming out. But I discovered gay novels around that time, and I worked on trying to reconcile my sexuality with my faith.”
“And you weren’t tempted to...experiment?” Adrian asked.
“I had panic attacks at going to sedate academic receptions. No way was I going to a crowded gay bar. And casual sex isn’t attractive to me.”
“But relationship sex is? Or are you not into sex at all? Because that’s cool too. I’ve got two asexual friends—”
“Not everything needs a label,” Noah said. “I find the idea of a relationship attractive, yes. And I’m not opposed to sex or immune to desire, but to me, it’s something sacred, reserved for a union of meaning, not some urge to be worked out on a Friday night—”
“Good to know.” Adrian smiled encouragingly at him, and Noah’s stomach flip-flopped. This conversation was happening on so many levels, Noah simply couldn’t keep up.
“But I’ve always been able to compartmentalize that part of my life.” He knew he was turning red again. “Anyway, I was slowly getting more okay with who and what I was and then...” He drifted and had to look away from Adrian’s questioning gaze.
“And then?” Adrian’s hand was gentle on Noah’s chin, turning his face back toward him.
“And then I got the job at Landview. And I had to sign a morality clause in the contract. They kicked two students off the basketball team the year prior for having premarital sex. Coming out was completely and totally off the table and I was...”
“Relieved?”
“Yes.” Noah felt the word all the way to his feet, every muscle releasing with the realization Adrian got Noah on a plane that no one else had ever. “Yes. I was relieved. I wouldn’t have to deal with the...messy reality of how coming out would destroy my family. I wouldn’t have to figure how precisely to navigate gay culture when I was opposed to casual sex. I figured it was a sign from God that this is how I’m supposed to live my life. Aware of and accepting who I am, but not...seeking more.”
“That’s quite possibly the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” Adrian’s voice had a quiver in that went straight to all the raw parts of Noah’s soul. “So you just resigned yourself to a life alone? You didn’t think about job hunting elsewhere?”
“Do you know how few tenure-track archaeology positions there are each year? No. This is just my life now. And I’m okay with that.” Maybe if he said it enough times, he’d believe it too.
“No, you’re not.” Adrian shook his head. “People aren’t meant to be alone, Noah. It hurts my heart to think of you choosing to be celibate simply to keep a job. And because you’re afraid. And I know coming out’s scary, but trust me—”
“It’s not an option for me.” Noah cut short Adrian’s pep talk. “It doesn’t really matter if I would have eventually gotten up the courage to do it. Last year, two tenure-track jobs opened. In the whole country. I’m here working on my book because this is my sabbatical semester. Assuming I make my book deadline, I’ll have the final tenure review in the spring and then I’ll be tenured. That’s enough for me. The ability to work on my research is huge.”
“But research won’t keep you warm at night. And I know that because I’m working eighty-hour weeks on this game. I take Pixel with me to the office because otherwise I’d never see him. But I’m honest enough to admit I’m lonely as heck.”
“Look where that got you,” Noah said, and Adrian’s face crumpled, all that earnest light fading from his eyes. Adrian looked away, studying the print of the Utah desert on the wall. Even his hands had gone slack from their usual perpetual motion. “Wait. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay. I get it. How about we start that movie now?” Adrian’s voice was flat, none of the eager inflection Noah had come to enjoy. Adrian had a way of making even small talk seem exhilarating, but his tone now was positively funereal.
Noah nodded, but his movements felt wooden, hampered by this deep sense of loss—more than the moment, more than the quiet intimacy of the conversation, more than Adrian’s trust even. He’d lost something in the past few seconds, something he didn’t even have a name for, but he instinctively wanted it back.
* * *
Adrian tried to shift his legs, but couldn’t do it without waking Noah. Noah had fallen asleep during the first thirty minutes of the movie. Because of course he did. All those hours of work and the emotionally taxing talk, and he’d apparently run out of gas somewhere around when Alex Rogan got beamed up by the aliens, leaving Adrian to wrestle with his thoughts.
He knew Noah didn’t think so, but they were actually very similar—they’d both sacrificed a lot for their professional lives. And they were both lonely. Only difference was that Adrian had the balls to admit his unhappiness and the guts to try to change the status quo. And yeah, Trent had been a terrible mistake, but at least he’d been out there, taking risks.
Noah had wrapped up his youth, said goodbye to his twenties, and crested the hill of his thirties, all while keeping the best parts of himself locked up tight. The worst thing was that Noah could make someone a wonderful partner—not just a boyfriend or a date. But a partner. Noah was deep and loyal, like some slow-moving turtle that mated for life. Sure, it would take him a long time to get to happily-ever-after, but man, the journey would be worth it. And maybe he wasn’t a wild monkey-sex kind of guy, wouldn’t ever be, but what would it be like to be with someone who genuinely believed in making love as a spiritual union?
And okay, thinking about sex while Noah was slumped against him was probably not the best idea. But Adrian hadn’t exactly been teasing when he’d volunteered to rid Noah of his virginity. It shouldn’t be such a massive turn-on either, the idea of being someone’s first, the idea of being the one to show Noah the banquet of sensual delights after a lifetime of fasting.
Noah shifted against him, tossing one arm across Adrian’s torso. Adrian took a risk and wrapped an arm around Noah, letting him move around until he was nice and cozy, legs tangled with Adrian’s, head on Adrian’s shoulder. The dogs had returned to the foot of the bed, and Adrian lowered the volume on the movie, until the world shrank to only him holding Noah, snow still falling outside the camper. This. This was what was missing from his life.
No hopeless crushes, remember?
But was it really hopeless? He sifted his fingers through Noah’s silky hair. There was so much longing in Noah’s words and actions. There was a certain desperation in the way he cuddled Adrian, even in his sleep, and it made Adrian’s ribs draw tight around his heart.
“Mmm. Dre? You still here?” Noah nuzzled against Adrian’s neck. Adrian liked the sleepy nickname almost as much as he liked the feel of Noah’s beard on his neck.
“Yeah, buddy, I’m still here. Movie’s just about done. You go ahead and sleep.” Stay like this forever. I don’t mind.
“Oh no. I missed it,” Noah mumbled. “I sleep?”
“Yeah. You slept. I think you’re still asleep right now. Go on now. Close your eyes.” And then he did the only thing that seemed sensible at that moment—he dropped a kiss on the top of Noah’s head.
But instead of sending Noah back to dreamland, his muscles went rigid and he seemed to realize where he was. Their eyes met. Noah’s wide, startled eyes made Adrian swallow hard. He knew all his fears, every ounce of the tenderness he felt, were on display in his own eyes. He couldn’t seem to help it—Noah made him care in a way no one else had ever. Maybe it was that Noah needed him that much. Noah deserved a life full of sweet moments.
Sweet memories.
Although his muscles were tense enough to bounce quarters off of, Noah hadn’t rolled away. He kept holding Adrian’s gaze.
“Are we cuddling?” His eyes seemed to ask.
“Yup,” Adrian sent the message back. “We are. And you were enjoying it. A lot.”
“We shouldn’t be doing this.” Noah’s eyes flashed a warning and his arm fell away from Adrian’s chest, but otherwise he didn’t move or make a sound.
“I want you.” Adrian sent another eye-message, this one closer to an eye-caress. He let Noah feel his want, let him see the desire that had built up over the past hour. Over the past two days really.
Miraculously, Noah didn’t flinch away.
Slowly, so slowly, so as to not break the moment, Adrian stroked Noah’s jaw. His face was mere inches above Noah’s now.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he told Noah with his eyes and with his caressing fingers and with the firmness of his arm around Noah.
Still no flinching.
It was possible that Noah was still half-asleep. Equally possible that he couldn’t read Adrian’s intent. But the better bet was that he wanted this too, wanted Adrian every bit as much as Adrian wanted him.
Bending his head, Adrian ghosted his lips across Noah’s. And waited.