ConvenientStrangers Read Online Free PDF Page A

he’d never go for that.
Not with witnesses.”
    “That sucks. We’ve all dated one of those.”
    “We don’t all bloody emigrate for one though.”
    Adam smiled, spinning his glass around on the tabletop. “No,
we don’t.”
    Stephen cracked his neck, too manly to be allowed. “You ever
been the first guy to bring a closeted guy out? Not all the way out. But you
know—been a guy’s first? The first one to get him to even admit to himself that
he’s gay?”
    “Yeah, I have. When I was in college. Kind of scary, like
you’re all they’ve got.”
    Stephen smiled, a tight little guilty gesture. “Not to me,
it wasn’t.”
    “No?”
    “That had me so fucking hot, knowing I was the only man this
bloke was willing to do shit with.” He shook his head, as if the mere thought
of it overwhelmed him.
    “Ah. I could see how that might have an appeal.” Especially
to a dominant, controlling type, Adam’s own kryptonite, for better or worse.
Maybe the guy could use a whipping boy, to hate-fuck all his anger out on. What
a terrible, ingenious notion.
    “It let me put up with him being closeted for ages, because
at first there was something about that, knowing I had him wanting things he
was scared of, you know?”
    Adam nodded.
    “Felt good, to me anyhow, knowing he felt filthy about the
whole thing. Taboo and all that. Dirty. Then you start caring about somebody,
properly caring…”
    “Yeah, I know. Then you start feeling filthy. Like
what’s wrong with you, that this person’s so ashamed to admit who you really
are to them, to the people whose opinions they seem to care more about than
yours. Coworkers and neighbors.”
    Stephen thumped a fist softly on the table. “Nail on the
head. I don’t need the guy I’m seeing to be out marching in every parade that
passes by. If he doesn’t want his coworkers knowing, I can accept that. Some
divisions are valid, like some people don’t need to know who you fuck when you
clock out at the end of the day. But something . Some sign you’re okay
with who you are. I mean, if you resent yourself because you’re fucking me, I
can’t help but think you must resent me .”
    “I hear you.”
    “Like, I fuck the shit out of you, wake up with you every
morning, move my bloody life across the ocean for you. But you care more about
what your elderly aunties think, and when do you see them? Once a year, tops?
Fucking coward.”
    “We all get to deal with it in our own ways. In our own
time.”
    “Well, his time wasn’t fast enough for me. ‘Never’ wasn’t
soon enough to stick around waiting for.”
    “No, of course not. And who knows—maybe your leaving will be
his wake-up call. He lost a good thing, staying in the closet. Maybe that’s
what it’ll take for him.”
    Stephen sipped his whiskey. “Not holding my breath.”
    Fine by Adam. He’d be lying if he told himself he was above
being somebody’s rebound. Just what he needed, in fact, to launch himself back
into the wonderful world of casual sex, post-romantic implosion. Though Stephen
was right to hit the brakes—they didn’t need to screw tonight. In fact, they
really shouldn’t. But get Adam’s sheets nice and messed up, give him some good
memories to jerk off to, to make bedtime feel less lonely. Cleanse his palate.
    “It’s odd,” Stephen said slowly, “how you can be with a
bloke for months, for years , then the second you break up with them,
properly break up with them… It’s like, what pills did somebody slip me, that I
ever thought that was what I wanted?”
    Adam nodded. “The rose-tinted glasses are off.”
    “Must be the fucking sex that does it—tints them in the
first place.”
    “True.”
    “The glasses have been off for a while, but I turned my life
so inside out, I couldn’t just give up on trying to make things work. Which is
mad, because I was never one of those people who think a relationship should be work , you know? Like, if it feels like work, you probably picked