Page 19 of Inevitable
Bas waved him off. “It’s fine. And to answer your question, I have. I like to be in a relationship. I like romance and everything that comes with it. Kissing. Cuddles. Dates.” He had a faraway look on his face for a moment, but then he shook his head as if trying to clear it of clutter. “It puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on a relationship if sex is off the table for prolonged periods of time. I mean, I can do it. I don’t really have any terrible hang-ups about it, but it rarely crosses my mind, and when the other person wants it, it becomes this whole thing. I don’t initiate sex enough. I don’t seem enthusiastic enough. Why can’t you just be normal? I’ve heard it all before. And then I’ll start to wonder if the other person is frustrated with me, and I’ll feel like every kiss has a hidden agenda behind it. What if he expects that this kiss leads to sex? Or this one? Or maybe this one? I’ll start seeing ghosts around every corner, and every sigh after a hug feels like it’s filled with frustration. It fucks with my head, and I turn into a neurotic asshole. Believe me, it’s not pretty.” Bas looked out the window, into the distance. “It’s easier with other aces. Limits one problem, but then…” He pursed his lips and shrugged.
“They’re not Drew?” Ezra guessed.
“No, they’re not.”
Ezra eyed him for a moment.
“What about an open relationship?”
Bas let out a short laugh. “You’d think it’d be perfect, right? But no. Tried it once. I get jealous, and I can’t do it. It’s a destructive circle. There is no way to make a relationship work with me.”
Ezra gave Bas a skeptical look. “And Drew hasn’t tried to change your mind?”
“He knows where I stand.”
Ezra still had a hard time wrapping his mind around it. He wasn’t sure if he should ask but then figured what the hell. They were strangers, so he was going to ask.
“What if Drew meets somebody one day? What if he gets tired of waiting?”
“Who says he’s waiting?”
Ezra gave him a look. Bas turned away first and busied himself with wiping down the counters.
“What if one day one of Drew’s hookups turns into something more?” Ezra wasn’t even sure why he felt the need to dig his heels in so hard.
“It’s never happened before.” Bas’s gaze seemed to drill into the depths of Ezra’s soul. “At least it hasn’t happened until you, I should say.” He took a deep breath and looked out the window for a long time before he turned his gaze back to Ezra. “If that day comes, I’ll let him go.”
Ezra stared at Bas’s profile until the man shook his head and pasted a smile back on his face, unwilling to elaborate on the topic any further. Ezra had no idea what to do with that piece of knowledge anyway, so he dropped the poking.
“I like to live in the now,” Bas said. “And right now, we’re good.”
“Well… as long as you’re happy,” Ezra replied slowly.
They stared at each other over their plates. The omelet smelled good, but Ezra couldn’t eat a bite. The fever had taken everything out of him. It had been the last drop in a bucket that was already overflowing with problems.
He hadn’t managed to locate Jordan’s whereabouts, so he’d finally had to accept that getting any of his money back was a pipedream. He’d tried to get his dishwasher job back, but he’d royally pissed off the chef, and of course the man had been there in person when Ezra had gone crawling back. The asshole had taken a lot of pleasure in telling Ezra to go screw himself.
Because things weren’t fucked-up enough yet, he’d been kicked out of the abandoned garage when a security firm had done a sweep, and the next day, a brand-new set of steel bars had been put in place in front of every window.
It was a pathetic existence he lived with nowhere to go and no one to turn to. If Bas hadn’t shown up—he didn’t want to think about that scenario.
His life wasn’t worth much. All he had to his name was a duffel with some clothes. There was not a single person in the world who would have missed him if he had died. For all intents and purposes, he was insignificant. But that didn’t mean he was ready to give up yet. He might have been stomped into the mud, but the will to live—that persistent urge to continue, to set one foot in front of the other and keep going—was still there, and as long as it was there, he would slog on.
“Thank you,” he said so softly that it was barely more than a whisper. Looking up and facing Bas was the hardest thing Ezra had done in years. The humiliation burned brightly at the thought of this man, somebody who had it all together, witnessing the complete mess that was Ezra’s life.
He expected to see pity, but Bas’s eyes held none of that. There was only kindness.
“You’re welcome,” Bas simply said and pushed a glass of orange juice in front of Ezra. “Here. At least drink that if you’re not hungry. Your body needs energy and vitamins to get better.”
Ezra took the glass. Getting even that down seemed like too big of a task, but he dutifully started drinking, one small sip at a time.
A sudden thought occurred to him. “What day is it?” he asked with a frown.
Bas was cleaning plates off the counter and threw him a look over his shoulder. “Wednesday.”
Ezra almost choked on his juice. “What?” he managed to squeeze through a coughing fit. His mind was whirling, tracing back his steps, trying to find the missing hours as if they were keys he’d left behind somewhere. He was sure he’d gone to school on Monday. He remembered a class, hazy as the memory was. And then he’d gone to the restaurant. He was sure something was missing between that and ending up in the diner. After that, everything was a blank.
“Yes?” Bas didn’t seem to get what was so confusing.