I clenched my jaw. It wasn’t fucking fair, and I felt like a child thinking it. Without me, she wouldn’t have the success, the notoriety. Jenna Delaney might have been well known in some circles, but it was only once she became a Carver that people really started to take notice.
I lost steam as quick as it had come to the fore. Without her, I wouldn’t have had the Carvery.
As if on autopilot, I was climbing the steps, then sliding the key into the lock and flicking on the lights in the entryway. It was quiet inside, completely still, and it seemed noticeably more vacant.
I moved through the living room that looked exactly how I’d left it, the muted tones and sparse, functional furnishings favored by the interior designer leaving the house completely devoid of personality. It was the polar opposite to Ben’s hodgepodge apartment with the worn leather sofa and the St. Elmo’s Fire poster that used to hang over our dining room table during our short stint living together before I’d moved to Manhattan. That was a home, even though it wasn’t much. This… I don’t know how I ever felt at home here.
Maybe I never did.
I pulled a duffel bag down from the top of the closet in my room and stuffed it with a few necessities—T-shirts, jeans, shorts, underwear. My hands lingered over the pressed chefs jackets emblazoned with the Carvery logo.
I left them. The reminder was too raw at this stage.
After collecting my knife roll from the kitchen, I took one last look around to see if I’d missed anything important. It was sobering to realize there wasn’t really anything I couldn’t live without, and that outside of the kitchen, there wasn’t much of me left at all.
With that, I turned my back on the last vestiges of my life and closed the door with a finality that sounded loud in the still New York night.
Sometime after eight, I heard the jangle of Ben’s keys in the door and looked up from the stove to see him trudging through the doorway. Some of the tension that had built up over the last few hours seemed to ease as he walked in.
Maybe I was only imagining the weirdness between us, projecting my own stresses and anxieties everywhere. My professional and marital situation had gone to shit so spectacularly, I half expected my friendship with Ben to follow suit.
He tossed me a nod as he crossed the kitchen and pulled a beer from the fridge.
“Want one?” he asked, holding the bottle up.
“Need might be more appropriate. I just got off the mandatory Jersey-mom weekly call. My ears are still ringing.”
“You tell her you were back in town?”
“Fuck no. I didn’t even tell her about Jenna. Not a chance in hell I’m telling her I’m back in Jersey.”
Without a word, Ben popped the lids off two bottles of beer and sat at one of the chairs pulled up to the kitchen counter with a groan. He slid the beer across to me and took a long pull from his, his body sagging, as though he didn’t have enough energy to sit upright.
“Long day?” I said from my post at the stove, where I was browning meat for dinner.
“Understatement. I was Byron’s whipping boy. He spent the whole day riding my ass.”
I laughed. “That doesn’t sound like you’d mind it all that much.”
He shot me a tight smile. “You don’t know Byron.”
Instantly, I regretted opening my mouth, feeling the unease thicken the air once again. So I hadn’t imagined it. I’d hoped I could smooth things over between us, kick it back old-school to a time when our friendship was effortless, before all my bad choices had made things weird. Cooking was my love language, and the only way I could think of to share how much I appreciated him and all he’d done for me, but years of barking orders in a kitchen had seriously put a dent in my brain-to-mouth filter.
He cleared his throat and nodded at the newspaper folded on the end of the counter. “Any luck on the job front?”
I shrugged. “Slim pickin’s. I saw Vera today, though, and she’s keeping her feelers out.”
I didn’t want to tell him I hadn’t even looked at the paper he’d so blatantly left open to the employment listings that morning. Truth be told, it was sort of liberating not working, despite my angst over leaving the Carvery and what my next steps should be. This was my first real self-imposed vacation in year, not counting the time I needed a root canal and Jenna forced me to take a few extra days.
He looked like he wanted to say more, but he left it at that. “All right. Shower time. Help yourself to another beer if you want it.”
I sighed when he left the room, relief flooding my body. This constant tension and release was doing a number on my sanity. I hated this, really fucking hated it. I don’t know at what point in our friendship everything had gone so completely off the rails. Everything had seemed fine the last time we saw each other it—what was it, a month ago? Maybe two if I thought about it. But Ben and I had the type of effortless friendship where we settled back into how it always was, like no time had passed at all.
At least, it used to be that way. Or it had been before I’d essentially turned him down, putting my selfish interests first. I knew how he felt about my relationship with Jenna, and it was just as clear how he felt about Jenna herself, though he’d never outright said anything negative about her. He’d sucked it up and stood by my side as best man on my wedding day, smiling pretty and playing nice even though his eyes begged me not to go through with it as I slipped the ring on her finger.
It had always been so easy for Ben, just being who he was. I envied that about him. He’d always just been himself, and he’d grown more confident with it as the years went on.
I stared out the window of Ben’s drab apartment, which looked eerily similar to the one we’d shared back when I was just starting culinary school. It was amazing how much had changed in a decade. I felt like I’d aged twenty years. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who’d moved on.
I smiled at the memories of drunken fumbling by candlelight—a terrible idea in retrospect, considering our state of inebriation—of stubble-roughened kisses and the feel of my best friend, hard under my hands…
I swallowed. It’d been a long time since I’d thought about those days. Maybe it was self-preservation. Thinking about it stirred up feelings—feelings I had no business having, that I’d intentionally kept buried since I was too young and stupid to know better. Those memories had been best left tucked away. But being around Ben, living in close quarters, it was harder to keep them from rising to the surface.
Chapter Four
Ben
I was so fucking stupid.
When I’d offered to let Jimmy stay, I’d been thinking with my emotions instead of my brain. If I’d taken even five frickin’ minutes to think things through, I would have realized what a terrible idea it was.
Five days. That’s all it took. Less than one fucking week for the crush that had been mostly reined in for years to explode like that creature bursting out of that dude’s chest in Alien. It was monstrous and consuming, and if I didn’t keep it in check, it just might kill me.
Maybe that was kind of over-the-top dramatic, but within the span of only a few days, I’d gone from keeping my desire for him confined to masturbatory fantasies every now and then to all-out wanting, all the time.
I was used to the distance living in different states afforded us. I was used to seeing Jimmy once a month, if I was lucky. I was used to there being that separation at the end of our hangouts where I could go home, decompress, and remind myself that he and I were never going to happen, that he’d put a stop to it long ago and I needed to get a fucking grip. It was that break I needed to keep the emotional distance and stop my feelings for him from overwhelming me.
But now, he was there all the time. When I cooked, he was behind me, ordering me around like the culinary equivalent of a back-seat driver. When I slumped down on the couch to watch Seinfeld, there he was, right next to me, sitting close enough that I could feel the body heat coming off him. When I got home from work, he was sprawled o
ver my furniture, his T-shirt riding up and giving me a glimpse of skin I wanted nothing more than to run my tongue over. There was no escaping him—no escaping how much I craved him.
The dumbest shit turned me on. Watching him shave was like shooting fucking heroin. I was losing my goddamn mind, and if Jimmy didn’t move out soon I was going to go completely insane.
It was bad enough that he was invading my waking hours, but I’d started to dream about him too. Not just run-of-the-mill sex dreams, but memories of what we’d been all those years ago, updated with the broader, more mature Jimmy of today.
My mind had retained every detail of him from back then. It had been half a lifetime ago, but that didn’t make the memory of it any less vivid in my head. I knew what he looked like, naked and turned-on, hard and desperate, and that picture was tattooed onto my brain. Bleach and a lobotomy wouldn’t erase that image.
We’d been young and stupid back then, two friends messing around together, figuring it all out.
Even though fucking around with Jimmy had been more exploration than skill, to date they were still some of the hottest experiences I’d had with someone. At the time, I’d thought we’d keep going forever, but life happens and he’d moved on.
I wish I could say the same for me.
Having him around was dredging up shit I didn’t particularly want to face. I tried to shake off the memory of it, to tuck it away and ignore that my whole body was aching to touch him. I could totally pretend to be okay… pretend that being in the same room with him didn’t give me an instant hard-on.
Sure. Yeah. Totally.
I could hear Jimmy in the kitchen, the quick, even passes of his knife on the cutting board audible through the thin walls of my bedroom. I couldn’t hang around here one more evening, watching him move around my kitchen like he owned it, my eyes trained on him because I just couldn’t look away.
I needed to get the hell out of there. I need to go out and distract myself with someone way too pretty to be a good idea.
After grabbing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt I was pretty sure was clean, I checked myself in the mirror, decided I looked decent enough, and added a quick spritz of cologne for good measure. I was itching to leave, like if I stayed one more night in that apartment I was going to start climbing the walls. I made sure I had my wallet, then shoved a couple of condoms and packets of lube in my pocket before making a beeline for the door.
“Ben! You hungry?” Jimmy called from the kitchen. I could smell the makings of a ragú, and my stomach growled. I’d always loved his pasta dishes. If he was making the noodles from scratch, I’d be done for.
He walked out, a tea towel draped over his shoulder and a red bell pepper in his hand. His eyes trailed over me, stopping when he saw my keys in my hand. “You’re going out?”
“Uh, yeah.” I paused, the awkwardness cleaving the room in half. “Thought I’d head out to Lucky’s for a bit. I’d have invited you, but I didn’t think it was really your scene.”
“Isn’t Lucky’s—”
“A gay bar,” I supplied for him. “Yeah.”
“Right.” He pressed his lips together into a line. There was a long, uncomfortable pause, and then he cleared his throat. “No, I think I’ll stay in, keep it low-key. There’ll be leftovers whenever you get back.”
I nodded, the feeling of dodging a bullet hitting me so abruptly I had to bite back the relieved sigh. “Maybe next time,” I offered, not meaning it at all. “I’ll see ya later.”
“Have a good time.”
Oh, I certainly fucking planned on it.
Lucky’s was more of a hole-in-the-wall bar than a club and happened to be the only gay night spot in town. It wasn’t the swankiest of places, but my agenda for the next few hours didn’t include admiring the décor. Normally on the nights I went out, I preferred to frequent a place in downtown Manhattan. It was a little more decadent, and the clientele was a little less… Hackensack. But there was no way I was hauling ass all the way into Manhattan. Tonight, it didn’t matter. Tonight, the object of the game was to let loose a little, then get in, get off, get out, and get Jimmy the hell outta my head.
I ordered and beer and took a seat at the bar to survey my options. It was still early and not many people had ventured out yet, but there were a few people who’d shown up already–guys in suits who looked slightly out of place at a bar lit in purple lights, a couple of men who were clearly together, their bodies angled toward each other as they sipped their martinis. But sitting near the back was a guy, maybe midtwenties with jet-black hair. He turned to me, dark eyes meeting mine across the bar.
He was gorgeous and the way he was looking at me, I had a good feeling about how this was going to go. A slow smile spread across my face as I pushed off my stool and made my way over to him.
“This seat taken?” I asked, gesturing to the stool next to him.
“Is now,” he replied, one eyebrow lifting in invitation. I swallowed hard, my gaze tracing the full line of his lips. I was hit with the vision of them stretched around my cock, sucking me off in a dark corner.
“Great. Can I buy you a drink?” So it wasn’t the most original pickup line I’d ever used, but judging by the expression of interest on the guy’s face, it didn’t have to be. It’d get the job done just fine.
“Sure.”
I caught the bartender’s attention and asked for another round. “I’m Ben.”
“Scott.”
“Nice to meet you, Scott.” I held out my hand to shake, and when he slid his palm against mine, I rubbed my thumb over the top of his hand. His gaze flicked up, and his expression was nothing short of wicked.
This was gonna be so much fun.
Less than half an hour later, we’d had a few drinks each and things were starting to get a little more interesting. Scott, it turned out, had been the perfect pick. The very definition of a twink, he was everything Jimmy wasn’t: lithe where Jimmy was broad, reserved where Jimmy was bold, dark where Jimmy was light. I couldn’t have designed a better distraction myself. Nothing about him was anything like Jimmy.
“You wanna get outta here?” I asked.
He grinned at me. “Yeah. My place is just down the block.”
“Perfect. Lead the way.” I tossed a couple of bills on the bar and followed him out.
We walked in silence toward his place, our pace brisk. He was eager to get this going, and so was I. I’d hoped that just leaving the house would be enough to get Jimmy off my mind, but the few minutes Scott and I had spent talking at the bar, I’d had to force myself to pay attention to what he was saying. Over and over my mind wandered back to Jimmy, and every time it did, it annoyed me more and more.
Clearly just being out of his presence wasn’t enough. But letting myself get lost in the euphoria of an orgasm—that would definitely do the trick.
“This is me,” Scott said, turning into the driveway of a two-level home across from a beauty school. He led me around the side of the house and down a set of stairs at the back to the basement door.
“Can I get you something to drink?” he asked, once we were inside. The place was small, with low ceilings and linoleum floors, but it wasn’t any dumpier than my apartment. I figured his folks probably lived upstairs, but I didn’t bother asking about it. It didn’t matter. This was probably the last time I was going to see him anyway.
“Sure. What have you got?”
He walked over to the fridge, which was only a few feet away from the door, and pulled it open. “A couple of Bacardi Breezers and some Budweisers.”
Jimmy would have cringed at the thought of drinking a Breezer. He thought they were cloyingly sweet and generally preferred his liquor straight. But this wasn’t about Jimmy. I forced him from my mind again. “I’ll take a beer.”
“You got it,” Scott said, grabbing a can from the fridge and handing it to me. “You need a glass, or…”
“No, this is good.” I cracked the top and took a swig as I looked around the kitchen. Cheap
pots and pans cluttered the stovetop and not a professional utensil in sight. When I returned my attention to Scott, he was staring at me. His expression was open, predatory, and I felt the little hitch in my heart rate, knowing the time for small talk and pleasantries was done.
It was time to get to the good stuff.
I set my beer down on the counter and reached for him, pulling him to me. He was shorter than me by a few inches, and quite a bit slighter, too. His arm went around my waist, and I leaned forward to kiss him, despite the fact that my mind was a mess of disquiet. Thoughts of Jimmy were circling through like a tornado of memories and regret, and I just wanted it to stop.
I kissed Scott harder, deepening the kiss as he thrust his tongue against mine. It was too wet, too sloppy. The rough scrape of stubble was absent as I slid my hand along his jaw to tilt his head back. It was off and I knew exactly why.
This wasn’t what I wanted. Scott wasn’t who I’d been craving for ten fucking years. Jimmy was. And fuck, if that didn’t make me angry.
I grabbed Scott’s wrists, my hands easily encircling them, and backed him against the wall, pinning his hands above his head. I kissed him again with more force this time, pouring every ounce of frustration and anger into it. I needed him to wipe away the cravings, to erase the constant fucking desire that had my back up since Jimmy became a semipermanent fixture in my life again, but it wasn’t fucking working.
I wanted Jimmy and despite how hard I tried to ignore that fact, it wasn’t going away. My feelings for him had been persistent enough to stick around for the better part of a decade, and no matter how many bars I frequented, no matter how many guys I fucked, none of that was going away.
Home Skillet (Culinary Kings Book 1) Page 4
