Milo couldn’t go to the gym, because everything there screamed Cliff. It was relentless, and he needed to dissipate the tension left over from Galen’s birthday party. He went pounding up the fire escape of his apartment building to find that pot plant someone hid up there in the summer. Later, as he smoked a joint, barefoot and shirtless in his kitchen, he thought about how he wasn’t going to embarrass himself. He and Cliff had been over for almost a year, yet the past few months were pure magic: they were finally capable of being friends. Cliff was emphatically “straight” again, and Milo had put all that bullshit aside and just let him be. Positive energy was flowering there and seeing him at work had become the highlight of every damn day. So—great. Great.

It didn’t mean anything else. They were just finally friends again.

But then, why did he hate the fact that Cliff had a girlfriend now?

Milo leaned against the refrigerator, the light over the stove catching every muscular bulge and crease of his torso. He took a drag of mother nature deep into his lungs and then exhaled it like he was spitting. Maybe, when he’d seen that invitation on Facebook, he had clicked “Going” with the expectation of taking things with Cliff to the next level. He had been so sure that things were going to have a movie ending, he never paused to consider that Cliff was in a completely different place. Milo stared down at the extinguished joint.

* * *

Milo couldn’t stay away from Results forever, though, and Cliff was there most days of the week. Early one Monday afternoon, Milo was undressing for a shower when Cliff came swaggering into the locker room like the cat who’d got himself a whole cageful of canaries. He was still wearing his day clothes along with a big, dumb, oafish smile. Milo scowled and that scrubbed away Cliff’s smile like magic.

“Hey,” Milo offered. What else could he say?

Cliff hesitated and then slowly approached. He leaned his shoulder against Milo’s locker and kept his eyes locked on his.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Milo’s scowl deepened. “Talk about what?”

Cliff raised his hands and his eyebrows. “Nothing,” he said. His voice was too smooth, too cool, and it pissed Milo off. He couldn’t just act like he hadn’t known there was something there, between them. He shouldn’t have led Milo on. There had been a lingering gaze when they were locking up the gym one night—Milo was closing, and Cliff had just finished a class. It all seemed too silly now, but there had been a look.

Had he really based all this anticipation on just one look?

And now Cliff was untouchable. Like nothing had ever happened. It made Milo want to go out there and fuck somebody just to show him how it felt.

“I guess I thought you might want to talk about Galen’s birthday party,” Cliff went on. “You left awfully quick.”

“It was a six-year-old’s birthday party,” Milo sneered, whipping his shirt off. Since the breakup, he had been careful to guard his body from Cliff’s eyes, but he suddenly didn’t care what this bastard saw. “Not a whole lot for a grown man to do, you know?”

Cliff’s mouth slanted to the side. It reminded Milo of Eve and the flame smoldered even deeper in his gut.

“You don’t mean that,” Cliff said. “You’re just angry.”

He tossed his shirt into his locker and peeled off his black boxer-briefs next. Fuck it. It didn’t matter anymore; Cliff was “straight,” right? Then he could see whatever he goddamn pleased. “Of course I’m angry,” Milo snapped. He didn’t even think about it. It just came out.

“I knew it!” Cliff said.

“You’ve been flirting with me for months,” Milo went on as he snugly wrapped a towel around his waist. “And what the hell was with that look? The night we were—”

Cliff nodded. “I remember,” he interrupted. “I know the look.”

“Was it all in my head?” Milo demanded to know. “Did I just imagine that you wanted me back?”

Cliff opened his mouth reflexively, and then just spluttered. Finally, a half-strangled “Yes!” emanated from his throat.

Milo slammed his locker door and strode past Cliff, focusing on the wet white tiles and dripping spigots of the large, open shower in the distance. If he was imagining all of this—if Cliff was only in his head like an imaginary friend—then he was really just talking to himself, wasn’t he?

But Cliff followed behind him to the shower. “I’m not—” he insisted loudly, then hesitated and examined the locker room for the sounds of movement. After confirming that no one was here, he continued in a more subdued volume, “Gay.”

Milo nodded. Sure, he had heard that before. He didn’t believe it last year, either. Milo tugged loose the knotted towel and flicked it over a metal suspension bar mounted in the shower. He stood with his back to Cliff and wrenched the nozzle, sending a spray of cold water onto the tiles.

“If you’re not gay,” Milo challenged him, “then how did I spend two goddamn years of my life with my lips around your cock?” Steam was pouring off the water now. Milo didn’t turn around to see how Cliff reacted. It didn’t matter. None of this mattered. Cliff wasn’t gay, right? Cliff had apparently never been gay.

Milo braced his hands along the shower wall and ran his face beneath the hot water, relishing it. Fuck, he needed this. The silence stretched for so long that he assumed Cliff was gone.

“Off and on,” Cliff said. “I was confused.”

Milo turned to look at him. He ran his hands over his wet face to clear it, so he could blink and look at Cliff directly. All the words he wanted to say sat like a coil in his chest, a spring ready to pop. He wanted to tell Cliff he was in denial, and tell Cliff that he didn’t need an explanation, and tell Cliff that he was over it, and tell Cliff that he really just wanted them both to be happy. He didn’t know which of these truths he was going to tell until he looked across the shower stall and saw the fractured melancholy on Cliff’s face. Even though Milo was fully nude and soaking wet, it was somehow Cliff, in his jeans and his t-shirt and his shoes, who looked the more exposed.

Milo’s hard heart softened and his mouth shifted into a grimace of understanding.

“Look, man,” he said. He swallowed. Maybe he didn’t need to make any point to Cliff after all. “Life is hard and weird.” He shook his head as he was leaning it backward, letting the water bathe his scalp. “You don’t need to do this with me. I get it. You’re with Eve now. Congratulations.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Cliff commanded, haggard and now very close. Milo opened his eyes and then narrowed them at the intruder. Cliff now stood on the wet tiles, fully clothed, staring Milo down. “Don’t talk to me like it’s easy for me and I’m the winner.”

Milo assessed Cliff. That he had come into the shower, infringing on Milo’s nude, steamy space, was meaningful. He tilted his head to the side. “What do you think you’re doing?” He didn’t feel self-conscious, himself. His shoulders were square and proud, his abdomen exposed in a strip of muscular ridges, his thighs powerful. His cock was half-full, as usual. He let Cliff take it all in.

“I just want you to know that it’s…that I…I’m sorry,” Cliff finished lamely. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I had never—and then you—” He shook his head, lost.

“Never what?” Milo asked.

“Never been with another man before,” Cliff explained. “Don’t think it didn’t mean anything.” He swallowed. “I just can’t anymore, not if I’m not sure. I have to keep looking. I have to figure it out by myself.”

Milo shook his head and spread his hands. “Hey, man,” he reassured Cliff, “Nobody here is questioning you. I said that you led me on. That’s all. I don’t want to fight with you about it.”

Milo was hoping that he’d be able to get out before Cliff did something he’d regret. Cliff made everything into a huge emotional deal, that was his problem.

“This is just as hard for me as it is for you. What we had was—is real.” Cliff swallowed thickly and his eyes darted from Milo.

Milo softened and stepped forward, stretching out a hand to Cliff and stroked his cheek. It was a natural gesture for someone he had loved passionately for two years, and he didn’t mean for it to morph into anything more. Cliff’s eyes met Milo’s and they flowed toward each other like spilled liquids merging. Cliff’s hand buried itself into the wet flesh on the back of Milo’s neck.

Milo’s erection hardened in anticipation.

They kissed, Milo’s body crushing against Cliff’s and his arm coming around to encircle the other man. Milo was about to lose himself in the warmth of Cliff Bauer when suddenly it was gone, and he opened his eyes, trying to catch himself from falling.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Cliff blurted, chest heaving, eyes in a panic. His shirt and jeans were wet where Milo pressed against them. The bulge down the inside seam was perfectly outlined.

“Then I’ll make it really easy for you,” Milo reassured him, a knowing smile creeping over his lips. For Milo, sex was just about having fun. There didn’t need to be a lot of overthinking going into the act or coming out of it. But he had been wanting this for a long time, and it was happening now. It was obvious that Cliff wanted this, too.

Milo ran one hand through Cliff’s hair, while the other traveled down his own chest, slipping over his abdomen and grasping the base of his own shaft. He pumped himself with a deep, soulful glare into Cliff’s eyes, subconsciously begging him to descend.

Cliff sucked in his lower lip and his eyes grew round. “This doesn’t mean anything,” he whispered gravely. “I like Eve a lot. We had sex for the first time last night.”

Milo nodded, still pumping away. He felt electrical and powerful as he replied in a breathless whisper, “This means whatever you want it to mean.”

Cliff nodded before descending to his knees and taking Milo into his mouth with such vigor that Milo didn’t know how he could ever deny his love for cock. His throat stroked over Milo’s head and Milo stifled himself a grunt. His lower abdomen tingled with the thought of coming release. Hot water pounded down on the tiles behind them, filling the silence of the locker room and drowning out the sounds of sex.

Milo kept his eyes open, peering down at Cliff with conflicted lust. The other man’s eyes were closed, his lips swollen, puckered around Milo’s length. It was a beautiful sight to behold, the half-moons of his wet lashes juxtaposed against those god-like cheekbones. His hair darkened in the spray from the shower nozzle. Milo let his neck loosen, let his head fall back. He didn’t expect to climax—it would probably just be a tease, considering where they were and how much time they had before the swinging door signaled someone entering the room—but then Cliff’s palm drifted between Milo’s thighs and cupped his slippery balls, rolling them tenderly back and forth, and the tingling at the tip of his shaft intensified a hundredfold. He swallowed hard and pumped hard, gripping the back of Cliff’s head and thrusting deeply into his throat.

Then the locker room door swung open. Milo tensed and his hand clutched more firmly into Cliff’s hair. Cliff’s mouth continued to work over Milo, though, as they raced toward his orgasm. Someone opened a locker, and there was the sound of a bag dropping. Milo bit back on the upcoming climax, but Cliff was diligent in his work.

One of the other showers was now occupied and Milo experienced a twinge of uncertainty. Not only did they both work here but this was his sole source of income. What if this guy reported them? What if he knew? What if they were fired? He should have thought about this. Combining work and sex never led anywhere good.

But then Cliff slid one thick, slick finger between Milo’s cheeks, massaging over his perineum, and a white fog of lust settled over Milo. He lost sight of all his concerns in the haze and concluded that he’d rather lose his job than remove his cock from Cliff’s mouth.

The finger slid further, teasing at Milo’s asshole, and his cock quivered with the inevitable. In the other stall the stranger in the locker room shut off his water, and the locker room was suddenly, disturbingly quiet. Cliff’s finger toyed at his threshold and pressed, penetrating him and moving in a rhythm that pulled him to the edge. Milo couldn’t bear to stop him.

The sound of footsteps receding. Milo wouldn’t let himself groan. He couldn’t let himself groan. The door to the locker room signaled that it had been opened again, and if Milo was thinking straight, he would have been praying that a new stranger wasn’t entering the scene. But Milo wasn’t thinking straight and his entire world throbbed and grew dim. “God damn!” he hissed at the ceiling. Right now, he didn’t give a shit if that innocent gym-goer was still in here or not. He didn’t give a shit if Evelyn Mooney herself had just walked in. He was coming and he was coming hard.

Harsh reality was crushed and smothered by the waves of pleasure radiating up Milo’s cock, up into his head. Lash after lash of hot cum jetted down Cliff’s throat, so much that he couldn’t blame the other man for pulling away from him prematurely and allowing one pearly rope to slip and cling against the base of Milo’s abdomen. The clouds cleared slowly from Milo’s mind and he shook his head, dizzy, finally allowing his eyes to open.

He saw Cliff lean down once more and lap up that last drop of cum, and Milo’s heart ached with desire for the other man. Such a fucking giver. All he could do was stare in adoration.

Now that all the madness and catharsis of their tryst had passed, leaving them both wet and exhausted, Cliff climbed off his knees, saying nothing.

His jeans were completely soaked in water. So were his shoes.

“Are you going to be here for a while?” he asked Milo, like none of this just happened.

Milo washed himself once more, quickly, answering in a tone just as light and casual, “I’m heading home for a while, but I’ll be back in a couple hours for a private session with Evelyn.” He didn’t look over his shoulder to see the look on Cliff’s face. It didn’t concern him, did it?

“Are you going to tell her about us?”

Milo scoffed. “It’s none of my business,” he reminded his ex. “She’s my client, nothing more.”

Cliff cleared his throat. “Right.”

Milo shut off the water and turned to exit the shower, stepping past Cliff without waiting for the other man to say anything more. “I really like her,” he said to Milo’s receding back. “She’s a good girl.” Cliff averted his eyes while Milo toweled himself off. It didn’t really make any sense.

“She does seem sweet,” Milo agreed, strolling back to his locker and pulling out some athletic pants and a hoody. Cliff followed, opening his own locker to change out of his day clothes, now soaked, and into some dry gym clothes. “If you want my blessing, you’ve got it,” Milo told him. And he really did mean that. Cliff was a good guy. Suffering from denial or not, he deserved to be happy.

“Thanks,” Cliff said. His eyes held onto Milo with a strange intensity as the other man pulled on his pants. He knew there was more to be said.

“What is it?” Milo finally pressed, shaking his hoody out and slipping it on.

“When I said that this didn’t mean anything—” Cliff blurted. Milo’s head popped out the top of the sweater, and he saw Cliff’s eyes, somber and intense just now. He wasn’t changing into his clothes, but just standing there in the waterlogged ones. “I didn’t mean that it meant nothing.”

Milo gave him a curt nod. “I appreciate you saying that.” And again, he meant it. “It didn’t mean nothing to me, either.” He stepped forward and looped one strong arm around Cliff’s shoulders, pulling him close and just enjoying his nearness for a second. He savored Cliff’s uniquely warm and sweet scent. He’d heard that it only took a matter of seconds in one hug to neutralize negativity in the brain and bond people together. His heart swelled as he held Cliff, but when he pulled away, he let go of the part of himself that swelled, too.

This was why he was able to see sex as mere fun, why he was able to sincerely wish his ex and his ex’s new girlfriend the best. Because he could let go of the past and move on.

When Milo came back in the early evening for his session with Eve, he didn’t let it bother him that he still found her stretches to be irresistible, that he still relished the curve of her ass against his crotch as he was spotting her. It didn’t have to mean anything. He wanted them both. “So, how long have you and Cliff known each other?” Eve asked Milo, her tone bright, as if she was hopeful for a truce.

“For a long time,” Milo answered vaguely. “We’re friends, and we always will be.”