Ex-Daredevil

by Zoe Lee

  “He left me alone with you, didn’t he?” I countered, curling in to slide my nose along his jaw, sneaking in a lungful of his amazing scent, and nipped his earlobe.

  When I started to pull back, his arm twisted in my loose hold so his fingers could tangle with mine, pinning my hand lightly to the top of my thigh.

  “Gavin,” Barley boomed, barging back into the room suddenly. “Are you reciting a thousand-line fucking sonnet in here or what? I have an appointment in an hour.”

  “With your personal trainer,” I grumbled.

  Eliott’s eyes gleamed and he laid a kiss on the corner of my lips, surprising me with the move since anyone outside the conference room might see. “I’ll text you later.”

  “Okay,” I agreed, dumbfounded, as he picked up his things and saw himself out.

  “You should see your face right now,” Barley snickered. “You have like… heart eyes.”

  I shoved him into the doorframe and stuck my nose up high in the air. “What are you doing just standing there? Kelli-with-an-I is dying to see you and prove she can count to one hundred while you do squats or whatever it is you weird people who like exercise do.”

  With one of his signature wall-shaking laughs, Barley slung an arm around my neck and we headed out, my mind fixating on my phone in my pocket, waiting for it to buzz.

  Chapter 12

  Gavin

  I hadn’t really tried anything remotely resembling dating anyone since my late teens, so the whole week was an agonizing flashback to that time in my life.

  I constructed each text methodically, switching it up between casual and flirty, and dropping in some facts or asking questions to learn more about him. It was a little tiring, but at the same time, not very many things made me nervous or unsure, so it was oddly good practice at working hard for something I considered rewarding. Sometimes Eliott responded like he always had to my texts, dry admonitions and gossip to distract me from something he didn’t want to answer. But sometimes he revealed a little more of himself to me too, little glimpses of his past and his inner workings, and that made me soar.

  By Friday, we had also finally agreed to the standard dinner at a restaurant date.

  While I didn’t want to ever change myself to impress anyone, I still wanted Eliott to know that I was pleased to go out with him. So I was wearing black skinny jeans, no rips, and a blue and black striped knit sweater, the kind that was almost too big and had a soft, stretched neckline and sleeves that went to my knuckles. My hair was in a stylishly messy top knot man bun and I was wearing a blue-green Labradorite pendant on a leather thong.

  We were meeting at a French restaurant and I had to hustle up the street once I got off the bus to make it on time. I hurried inside and there he was, waiting at the bar with a glass of red wine, looking like an ad for a gay vineyard in California. He was dressed down, for him, also in black jeans, tailored but not skinny like mine, and a tucked-in charcoal shirt that settled around his body like I wanted to, kind of clinging and definitely stretched out.

  Our eyes met over the rim of his wineglass and his eyes flashed with heat, almost as if I’d said what I was thinking aloud and he’d heard me from twenty feet away.

  “Hey,” I said, then darted in to kiss him, my hand holding his waist for a second.

  “Hi, Gavin,” he said once my lips had slid off his. “You look good.”

  I gave him a big smile just as the hostess called his name.

  She led us to a little table right in the middle of the crowded restaurant. She sounded like a buzzing bee in the background, while Eliott adjusted his jeans just like he’d done with his fancy, sexy suit in the conference room on Monday when he was in lawyer mode.

  “I, ah, looked up Barley,” Eliott said, smoothing his hair again as a runner set down waters, a basket of steaming bread, and a dish of olive oil. “You’re right, I was embarrassed.”

  “He was more outraged by the idea that you don’t listen to rock than that you do but don’t pay attention to musicians’ names,” I said with an eye roll. “He was fine until he realized that you know who Carina is, which means you do know certain musicians’ names.”

  “Good evening,” our server interrupted, telling us the specials before asking me what I’d like to drink.

  I plucked up Eliott’s wine and tried it, while he lifted both eyebrows in mild disapproval that I’d taken it without asking. “This is good, can I have a glass too please?”

  “Of course, may I see your I.D., please, sir?” With a faint grunt of annoyance, I fished it out. “Thank you, sir, I’ll be back with your wine shortly.”

  “You must be older than you look, if getting your I.D. checked irritates you,” Eliott commented once the server was out of earshot. “I had pegged you in your mid-twenties.”

  I gave a dry laugh and replied, “You didn’t notice it at the bar the first time? I’m thirty.” That had his brows lifting again, this time in surprise. “Don’t give me that look. Not everyone is perfectly masculine like you.”

  “And not every man can pull off being beautiful,” he countered mildly.

  I floundered with the compliment.

  He meticulously tore off a piece of bread, dipped one side in olive oil, and ate it. “It’s not like I have anything against rock music,” he went on, moving back to our conversation before the server’s arrival, “it’s just that left to my own devices, I pick other genres.”

  “Why would you go to a club for your birthday, if… modern music isn’t your thing?”

  That brought out the most relaxed, happiest smile I’d ever seen on him.

  “That’s tradition. I went to the University of Chicago for undergrad and met Camdon and my three other best friends at a mixer for a campus LGBTQA+ club. It wasn’t a favorable first impression, so we ditched it and decided to go somewhere else. Sam—the most energetic and outgoing of us—said he’d heard of a queer-friendly club. Off we went, two trains and a bus, an hour and a half, Sam talking almost the whole time and getting the rest of us comfortable enough to join in by the time we got there. After we graduated, we set up a monthly meetup there. Of course, Cam and I were gone the first two years at law school, and Asher missed plenty when he was working on his MBA and planning his first wedding.”

  “I don’t think you have ever said that much at once to me before,” I teased him.

  “This is a first date,” he reasoned, “I’d rather tell you a lot about good things, like my best friends, than tell you my pathetic dating history or my miserable high school years.”

  We paused when our server came by with my wine and to take our food orders. Eliott went first while I skimmed the menu quickly and then chose something I’d never tried.

  I propped my chin in one hand and cupped my wine glass in the other, swirling it as I studied him, trying to guess what sort of pathetic and miserable he’d been. But I couldn’t imagine him as anything other than the self-assured, never-quite-relaxed man he was today.

  “Were you horribly dorky when you were young then, Eliott?” I asked lightly.

  “No,” he said shortly. “I wasn’t cool, true, but that wasn’t prioritized in my family.” I hummed in curiosity and he gave me a stern look before he obliged me anyway. “My family’s very artistic. My mom does wardrobe for theatres, operas, dance companies, drag queens, you name it. She wears feather earrings and about a thousand rings and hand-dyed flowy dresses. My father worked in custom framing, mostly for photographers.”

  “You were the duck among swans?” I speculated.

  “So it turned out,” he replied, taking a big swallow of his wine. “And you, then?”

  It was fair to turn the question back on me, but I didn’t like talking about it.

  Still, I lifted my chin and got it all out of the way at once. “It wasn’t pretty. Working class Irish Catholic neighborhood, looking like I do, with no sense of self-preservation, and no big tough brothers to protect me? I got my ass kicked, got called all the ugly names, until I figured out how
to be the class clown so people gave me a little bit more space. Strangely, the only upside is I actually am gay, so it wasn’t like they were wrong and I was completely misunderstood. I left high school and the neighborhood as soon as I could though.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he exhaled. His fingers crept across the small table to stroke mine where I’d been crushing a piece of bread, and it was so sweet that I almost choked when I took my own big swallow of wine. “There I went, cross-examining you instead of…”

  “It wasn’t all bad,” I said around the tightness in my throat. “My mom fought for me like the best lioness in the whole world with the school. My grandparents too, they switched churches after the priest gave a sermon that was definitely not aimed at me the Sunday after I was caught kissing Sean O’Flaherty in the movie theater. I have two cousins about my age and they were weirdos too, so we stuck together. It’s only made me more determined to be me. If people don’t like it, well, that’s their problem and their loss.”

  Something complicated twisted up Eliott’s expression, something like the jealousy I’d seen him give into at his office on Monday morning, except it couldn’t have been that. But I was a little wrung out from telling him that, so I gave him the time to work through it without interrupting him or flirting outrageously the way I would’ve with a hookup.

  He looked away from me, his fingers still stroking the backs of mine, and I twisted my head to follow his line of sight. He caught the attention of our server and when he got to the table, Eliott said, “We’d like our order to go, please. There’s been a change of plans.”

  “No problem, sir, I’ll bring the check and let the kitchen know.”

  “Eliott—” I started to ask.

  He angled up and over the table suddenly, the glasses and silverware rattling, and pressed his lips to mine, his breathing hard as his tongue slipped into my mouth for a quick tease. “It is their loss,” he murmured, right against me still. “Come back to my place.”

  “I-I thought you want to take me out on a date.”

  His eyes pinned to me, he sat back down and explained, “I’ve learned so much already about you through our texts—the silly photos and gossip, and your clever questions to get me to open up. I asked you out because I want to date you, but as soon as we sat down, I remembered I hate first dates. They make me anxious, like I’m going to break a boundary I don’t know about yet. I just want to spend time with you, like we have before, without it being some… manufactured thing because I think we’re supposed to go on a dinner date.”

  The focused energy pouring off Eliott engulfed me in heat and comfort, my eyes wide and my throat dry from his confession. I wondered how many dates he’d suffered through, being polite and hiding his anxieties, because that was the normal, expected thing.

  “I don’t really go out on dates. Maybe a drink before a hookup, to make sure the other person isn’t a total psycho,” I said with a little shrug. “I guess I never really considered that there’s a difference between dating and going out on dates. You’re right, I like more organic ways of getting to know people. It’s one of the reasons I like doing all my risky hobbies, because you can really get to know someone without needing to exchange a million facts.”

  “Good,” he said, his voice rougher and lower now.

  “Here’s the check and your food,” the server interrupted again.

  “Here,” Eliott said, handing over a card I hadn’t noticed him getting, without looking away from me. The air crackled between us and as soon as I saw the server coming back, I got up, Eliott following a second later. “Thank you,” he said as he scribbled on the receipt.

  His bigger hand clasped my wrist, my sweater’s loose knit letting me feel the heat and pressure so much more deliciously than if it were bare skin meeting. I scooped up the takeout bag and let him tow me out and a few blocks to his condo, laughing breathlessly.

  “Eager much?” I queried rhetorically as he hustled us inside and up the stairs.

  The takeout bag hit the floor when he turned and kissed the everloving fuck out of me.

  My cock was trapped down my leg in my briefs inside my skinny jeans, the dual pressure exquisite as Eliott ground full-length against me. I fell against the door, wiggling over until the knob wasn’t digging into my ass, my hands grabbing his hair. The kiss robbed me of breath and I had no idea, really, where all of this was coming from, but I didn’t care at all. The way he wrapped his arms around me, surrounding me in his heat and scent, made me shiver and whine into his mouth where our tongues thrust in rhythm with our hips.

  After minutes or hours, my legs were weak and I whined again, shifting my grip to his shoulders so that I could blindly guide him further into the condo, towards furniture.

  He caught on and led us to his black leather sofa, dropping down on it.

  I fell on top of him, my knees landing between the seams of the cushions on either side of his hips, and our mouths never separated and his arms stayed snake-like around me, pinning us together. There wasn’t enough room to move and it was the best kind of torture.

  Pulling back with a gasp, he said, “I didn’t mean to start something.”

  “Just couldn’t keep your hands off me, huh?” I teased, wiggling my hips.

  With a hum, he moved me off him and said, “We’ll get back to that later.”

  My heart fluttered when he stroked a finger over my jaw before retrieving the takeout bag from the floor and going into the kitchen. Even though I’d wanted to go on a date, I liked this so much better. Not only because it was my style, but because he seemed comfortable now. It made me feel like I brought out something in him that he’d never recognized before, or something totally new, and I grinned when he brought over the food and wine.

  We started eating and I could see the gears turning in his head as he tried to find something to talk about that was date-like, but also fitting for eating takeout on his couch.

  Deciding that we needed something to help us, since I was a little out of my depth too, I asked, “Do you watch movies or TV shows? Or only documentaries on famous judges?”

  “I… do not watch documentaries on famous judges,” he said cautiously.

  My eyes lit up, sensing something good, and grabbed up his remotes so I could turn the TV on, clicking on a streaming service. I made a noise halfway between a snort and a squeal as I scrolled through his recently viewed items, and he tried to look dignified.

  “This is amazing,” I said. “You watch trashy melodramas. I love this.”

  I clicked on Riverdale and he sighed in resignation.

  “I’ve never seen this, so you’re going to have to catch me up,” I told him, our arms brushing as we ate between my questions and his explanations. He tried to be blasé, as if he hate-watched the over-the-top show aimed at teenagers, but he wasn’t pulling it off. I had to keep shooting sly, delighted looks at him and saying, “This is so much fun, Eliott.”

  “You’re making fun of me,” he muttered.

  I glared at him through my mouthful and then denied hotly once I finished it, “I am not. I’m learning something new about you that doesn’t fit into the neat box you like to pretend you live in. Besides, this could be my new favorite show, if it stays this good.”

  He gave me a small smile and then relaxed more fully into the couch, letting his enthusiasm show, and we kept watching for another episode after we’d finished eating. The show was a little crazy, but not too complicated, so we could argue the themes and plot holes, plus go on tangents talking about other shows and movies we liked.

  After we watched a second episode, I paused it before a third could start.

  Stretching my arms over my head, I sprawled out on the couch, draping my calves over his thighs. “If your first date with someone is really good, and you bring them back to your place, does that mean that you’re definitely going to sleep together? Or do you have a rule?”

  “Since my last bad breakup, I’ve dated people with the same temperament as me. You wer
e right about that.” He gave me an arch look, even as he began to smooth his hands up and down my shins, pausing to gently squeeze my ankles. “So there was definitely no first date sex. It wasn’t a rule, it’s just that I thought it was more important to be established.”

  I shook my head and scolded him, “That’s bloodless. It’s not a business deal.”

  “Business deals are bloody,” he argued, showing off his sharky lawyer grin. But then he got serious and asked after a hesitation, “Why haven’t you gone on many first dates?”

  “I guess I was oversimplifying it when I said I didn’t go on dates,” I admitted, scooting down a little so the arm of the couch could support my neck more comfortably. “I graduated high school at seventeen and moved out, and I was a bit wild. For me, I wanted to go out with all different types of guys and try anything that sounded fun or sexy. And I never really… ran out of interesting men or fun, sexy things to do with them.”

  That made me wince at myself, because it made me sound shallow and flighty.

  But Eliott seemed to have taken something else from it. He shifted out from under my calves, then laid down against me, sliding his cheek over my sweater. “Honestly, that sounds a little lonely to me, although I’m sure you don’t have any regrets.”

  Laughing softly, I played with his hair and agreed, “I don’t. There were guys I wanted to grow past the hookup phase with, but they weren’t interested. It didn’t feel great. But I wasn’t crazy about any of them, so I wasn’t always getting my heart broken or anything.”

  “Hm,” he hummed, sounding sleepy all of a sudden. “I’d like to spend the day with you tomorrow, if you want to stay over again and don’t have other plans,” he answered.

  Nudging him, I said, “That sounds perfect, but I don’t want to sleep on the couch.”

  We stood up and got ready for bed, taking turns in the bathroom, and this time, I didn’t feel like I was overstepping or he was just indulging me. It felt dangerously easy to curl up with him and drift off to sleep as I thought that it hadn’t been so scary, opening up to Eliott.