Alphas Like Us (Like Us 3)

It’s been one week since he returned to his residency at Philadelphia General, and my brain translates a text as Farrow gifting me a piece of red construction paper shaped into a heart, glitter glued to it.

Fuck.

My.

Sappy.

Brain.

But I understand my semi-infatuation. Farrow and I haven’t spoken or seen each other since he left for an excruciatingly long shift at the hospital.

He said he probably wouldn’t even get time to text. Something about double shifts, low staffed. I don’t get how any of it works, but it’s been twenty-nine hours since I last heard from him. I’d be lying to say I haven’t been counting.

Twenty-nine hours without talking.

Twenty-nine hours without touching.

And with a high sex drive, that last one has me pent-up and resorting to jerking off more than usual. I typically try to come every day or else it feels like my balls are going to explode. Even on the FanCon bus, I managed to masturbate when Farrow and I couldn’t fuck.

Being horny—it’s nothing new for me. Being horny and having a boyfriend who’s not around all the time—that is new. I trust myself fully, and my hand is a decent alternative.

But I’ve never fantasized more about him than I have when he’s gone. I’ve replayed the first time he topped me on loop.

I tune out the bartender’s dirty martini instructions and pop open the text. Scanning the words, my spirits burst like the pop of a balloon.

Running late. Sorry, wolf scout. – Farrow

Before I type a reply, another text pops up.

I’m still going to make it. Save one of Jane’s terrible drinks for me. – Farrow

“Est-ce que ça va, Moffy?” Jane asks while measuring gin in a shot glass. Are you okay, Moffy?

“It’s Farrow.” I set my elbow on the bar, phone in hand. I reread the text. “He’s going to be late.” I look up. “Jane—”

Gin overflows her shot glass. “Merde,” she curses and sops up the spill with a dishrag. She flashes me a consoling look. “There’s a seventy-two percent chance your drink may cheer you up, old chap.”

I smile and reach for the martini. Just as another text pings.

Miss you – Farrow

My chest tightens. I quickly respond: no worries I’ll save u that drink

Lately I haven’t bothered typing out the correct spelling of “you” and I’ve stuck with just the letter. He’s gotten onto me about it a couple times, and it just makes me want to do it more.

I’m about to add “can’t wait to see u” but then I think about how it’ll make him feel. Maybe concerned. Like I’m sitting here pining for him and not living my own life. I can survive without Farrow around me all the time. But I do feel his absence.

I overthink the text. Typing and deleting and typing and deleting.

I take too long because Farrow replies first.

You okay? – Farrow

Fuck. I clutch my phone harder. Thinking. I don’t know how to do this. Large intense gaps of zero communication. We barely even used to text because we were with each other all the time. It’s weird to think back to the day he became my bodyguard. I couldn’t even imagine my childhood crush in my life 24/7, and now, not having him is a struggle.

And I’m overthinking again.

My phone rings. Great, Farrow is calling me.

But I’m selfishly glad he did. I think it would’ve taken me a solid millennium to type out a text.

I put my phone to my ear and reach for my mint-green drink. “I was texting you back,” I say before he can speak. “I’m sorry, man. I don’t want to take up your time or distract you—”

“Maximoff,” he cuts me off. “If I didn’t have time to call you, I wouldn’t have called you.”

I nod a couple times to myself. Alright. “How are you doing?”

“Good. Shit has finally slowed down.”

“I thought you liked the high-intensity stuff.”

“Not at the end of a shift.” He’s quick to ask, “You okay?”

“I’m alright. Just drinking this drink here…” I take a sip of the martini and as soon as the liquid hits my tongue, my cheeks pucker. Jesus Christ, Jane.

She notices. “Oh no. Too sour?”

“Yep.” My cheeks hurt.

“I’ll make you another.” She swipes my martini glass out of my hand.

On the phone, Farrow tells me, “I’m glad you’re having fun, wolf scout.”

I wish you were here. I rub my lips together before replying. “All the fun in the damn world. It’s a regular rager here,” I say dryly. “I’m planning on trying shrooms next. But the non-drug kind. Like a Cremini mushroom, maybe a Portobello.”

I can practically feel his eyes rolling before he laughs. And as the sound fades, the line goes quiet; the silence is like a raw, aching thread of longing.

“I miss you,” I admit out loud.

“I know you do,” Farrow says, like an ass.

I groan, but I’m not able to shelter a fucking smile. At least he can’t see it. “I meant I don’t miss you at all. I haven’t been thinking about you for even half a second.” It’s hard to even joke. It hurts.

“That’s too bad,” Farrow says. “Because I’ve missed you.” His words are tender like I can’t touch them. I shouldn’t. Voices muffle in the background on his side. Quickly, he tells me, “I need to go, but I should be finished here in thirty minutes. See you soon.”

See you soon.

“See you.”

We hang up. I refuse to look at my watch as a countdown to his arrival. I already catch myself doing it once.

And once is enough.

Luckily, a great distraction bounds through the entrance.

Sullivan arrives from the pool, wet brown hair soaking the shoulders of her jean jacket. “Fuck, sorry I’m late,” she apologizes to Jane. “I didn’t want to leave until I beat my morning time.”

“Butterfly?” Jack asks, panning the camera to Sulli.

“Backstroke today.” She claims the stool next to me, not flinching at the single camera. The FanCon tour helped ease her in. I’ve been on the docuseries since I was three-years-old, Jane since she was six, and for Sulli, this’ll be her first time. And she’s twenty.

I notice how Sulli watches Akara and Jack fist-bump into a hug in greeting, and she hangs her head and focuses on braiding her wet hair.

A few days ago in the Meadows treehouse, she told me

about how Akara and Jack are becoming good friends, and she’s been feeling weird.

“I’m not sure why,” she explained to me, hugging a beaded pillow.

“Maybe you’re into him,” I speculated.

Sulli frowned. “Him, who?”

“Akara,” I said.

Sulli laughed. “No fucking way…Kits is like…” She stared up at the treehouse ceiling, handcrafted paper flowers cascading off wooden beams. “…he’s Kits.”

The way she said that reminded me of me. And how I couldn’t make sense of my feelings for Farrow and what he meant to me, in my life. I just knew he meant a whole hell of a lot.

“I think you’re into him, Sul,” I said.

“I’m fucking not.” She chucked a pillow at me, and when I threw it back, she repeated strongly, “I’m not, Mof. If I thought I was, I’d fucking tell you.”

I didn’t expect her denial. “What about Jack then?”

She frowned more and shook her head before groaning into the pillow. I rubbed her back, and we started talking about swimming.

At the speakeasy, I think about that moment in the treehouse. Especially as her bodyguard rests against the bar, out of the camera’s frame.

Akara tells Jack, “The time was Sulli’s personal best.”

My cousin ties the end of her braid. “It’s still too fucking slow, Kits. I couldn’t even qualify with that time.”

“But backstroke has never been your thing, Sul,” Akara reminds her. “It’s a good time.” He saunters around the camera and ends up standing beside Thatcher Moretti further down the bar.

And I spot my new bodyguard.

He’s been at a wooden table guarding the entrance. Sky-scraping tall, bulky, bald, bearded, and the former bodyguard to Loren Hale.

My dad requested that Bruno Bandoni be transferred to my detail. He told me, “You don’t need to deal with a new inexperienced bodyguard, bud. Take mine.”

Thanks to my dad, it’s been an easier transition. But there’ll be times where I search for my bodyguard. Expecting to see that widening know-it-all smile and the cocky raise of his brows.