“All right, get over here,” I said.
“Hmm?”
“C’mon,” I said, patting my thigh.
He realized what I meant, and a moment later, shimmied over on the couch so that his head was resting on my thigh. He was so warm, and I wanted to reach down so badly. I wanted to run my fingers through his hair, tickle his back, anything.
That was what he wanted anyway, right? Cuddling was okay. Cuddling was something we could do, even if we definitely weren’t dating.
But I held back. I didn’t know how much was too much, either for me or for him. If it had just been my cock in his mouth, everything might have seemed easier. But when it came to small, tender, affectionate moments like this, I felt just as new to everything as he was. The show played on in the background, but now neither one of us were calling out answers. I was so aware of the feeling of his body on mine.
I didn’t even care that I was indoors anymore. All I could think about was how good he felt.
“Luke?” he murmured after a few minutes.
“What’s up?”
He turned so that he was facing upward, his big eyes searching my face. “How many guys have you… y’know…”
I lifted an eyebrow at him. “Spit it out.”
“How many guys have you fucked?”
“I was hoping it wouldn’t be that question.”
“What?” he protested, turning his body fully now. He was still on my lap but now I felt exposed as I looked down at him, like he was looking deeply into my soul. “Why’s that a bad question?”
“Because I don’t want to compare yardsticks and bedpost notches with you.”
“It’s not like that at all,” he said. “I just want to get to know you better.”
I puffed out a laugh. “Well, that’s your first mistake.”
He reached up and gently swatted me on the side of the head. “Not a mistake at all. The more I get to know about you, the more I like you, actually.”
I pulled in a long breath. “I don’t know the exact number,” I said. “But it’s more than forty.”
His eyes went wide, just briefly, before he made himself put a neutral expression back on his face. “Oh. Okay,” he said.
“You’re judging me,” I said.
“I am not.”
“I know you are, you don’t have to pretend, Cam.”
“It’s obviously more than I’ve done. But I think that number is pretty normal for a guy like you.”
“Guy like me, huh? What’s that mean?”
“You’re hot as fuck, never been married, and you’re independent. You go to bars and stuff. You’re not a boring guy like me.”
“You are definitely not boring,” I said. I tried to breeze past the fact that he’d called me “hot as fuck,” but it lit me up inside. “And you had a whole marriage. You have so much more to show for your past than I do.”
“I am weirdly proud of the marriage we had,” he said, “even though it ended. Never thought I’d be able to say that. We really worked well together, until we didn’t.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, nodding down at him. “I purposely haven’t asked more about why you and Rachel split up.”
He looked away from my eyes, focusing on a little string hanging from the T-shirt I was wearing. He wrapped it around his finger, lost in thought for a moment.
“There’s no big secret about why we split up,” he said. “I blame it a lot on myself. Probably more than I should.”
“She didn’t blame it on you, did she?”
He looked off into the middle distance. “She only blew up at me once. It was an ugly one, though. I mean, not breaking-dishes angry, but… Rachel never yells, and she was screaming at me. She called me exhausting. Said that we never did anything without overplanning it.”
“Cam, that sounds horrible,” I said.
“Rachel isn’t a monster. The fight was coming for a long time. And I really disappointed her.”
“How so?”
“She wanted our family to go on a spontaneous road trip to Chicago, to see some band play live. And I told her I couldn’t. She gave me two days’ notice, and I just… crumbled. I’m not a very flexible person, surprise, surprise.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“It’s not just about that, though. Things just fizzled out between us over the course of years. It felt like we were strangers, living in the same house.”
“I couldn’t possibly know what that feels like,” I said. “But it sounds stifling.”
He seemed so lost, suddenly, like he was thinking about his entire life all in one moment.
“I think you’re already rebuilding,” I said. “You just can’t feel it yet.”
He ran his fingertips down my arm, still lost in thought. “I hope so.”
“I know so,” I said. “You just have to keep moving forward. Every day, it’s going to feel the same. But eventually, you’re going to look back and suddenly realize you feel normal again. The type of normal that sounds impossible right now.”