Double Header (Hardball 2)

“I’ll be on a plane tonight, but I’ll try to call you when I get in, okay?” Zach hesitated to sign off with the usual, “I love you.” It would have just been swallowed up by Domenic shouting about losing the light before he hung up.

The trickling sound of the pool filter should have been relaxing, but Zach felt insanely keyed up. When he went back into Javier’s home gym, he asked, “When you’re finished with your run, can you give me a ride back to my car?”

“Yeah, sure.” Javier stopped the treadmill and stepped down, taking a swig from his water bottle. “Things not go well out there?”

“No, things are fine.” Why was he lying? If they were friends, they were friends, right? “Actually… I told him what happened last night.”

“And he freaked?” Javier grabbed a t-shirt from the weight bench and pulled it on. Every muscle in his torso rippled with the motion.

Zach needed to get out of there and fast. “No, he didn’t.”

“But you wanted him to?”

How did he know him so well? He would have suspected that he’d listened to his conversation, but over the sound of the air conditioner and the treadmill, it would have been impossible. The truth was, Javier knew him better than anyone ever had, and that hadn’t changed.

“We have an open relationship, but I’ve never taken the offer, you know?”

Javier nodded. “And now you’re wondering if he has.”

Miserably, Zach nodded.

Javier sighed like he knew what Zach was going through and he sympathized. “Look, let’s postpone the car for a minute. Let me make you some breakfast. You really don’t need to go back to that hotel to be alone, wondering if he’s fucking around on you.”

Zach found it difficult to tell if he was agreeing because he wanted to have breakfast with his friend, or if he was agreeing because he wanted to have breakfast with his ex. Would things always be this weird or were things weird because he’d made an ass of himself the night before?

He said yes, anyway.

Javier took a quick shower and joined Zach back in the kitchen. “I was thinking about your problem, and you know, it seems like there’s only one solution.”

“Ask him?” It wasn’t like Zach hadn’t thought of that himself. “I don’t have the balls. What happens if he has been with someone else? What if he’s been with a bunch of guys?”

“This is why we would never have worked out in a long-distance open relationship,” Javier said, cracking eggs into a ceramic bowl. “We would both have been exactly in the same spot you’re in right now.”

“That’s why I didn’t agree to it, I knew us too well.” He hadn’t agreed to it with Javier, but he’d been okay with it when Domenic had set it as a parameter before they’d moved in together. What did that say about his feelings for Domenic, then, if he’d wanted to protect Javier, but not him?

“Maybe Domenic feels the same way. Maybe he’s casually blowing it off because he doesn’t want to hear about it if you do sleep with someone else.”

“Then why would he have brought it up in the first place?” Zach groaned. “See, I always say, this kind of arrangement never works out. Someone always gets hurt.”

“But if Domenic isn’t hurt, and you’re not hurt…” Javier let the question end itself as he whisked the eggs with some milk.

“It’s not that I’m not hurt. I guess I’m more hurt by my own actions.” Zach shook his head. “I’m disappointed in myself.”

“Well, I am pretty hot. No wonder you couldn’t resist me.”

Javier deftly poured the eggs into a hot skillet. Were he anyone else, Zach would have told him to knock off the flirting. With Javier, flirting was like breathing. He couldn’t consciously stop doing it, so Zach wouldn’t hold it against him.

“You’re not disappointed in your own actions,” Javier said, the humor fading from his voice to be replaced by pure sympathy. “You’re disappointed because you expected to hurt him with this big revelation.”

“I didn’t intentionally want to hurt him,” Zach clarified.

“Not intentionally, no.” Javier used a spatula to fold the egg in the pan. “But you wanted to make some kind of impact on him. It would prove that he loves you as much as you love him, right?”

“Stop being inside my head,” Zach commanded with a weak laugh.

Javier shrugged. “I can’t help it. We’re more alike than you care to admit. Always have been.”

He got down two plates and slid a huge, steaming omelet onto one of them. Cutting it in half with a spatula, he slid one piece onto the other plate and offered it to Zach. “Hang on, I’ve got Tabasco.”

“You remember how I like my eggs.” It shouldn’t have touched Zach, and maybe it wouldn’t have if he hadn’t just been metaphorically kicked in the gut by Domenic. But it did, and that felt dangerous.