Page 11 of Blue Gold

“No. This was a treat.”

I looked around the restaurant, which was now completely empty.

“I feel bad⁠—”

“I insist,” he declared, and the look in his eyes was so serious I knew better than to argue.

“Okay then.” I got up when he did the same.

“I’ll go get your coat.”

He quickly left, and I swore he sounded disappointed. While I was flattered, knowing he enjoyed my presence, it also formed an unpleasant knot in my stomach.

“Thank you,” I said once he returned and handed me my coat.

Before I could put it on, Elliot placed his hand on my arm.

“Will you come back again so I can tell you why I moved here?” he asked with a smile, but the glint of fear that flickered in his clear eyes told me this smile was nothing if not a mask to conceal something underneath.

“Yes,” I said before I could dive deeper into the consequences of my weakness. Weakness to him and how I felt whenever he looked at me with those blue eyes.

Sitting in the back seat of a cab, I couldn’t stop thinking about Elliot and the last three hours we’d shared together. There was nothing inappropriate about that dinner, as we didn’t do anything but talk and eat. He told me about himself while I did the same, and the whole thing was purely platonic. Of course, I also enjoyed his beauty, but it was impossible not to.

Elliot was a marvelous young man with a youthful innocence that a thirty-three-year-old like me had no right to ruin. Besides, it wasn’t just our age difference but other matters in my life that simply didn’t allow me to even fantasize about sharing a bed with such a man.

A horrible feeling gripped my stomach at the thought and the cruelty of wanting something I could never have. But that was a part of life, and being an adult meant accepting it. I had far too many responsibilities and duties to ignore them. Yet, when Elliot asked me if I would come to see him again, instead of saying a clear no, I caved to my deepest desires and made a foolish promise I could never fulfill. The reason I couldn’t see him was far worse than simply being a closeted gay man, obligated to meet his parents’ demanding standards.

And while my real life had been pushed aside for a few hours, now I had to get back to it.

After paying the driver, I got out of the cab and stared ahead at my town house, which I’d bought several years ago. Structured, boring, and beige, it resembled everything I was forced to be, and I hated it.

With a heavy sigh, I loosened my tie and began climbing the stairs to the front door, cursing the cold as I did. My keys jingled as I pulled them out, and I took a deep breath before opening the door and stepping inside. The house was comfortably warm, yet somehow, I wished to step back into the cold.

“Oh, thank God, you’re finally home,” Claudia, my wife, said as she greeted me at the door. “What kept you out so late?” she asked after taking my coat from me.

“Work.”

It was at this moment that I understood my dinner with Elliot was anything but platonic. Because if it was, why did I just lie?

Claudia sighed and ran a hand through her mess of blonde curls. “Well, you missed Maya. She asked about you before I put her to sleep.”

A faint smile reached my lips at the thought of my four-year-old daughter.

“I’ll go give her a kiss,” I said.

Claudia smiled at me. “Good. I’ll go heat up your dinner in the meantime⁠—”

“Actually, I already ate.”

“Oh, really?”

I nodded, a pang of guilt nipping at my stomach. “I ordered some takeout.”

“I see. So how about tea, then?”

Elliot likes tea.

“That would be lovely.”