in Los Angeles. The first night I saw her, she was screaming at a bartender for hitting on her friend, and for being a creep when she turned down his advances. I ended up stepping into the conversation when it seemed like the bartender was being a real asshole about the whole thing. Anyway, I said a few choice words to the guy, paid for Leah and her friend’s drinks, and from that night on, Leah and I were inseparable.”
Jack seemed to smile at the memory as he went on. “It felt like we spent all our free time in museums or at art galleries or at underground concerts. Leah was obsessed with anything art-related, which made sense because she was going to UCLA for a graduate degree in art history. And honestly, being with Leah was the first time I ever really thought about getting married or anything in that realm, you know? Which was pretty fucking weird, because I’d had plenty of girlfriends before Leah Hearth, and yet, it felt like she was on the verge of being The One.”
Jack’s smile then faded from his expression. “But I’m happy I never got around to buying the ring, because after a solid eighteen months of what I thought was building up to the rest of my life, Leah left me for a guy she met in one of her classes. Apparently, they’d been having an emotional affair, behind my back, and I guess they wanted to take things to the next level. I confronted her about it while she was moving her shit out of the condo that I’d been renting while I was in the city. Do you know what she told me?”
“What did she tell you?” I kept my voice low as I waited for Jack to answer the question.
“She told me that if we’d somehow managed to have a kid that year, that I would’ve been fifty-eight when our kid was eighteen, and that she would’ve been forty-three,” he continued. “And she said it with so much disdain in her voice, like it was cruel of me to expect her to commit to building a life with me, like just because I was going to be close to sixty when she was in her early forties that I was somehow wronging her.”
“Leah sounds like an ageist.”
“No.” Jack sighed as he shook his head. “Leah was right. I… never considered that I could’ve become a burden to her, that I could’ve dimmed her light just by sticking around past my expiration date as a partner.” Jack sighed again. “Anyway, that was the end of that. After Leah, I knew better than to dip my toes into younger waters. I’m not interested in anyone looking at me the way she looked at me when she was leaving, like I’m a boulder asking to be carried on their back.”
“You’re not a boulder, Jack.”
“Oh yeah?” Jack pressed. “Have you ever dated an older guy before, Austin? Seriously. Would you have even looked my way if you knew I was forty-five when you met me?”
“No, I’ve never dated anyone too much older than me before but—” I stopped myself short as I tried to figure out my next words. “Why does any of this matter right now, anyway, Jack? We don’t even know if we like each other as anything more than fuck buddies.”
“We actually don’t even know if we like each other as fuck buddies,” Jack corrected with a smile. “I’ve… never had the opportunity to have you in my bed.”
“Is that your way of asking me if I want to go to bed with you tonight?”
“Maybe it’s my way of asking you if you want to go to bed with me right now.”
“Jack—”
“Come to bed with me, Austin,” Jack murmured before he pressed a soft kiss against my lips.
“Jack, I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I murmured right back. “I just… we should probably talk about it a little bit more. It sounds like we might be on two different pages—”
“No, I think we’re on the same page,” Jack interrupted me with yet another kiss, this time sliding his fingertips underneath the bottom of my t-shirt.
I shivered at his touch, my next breath coming out as a hopeless pant. “Jack…”
“Have you ever had sex in public?” Jack asked, his fingertips gliding up my skin, his digits soon circling around one of my sensitive nipples.
“No,” I admitted. “I’ve never… done that before.”
“You should try it. At least once.