6. Jamie

6

JAMIE

“Why are you hiding in my kid’s blanket fort?” My sister, Emma, asked from outside said blanket fort.

“I’m not hiding,” I said. “I’m making sure it’s structurally sound for when they wake up from their naps.”

She lifted the edge of the blanket door and peered inside. “Is that really the story you’re going with?”

“I’m not not hiding,” I relented.

“Am I coming in there, or are you coming out here?” Emma asked.

“I’ll come out.”

The fort was big enough for two kids to play in, but not for two adults to sit comfortably.

Mindful that I didn’t knock over the supports, I crawled out of the fort.

“Sit.” She pointed to the couch.

I sat.

“Eat.” She pointed to a bowl of apple slices, another of crackers, and a juice box on the coffee table in front of me.

“You do realize I’m an adult, right?” I grabbed the juice box and peeled the straw off the side of it.

“I know, but you haven’t eaten since you got here, and all I have is kid food.” She flopped onto the couch next to me. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

I shrugged and stabbed the straw into the juice.

“Well, if you’re not going to tell me, then I’m going to guess.” She tapped her chin with her finger and squinted at me theatrically. “See if I can’t figure it out on my own.”

“It’s nothing.” I smiled. My sister could always make me laugh.

Emma was six years older than me, and while we were very different people, we’d always been close. It wasn’t unusual for me to come over to hang out with her family on the weekends, especially when her husband was away for work.

I’d hoped getting out of the apartment for a while would help clear my head after what happened between me and Isaac yesterday, but I was still distracted enough that my eagle-eyed sister noticed.

“You didn’t check your phone at all when you were playing with the kids, and you’ve been subdued since you got here,” she said thoughtfully. “Did something happen with Isaac?”

“What?” I almost choked on the apple slice I’d just bitten into.

“Is something going on with Isaac?” she repeated when I’d regained my composure. “Did you guys have a fight or something?”

“No, not a fight.” I drank some juice, not wanting to risk choking again.

“Is something else going on?” she pressed. “Even you have to admit you’re not acting like yourself.”

I shrugged and sipped more juice so I wouldn’t have to answer.

I loved my sister, but I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone about what was going on in my head. I hadn’t even fully processed it myself yet.

“Jamie,” she said in that voice she used when she was trying to soothe one of the kids. “You can tell me.”

“It’s nothing.” I put the juice box down. I couldn’t stop fidgeting and didn’t want to spill any of it on her couch. “I’m fine.”

She gave me a dubious look.

“I’ll be fine,” I corrected.

“Are you sure?”

I nodded. “I’m sure. It’s not a big deal. Just need to work through some stuff.”

Her expression said she didn’t believe me, but she just nodded, accepting my answer.

“Are you excited for London?” I asked, needing to change the subject. Talking about her and Mike’s upcoming anniversary trip should do the trick.

“I can’t wait.” She perked up, forgetting all about my mood.

“I’ll bet it’s getting down to the wire for planning, huh?”

She launched into a rant about how our parents, and Mike’s, were being flaky and how she was going crazy trying to coordinate watching the kids and checking in on the house with them on top of getting organized and planning their itinerary.

I listened with half an ear, nodding and interjecting little exclamations or one-word answers when appropriate. I’d heard this rant before. She didn’t want someone to try and fix her problems for her. She just needed someone to sympathize. I could do that, even with my head half in the clouds.

The situation at home was complicated, and it was my fault.

Isaac wasn’t acting any differently. He’d slipped right back into his best friend role like we’d never gotten each other off.

I had no idea how to feel about any of what happened. I didn’t regret it, and I was pretty sure Isaac didn’t either, but I couldn’t just forget about it. Or everything that led up to it.

The threesome, the weird week of tension, the sort-of kiss in the bathroom at the bar that sparked the fantasy of Isaac blowing me, and an even weirder week where I couldn’t stop picturing my best friend naked and on his knees.

All of it felt like one big albatross flying over me. Or maybe an anvil held up by a fraying rope, ready to fall and destroy me at any second.

But the worst part wasn’t just obsessing about hooking up with Isaac or dissecting every moment of it to try and make sense of what was going on. It was how I couldn’t stop cycling through my memories to understand why it happened.

Isaac and I were both straight.

At least that’s what I’d thought until a few weeks ago. Now I wasn’t so sure.

Obviously I wasn’t straight if I’d gotten off with a guy and liked it, but could I really consider myself bi if I’d only ever wanted one guy?

Did that make me bi-curious? Or had that just been an experiment between friends?

We’d both been in weird places since the threesome, and the distance between us had only grown after that night at the bar. I’d been avoiding him, not sure how to act after coming to thoughts of him on his knees for me.

He’d given me space, but it hadn’t helped. If anything, it made things worse.

I hoped that hanging out and doing normal roommate stuff yesterday would help me get over myself, but instead I’d jumped him and dry humped him on our couch until we’d both come in our pants like horny teenagers.

And I’d loved it.

Being with Isaac felt good. But more than that, it felt right.

But was that because it was Isaac and not necessarily because he was a man?

I’d played hockey for seventeen years and spent more time in locker rooms than I could count. I’d spent most of my life surrounded by fit guys, and not once in all that time had I felt even a flicker of interest for any of my friends or teammates. Not once.

And it wasn’t like I’d never had guys flirt with me, and more than one had heavily hinted that they’d be open to messing around if I wanted to. The opportunities had been there, I just hadn’t been interested.

But then again, I’d never seen any of those guys fuck my ex-hookup in a threesome. Was that why it felt like I had a massive crush on my best friend?

On top of obsessing about that, I was trying to figure out if Isaac really was the first guy I’d had a crush on, and I honestly didn’t know.

Isaac wasn’t my first best friend, but our friendship was on another level from the ones I’d had before. I assumed that was because of how intertwined our lives were. We spent almost all our free time together, and we lived together. That created a sense of closeness that wouldn’t be there if we weren’t roommates on top of being best friends.

But none of that could explain why I’d thought about him blowing me. Or why I liked kissing him. It definitely didn’t explain why rubbing off on him felt so good either.

But if I was bi, wouldn’t I have figured that out by now? How could I go this long without knowing I was into men?

Which was why I kept cycling back to wondering if I wasn’t into men, and I was only into Isaac?

Over the past week, I’d tried to see if other men did it for me. I’d paid extra attention to the men at work, at the gym, and had even started scrutinizing the male models and influencers I came across on my social media.

A lot of them were attractive in the sense that I understood why other people would be attracted to them. That was as far as my interest went.

I could recognize a hot guy but had no desire to do anything with them. The thought didn’t turn me off, but it didn’t turn me on.

It was the same as with a lot of the women I saw in my day-to-day life. I found a ton of different types of women attractive, but that didn’t necessarily mean I wanted to do anything about it.

All of it was confusing as fuck, and it wasn’t like I could just ask people if I was normal. My old high school friends and former teammates weren’t the talking types. Not about deep or personal stuff, at least.

I had a few queer friends, but we weren’t close enough for me to ask them about this kind of stuff. And the one queer friend I was close with wasn’t really the talk about your feelings type.

The only person I really talked to was Isaac, and that wasn’t exactly helpful when he was the person I needed to talk about.

I was attracted to women; I knew that. I enjoyed being with them, and I liked looking at them.

But did I only like women?

I’d been going in circles on this for over a week now, and in an effort to get some answers, I’d upgraded from looking at hot guys to checking out some gay porn. Unfortunately that hadn’t really helped clarify things either.

Watching it turned me on, but not because I wanted the models or I was picturing myself in one of their places. It was the acts themselves that were hot.

I’d never thought about blowing a guy, never once considered touching another man’s dick, but I wanted to do both with Isaac.

And that brought me to the other part of my turmoil. I had no idea what the hell he thought of any of this.

He enjoyed it as much as me, and I believed that he didn’t regret it, but that was all I knew for sure.

Isaac was much better at compartmentalizing things than me. He could pack shit away, lock it up, and never look at it again.

I could only ignore things for so long before they drove me crazy and I freaked out and made everything ten times worse.

Which was why I’d come to my sister’s house to process, only that hadn’t happened, and all I’d managed to do was be confused and distracted in a different location.

“Did I tell you about the hotel?” Emma asked.

“The one that canceled your reservation last week?” I asked. Hopefully she hadn’t noticed that I’d pretty much zoned out for a few minutes there.

“Yes!” She threw up her hands in exasperation. “Can you believe it? We made the reservation six months ago, and they cancel it three weeks before we’re supposed to check in.”

“That’s insane,” I said. Hopefully that was a good enough answer.

“Right! Thank god I found us another hotel. It’s more expensive, but so much nicer and more central for what we want to see.”

“That’s good.”

She pointed to the snacks on the table. “Eat.”

Dutifully, I picked up the bowl of apples and popped one of the slices in my mouth.

She launched into another rant about the hotel canceling their reservation and how she’d had to scramble to get them another one so close to their travel dates while I zoned back out.

How the hell was I supposed to go home and pretend like everything was fine when I had no idea if Isaac was as twisted up by all of this as I was?

I couldn’t just ask him either.

Isaac had major abandonment issues, and he didn’t trust people, not until he got to know them and was able to feel them out.

He wasn’t afraid to cut people out of his life, and he’d told me about more than one friendship he’d walked away from when things got weird or being friends with them was too much effort.

He wasn’t callous about it, and it wasn’t like he stopped talking to someone the moment things got difficult, but he only put up with so much before he walked away.

I couldn’t risk putting him on the spot like that, not until I had an idea of how he felt about things. It was entirely possible he was just as messed up as me and was hiding it but trying to force a conversation before he was ready would spook him, which would just make him shut down.

And if he wasn’t messed up and had already put it behind him, bringing it up and piling my crap on him would just make things even more awkward. Especially if he’d decided it was a one-time thing and he wasn’t attracted to me the way I was attracted to him.

One uncomfortable conversation wouldn’t kill our friendship but having that hanging over us would eventually erode things, and I wasn’t willing to risk it.

Not even for the best kiss of my life.

My neck heated as memories of last night came rushing back to me.

I was a single man with a healthy sexual appetite. I’d also spent most of my life as a star athlete, which made picking up easy. I’d never had to work for sex or female attention. I’d had a lot of sex in my life, but none of my hookups could even come close to what happened with Isaac.

Sex was fun. It was a great way to blow off some steam, get some good feels, and enjoy some intimacy. It wasn’t supposed to be life-changing or make me question pretty much everything I thought I knew about myself.

Even though Isaac and I hadn’t had sex, or even touched each other’s dicks, it felt like my entire world had been flipped upside down and backward.

The intensity between us had been as hot as the actual frotting, and the way he’d looked at me had almost been my undoing.

But it was his kiss I couldn’t forget.

In all my years of hooking up, I’d never been kissed like that. Never felt that kind of emotion or passion from just a kiss.

He’d been gentle and exploratory, letting me lead but also taking over when the moment was too much. He could read me, anticipate my needs, and he’d poured all of that care and consideration into his kiss.

And now he was cracking jokes and acting like we hadn’t seen each other’s O faces again. Like we hadn’t shared that earth-shattering kiss.

Even with all my insecurities about the situation, I had no doubt he’d enjoyed it as much as me.

Isaac could read me like a book, but the opposite was also true. I knew him, and I understood how he worked. He’d been just as turned on, just as desperate as me.

He’d wanted it, and he’d enjoyed it, but now that the moment was over, I was so messed up by my own shit I had no clue what he was thinking.

“Blanket fort!” Cody, my five-year-old nephew, shrieked, running into the living room in nothing but a pair of turtle underwear and a single red sock.

“Blanket fort!” Sophia, his three-year-old sister, hollered, hurrying into the room after him, her little legs working double time as she tried to keep up.

“Cody,” Emma groaned as Cody raced up to the fort and swiped at the sides, looking for the entrance. “Where are your clothes?”

“Upstairs.” He found the flap and held it up. “Got it!” he announced triumphantly, then dove inside with all the enthusiasm of someone about to uncover sunken treasure.

Sophia skirted around the fort and stopped in front of me, a smile on her cherubic face.

“Did you have a good nap?” I asked.

She made a face. “Naps are for babies.”

“My mistake,” I corrected. “Did you have a good rest?”

She shrugged and eyed my juice box.

“I’m hungry,” Cody announced from inside the blanket fort.

“Me too,” Sophia said, turning her smile on Emma.

“I’ll get them some snacks if you want to make sure the fort is stable,” I offered.

She shot me a grateful smile and settled on the couch.

“I want grapes.” Sophia looked up at me expectantly.

I arched an eyebrow at her in question.

“Please,” she added with a demure smile.

“I want grapes too! Please!” Cody yelled from inside the fort. The side of it shook precariously.

“Careful,” Emma and I both said.

“I’m being careful,” he promised, his voice muffled by the blankets.

Sophia hurried away from me and stopped beside the fort. “Let me in.”

The flap lifted as Cody pushed it open for her. “Come on, Soph, check out the lights!”

Sophia crawled into the fort, and her exclamations of glee made me smile.

I’d strung some battery-powered fairy lights through the plastic fort supports, hoping they’d like them. I loved how such a simple thing could bring them so much joy.

Emma caught my arm as I squeezed past her to get to the kitchen. “Are you staying for dinner?”

I was tempted to say yes and extend my time away from the apartment, but it was my night to cook, and I hadn’t told Isaac I wasn’t going to be home.

“Not tonight.”

She shot me another scrutinizing look but let go of my arm.

I should have known Emma would clock me the second I walked through the door. At least she accepted my answers, even if she didn’t believe them.

Not any clearer on anything than I had been when I’d left the apartment that morning, I went into the kitchen to fix the kids a snack.

I’d head home in a bit. Right now I wanted to watch my niblings destroy the fort that had taken me almost forty-five minutes to put up. They were hellions when they wanted to be, and I appreciated their chaos way more than my sister did.

“Cody, put your underwear back on your butt. Undies don’t go on your head,” Emma’s exasperated voice filtered into the kitchen.

“But I’m helmet head,” Cody protested. “I need a helmet.”

“You can get one of the helmets out of the toy bin.” Emma tried to reason with him.

“No thanks,” Cody said brightly.

Cody hated wearing clothes, and Emma had been fighting with him about his random bouts of nudity since he was a toddler and learned to undress himself.

Chuckling, I got the milk out of the fridge. Apparently I’d been the same as a kid, and Emma and our older sister Laura loved to tell me about the times I’d come tearing into the living room when they were hanging out with their friends wearing only underwear and a pillowcase tied around my neck like a cape. Apparently their friends thought I was adorable. My sisters had been less than impressed with my antics.

Life had been a lot simpler when all I had to think about was what I wanted for a snack or if I should take my clothes off just for the hell of it.

Being an adult sucked donkey balls.