Page 52 of Better When Shared
Three weeks was a fucking eternity.
Julian and I didn’t know what to do without Caleb, as if he had altered us somehow, become a part of the fabric of our lives, and nothing was quite the same without him. We lounged on our sectional, my feet in Julian's lap as he massaged my arches, both of us staring at our phones. We were just killing time until we could go to bed and fuck each other while whispering Caleb's name between us like a shared secret.
"Six more days," Julian murmured, not looking up from his screen.
I wiggled my toes against his palm. "Counting them down?"
His mouth quirked up. "Like you haven't been."
He wasn't wrong. I'd marked Caleb's return date on our shared calendar with a British flag emoji and an eggplant emoji thatmade Julian roll his eyes every time he saw it. We'd been back and forth about whether to call him during his time away—Julian worried we'd come across too needy; I insisted that we were all adults and could handle a casual check-in.
So far, we’d only exchanged a few brief text messages, and I wanted more, wanted to get to know Julian, to understand why I felt so drawn to him.
"It wasn't supposed to be like this," I said, setting my phone aside. "It was just supposed to be fun. A hall pass."
Julian's hands stilled on my feet. "Too much?"
"No, not too much. Just... different than I expected." I studied my husband's face, the familiar angles of his jaw, the way his glasses slid down his nose when he was tired. Three years of marriage, and I'd never seen him look at anyone the way he'd looked at Caleb. The way he still looked when Caleb's name came up. "You miss him," I said. Not a question.
"Yeah." Julian sighed, leaning his head back against the couch. "Fuck, I sound like a teenager with a crush."
"We both do." I crawled across the couch to straddle his lap, my hands finding his shoulders. "But I like it. I like seeing you... lit up."
His hands settled on my hips, warm and familiar. "You're not jealous?"
I traced the curve of his lips with my thumb. "Of what? The way you look at him? The fact that you've been jerking off in the shower thinking about him?" I leaned closer, my lips brushing his ear. "Or how badly you want him to fuck you?"
Julian's hips jerked beneath me, his cock hardening against my ass. "Nisha—"
"Am I wrong?" I pulled back to meet his eyes. "You've been fantasizing about it, haven't you? Since that day in the yoga studio."
His cheeks flushed, but he didn't look away. "I feel so stupid for never realizing what I was feeling.”
The admission knocked the breath from my lungs. "You've wanted him... before?"
Julian's grip tightened on my hips. "Maybe always? I don't know. I never let myself think about it that way before. But when I saw him again, when we kissed and fooled around…" He trailed off, swallowing hard. "It unlocked something."
I rocked against him, feeling him harden further beneath me. "Call him," I whispered.
"What? Now?"
"Yes, now." I reached for his phone on the side table. "Video call. Let's see if he answers."
Julian's eyes widened behind his glasses. "It's like 3 a.m. in London."
"So?" I grinned, already pulling up Caleb's contact. "He might be up, and if he’s not, he keeps his phone on silent when he’s sleeping. We’ll leave him a sexy message."
Before Julian could protest further, I hit the video call button and settled more comfortably in his lap, positioning the phoneso we were both in frame. My pulse quickened as the call connected, ringing once, twice—
Then Caleb's face filled the screen, backlit by what looked like a hotel lamp. His hair was disheveled, eyes heavy-lidded with either sleep or booze, and he wore a plain white T-shirt that clung to his shoulders in a way that made my mouth water.
"Julian? Nisha?" His voice was rough, the accent thicker than usual. "Everything alright?"
"We miss you," I said simply, leaning my head against Julian's shoulder. "Are we waking you up?"
Caleb's expression shifted from concern to something warmer, more intimate. "No, I was up. Working late. I’m in New York." He adjusted his position, and I caught a glimpse of a hotel desk behind him, papers spread across it. "Miss me, do you?"
"Desperately," Julian admitted, his voice low. “I’ve been counting the days until you're back."
