“And it was great. I sort of word vomited a bunch of stuff at him, but it was nice, and—and we were drinking. Except Alexei doesn’t drink, because he was raised in some kind of super strict religion, and I think I maybe pushed him to? Oh God. It’s just that he’s had this really hard time and I’m really proud of him and I just wanted him to let loose and let himself have fun and—oh no, Julie. I’m one of those people they warned us about in all those D.A.R.E. videos.”
“Ben.”
“I am! I’m a bad influence, Julie! I’m a drug pusher!”
“Wait, did you dodrugs, too?”
“Alcohol counts as drugs.”
Julie sighed. “So then you banged.”
“Yeah. Well, actually, no—Julie, oh myGod.” Ben fell back onto the bed. “First, we started walking back to the motel, and we pass this group of people playing music in a parking lot, and Alexei just, like, takes this dude’s guitar and plays ‘Wonderwall.’”
“Shut the fuck up.” Julie laughed.
“Iknow.” Ben curled his legs in front of him, unable to hold back his sigh. “It was so, so unlike him and sodreamyand he can, like, really sing? And he waslookingat me, andugh—”
“My poor Benny poo,” Julie soothed.
“I know.” Another sigh. “Yeah, so then we banged.”
“Obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“And was it bad or something?”
“It wasincredible.”
“Gross.”
“You asked.”
“So then what happened? I’m waiting for theyou fucked uppart here.”
Ben frowned.
“Did you not hear me when I said I plied a sweet, sweet man with alcohol and then sucked him off when I knew that was the last thing he probably needed, like, emotionally?”
“Gross, you know I don’t like details—”
“You love details.”
“But why is having a bit of fun and then getting off not what he needs emotionally? It sort of sounds like that’s exactly what he needs.”
Ben closed his eyes.
“It wasn’t. Because if it was, he wouldn’t have bolted this morning as soon as he woke up.”
“Oh.” Ben could picture Julie’s frown. “And you just let him go?”
“Yeah. It was the right thing to do.”
Julie was quiet a moment.
“Well, that fucking sucks.”
“Yeah. It’s going to be so lonely hiking without him. I just felt safer with him there, you know? And he knew all this stuff about birds and—”
