The Delicious Series: The First Volume

by Stella Starling

  But no, Jeremy knew what day it was. There was no way he’d let Cash get away with that.

  Beck handed him a couple of painkillers, and Cash dry-swallowed them, tossing the bloody remains of his shirt into the trash—it was a total loss—and then following the other man into his neat-as-a-pin kitchen.

  “You know what I like about you, Beck?” he asked.

  “Free first-aid service?” Beck asked, grinning. He grabbed a couple of beers out of the fridge and handed one to Cash.

  “Please,” Cash scoffed half-heartedly, fucking with his friends was such an ingrained habit that it had become second nature. Another good distraction, most of the time. “We both know I’m the one doing you a favor here, buddy. You loved having an excuse to get your hands on me.”

  Beck laughed, spraying out the beer he hadn’t swallowed in time.

  “Shit, Cash,” he said, pulling his now-wet shirt away from his chest. “Thanks a lot. Now I have to go change, too.”

  “Play it off all you want, Beck,” Cash said, grinning as he leaned back against the counter. Getting Beck to spit-laugh actually did help improve his mood a bit. “But I’m just sayin’, it’s okay to admit that you want to get naked with me.”

  “No offense, Cash,” Beck said, still laughing. “But even if you weren’t a man-whore, you wouldn’t be my type.”

  “This is true,” Cash acknowledged, thinking of the series of short-lived boyfriends Beck had had in the year they’d known each other. The man clearly did have a “type,” as they’d all been remarkably similar. Remarkably boring, in Cash’s opinion, but he was the last person to judge someone else’s taste in men. For him, men all fell into one of two categories: Robbie, and everyone else.

  He ratcheted up his smile a few notches, pushing the thought of what he couldn’t have away for the millionth time—a mental move so reflexive by this point that he almost didn’t have to think about it.

  Almost.

  “What I like about you—” he continued, ignoring the interruption just like he ignored the sight of Beck’s admittedly stellar body when he stripped the wet shirt off. Although Beck getting half naked did just go to prove that Cash actually had a third category: Men who he genuinely had no interest in fucking. Friends, family, married men. Nuh-uh. Those ones were a no go on every level. “—is that you’ll fix me up without telling me not to do stupid shit.”

  Beck slanted him a look as he headed out of the kitchen. “Don’t do stupid shit, Cash.”

  “Are you just trying to fuck with me?” Cash called after him, wandering closer to the fridge to admire the high quality art displayed there. Cash had met Beck through his cousin Jeremy’s boyfriend, Nick. Beck was an honorary uncle to Nick’s daughter, Ava, and his otherwise almost-sterile looking kitchen was seriously brightened up by the colorful collection of the seven-year-old’s crayon-and-construction-paper masterpieces. “Because if I’d wanted to hear that, I could have gone straight over to Jeremy and Nick’s place to get cleaned up.”

  “No, seriously,” Beck said, walking back in a moment later with a fresh shirt on. “You know I’m all for pushing limits, but sometimes you border on reckless, bro. Self-destructive, even. I don’t know if you’re just addicted to the adrenaline or if you’re trying to use it as some kind of an escape, but maybe it’s time to pull back from the brink a little.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t a doctor,” Cash said, raising the bottle of beer to his mouth as he kept his eyes trained on the refrigerator art. “Now you’re a shrink?”

  Ava really was artistic. Cash cocked his head to the side and squinted, trying to tell if he was looking at a depiction of Safeco field or that big-ass spaceship from Independence Day. Probably the ball field, given that what he’d at first took for a green star and a squiggle in the corner bore a faint resemblance to the Mariner’s team logo. Well, that and the fact that he knew Beck was religious about not letting her miss any of the M’s home games.

  “I am a doctor,” Beck said, clapping Cash on the shoulder. The un-fucked one, thankfully. “Just not a medical one. Or a psychologist, thank God. No need to get all prickly on me, though. If you want me to back off, that’s fine. I’m just talking as a friend, since you opened the door, Cash. You want to swing it shut again, I’ll respect that.”

  Beck was right. Cash had all but invited the comment, even though, normally, he kept anything related to Robbie strictly off the conversational table. And, yes, acknowledging that fact meant that a part of him knew all the stupid shit he did was ultimately related to his inability to get out of that damn broken-record groove. But really, he didn’t know why he’d opened his mouth about it now. Beck didn’t know about Robbie, and it wasn’t like talking about how Cash felt about shit he couldn’t change was going to do any good whatsofuckingever.

  “You ever been in love?” he asked Beck, wanting to bite back the words as soon as they escaped.

  Jesus, overshare much? What was wrong with him today? Sure, it was a rough anniversary, but he’d be hanging with his cousin later if he needed to air some feelings. His friendship with Beck had always centered more around their mutual love for pushing physical limits, not baring-the-soul type shit.

  Besides, Beck would probably think that particular question was just another variation of Cash messing with him. After all, he’d just called him a man-whore, and it was a title Cash had definitely earned over the last few years. “Love” wasn’t a word that anyone would think to apply to his never-ending string of hookups, and since hookups were pretty much all his life consisted of lately—well, along with the occasional security consulting job he took to keep money coming in and an increasingly risky series of extreme-sport adventures—Beck would probably laugh his head off at the question

  But Beck surprised him. And not just because of his failure to mock, but because—if Cash had stopped to think before opening his mouth—he would have bet money that Beck’s answer to that particular question would have been “no.” Instead—

  “Yup,” Beck answered, calmly taking a sip of his beer as if the fact didn’t tear him up inside.

  Which, fine, maybe—as with most rational people who didn’t stubbornly cling to things that were hopeless—it didn’t. But love? Beck was the poster-child for things like common sense, responsibility, and self-discipline. Cash tipped his head to the side—much as he had when trying to interpret Ava’s refrigerator art—and tried to picture him in love.

  He couldn’t do it.

  At least, not the kind of love that Cash had experienced, back before it had become a painful exercise in constant self-denial. In the beginning, when loving Robbie had filled him with a giddy excitement and heart-lifting joy that had made everything seem possible. When it had made the world feel bright and full of hope and possibility.

  It was the kind of love his cousin Jeremy had found with Nick, so Cash knew he wasn’t just romanticizing what he’d felt—that shit really existed—but, honestly, Beck just seemed a little too set in his ways to ever get swept up in any version of it. Beck was obviously talking about the past, though. There was no way he could be referring to any of the interchangeably dull men he’d dated since Cash had met him.

  “So how’d you manage to get over it?” Cash asked, half hoping that his über-capable friend was about to disclose some kind of trade secret that he could use to finally move on.

  He slipped the fresh t-shirt Beck handed him over his head while he waited for an answer. Too tight across the shoulders, which rubbed a little despite the bandage, but whatever. He still appreciated Beck’s consideration.

  “I didn’t really have any choice,” Beck answered, shrugging. Neither had Cash, but apparently Beck was more pragmatic about that kind of shit. No surprise. “I was just a kid—fourteen, maybe?—and Liam was the first boy I ever fooled around with. But his family moved away. End of story.”

  “Fourteen? That wasn’t love,” Cash said, smirking. He downed the last sip of his beer and chucked the glass bottle into Beck’s rec
ycle bin. “That was just your dick’s first taste of what it was made for.”

  Beck laughed, but shook his head. “Sure, maybe there was some of that, too, but young or not, I was definitely in love. I thought we were going to be together forever. To this day, I’ve never met anyone like him. He was definitely a free spirit, which made being with him a total one-eighty from what I was used to at home. My asshole of a father ran our household like it was a fucking boot camp.”

  Cash knew Beck and his father were estranged, and from a few comments he’d picked up on, it sounded like applying the word “asshole” to the senior Beckworth would have been going easy on him. The older man had apparently taken all the strict training he’d picked up during his military career and shoved it down his only son’s throat, along with an unhealthy dose of small-minded bigotry and general douche-ishness. Still, as hard as it was to imagine Beck in love, it was even more bizarre to picture him with someone he’d describe as a “free spirit.”

  “I guess opposites really do attract, huh?” Cash asked, steering away from the I-hear-your-father-is-a-dick part of the conversation. “So what happened? You ever track him down?”

  “No. We lost touch, and I never tried. I mean, love or not, I was just a kid, so what else was I supposed to do? It wasn’t like I could go chasing him around the country. Besides, no matter how real it felt at the time, no one actually ends up staying with their first love forever.”

  The ping of an incoming text gave him an excuse not to reply, which was good, since Beck’s words had made his throat tighten to the point that he wasn’t sure he could have. Beck was right, of course, and Cash needed to get that little piece of reality drilled into his thick skull. He needed to stop wishing things were different, and put the past to rest once and for all. He could go weeks—months even, lately—thinking that maybe he’d finally managed to accomplish just that, but then something as casual as the almost-impersonal message staring back at him from the little screen of his phone exposed that for the lie it was.

  Right under Cash’s “Happy Birthday, Robbie” from earlier was the painfully ironic response:

  Thanks for remembering, Cash :-)

  Cash scrubbed a hand over his face, laughing despite himself. Oh, that was rich. Beck raised an eyebrow, inviting him to share the joke, but Cash just shook his head. Not funny. Really, truly not even a little bit funny. He almost wished he could forget, the way Robbie had, but Cash’s feelings just would not fucking die. The best he’d been able to manage was getting them to lie dormant, just under the surface, while he distracted himself with anything and everything under the sun. An ongoing effort to keep his mind off what his heart couldn’t seem to let go of. The minute he let thoughts of Robbie surface, though—something that was inevitable today—they came rushing right back, threatening to drown him.

  “What about you?” Beck asked, graciously letting the moment pass without comment, even if he did unintentionally end up piling the shit on by continuing their prior conversation. “Do you still remember your first love?”

  “Yeah,” Cash answered, too curtly. Maybe he did want to shut the door on that particular topic, after all. He tapped the bandage on his shoulder. “Thanks for this. I’ve gotta get over to Jeremy and Nick’s, though.”

  Beck raised a single eyebrow—Cash had never understood how people managed to do that—but after a moment’s hesitation, he nodded.

  “Okay,” he said, letting it go, just like he’d promised he would.

  He still watched Cash with a concerned expression as he showed him out, though. And closing that damn door didn’t stop his words from rolling around in Cash’s head as he pulled on his helmet and started up his bike.

  Do you still remember your first love? Do you still remember… doyoudoyoudoyou?

  It was like an earworm that wanted to eat its way through his brain.

  Of course he remembered. Cash had never been able to forget a single thing, no matter what he’d tried to distract himself with.

  Not the first time he’d seen Robbie, all quiet and serious and so fucking beautiful it had stopped his feet—freezing him in the doorway—and just about stopped his heart, too.

  Not the first time they’d kissed.

  Not the way Robbie’s hair had felt when it had curled around his fingers like a soft embrace, or the way he always used to press his lips together when he thought something was funny instead of letting himself laugh out loud… and the way that, sometimes, Cash had been able to get him to let loose and do it anyway. Not the thrill he’d felt the first time Robbie had admitted he loved him. The shyly whispered words had touched him with an almost-physical sensation, washing over him, moving through him, lodging in the deepest parts of his soul and redefining his whole definition of himself as part of something greater. Something that only existed as the sum of the two of them, together.

  Cash had never been able to forget the promises they’d made each other, or the plans they’d had, or—as much as he sometimes wished otherwise—Robbie’s eighteenth birthday, when it had all come crashing to a painfully abrupt end.

  He clenched his jaw, reflexively checking his blind spot before he pulled away from the curb, even though Beck’s house was on the quietest street in all of Seattle. Why were other people—like Beck—able to forget all that kind of shit when love ended, and move the fuck on with their lives? Robbie had. Although as soon as Cash thought it, he knew that wasn’t fair. Cash may have been able to remember every minute they’d spent together in painfully vivid detail, but Robbie couldn’t.

  And while Cash knew damn well that it wasn’t Robbie’s fault, he had to wonder—if love was fickle enough to disappear with a few stray memories—had it ever been real at all?

  2

  Robin

  “So are you going to sleep with Liam?” Sarah asked, handing Robin the stack of shirts she’d just folded.

  The question almost startled a laugh out of him, and he fumbled the neatly folded stack, spilling them sloppily into his suitcase.

  “Oh my God, Sarah. N-no,” he said, his fingers brushing hers as they both started refolding.

  “Why not?” she asked, giving him a cheeky smile and ignoring the intermittent stutter that still plagued him after all these years. “You totally should.”

  Robin could feel his cheeks heat up, but he couldn’t help smiling back at her. She was too much.

  “Jeez, Sarah. You know it’s not like that.”

  “I know it hasn’t been,” she acknowledged, hip-bumping him out of the way and straightening the last few things in his suitcase before zipping it shut. The perfect wife. “But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be. Don’t you ever want to fall in love, Robin?”

  “I love you,” he said, avoiding the question.

  She smacked him, laughing. “Go get your shaving stuff. And I love you, too, but you know that’s not what I meant.”

  He rolled his eyes as he walked into the spacious master bathroom, making sure he had his back to her so she didn’t see the expression. No need to give her another excuse to smack him. All the years of physical therapy had given Sarah some serious muscle.

  “Well, I definitely don’t want to fall in love with Liam,” he threw over his shoulder, knowing she wouldn’t miss the fact that he was still avoiding an actual answer. “He’s… Liam. He’s a friend.”

  Robin had expected to stay married to Sarah basically forever, so the idea of falling in love really hadn’t been on his radar before now. Not to mention that—although he would never admit it to her—it wasn’t something he was sure he deserved. Not, of course, that “deserving” and “wanting” necessarily went hand-in-hand. But if he were to ever admit wanting the kind of love she was talking about, Liam definitely wasn’t the person who came to mind.

  “You and Liam were friends before, right?” Sarah asked, following him into the bathroom and leaning one hip against the counter as Robin sorted through their shared toiletries.

  She didn’t have to clarify that “befo
re” meant before-the-accident. It was the defining moment for so many things in both their lives, and over the last seven years, they’d developed a bit of a shorthand when referring to the events surrounding it.

  “Yes.” Robin said, nodding.

  He couldn’t say exactly when he and Liam had met—not that that was any surprise, given his Swiss-cheese memory—but he remembered hanging at the docks down at Ballard Mill Marina with him as kids. And, even if it hadn’t been much more than a friendship of proximity and convenience at the time, he knew for sure that they’d always gotten along.

  If there was one thing that living with memory loss had taught him, it was that even when the details about someone were hazy, he could still trust his feelings. Those hadn’t seemed to have been affected by his head injury, and he’d come to rely on them when dealing with people who had known him before the accident.

  Not, of course, that there were a ton of those lining up and vying for his attention.

  “Was Liam always so…” Sarah waved a hand in the air, her voice lilting up in a question, and Robin laughed.

  He didn’t know what the fluttering hand was supposed to represent, but he knew what she meant. Liam was unique. Or at least, definitely different from anyone else Robin knew. Nothing seemed to faze the man, and his approach to life was so carefree and laid-back that it bordered on irresponsible. Except he wasn’t that, exactly, either. He was just… free spirited.

  Both of their families had moved around a lot as children, but the lack of roots seemed to have had opposite effects on Robin and Liam. Based on his spontaneous leave-at-the-drop-of-a-hat-and-be-gone-for-months travel schedule, Liam didn’t appear to want roots, whereas Robin was a homebody at heart.

  Robin’s father’s job had meant packing up every few years and moving somewhere new for as far back as he could remember. It wasn’t until just before the accident that his family had finally settled for good in Seattle. Even during those earlier years, though, Robin’s normally-passive mother had uncharacteristically dug in her heels and insisted that they spend part of each summer here. “Back home,” she’d called it, since she’d grown up in the area, but honestly, the concept of “home” had felt pretty hollow to Robin in his youth. Still, he’d always liked Seattle, and he could definitely relate to his mother’s desire for a sense of stability. He’d liked the idea that they’d always had a home base to come back to, no matter how far away they’d strayed.