“It is true. There is no need to be sentimental about it.”
“Here we go.” Jonah rolled his eyes. “Do you repeat that narrative about everything?”
“What narrative?”
“That you don’t care.”
“I do not care about my father. You are pushing your own emotions onto me.”
Jonah snorted. “If only. But I didn’t just mean your dad. I meant everything. Why do you pretend you’re this unfeeling, emotionless android? I know you’re not.”
“How do you know that?”
“A mixture of instinct and evidence.”
Sacha shook his head slightly, as much to clear it as in disagreement. He had not prepared for such a convoluted conversation. “Your instincts are misguided, and your evidence is based on what? The short time you’ve known me compared to the lifetime I’ve known myself?”
“You help people,” Jonah countered. “I’ve seen you.”
“Perhaps for my own gain. Nothing is ever truly altruistic, no?”
A server came to the table with plates of poached eggs, crisp bacon, tomatoes, and fresh avocado. On the side was rye bread almost dark enough to be Russian. Sacha smiled and lost control of his leg as it hooked Jonah’s under the table, entwining their ankles. “It is like you know what I need before I do,” he said softly.
Jonah slid cutlery across the table. “Or maybe I’m greedy enough to eat yours if you don’t want it.”
“Greedy? You? No.” Sacha closed his fingers around his knife and fork, using the cool metal to ground himself, to tie him down to the world when the simple contact of Jonah’s leg against his was enough to send him spinning out of orbit. “You listen, Jonah Gray, even when others do not speak.”
Jonah let it go. They ate in the companionable silence Sacha enjoyed so much when he wasn’t in the mood to talk. The food was good, just the right balance of naughty and nourishing.It is a parallel. Of your friendship with him. You want to fuck him, but you want this too—to eat with him while he stares at you and tries to figure you out.
Sacha swallowed the last bite of his breakfast and pursed his lips. The idea of Jonah ever figuring him out was laughable. Sacha had a one-forty IQ and twenty-eight years of trying, and he was still no closer to understanding the contradictory nature of his brain.
“You are a cold man,”a girlfriend had once told him.“You take intimacy to make yourself feel good, but give me nothing in return.”
Sacha had given up on relationships after that, and had never regretted it. Walking away from affection was easy. At least, it had been until now.
In his head, he reclaimed his leg and pulled it back under the table. Pushed his plate away and leaned back. Thanked Jonah for breakfast and left with a resolve not to waste time waiting on flashes of auburn across the office to make his day more bearable. In reality, he pushed his plate aside and leaned forwards, grinning as Jonah met him in the middle. “Thank you,” he said. “In case I was not clear.”
Jonah smiled too, softer than Sacha’s sharp edges as he moved his own plate aside. “You were clear. I hear what you don’t say, remember?”
“I remember.”
More silence stretched out between them, loaded this time, hot and heavy. Jonah’s lips called to Sacha, soft and pink. He wanted to bite them, and feel them on every part of his body. He was more tired than he’d been for a long time, but with Jonah so close, the binds of fatigue loosened. New energy surged in his veins. Addictive energy. Was this how friends with benefits worked? Or was their friendship clouded by the fact they’d started out pretending to be something more?
Figuring it out was more complicated than Sacha had time for, but the sense that he was in too deep was a cold, creeping wave that felt all wrong against the heat simmering where his leg touched Jonah’s.
You’re overtired. It makes you emotional.
Sacha groaned and sagged back in his seat.
Jonah’s fair eyebrow ticked. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Why do you ask this?”
“Because you look tired and I’m your friend.”
“You are not my friend. We sleep together. That is all.”
“Okaaaay.” Jonah leaned back too, widening the much-needed distance between them. “If that’s how you feel, I should probably get to work, but—”
