Enrique

I held Oliver close to me, running my fingers through his obnoxiously soft hair and silently debating if I should ask him what product he used. He smelled nice, a perfect mix of something that wasn't too feminine or too masculine and producing just a hint of almond. I couldn't imagine what his day to day personal care routine was, but I could guess it involved more than shaving, brushing teeth and putting on deodorant, which was pretty much the extent of my own schedule. Given, he also worked in a bakery, which could have been where the sweet scent came from, just permanently embedded in his skin at this point.

He rested his head just below my shoulder, nuzzled into my collar bone and hands relaxed onto my rib cage. He had pulled his feet up onto the couch and positioned his knees close to his chest, entire body now just about on top of me. Even the way he cuddled with me was sending shivers up my spine, causing me to wonder if he was doing it on purpose. No way could someone naturally be this cute, he had to know what he was doing.

Crossing his ankles together, he brushed a socked foot across my knee, repositioning his head into my chest as he wrapped an arm around my torso, a comforting sigh slipping out from his naturally pink lips, and by natural, I meant that he bit them a lot, something that I had never taken notice of in the past.

"I really missed you." I whispered, planting a kiss on the top of his head. He'd taken his beret off at some point when getting comfortable, my eyes now wandering the floor next to where we sat in an attempt to figure out where he'd put it.

"I'm not the one who left." He reminded me.

"I know…"

"I'm sorry, that was rude of me."

His less than stellar attitude didn't bother me. Not really. It was going to take time for his negative feelings toward me to settle down, slowly accepting that I wasn't going anywhere. Besides, he wasn't my boyfriend or anything like that. We hadn't quite figured out where we would be going from here, neither of us in a hurry to label our current relationship.

We were… friends? A little more than friends?

Even if we were, my parents wouldn't understand and his parents more than likely didn't view me in the best light after what I had done to him. They weren't as protective as my own, my mother in particular, but I couldn't imagine him coming out as gay and me responding by never speaking to him again had left the sort of impression that brought me under their radar. It was unlikely his entire family didn't know that I'd hurt him, and they probably wouldn't love that he had decided to allow me back in.

"I should have just told you." I admitted.

"It wasn't an easy thing for me to accept about myself either. At the end of the day, we all want to feel like we're normal. Sometimes it seems easier to push those feelings down than to admit that maybe we aren't."

"You said that day that you had known since you were ten."

"Honestly, I think I knew even before then. Ten was just my first introduction to the concept of homosexuality. Before that, I just thought I was broken."

I pulled him closer to me, gently squeezing his body into mine. I no longer had to kiss him in order to get the feeling I had been longing for. Just the feeling of having him in my arms was enough to jump start my heart.

"You're probably the most put together person I've ever met." I giggled. "I'm the screw up."

"I'm not the perfect person that you think I am, and you aren't a screw up."

"Of course I am." I smirked, flicking him gently in the temple. "It's part of my charm. The ladies love a man that they can fix."

"There's a flaw in your logic."

"What would that be?"

"The part where you have no lady."

He gave me a sly smirk, pulling himself to his knees and grabbing a hold of my hand, allowing me to get to a sitting position with his counter weight. I was finally starting to find the Oliver that I used to know all those years ago. Kindhearted, cunning, and radiating an energy that no one else in the world seemed to have.

"I don't know if I even want a lady." I shrugged. "A woman, I mean. It's like… I always figured I would end up with one, it makes the most sense, but-"

"You know that bringing a man home would mean telling your parents, right?" Oliver interrupted. "You can't just claim to have a roommate for the rest of your life."

I definitely knew. If anything, it was my current biggest concern. Oliver was not my boyfriend and I was fairly convinced that he didn't even want to be. Something that was becoming a good excuse for me to not need to head down the path that I was pretending not to avoid. Then again, he had allowed me to hold him in my arms; to plant kisses on his head without telling me off. Not to mention I was fairly sure that when we had shared our most recent kiss on the lips that he had been offering himself to me physically. Even if he wasn't, there was still the fact that we'd had sex the first day I had come back into his life, which we avoided talking about. We were very clearly not the same friends we had been before and if we continued down our current path, we needed to have a mutual understanding of what we wanted.

"My parents would never be okay with it." I said. "Can I really risk being disowned when I have nowhere else to go? I have no job, nothing I'm good at and I just spent the last five years doing nothing but blowing through my trust fund and screwing around."

"It could be worse."

"How so?"

"You could have spent five years just blowing and screwing."

The tiniest of cheeky smiles filled his face, causing my own anxious feelings to relax themselves as I touched a hand to his jaw, brushing my thumb gently against his lower lip.

"I thought that was what you had been busy doing." I teased before pecking him gently on the lips.

"I mean…" He blushed, suddenly avoiding my eyes. "I just-"

"It's okay, Ollie. You don't have to spend your whole life being some prim and proper caricature of yourself. Besides, I lost my virginity when I was fifteen, so I'm not exactly one to talk when it comes to morals." I brushed his bangs behind his ear, now dawning a small rose gold hoop. "I don't regret what happened between us that night. I know it was awkward afterward, but-"

It was incredible. That was what I wanted to say, but I was already pushing things too far. I'd had my fair share of flings and although I wouldn't say I had the largest body count of anyone I knew, it was safe to say that I had some experience in that department. Everything with Oliver had been different, though. There was a connection between us that I'd never felt before and a vulnerability that had sent shivers down my spine like no other. I had feared his judgment, repeatedly second guessing if he liked what I was doing with every tiny whimper that left his mouth.

"We can't keep going back to that night," He said, leaning his cheek onto his propped up knees while avoiding my gaze. "Yes, it happened, but we need to move past it. I'm not just some weird kink you got out of your system."

"I never said you were."

"So why are we suddenly acting like something we aren't?"

"Meaning what?"

"It's not as though we're suddenly together, Enrique…"

I leaned back onto the couch, running my fingers through my hair as I scratched at my head. I knew that he was right, but I couldn't deny that it had stung to hear.

"Why do we have to be anything?" I asked.

He looked down sadly, clearly unsure where we were supposed to go from here. He couldn't claim that I was the one in the wrong this time, more than willing to kiss me back when the opportunity presented itself. Yet at the end of the day it was hard to say we for sure knew exactly what it was that we wanted.

"Coming out was hard for me to do." Oliver sighed. "It was a decision I had gone back and forth on more times than I can count and I can accept that it's not something you're ready for."

"It isn't like I don't want to be open about who I am, Ollie. I need you to understand what sort of life I live, though. Your parents love you unconditionally."

"Do you really think that yours don't?"

"It's complicated."

"And it was just so easy for me, right?" He rolled his eyes at me, a small grunt exhaling out of his nose. "I had the exact same thoughts that you do. I had that internal debate that my family was never going to look at me the same again. Hell, I'm the only boy in my immediate family and you never concluded that I might have been afraid of telling my parents I would likely never have biological children to pass our family name onto? You have brothers for that, you have nieces and nephews who can keep your family lineage going. My parents accept who I am but do you truly think that there was never even a remote hint of disappointment in regards to what I was doing to them?"

"Maybe I'm just not as brave as you, Oliver." I sighed, trying to shove back down the hint of anger that was beginning to come through me. "I can't just uproot my life with no understanding of what will be waiting for me when I come back down."

"That's exactly what you did." He pulled himself away from me, leaving a gap between us where only minutes ago we had been locked within each others embrace. "You uprooted everything because never speaking to me again felt like a safer alternative to the idea that you maybe viewed me as more than just a friend and now you think that we can just live life as, what? Friends with benefits? That's all I am to you?"

Why was he acting this way? Our relationship had finally begun improving and all of a sudden he hated me the exact way he had the first day I came back. Only minutes ago we had been laughing together, spooning on the couch like a real couple.

"I don't understand." I said. "Why are you mad?"

"I'm not mad." He mumbled.

"Then can you just tell me what's going on?"

He stayed silent, gripping himself around the knees and refusing to look at me.

"I'm trying, Enrique, okay?" He said. "I really am."

"Trying what?"

"To forgive you for everything you took away from me."

I put my arms around him, pulling him back into me the way we had been when we were laying down. He had been trying to pretend he wasn't hurting anymore and a part of me was struggling to understand why. I explained my feelings to him, admitted that everything would have been easier had I just admitted that I loved him the way I had once believed a man could only love a woman. If he didn't forgive me; if he was still angry at me for what I had done to him, then why was he still here? Why was he trying to work things out? Just for my sake?

The thought disgusted me.

"This isn't how this is supposed to happen." I admitted. "I don't want you to be in my life just because it's what I want."

Letting him go, I got off of the couch, walking to the center of my room for no reason other than having nowhere else I could think to go. The negative things he'd concluded about me were correct. At the end of the day, the only person I had been trying to help was myself.

"I'm sorry." Oliver said, continuing to curl up into himself. "I shouldn't have come here."

"So why did you?"

He perked up suddenly, watching me with haunting lilac eyes and a pouting lower lip.

"Why did I?" He repeated questioningly.

"I told you what I needed to tell you. You don't owe me a listening ear."

It was clear he wanted to tell me something, keeping whatever secrets he held close to his chest and away from me. He could leave any time he wanted, yet here he remained, stuck to me like a glue he hadn't the slightest interest in removing. Why was that, though? Why did he continue to kiss me back when I went for his lips? Why had he stopped pushing me away after I had told him the real reason that I'd felt there was no choice to leave him behind? Why did the idea that I didn't want to tell anyone yet seem to upset him after he himself had told me he understood the feeling?

"Enrique-"

"You liked me too." I said. I wasn't asking him. It wasn't a question. "That's what this is all about."

"I don't want to talk about this."

It explained everything. Him throwing himself at me that night, his fear of letting me back in; the way he wanted to hurt me the same way I had hurt him those years ago. There had been a point in time before I left where he viewed me the same way I had viewed him.

Oliver Boulanger, at one point in time, had a crush on me.

"Goddammit," I laughed sadly, shaking my head at what I couldn't believe I never realized. "Why didn't any of my friends ever bother telling me I was this stupid?"

"They did. Johnny told you many times."

"Do you wanna go to my families charity gala with me?" I asked suddenly, the words escaping my lips faster than I could process.

"Huh?"

The question caught him off guard, a mix of confusion and curiosity now taking hold of his face. Given I had thrown myself off as well just by asking, unsure how the idea had even entered my head.

"It's supposed to be the biggest event of the year. My dad rented out the ballroom at St. Regis. Cocktail reception, big dinner and dessert, silent auction…"

"Ritz Ballroom."

"What?"

"The ballroom at St. Regis, it's a Ritz ballroom."

"That's what you got out of that?"

"Accuracy is important." He shrugged, turning away from me to hide the shy grin that was escaping his face. "Would your parents be okay with you inviting a guest?"

"I brought two different girls last year, I don't think they'll mind."

"It's not a date, though, right?"

"Oliver, if I was asking you on a first date do you seriously think I would want my parents around for it?"

"Touche." He smiled shyly. "I'm sorry, Enrique. For getting upset, I mean."

"I think you've apologized to me more today than you ever have in your life." I stepped back over to the couch, sitting back down next to him. The weight shift forced his body to meet my own and now he was leaning into me again, allowing me to wrap my arms around him and give a gentle squeeze. "That's supposed to be my job."

"I'm giving you a different job."

"I like where this is going."

He smacked me playfully, cheeks turning the lightest shade of pink as he smiled.

"That's not even remotely what I meant." He laughed. "I'm making you an exfoliating routine, your face feels like sandpaper, and I'm teaching you how to tame your hair."

"Hang on," I intervened, "What's wrong with my hair?"

"First of all, you aren't supposed to brush curly hair when it's dry."

I raked my fingers through my frizzy locks, making a mental note to schedule myself a haircut. My bangs were starting to fall into my eyes and although Oliver could pull off long hair extremely well, I was definitely the opposite.

"I think I just used too much styling gel last time. It got kind of crunchy."

"You tried brushing your hair all the way back with a comb so it lay flat. You have a cowlick on the front of your hairline that was having none of that, you need a cylinder brush and to work with your natural texture, not against it."

"You'll have to show me. I mean, seeing as I didn't understand a word you just said."

Oliver smiled, rolling his eyes at me as he lay his head in my chest and sighed, giving me the opportunity to play with his hair in my fingers instead of my own, resting my face close to him and inhaling the aroma of his shampoo.

"You're something else, Enrique." He said, closing his eyes. "Did your parents ever take the lock off of your balcony? I need a cigarette."

I laughed loudly, recalling like it was yesterday when my parents had told me I'd lost the privilege of using my balcony due to being caught for the third time trying to sneak a girl down the trellis in the middle of the night. That discovery on top of the used pregnancy test that had been found in my bathroom trash can (which was negative, I would like to point out) had gotten the entire door deadbolted on me for at least a year and a half before I had left for north America. It was by far the longest I'd ever been grounded for and probably the most trouble I'd ever been in overall, the punishment really only ending because I turned eighteen and they couldn't legally keep me home. Sometimes I wondered if a tiny second aspect of why I had left was so I no longer had to deal with the embarrassment of my mom repeatedly sticking condom boxes in my bathroom drawer and checking in on me several times in order to ask if I was using them. My parents already had three grandchildren at that point and were fine with it remaining that way, even though that number had doubled since my oldest sister married when I was seventeen.

"Yeah, it's open." I said, walking with him as he took the pack of cigarettes from his pocket. "My mom is gonna lecture you if she sees you smoking, though."

"I'm sure she'll change her mind if she has to deal with my mood swings while withdrawing."

"Doesn't stop her from yelling at my dad."

He shrugged, lighting the stick and taking in a long inhale, holding it in his lungs for what felt like way too long before releasing the breath, coughing slightly as he did so. His shoulders relaxed suddenly and he took no time breathing in another hit, tapping the glowing orange ashes on the concrete edge.

"I'm trying to cut back." He admitted. "It's not good for the complexion and I'm already getting laugh lines."

"You live in Paris, even if you quit I'm sure just the second hand will do the job." I smirked, allowing a small moment of silence before continuing. "You look great, by the way. You're really cute."

Once again, I had made him blush as he finished his cigarette without words. I wasn't always sure how to speak to him, regularly needing to stop myself from calling him pretty in fear of offending him. I'd met a few extremely feminine men, even going so far as to sleep with one of them. He'd been the first male I'd had sex with, but he definitely took pride in that side of him. Oliver didn't wear make up or cross dress that I was aware of and it left me uncertain if he'd appreciate me saying that he was beautiful.

"I should probably go home." He said, putting out the last of his ashes before turning to me. "It's been, I mean-" He stuttered. "I've… enjoyed spending time with you today."

"You didn't give me a definitive answer about the gala."

"Yes," He smirked. "I'll go with you."

A smile filled my face as I opened the balcony door once again for him, waiting for him to step ahead of me before following as I closed it, letting the mesh curtain cover the windows before bringing a hand to the back of his head and pulling him in for a kiss.

"It's at the end of the month, I'll send you a formal invitation with all the information on it. If you wanna just stay the night here the day before I'm sure it would be fine."

"I'll figure something out." He nodded, standing on the tips of his toes in order to put his arms around my neck as he looked up into my eyes. He really was tiny, the top of his head only coming up to my chin.

Bringing him into a gentle hug, I took in the shape of his body intertwined with my own, a feeling I didn't want to forget when he left. I couldn't ever let him regret letting me back in after everything I'd done, now tightly holding onto the second chance I didn't deserve.

Five years had changed nothing.

I still loved him.