Page 11 of The Cubby Hole

I stripped quickly and joined him in the cauldron, wincing at the scalding heat as I tried to quickly hide my half-hard cock beneath the bubbling surface of the water. I settled across from him, watching him sip whiskey and stare out at the evening sky. I had to twist around to find the moon suspended between silver clouds. “Fuck. I’m looking at a wall.”

“Move over here with me.” Ben spoke loudly so I could hear him over the jets. He scooted over to make room. His side of the tub was molded as a two-seater, but it was a tight spot for two grown men. I felt his arm stretched along the edge of the tub behind me.

There were rogue cells hiding in my body, deep in a hole in my heart, that remembered what it was like to be this close to him and refused to think of him as my friend or my brother—a term I often used when describing him to others to elevate the unique position he occupied in my life.

So many parts of us were touching—our hips, our thighs, the sides of our calves, the edges of our feet… I resisted the impulse to throw my leg over his.

This man’s legs. Fuck. They were the standard by which I judged all others, and they were right there, pressed against mine. I used to squeeze them and massage them whenever the urge struck me. They had once briefly belonged to me, if it had ever been appropriate to use such a possessive term.

Having his legs tucked behind mine when we’d spooned had been my favorite sensation in the world. Nothing had ever made me feel so simultaneously safe and aroused.

I tried to tell my head and my heart to forget about that, even though my body wasn’t getting the message.

Maybe I could blame my erection on the jets and the heat, purely physical stimulation, less complicated than desire. Surely men got innocently hard in hot tubs with their friends all the time.

Ben started drumming his fingers on his cup. “I brought a Bluetooth speaker. Want me to go grab it?”

I shook my head. “Nah. I don’t mind the break.” Working in music was my passion, but quiet moments without something playing were few and far between. Not to mention, the retro dance tunes from the Cubby Hole were stuck on a loop in my mind. Run away, run away, run away if you want to survive.

“This remind you of anything?” Ben’s voice was husky and low, barely loud enough for me to hear him above the churning water.

Tybee Island. He was talking about the beach trip we’d taken right after we’d broken up.

It had been the worst weekend of my life. We’d already paid for the condo months in advance, but after the decision to split up, we hadn’t wanted to be apart. As confusing and fucked-up twentysomething emo as that had been, we’d needed someone to comfort us about us.

We’d needed our best friend.

So on some misguided impulse, we’d made the decision to spend the vacation mourning our relationship together.

The beach had been unseasonably chilly and rainy. Dreary as fuck. It had felt like we were the only people on the island. The sole amenity had been the hot tub.

I turned to find him watching me over the edge of his drink, his pretty blues now dark, open wells that trapped the night sky. “Why would you want to recreate that? All I did was cry.”

“We had great breakup sex.” It was hard to tell if Ben’s soft smile was intended to be mocking or fond.

I raised an eyebrow and looked away, studying the colored lights in the foam. I granted a small huff of agreement. The sex had been amazing. No other time had compared to it. It hadn’t been angry or cathartic or closure; I hadn’t felt anything like that. It had been intense but tender. Maybe because we’d known it would be our last time.

The heartache had been worse than anything I could have imagined, yet I’d never felt closer to him. I’d begged him to call off the breakup, to reverse course.

Now, I shifted position toward him as well as I could in the small space. Ben had never been one to talk about things, and if he wanted to go there now, I couldn’t resist the chance.

He blinked slowly. “We also made a pact that if we didn’t find anybody else by our thirtieth birthday, we’d be together.”

The pact. After that weekend on Tybee, neither of us had ever brought it up.

My laugh came out too loud. “Ah, yes. The awful, ancient age of thirty.”

The quip was an impulse to test his intention at dredging it back up. Because I had thought about the pact every year—the birthdays we’d spent together with our friends, the ones when we’d been apart, and especially the ones after the designated age had passed—always wondering if he was thinking about it too.

The pact—was it a resurrected proposition now?—hung there around us like the steam rising off the water. The bubbling cauldron suddenly reminded me of that old fable about the frog being boiled alive so slowly it didn’t realize it until it was too late.

Ben’s expression was unnervingly calm.

I panicked, leaping toward a conversational deflection. “I don’t even remember. Were you with someone at thirty?”

“Me?” He chuckled. “Of course not. You were, though.” He didn’t say it accusingly, just as a matter of fact. “Nick.”

I groaned. “Nick. Ugh. I’d almost managed to forget him.”