Chapter Eight, Part I

The Door on the Left

Adrian wakes because he needs to pee.

For several seconds, this is the only thing he knows with any certainty.

The room is unfamiliar. The mattress is firmer than the one at the hotel, the light through the curtains is wrong, and something heavy and warm is resting across his waist.

He lies completely still.

Then the previous evening comes back in pieces. The bar. The stories. The pavement moving beneath him. Jack standing beside the bed in dark boxers. The kiss.

Jack.

Adrian becomes aware of the broad chest pressed against his back and the steady warmth of Jack’s breath near the base of his neck. One of Jack’s legs is tangled loosely with his own, and the arm around Adrian’s waist has apparently stayed there all night.

He should probably move.

He doesn’t.

For one quiet moment, Adrian just lies there and lets himself enjoy it. Jack’s body surrounds him almost completely, solid and warm — exactly as overwhelming as Adrian had imagined, and somehow gentler than he’d expected.

His bladder eventually wins the argument.

Adrian lifts Jack’s arm carefully, trying to slip out without waking him. Jack makes a low sound behind him and tightens his hold for half a second before letting go.

“Where are you going?” Jack asks, his voice rough with sleep.

“Bathroom.”

“Door on the left.”

Adrian sits at the edge of the bed and waits for the room to settle. His glasses are somewhere behind him on the nightstand, and without them everything beyond a few feet is soft edges and vague shapes. Jet lag has apparently rearranged his internal map overnight — for one disoriented moment, he still expects the hotel bathroom to be directly opposite the bed.

Then he remembers he’s in Jack’s house. In Jack’s bedroom. Wearing nothing but the black briefs he slept in.

His body, meanwhile, has ignored all of this confusion completely and kept its usual morning schedule with impressive determination.

Adrian is used to waking hard. Inconvenient at times, but hardly remarkable. Normally he just ignores it until it passes.

Normally, though, he isn’t getting out of another man’s bed while that man watches.

Still half asleep and increasingly desperate for the bathroom, Adrian stands without thinking.

Behind him, the mattress shifts.

He takes two steps toward what he hopes is the bedroom door before Jack speaks again.

“Adrian.”

Something in his voice makes Adrian stop.

“What?”

“The other left.”

Adrian turns.

Even without his glasses, he can see Jack sitting partly upright against the pillows, the sheet gathered low across his lap. He can also see that Jack is looking somewhere well below Adrian’s face.

Adrian follows his gaze.

The front of his briefs is stretched almost absurdly tight.

He freezes.

“Oh, for God’s sake.”

Jack drags his eyes back up with visible effort.

“Door’s behind you,” he says.

“I know where the door is.”

“You were walking toward the closet.”

“I am jetlagged.”

“Of course.”

“And I need to pee.”

“I gathered.”

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You’re smiling.”

“I’m trying very hard not to.”

Adrian turns away so fast the room tilts slightly.

The sound Jack makes behind him is suspiciously close to laughter.

“Not one word,” Adrian says, finding the door this time.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Adrian closes the bathroom door behind him and leans against it.

This is not how a grown man should start the morning.

He finds the light switch and immediately regrets it. The brightness is unforgiving. His face bears the faint imprint of a pillow.

By the time he’s used the bathroom and splashed cold water over his face, the immediate crisis has eased. Not enough to preserve his dignity, maybe, but enough to make walking back into the bedroom physically possible.

He opens the door.

Jack is still in bed, now sitting fully upright against the headboard, the sheet carefully arranged across his lap.

Adrian notices that immediately.

Jack notices him noticing.

Neither of them says anything for a moment.

Then Jack clears his throat. “Better?”

“I would like to formally withdraw from this morning.”

“Request denied.”

Adrian crosses the room and retrieves his glasses from the nightstand. The world sharpens into focus.

This does not improve matters. Jack is suddenly much too clear.

Adrian looks away.

Jack’s mouth twitches. “Something wrong?”

“No.”

“That wasn’t a no look.”

Adrian puts on his glasses and adjusts them with as much dignity as he can manage.

“You are enjoying this far too much.”

“I’ve had an interesting morning.”

“You’ve been awake for approximately three minutes.”

“A lot has happened.”

Adrian reaches for his trousers.

“For what it’s worth,” Jack says, his voice gentler now, “you don’t have anything to be embarrassed about.”

“That’s remarkably easy to say while hiding beneath a sheet.”

Jack glances down at himself. “The sheet isn’t helping as much as you think.”

Adrian immediately regrets saying it.

Jack looks back at him, a slow warmth spreading across his face. “No,” he agrees. “Probably not.”

The air in the room shifts.

Adrian turns his attention to his clothes, though putting on trousers while keeping any dignity turns out to be more complicated than it should be.

Jack watches him for another second before looking away, deliberately.

Adrian notices that too.

“You remember last night?” Jack asks, the question casual but something careful underneath it.

Adrian pauses, shirt in hand. “Yes.”

“All of it?”

“The stories. The wine. The patio trying to throw me to the ground.” He looks over at Jack. “The kiss.”

Jack’s eyes stay on him. “Any regrets?”

Adrian considers pretending to think about it, but Jack looks too genuinely unsure.

“The final glass of wine,” he says. “Possibly the one before it.”

Jack waits.

“Not the kiss,” Adrian adds.

Something in Jack’s shoulders eases. “Good.”

“And you?”

“Not the kiss.”

“The wine?”

Jack thinks about it. “Ask me after coffee.”

Adrian pulls on his shirt, wrinkled now from a night folded over a chair.

“Do you have coffee?”

“I do.”

“Real coffee?”

“I have a machine that produces a large quantity of something brown and caffeinated.”

Adrian stares at him.

“You’re in my house,” Jack says. “You don’t get to insult the coffee before you’ve tried it.”

“I’ve seen the machine.”

“You haven’t even left the bedroom.”

“I can tell.”

Jack gets out of bed, taking the sheet with him for a moment before reaching for his jeans.

Adrian very deliberately studies the wall. It’s a good wall. Plain, off-white, entirely free of half-naked mechanics.

“You can look,” Jack says.

“I am being respectful.”

“That’s more than I managed at the hotel.”

Adrian glances back despite himself.

Jack is pulling his jeans over the dark boxers, his chest still bare, the muscles in his shoulders shifting with the movement.

“Still assessing,” Adrian says.

Jack laughs.