I AM A FURNACE, HE IS A CAT
TJ
We shower.
We don’t talk, and that works for me. I don’t want to ruin this bubble of sex and intimacy, especially since Jude and I feel like old times under a hot stream of water. Like the moments we had in London before we hurt each other.
Maybe Jude’s afraid to ruin this moment too. He’s quiet as well, wordlessly cleaning up and sharing his body wash.
I study the bottle as I take it, recording another detail in my Jude file. The bottle is labeled Sunshine and Citrus, and the scent fits him. Using it, I wash off the evidence of sex, then spin him around, soap his shoulders, his arms, his chest, staying silent as my hands travel over his body.
He lets me, like a cat permitting several, luxurious strokes of its fur. That’s fitting too. Jude is something of a cat—in charge, demanding, beautiful. “Do you like cats?”
“Yes. Why?”
“You seem like a cat person,” I remark.
A soft laugh comes from him, but then it dies. The water patters against black tiles on the floor.
Does he plan to ask me to stay the night? My heart races too fast with worry. Maybe an hour at his place is all we need for our boyfriend theater. What if that was just sex and catharsis?
But I should ask. I don’t want to be the guy with walls forever. “Can I stay the night?”
“Yes,” he says simply.
That’s all. Nothing more to his answer or his tone.
His back is to me, and he tips his head under the water, but I can tell his eyes are closed, so I can’t read his reaction any more than his voice.
Jude clears his throat. “On one condition.”
I tense, bracing myself for whatever is coming. Knee-jerk reaction on my part, but so it goes. “Yeah?”
Opening his eyes, he turns around, determination in his expression. “Tell me why you were so adamant we come here.”
Huh. “Was I adamant?”
“You were, TJ,” he says, firm and clear. “Like you didn’t want me at your place.”
Ah, I get his tone now. He doesn’t want to leave things unsaid.
That’s good, objectively.
But it’s hard in reality.
Since that means I have to figure out why the hell I was dead set on coming here. At the time, I gave a gut response since my gut said I wasn’t ready to bring him to my apartment. Why the hell don’t I want him there? Fine, I do like being at his place. His home makes me feel good. Maybe even safe.
And there it is. I don’t feel as safe with him in my home. Now I need to dissect why.
Ugh.
This emotional shit is hard. “Gimme two minutes,” I say.
He snort-laughs. “You don’t know the answer?”
“This may shock you, but sometimes I have to think before I speak.”
Jude rolls his eyes. “Some things never change.”
As I get out of the shower, I search for the reason. I don’t stop hunting for my motivation as I return to his room, find my black boxer briefs, and tug them on.
He grabs a pair of purple ones with dragons on the waistband. Rafe Rodmans. “Hot,” I say, then I gesture to the doorway. “I’m going to grab some water.”
In the kitchen, he hands me a glass. I down some water from the tap, and I swear I can hear a clock ticking in my head.
I better find the answer soon. Something other than I’m not ready to invite you into my home.
I scan his place as if I can find the answer in his couch, his window, his kitchen.
His makeshift bookshelf.
That’s it. Books.
As I set down the glass on the counter, I walk quietly into the adjoining living room then run a finger along the spines, stopping at New York Hidden Gems.
Jude sits on the couch, waiting patiently. That’s new too—Jude being patient.
It’s a step toward me—time to take one more toward him. I turn around, meet his gaze head-on. “There’s a lot of me at my place. My books. My computer. Notebooks with ideas,” I say.
He nods a few times like he’s taking it in. “Are you afraid I’d read them?”
The word again is unsaid, but it hangs between us at the end of his question. But tonight, I don’t want to hash out what went wrong in Los Angeles, from the way I bungled telling him about my deal to the hurtful accusations he lobbed at me.
Or how I walked away, retaliating over and over by not giving him a chance to say he was sorry.
Tonight, I want to get into bed and curl up with him. Just feel him close to me as we sleep.
But I owe him answers. Pretty sure I also owe it to myself to face my own issues. “No. But my books came between us last time. There’s a ton of copies of Top-Notch Boyfriend on my shelves. My publisher in each country sends them to me, so I have a lot. I guess I didn’t want us to be surrounded by that. Not tonight. Not when I had a feeling . . .”
His lips twitch. “You had a feeling you’d seduce me?”
Flopping down next to him, I park a hand on his knee. “Dude, when will you ever get it straight? You’re always seducing me. Always.”
“Good. It happens to be my favorite hobby.” Then he sinks deeper into the couch and hums pensively. “I don’t want your books to come between us,” he says, his brow creased. “And I don’t entirely know what that means. But I think it would be good if . . . they don’t come between us.”
I don’t entirely know what that means either, but I’m pretty sure this is a good first step—communicating about what we want and what we don’t want.
“I’m good with that,” I say.
He gets up, offers me a hand. Taking it, I stand, lifting my brow. “Let’s wash the cover,” he says, answering my silent question.
“Yessss. Laundry is so sexy,” I say.
“When you and I do it, absolutely. And you better put a laundry scene in your book.”
It’s a clear order, but I don’t want to wind up in a hot mess of misunderstandings like the last time, so I need a little clarity. “So, let me get this straight. I can use you as inspiration for my story, from your high-heat washer/dryer to the high heat of—”
“—the way we fuck?”
Whoa. I’m an inferno again. “I was going to say how we are in the bedroom, but I prefer your word choice.”
“Then take it. Use it in the scene you write tomorrow,” he says, a little smug. Maybe he has reason to be.
But just so I’m sure where he stands, I say, “And that’s not my books coming between us?”
Jude tugs on the waistband of my boxer briefs with a lift of his brow. “No. Especially since you still owe me a big-cocked Jude in one of your stories,” he says, then squeezes my dick before he heads down the hall.
I smile privately as I watch him.
* * *
The dryer rumbles softly in the hallway as Jude yanks open the linen closet next to it. Tapping his chin, he studies the options on the shelves, from a sapphire blanket to an emerald one to a ruby red fleece. He selects the last one, tosses it on the bed, then spins around and grabs another from the closet. Once he’s draped the sapphire blanket on the bed too, he flicks off the light then slides under both.
I join him under the fleece, fingering the red fabric. “So, I’ve gotta ask something. How many blankets do you have?”
“It’s March,” he says, faux defensively.
“That’s not the question.”
“Not enough.”
I crack up. “There are stores to fix that problem for you.”
“Thanks. I had no idea.”
“See? I’m helpful like that,” I say, darting a hand under the blanket to squeeze his waist.
“Are you trying to finagle a blanket-shopping date? I can see it now,” Jude says, then spreads his arms out wide like he’s lighting up a movie marquee.
I can see it too.
Holy shit.
I can see it so clearly. Maybe in a Bed Bath & Beyond, a Target, a T.J. Maxx. One guy teasing the other. They’re flirting, but they won’t give in. They can’t give in. That’s one of the rules of fake dating your ex.
Jude laughs, moonlight streaking across his handsome face, sounding incredibly content. “Slade would be all over a blanket-shopping date.”
Maybe my characters will too.
Maybe that’s part of the hero’s recurring dirty daydreams.
“Yeah, he definitely would,” I say with a smile, filing this conversation away in a drawer I’ll open very, very soon.
With a big, hearty yawn, Jude stretches, then glances at my discarded shirt on the floor. The one covered in the cartoon mushrooms. “All right. I have to know. Why mushrooms?”
This is easy to share. “Maybe because I have good memories of the last time I wore that shirt. I had it on when I saw my brother in the fall in San Francisco. His team had lost in the playoffs, and he didn’t want to deal with random fan sympathy, so we switched shirts in a Lyft on our way to dinner. He’d grown out his beard so I pretended to be him when we went out to grab burgers.”
Jude laughs, a little disbelieving. “You and Chance pretend to be each other?”
“What’s the point of being identical twins if you don’t use it for fun and games? We have since we were younger,” I say.
“That would be amusing, to see you two together,” Jude says.
I have to bite my tongue so I don’t blurt out what, at this moment, is my heart’s desire—to ask Jude to meet my brother. I want to meet his brother too. The intensity of these wishes surprises me, and I’m this close to saying both out loud, but it’s too soon. So, I keep talking about our twin tricks. “We fooled our parents a few times. We’re that good at imitating each other.”
“Impressive,” Jude says, stretching out the word in obvious admiration. Then he chuckles, sounding almost like a villain in a flick—but an endearing one. “You can’t trick me, though.”
With the gauntlet thrown, I have no choice but to test him. “Let’s put this to the test right now,” I say, hopping out of bed to hunt for my phone in the kitchen. I return with it, clicking through the camera roll. I show him a picture of my brother and me from the night in question. We’re standing on a street in San Francisco. “What do you think? Is this before or after the shirt change?”
With a smile, the man in bed with me rolls his eyes. Lazily, without a care in the world, he points to the screen, selecting me in a heartbeat. “Child’s play.”
Damn. Jude has game. “How’d you know? I showed this to Nolan and Jason. They didn’t get it.”
“Jason’s the quarterback for the San Francisco Hawks?”
“Yes, he’s Nolan’s brother, and a good bud of mine too. Hazel didn’t get it either, and she’s pretty astute.”
Turning to his side, he props himself on his elbow, looking right at me. “It’s your eyes, TJ. That’s all I need to see. I know how the brown in them darkens when you’re trying to understand a man, how the gold flecks intensify when filled with affection. How your eyes go all dreamy sometimes when you look at me, and you think I don’t notice,” he says, and my face flushes. I’ve never felt so . . . transparent. Jude brushes his fingers along the ends of my hair, his thumb coasting down my cheek. “And I know too how they shimmer with heat when you’re about to fuck me.”
I. Am. A. Furnace.
The things Jude does to me are unfairly sexy.
He sees through me. He understands me. He makes me want to tell him things I haven’t told anyone. This is the Jude I’ve missed the most—intuitive, confident, vulnerable, giving. This is the man who makes me want to share pieces of myself, stories I haven’t told.
But I can’t just yet.
It’s too soon.
I can do this much, though. I draw him close. Kiss him soft and tender. It’s a dreamy, lingering kiss. The kind you get lost in. A kiss that wraps around you like a warm blanket.
It’s a kiss you don’t want to leave.
My lips explore him slowly as if I’m imprinting the way we touch into my mind. I want to memorize the shape of his mouth, the taste of his lips, the feel of his pleasure so I can recall every second tomorrow and the next day. With each kiss, I slow down a little more, recording every detail as I slide my fingers through his hair, along his neck, down to his chest.
When I pull back, he sighs like he can’t believe I just kissed him like that.
“Maybe I’ll write a long, endless kiss,” I say.
“Then you should do more fieldwork,” he says, inviting me for seconds.
I say yes with my mouth, greedily taking more. I may need to store them up for the long winter. I don’t know if I’ll kiss him tomorrow or ever again.
At some point after midnight, we stop. The moon’s illuminating the pillow now. “Goodnight, Jude,” I say into the dark.
“TJ?” His voice is gentle, a little contrite.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry about LA.”
I sigh softly. “I’m sorry too.”
It’s just the beginning of healing. Of starting again. There’s so much more to unpack, but at least we’ve unzipped the suitcases.
In the morning, though, I’m not thinking about apologies or endings.
I’m writing.