Page 36 of Someone Like You

Phil was dying to lock himself in the bathroom and get some relief. As soon as he closed the door, he stripped off his itching clothes and threw himself under the running water. He had a full erection now. A throbbing, painful erection he gaped at in utter disbelief with his hands braced against the wall as the water dripped down his hair and shoulders, a dull rumble in his ringing ears.

A year.A full, humiliating year living with a dead libido that had convinced him he’d never be able to have sex again or even justwantto. He’d made peace with it, with the quiet resignation on Abby’s face every time he’d shied away from her advances, until one day she’d simply given up trying. And now he was here, harder than he’d ever been, because amanhad made a suggestive joke about the people he’d slept with.

He winced when he finally dared to wrap a hand around himself, breath catching in his throat. He was so sensitive that a hiss wheezed out through his teeth at the slightest friction. Shutting his eyes, the memory of Ian holding him tightly flooded his senses — the musky scent, the rock-hard pecs pressing into his back, the hot breath and the scrape of the beard, and Ian’s voice — that low, husky voice, murmuring soothingly into Phil’s ear… The sense of safety, ofbelonging…

All it took was a few strokes for his sight to blank out. A jolt of blinding pleasure shot through his body, leaving him trembling and gasping for air. Forced to brace himself with an arm against the wall to keep his balance, he bit into it to smother the moan that grazed up his throat, out of control. It was a miracle his knees didn’t give out. He could feel it down to his toes, an overwhelming tide coming in waves that turned into shudders, then groans, then sighs, and then peaked again. He had no memory of an orgasm ever leaving him so viscerally spent before.

As his sight came back, he let his forehead drop against his forearm, panting hard, and opened up his palm to the water, watching it wash away the source of the burning shame coiling at the pit of his stomach. His eyes shut the same moment his hand balled back into a fist; he pounded into the tiles, again and again, sickened by what his own body was doing to him.

Except it wasn’t just his body.

He may be a coward, but not enough to deny that the attraction he felt towards Ian had roots much deeper than looks and if his body was just starting to channel that attraction, his mind had been at it for weeks, perhaps from the very beginning, getting off on Ian’s sagacious brains, chasing the addictive, rewarding feeling of their never-ending push-and-pull, whose borders had quickly blurred into flirtation.

Phil had known all along what he was doing. It was supposed to be a game — a harmless one.Feelingswere never meant to come into play. But Ian wasn’t just smart and hot: Ian was an awful lot of things Phil was hopelessly weak for, and his dazzling looks were not even close to the top of the list.

Ian was kind. Compassionate. Caring.

He was aman, sure, but how was that relevant when everything about him was just so damnlovable?

Phil had never put too much thought into his sexuality. He’d only dated women, but had never been one of those guys who gagged at the idea of sleeping with another guy. Perhaps it was because he barely cared about sex, but the prospect had never repulsed him.Still, he had gone all his life identifying as a heterosexual simply because it was a default setting he’d never considered updating. He wasn’t adventurous: anything new and unknown distressed him, and men, or at least the ones he’d been around, had never appealed to him. Too rough, too loud, too physical in all the wrong ways. And yet here he was, dealing with a sexual and romantic awakening at the ripe old age of forty-five, all while somehow still being unyieldingly devoted to the woman of his life.

How did that even work?

The way Ian had held him the night before, how his hand had cupped Phil’s neck… For a fleeting, foolish moment Phil had genuinely believed there would be a kiss. He’dcravedit, so desperately that just losing Ian’s touch had made him feel like the ground beneath his feet was giving in. He should’ve known that Ian, ever the gentleman, would have never made a move on an engaged man. But the yearning tension had been there, and Phil knew that. Whatever it meant, he hadn’t just imagined it, though he kind of wished he had. This unhealthy fixation of his wouldn’t be half as hard to keep at bay if there hadn’t been that aching softness in Ian’s eyes when he looked at Phil.

His fingers were wrinkled by the time he mustered the courage to crawl out of the bathroom, as clean on the outside as he felt filthy on the inside. Filthy and incrediblyalive.

Fucking hypocrite.

He dragged himself to the kitchen, rehearsing excuses for taking so long, but they all dissolved the moment he walked in on Ian whistling quietly while working by the stove, hair pulled back into a half bun. The familiar sight of that broad back gave Phil the same heartwarming sense of domesticity he got when Abby sang her silly songs in the shower.

Abby.

He felt like shit just thinking about her. The human heart was a fucked up machine. Or maybe it was just his. Fickle and greedy and ungrateful.

“Took you long enough,” said Ian without turning back.

“The water took forever to warm up,” Phil readily lied.

“Ah, yeah, should’ve warned ye. Breakfast’s almost ready.”

Phil had lost his appetite, but he wasn’t going to let Ian down after all the trouble he’d gone through to put together a decent meal. There was milk and orange juice on the table, and a box of cereal. Ian carried a sizzling pan to the table, loaded with scrambled eggs and sausages.

“Help yourself.”

Phil took a bit of everything out of sheer gratitude and ate mechanically, bite after bite, his mind lost elsewhere, in a limbo between mortification and uncontainablejoy.

“How long have you been dealin’ with that shite?”

“Uh?” Phil tore his gaze off his plate, replaying the words in his head because they didn’t compute the first time. “Ah. Forever, basically.” He fidgeted with a chunk of egg white, soaking it up with sausage gravy. “It was more frequent in my late teens and early twenties, then it got sporadic… Until I started attending public events. Xanax kept it under control, but then I had to drop it to get on Seroxat, which isn’t half as effective on my anxiety.”

“Ye’ve been through some serious shite, eh?”

Phil shrugged.

“Does it hurt? A panic attack.”

“Yeah. It’s like… like my ribs are closing in on my lungs and someone’s pressing a pillow to my face.” Phil shuddered at the recollection. “Rationally, I know it’s all in my head, but physically it… it feels like dying.”

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