Page 43 of Jealous Guy

It’s a universal truth. Verity. A fundamental reality none of us can escape.

Even though I know in my bones that sleeping with Jordan is a gargantuan error, deciding whether or not to do it isn’t a difficult decision. It’s easy because I know as surely as I’m standing here, living and breathing, that if I don’t do it, it will be my biggest regret. It will be the thing that makes me toss and turn on my deathbed. The watershed moment. The great if only that defines me.

The singular regret that would echo through me for the rest of my life.

It’s no secret that I want Jordan. I’ve wanted him since before I knew for sure what this kind of want is, or what it means. I want him more than I’ve ever wanted anyone. I want him so much that I don’t know if it’s possible for me to want anyone else. I want him in the best and worst way, and I know, I know that for as long as I live, if I don’t take him up on his offer, I’m going to hate myself for it.

I know myself well enough to know that if I don’t do it, I’ll never be able to stop thinking about it. I’ll be trapped in an endless loop of what if. I’ll be hopelessly in love with Jordan forever, unable to move on, if I pass this opportunity up.

Before I have time to reply, Jordan waggles his eyebrows and says, “I’m really good at sex, you know.”

It shouldn’t be at all attractive that he’s like this. An idiot and arrogant at the same time. But it is.

“I know that, asshole. I’ve heard you fucking girls to within an inch of their lives for years.”

His lips peel back and his eyes don’t leave mine. “I’ll bet you have.”

It’s not what he says that affects me. It’s the way he says it. A brown-sugar voice with a flame lit beneath it.

He’s flirting, I realize with a jolt. Jordan is flirting with me.

What’s more, I’m flirting with him too. My hand is still on his arm. It’s found its way past his elbow, and I’m groping the swell of his bicep rhythmically. Like I mean it. Like I can’t get enough. Not only that, I’m looking at him. Really looking at him. Looking at him without moderating my gaze. Without masking it. Without hiding who I am or what I want.

“Okay.” I’m stunned to find I have the audacity to sound sure of myself. “Let’s do this.”

Jordan reacts without hesitation, reaching out and plucking my towel from my waist with a rough tug that jostles me. It falls to the floor in a puddle and leaves me feeling like I’ve been splashed in the face with ice water.

Holy shit. Are we doing this? For real?

I clamp my hands in front of my junk like an idiot, and Jordan throws his head back and laughs. Before his laughter dies completely, he makes a quick, jerky movement that’s designed to ignite an instinctive reaction in me. An instinct to jump back. To run and find cover.

An instinct all prey has when a predator is near.

I take two quick steps to the side, heading toward the safety of my bedroom. He’s quicker, barricading my door with his broad body, leaving me no choice but to dash to his bedroom instead of mine.

Jordan’s bedroom feels like him. A little messy in an appealing way. There are pens and pebbles he collects wherever he goes laid out on his desk, and a pile of books that haven’t found their way to his bookshelf since we moved in. He has a little yellow star-shaped trophy on top of a stack of books that has proid of you engraved on it. It’s an inside joke that arose as the result of a typo in a message he sent me years back. I had it made for him when he failed the first big assignment he turned in during our freshman year of college. He loves that kind of shit.

His bed is made—smoky sage-green bedsheets and a duvet cover that matches—but it’s rumpled. It’s always rumpled. I’ve seen him make his bed many times. I’ve watched as he shakes the covers out and smooths the sheets down, only for it to look lived-in a minute later.

His bedside light is on. The lampshade is tilted at a rakish angle, casting a warm glow that climbs up the wall.

Now that I’m in his room, stark naked and standing about two feet from his bed, I don’t know what to do. My thoughts are fried. I’m thinking a million different things, and I’m feeling a million more. I feel hot but not uncomfortably so. My heart is beating so hard that I can hear my pulse whooshing in my ears and my lungs are working overtime. I think my natural state right now would be breathing hard and loud, as if I’ve been running, but I’m fighting the urge because I don’t want Jordan to see how affected I am. I don’t want him to know that I’ve dreamed of this moment. Spent my life thinking about it.

Even though everything’s jumbled and reason is in short supply, I know tonight is going to end. The sun will come up tomorrow, and a reality will exist where this crazy thing has happened between us, and our lives go back to something that resembles normal despite it.

I’m here, and I’m doing this, but I need to hold part of myself back. I have to. I have to keep what happens tonight in the realm of plausible deniability. I need to be able to look Jordan in the eye tomorrow and for him not to see the simple, unequivocal truth that in the history of men who love men, no man has ever been down bad worse than I am for him.

Our friendship depends on it.

I glance back at Jordan to try to work out what I should do next, just in time to see him launching himself at me, arms outstretched, lips slashed in a wide grin.

We crash onto the bed in a tangle of arms and legs. He’s on top of me. Heavy and hot. Hands grasping and groping. It’s a shock to my system. A sensory overload. He’s fully clothed, and I’m not. I feel the softness of his T-shirt against my chest, and the texture of his pants against my hip. I feel naked in a way that doesn’t feel perfunctory like it does when I undress for bed or the shower. This nakedness feels raw. Bone-deep and charged with electricity.

When I’ve imagined this moment, it’s always been in the context that Jordan and I are together. That a parallel world exists and that we live in it. A world where he loves me back as much as I love him.

I’ve never mentally concocted a scenario like the one that’s playing out. Where we’re still only friends, but we’re about to fuck. I think if I had, I’d have thought I’d feel awkward. That I’d wear my nudity like something I wasn’t proud of. Perhaps I’m so dulled by arousal that I can’t access my awkwardness. Or perhaps the part of my brain that controls self-awareness has been overcome by the thick, hard pull currently dragging every thought in my head toward my groin.

Jordan laughs as we wrestle, a soft sound that makes me feel like something warm has been poured down my spinal column.