Chapter Sixteen
Halfway through unbuttoning his shirt after work, Julian heard the buzzer ring. He cursed under his breath, since he didn’t have long to get undressed, showered, and re-dressed before Isaac picked him up.
If this wasn’t something important…
“Hello?” he asked, trying not to soundtooannoyed, but not sure he pulled it off.
“It’s me,” Isaac said. Something about the tone of his voice made Julian’s stomach go cold.
“Come on up,” he said, hitting the button to let Isaac inside.
He paced back and forth in front of the door until a knock on it made him snap out of the spiral of increasingly worried thoughts, having gotten as far aswhat if someone’s diedin the two or three minutes it took for Isaac to get to the apartment.
Julian opened the door, his heart sinking as he took in the look on Isaac’s face. He ushered him inside, closing the door behind him and then hovering, unsure whether to offer a hug.
Isaac definitely looked like he coulduseone, but Julian wasn’t sure he’d want it. Not from him, at least, depending on what this was about.
“Hey, uh… I know I said we’d go out tonight, but can we… not?” Isaac asked.
Julian swallowed. So this was definitely on the serious side, then, whatever it was.
“Of course,” he said, giving Isaac a gentle nudge toward the couch. “You look like a man who could use a hot chocolate.”
Isaac looked up at him, some of the misery falling away from his face. “Uh… if it’s not any trouble…”
Julian smiled his kindest smile, glad that he’d hit on something that might at least soothe Isaac a little. “No trouble. You sit down and make yourself at home, I’ll bring it to you.”
Isaac nodded, shrugging his coat off and then heading for the couch. The way he flopped onto it, like he was exhausted down to his bones and sitting normally was too much effort, made Julian’s heart ache.
If Isaac was upset, Julian was glad he felt as though he could come here. On the other hand, though, he would have preferred that Isaac wasn’t upset at all.
Knots formed in Julian’s stomach as he set about making Isaac a hot chocolate. Hestilldidn’t know what had happened, and the fear that it was something big wouldn’t quite leave him. He’d rarely seen Isaac like this. Isaac was the first person to smile and shrug off anything that happened to him, normally.
Whatever it was, it must have cut deep.
Unless…
Unless Isaachaddecided he didn’t want to do this, and was afraid of what Julian might say or do.
That was what Julian had been waiting for, after all. For Isaac to realize what he’d done and decide that he didn’t want Julian after all, not like that. Julian was waiting for Isaac to end his experiment.
The thought made him sick, but he brought the mug of hot chocolate over to Isaac anyway, setting it down on the coffee table in front of him, and then sitting beside him on the couch.
“I, umm… Isaac… it’s okay if you’re here to break up with me. I understand and I won’t be mad,” he said, deciding that he might as well make this easy on his friend.
This was the only path to not losing him entirely, and losing him entirely would have broken Julian’s heart.
“No,” Isaac said, turning to look at him. “No, I’m not… that’s not even close…”
Julian swallowed. That was a relief, though it still didn’t explain what was wrong.
“No,” Isaac said again, reaching out to take Julian’s hand. He squeezed it tight, and then spread the fingers out, looking at them as though he’d never seen them before, as though they were the most fascinating thing in the universe.
“I just, uh… I think I ran into my first… is there a word for homophobia but when it’s because you’re bi?”
“Biphobia,” Julian supplied.
“Right, that… I probably could have figured that out myself.” Isaac smiled wryly. “Anyway, it kinda… shook me, a little, and then I thought of you and how much crap you must have to deal with all the time and how much ithurt, even though I’m not…”
