Page 45 of Hold Me Down

Okay, so maybe he didn't entirely let it go, but he liked to keep people on their toes, especially at the beginning.

Thankfully, the guy only laughed.

"That's true. But if you say no, I guess I'll have two whiskeys to soothe my busted ego with."

Travis's lips twitched. This, at least, was easy.

"How about you keep one and I keep the other?"

"Perfect." The guy's smile widened. "I'm Byron."

"Travis."

And after that, it went down a fairly familiar path—even if one that was half-buried in his mind. They talked, they flirted, the personal space got smaller and smaller…

But then came the obvious question, and things suddenly weren't the same anymore.

"You up for another round or do you want to get out of here?"

Travis had come here to hook up. That had been the whole plan for tonight—to let out some steam, to lose himself in quick and easy pleasure. And yet, now that he was faced with what he supposedly wanted, he balked.

"Sorry, I'm—" Travis halted, searching for the right words while he still didn't quite understand what he was doing and why. "I'm up for another round but nothing more, so no hard feelings if you want to change targets, so to speak." He glancedback and saw the place had filled out while they'd been talking. "Plenty of fish, etcetera."

Byron leaned back in his seat but thankfully didn't seem angry or upset.

"Ah. I might have mixed up the signals, then. It's been a while since I've done this."

"No, that's on me," Travis assured him quickly. "I seem to have changed directions along the way. Sorry about that."

"No worries. Maybe that's actually a better outcome. A slower reintroduction to the scene won't hurt."

"Bad breakup?" Travis motioned for the bartender for another round. He wasn't usually the type to sit there and listen to a sad story from a stranger, but their conversation had been going well so far and he did feel kind of bad for backing out. "Or a nice one, which may be even worse?"

Byron drowned the rest of his drink.

"Uneventful for him, life-changing for me, since I've had to start looking for another jobandan apartment now that I don't want to keep living my life in the same place as him."

"The worst, then." Travis grimaced and grabbed a glass when the bartender put the new drinks in front of them. "That sucks."

"The worst part is, I know I was the stupid one. We lived together, worked together, and spent basically all our time with each other, and he still kept insisting he wasn't 'the commitment type'."

Freezing, Travis stared at the drink in his hand, unable to look up at Byron, who seemed to be on a roll now.

"And let's be clear, I wasn't asking for his hand in marriage or whatever. I used the word 'boyfriend' and he would flip out, that kind of thing. I finally realized I'm too old to be a convenient fuck buddy hoping for something that will never come, but that's two years I'm never getting back."

For a moment there, Travis could kind of see the scene from the side, as if he was watching an interactive-experience movie or something. There was Byron, gesticulating and talking about his failed relationship with a guy who sounded like he could be a copy of Travis, and there was Travis himself, unmoving, having some kind of an existential crisis in the span of a few seconds.

"—too old to be a convenient fuck buddy hoping for something that will never come—"

"—calling yourself a person that doesn't 'do commitment' in general can create confusion, because that's not who you are in every context. You're committed to people who are already in your life and with whom you have close bonds—"

"Do you ever think you might one day want a committed relationship after all?"

Byron's words, and Doctor Kumar's, and, finally, a question from Dave, one that had seemed insignificant at the time—all of it came back to Travis now, reframing what he'd always thought of as central to who he was.

But was it really?

Was "no commitment" really a core part of him, or was it more that he had"no desire to seek commitment outside of what he already had", like Doctor Kumar had suggested?

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