19. Jeremy

“Any dietary restrictions?” Jeremy asked, pulling up a food delivery app on his phone.

“I try to not eat a lot of red meat, but I’m not picky,” Davis responded, putting his hands in his pockets.

Jeremy pushed down the impulse to offer to cook for him, to pull out what was left in his pantry and fridge and impress Davis with what he could pull together. He knew that he had gotten at least a few blowjobs after making carbonara.

“Breakfast?” Jeremy asked.

“It’s seven p.m.”

“Time is a social construct,” Jeremy replied, inadvertently quoting a rambling that Phoebe had gone on recently when she was extra high at the bar next to the museum.

“I’ll take your word for it.” Davis chuckled. “Yeah, sure. Why not? Breakfast sounds excellent.”

“Have you ever had breakfast at the Fox?” Jeremy asked, assuming an answer, but swiping on his phone. He pulled up a delivery app and showed Davis the menu on his phone. Davis looked briefly and nodded.

“No, I mean. I don’t spend much time down here, and I don’t have that much in common with the college kids that live here.” A wry laugh. “I barely had things in common with kids in college when I was in college.”

“We’ll go next time. I really love their Belgian waffles,” Jeremy said before realizing what he’d implied. A moment of panic, then trying to rationalize it to himself. Friends hung out. He got coffee with Foster once a week. More than that, usually. He grabbed dinner with Emmy all the time, cooked for Phoebe, and at one time even agreed to watch a sports game with Ryan. Friends hung out.

“Do they have biscuits and gravy?” Davis asked, apparently unaware of Jeremy’s inner turmoil.

“I don’t know. Uh, here,” he said, passing the phone to Davis awkwardly. Food was ordered, and the two men made small talk while waiting for it. Finally, Jeremy realized he was being the worst host of all time and offered Davis a drink.

“Not a drink drink, but, like, like a liquid to consume.” Had he been replaced by a robot? Who the fuck talked like this? “I got some beverages without alcohol.” Overwhelmed by his inability to form a normal sentence, Jeremy got up and crossed to the kitchen. He had picked up some seltzers and other drinks at the store last weekend, a tiny voice in his head saying just in case. That tiny voice’s entire goal had been to make Davis feel more comfortable, and here Jeremy was, being the most uncomfortable he had ever been in his tenuous friendship with Davis, so he couldn’t imagine how Davis felt.

Davis, to his credit, gave a light laugh. “What do you have?”

“Uh, a lot.” He felt Davis’s presence behind him as he opened up the refrigerator, surrounded by the cabinets that Davis had helped to realign.

“Oh, I love this one.” He reached around Jeremy, their arms brushing, and picked up a light green bottle. A type of ginger beer that Jeremy had only picked up because the design on the bottle was especially eye-catching. He had to support businesses that employed good designers.

Jeremy grabbed a seltzer, and the two men settled around the dining room table, Davis leaning back in his chair and kicking one leg across the other. One of the knees in his work pants had ripped, exposing a small patch of skin, and Jeremy was overcome by an odd desire to mend the knee of those pants.

“What’s that from?” Jeremy said to distract himself, pointing to a spiderweb of scar tissue that spread across Davis’s left knee.

“Mountain biking,” Davis said, taking a deep pull of the ginger beer. Jeremy made a mental note to keep more of those in the house, along with the flavors of seltzer that Davis liked. Huckleberry. Peach. Flavors that were fresh and earthy, like him.

“That seems intense,” Jeremy said stupidly. He made another mental note to ask Phoebe and Emmy to look up the history of mountain biking so he could sound intelligent the next time he saw Davis.

“It’s not that bad,” Davis said, stretching. Jeremy tried very hard not to look at the slice of stomach and flash of hair that was revealed. He failed. “Have you ever been mountain biking before?”

“Huh?” Jeremy asked, again stupidly. He always felt stupid around Davis. He could hold his own with PhDs and professional scientists, but there was something about this sincere, open, genuine man that unraveled him. Davis was unlike anyone Jeremy had met before, and it still had him off-kilter. He was beginning to think that he liked it.

Because he wasn’t allowed to like him.

“Mountain biking. You could come out with me, if you’d like. We’ve got some good trails in the national forest. Plus, it would be a good way for you to see some different ecosystems.” Davis finished his ginger beer, asked where the recycling was.

Jeremy thought for a second. He could hold his own in a spin class, had been going with Foster three to four times a week since everything had reopened. He had been complimented on his legs before by men during the summer. Those skills could transfer, right?

“Yeah, it’s been a while, but it’d be nice to go out again.” A white lie. Which was fine. He told those all the time, about deadlines for deliverables and when he would show up to meetings on time.

“Great. Do you have a bike?” Davis looked so excited, so pure, that Jeremy told another white lie.

“It’s in the shop.”

“You can borrow my friend Alex’s. He’s about your height.” Davis’s eyes flicked up and down Jeremy’s body, and he had to try not to preen. Because you didn’t preen in front of men who were just being friendly.

“Great, what day?”

And so, Jeremy Rinci ended his weekend eating breakfast at seven thirty p.m. and making plans to go mountain biking— a sport he had never tried— with Davis, a man he could never have. At least the pancakes were excellent.