Love Him Desperate (On the Market #5) - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,30
it would be worth it.
Chapter Six
It was hard to believe a year had passed. That twelve months had rushed by in the blink of an eye, and both nothing and everything had changed. His twentieth birthday had crept up, nipping at his heels, and Dmitri was starting to feel the weight of his life, which had amounted to nothing apart from his growing friendship with Raphael. But other than that, his life was still water, and it felt like he was drowning.
Staring down at the paper in his hand, Dmitri tried to focus on the words instead of the oppressive weight of the decision it would require to fill it out—and the fact that he always had one of his existential crises around his birthday. Typically, they were small, pointless little things, but this one felt bigger.
And maybe because twenty felt, in some strange way, momentous, but he couldn’t ignore the unsettled feeling in his gut. Or it might have been that the year before had been spent in a wholly unexpected way that landed him a friendship he didn’t think possible with a long-time crush who was now one of his best friends.
Or something like it.
It had been one full year since Raphael spent Dmitri’s birthday with him, stargazing on the hood of his car. Just under a year since the afternoon Dmitri spent sitting in Wilder’s apartment watching Raphael recover from a seizure.
He still struggled with understanding what a man as bright and beautiful as Raphael got out of spending time with him, but Dmitri wasn’t going to push his luck and ask him to examine his choices. And the crush hadn’t lessened, but it had settled into something manageable and soft. He was resigned to the fact that Raphael would never love him back, but it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things because Raphael loved him in the only way people were capable of loving him.
And maybe even a little more, because Raphael was stingy with his feelings and only a few people were on the receiving end of them. Dmitri cupped his hands protectively around what they had and would fight to the death to keep it.
The reality of his crisis now was that he was tired. He wasn’t the sort of man who couldn’t find contentment in monotony. He didn’t want to change the world or make waves. If his kindergarten teacher presented him with the little outline of an apple that read, When I grow up, I want to be… it would sit sad and blank.
When he grew up, he wanted to be loved—in the crushing, romantic kind of way, but he wasn’t brave enough to say that out loud because every time he did, he had to face the consequences that came with his sexuality. And it wasn’t that he fell into the trap believing that any queer, asexual person would end up alone, but the little bubble of Cherry Creek offered him so little in the way of understanding. He came to terms with it, or at least, he was trying. But it wasn’t easy.
Dmitri had been so lost in his own thoughts, he didn’t hear the bakery door open, and he jumped half a foot and crushed the paper when fingers tapped his shoulder. His head whipped up to see Wilder there, a frown creasing his brow.
His right hand formed a Y and tapped his chin. ‘What’s wrong?’
The lie tripped off his fingers a little too easily, the circle under his chin, flung out like it didn’t matter. ‘Nothing.’ And really, it was nothing. Wilder didn’t need him at Indulgence anymore. He had two other part timers, and he had Lorenzo, who made everything flow smoothly. Dmitri needed to pay bills, but he didn’t have a fire in his belly to make people happy with cakes.
Coming to work at three AM for prep was hell, and he resented every sunrise he watched through the shop window. He loved Wilder, of course, and Lorenzo now that he’d made himself home in Cherry Creek. He knew Theo a little better, and of course there was Raphael who was unfailing in his attentions whenever Dmitri needed him most.
But it wasn’t enough.
“What is that?” Wilder tapped his finger on the edge of the paper, and Dmitri swallowed thickly.
‘Nothing,’ he signed again, but Wilder touched the back of his wrist with his first finger letting him know he could read the lie in his signs. ‘Job application.’