Page 71 of Love It or List It
“Maybe I am,” Austin said.This couch was really too comfortable.No wonder Alex fell asleep so quickly the other night.
“Mm,” Joe said, and then for a very long time, he said nothing.
Austin closed his eyes and wondered how he’d lived almost thirty years without him.
Chapter Seventeen
MID-DECEMBER BLEWby in a flurry of snowflakes and last-minute preparations.Austin’s skill set—or lack thereof—made him ineligible to help Joe bake, but he had a good eye for creating equal-sized cookie-dough balls for Joe to bake ahead and then freeze so he didn’t spend the two days immediately before Christmas exhausting himself.
By mutual agreement, Joe and Austin were taking things slower on the physical side.But just because they weren’t fucking didn’t mean there was no intimacy.Joe hadn’t done so much cuddling and handholding since he was a teenager.He wondered if Austin had ever gotten to enjoy this stage as a kid or if he’d thrown himself right into clubbing and one-night stands.Austin had probably been pretty at eighteen—he would’ve had plenty of older men lining up with offers to show him the proverbial ropes.
Possibly also the literal ropes, if Joe were being honest.
He should ask Austin which it was, he reflected—about the cuddling versus clubbing, not the bondage.(Okay, maybe also the bondage.) He’d probably get an answer.They’d shared plenty of trauma by now.
All the quiet domesticity was easy to fall into, though.He loved this part of dating—having someone to eat dinner and watch TV with.It wasnicejust spending time together.Joe didn’t remember the last time he and Paul had done something like that.He’d forgotten the way it could feel, learning someone, letting them learn you, knowing you were headed somewhere good without being in a hurry to get there.It was a giddy, effervescent thing; it bubbled up inside him like a laugh and wrapped around him like a hug.
Joe felt like a teenager with a crush.When he told Starling—half sheepish, half proud—about their talk while skating, she cooed like a parent whose child took first prize at the science fair.
“Proud of you, babe,” she said.And then, because she was Starling and couldn’t resist, she added, “Even if it was definitely Austin who did the talking.”
Joe didn’t bother to defend himself.He didn’t have a leg to stand on and Starling never let him get away with shit.
“So does this mean you’re finally going to chill out now that you’re getting laid again?”
And really, he wished shewouldlet him get away with it, just this once, because his silence told her everything.
“Joe… are younot getting laid?”
He felt his face burning.“We’re taking it slow,” he said, mortified.
Starling cackled.“I can always count on you to make me laugh, even on a rough day.”
“Glad my pain amuses you.”
She snorted.“Waiting to have sex and somehow landing yourself in a decades-in settled married life of bills, children, and no sex is not pain, it’s fucking hilarious.”
“Ha ha,” he said dryly, but he didn’t actually mind, not when she spoke with such joy.
“Other people have real pain and troubles.”She sounded too earnest for a moment as she said that, like something specific was on her mind.
“Everything okay?”
“Just… I’m not fully sure, to be honest.My sister called and—I don’t know yet.”
“What’s going on?”
“It might be something, it might be nothing, but the waiting sucks.”
“Uh….”
“I don’t want to talk about it yet.I do, however, want to mock you for embodying two lesbian stereotypes at once—U-Haul and bed death, which you shouldn’t be able to do at thesame time.”
“This feels discriminatory,” Joe protested.“Are you allowed to say that to me?”
“I sleep with women, so yes.Now tell me more about hosting Christmas.I need to know about this domestic disaster in the making.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Joe said, but he told her everything all the same.
