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Title: After All (Sequel to Can't Let You Go) - Chapter Eleven
Rating: R
Pairings: Adam Lambert/Kris Allen
Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. The characters and events portrayed are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
Note: A huge thank you to
bigj52. Thank you for being an amazing beta. I feel guilty for the amount of work I put you through with each story.
Chapter Eleven
Kris could barely function because he had let himself become so tired. He didn’t get any sleep the night that Brian exploded into his bedroom, mainly due to the fact that he hadn’t really ever let herself cry over his failed marriage with Adam. It wasn’t that he never shed a tear over it; he just never had a good cry over it.
Brian repeatedly told him that he just needed to forget about it and move on. Obviously, it wasn’t meant to be and it was God’s way of showing him that Adam wasn’t meant to be part of his life. To a certain extent, he believed Brian. Now, he wasn’t so sure. If Adam wasn’t meant to be in his life, then why were they thrown right back at each other?
God was sending him mixed messages.
He yawned repeatedly, fighting to find sleep but not being able to actually succumb to it. Added to the fact that Adam was scheduled to leave for New York that very day, he truly couldn’t function. He was an emotional and physical wreck.
After fighting with his blankets for the last time that early afternoon, he finally gave up and headed to Katy’s house. He hadn’t talked to her since the ceremony and right now, he just needed to talk to someone. He needed to spill his guts. He needed a friend.
Kris pulled into the driveway and quickly got out of the car. He made his way to the front door, knocking twice before letting himself in. “Katy!” he yelled, making his entrance known.
“Up here, Kris!”
He climbed the stairs, taking them two at a time. “Hellllllooooo?”
“In the spare room!”
Kris took a step toward the spare room and stopped. He hadn’t set foot on the second floor of Katy’s room, let alone the spare room, since the time he babysat Cassidy when Katy and Cale went on their weekend retreat. The last time he and Adam had made love was in the spare room.
“In the spare room!” Katy repeated louder.
“I heard you,” Kris quipped, fighting to put his left foot in front of the right one. When he finally took charge of his feet, he found it increasingly more difficult to breathe the closer he got to the room.
“Hey,” Katy said, waving him in. “I’m just finishing up this cute sweater dress I started for Cassidy way back when.” He held it up and smiled on cue, looking to his friend. “Well, what do you think?”
“It’s beautiful,” Kris sighed, smiling back. He finally made it inside the room entirely at that exact moment and then did the unthinkable…he looked towards the small twin-sized bed in the corner. The exact spot where they had made love for the last time. Placing his hand over his heart, he was relieved when he felt it still beating. “This is where we made love for the last time,” he whispered, letting himself walk over to the bed.
“What?” Katy put the dress down and turned around in the chair. “You had sex in my house?” she joked, scrunching up her nose. “Thank God you didn’t do it in my bed,” she continued, growing serious. “You didn’t, did you?”
Kris smiled, taking a seat on the bed. “No, we didn’t do anything anywhere but right here and don’t worry, I washed all the bedding afterwards.”
Katy stood up from her chair and made her way over to the bed, taking a seat next to her best friend. “I was only kidding,” she stated, putting her arm around Kris’s shoulder. “Are you okay, Kris? You don’t look okay.”
Kris shook his head, letting his gaze drop to the floor. “I’m not okay, Katy,” he whispered. “Not at all.”
Katy was silent for a moment. Her feet tapped against the floor. “Okay, so what’s going on? Problems with Brian?”
“You could say that,” he sighed, still staring at his friend’s feet. “I’m going to be real honest here.”
“Okay,” Katy whispered. “Let me hear it.”
“I’m not in love with Brian,” he blurted out. Looking over at his friend, he pressed his lips together and shrugged. “I mean…I love him I guess. I’m just not in love with him. Does that make sense?”
Katy shrugged.
Kris let his head fall again. “I’m pretty sure that he’ll always hold a special place in my heart as he was my first true love and all.” He took a deep breath and froze. “But I can’t see myself spending the rest of my life with him. He isn’t the same person he was when we were married.”
“You aren’t either, honey. I tried telling you that many moons ago.”
“I know,” he affirmed, nodding his head in agreement. “I guess I just didn’t want to hear it then.”
Katy sighed loudly before getting up and moving back to the chair. She took a seat and rolled the chair over so that it was in front of Kris, directly between his legs. “And you want to hear it now?”
“It’s not a matter of wanting to hear it.” Kris slowly brought his head up, looking at Katy head-on. “It’s a matter of me finally admitting to myself that what Brian and I had isn’t something I want now.”
The silence lingered between them for quite some time, each one lost in their own thoughts.
“Have you told Brian this yet?”
Kris shook his head diligently. “God, no,” he moaned, closing his eyes momentarily. “It won’t go over well.”
“If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times, Kris,” she moaned, shrugging her shoulders. “You need to do what’s best for you and if that means cutting him loose, then that’s what it means.” She sat back in the chair and folded her arms in front of her chest. “Personally, I think you needed to be on your own from the get-go. You need time by yourself so that you can sort through these issues before you can even think about jumping back into a relationship with someone you barely know anymore.”
Kris’s thoughts turned to Adam. “I don’t need time by myself to sort anything out. I already know what I want. It’s just a matter of whether or not it’s something Adam will want.”
“Adam?” Katy spat out. Her feet pushed back, causing her chair to go sliding against the wood floor. “This is about Adam?”
Kris could already tell that the subject of Adam wasn’t going to go over well just by the way she said his name. “It’s always been about Adam,” he whispered. “I just never had the guts to admit that to anyone, not even myself.” Looking at his friend, a couple of tears escaped from the corner of his eyes. “Katy, I love Adam. I have always loved him and I’ll probably go to my grave loving him.”
Katy jumped up from her seat and began pacing the floor at a snail’s pace. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” she gasped, placing her hands over her ears and shaking her head. “He put you through hell.”
Kris’s shook his head from side to side. “No, Katy. I put both Adam and myself through hell, not to mention the hell I’m about to put Brian through.”
Katy’s eyes narrowed. “He let you go, he left you,” she growled. “Have you forgotten that?”
With each word his friend spoke, Kris’s stomach twisted into knots. “I haven’t forgotten anything, but I can’t continue to ignore the fact that I love him and if he hadn’t given up on me so soon, we’d probably still be together.”
“You don’t know that!” Katy spat, marching towards her friend. “You don’t know that.”
Kris’s head dropped, his heart dropping too. “What I do know is that on the very day that he decided to let me go, I was going to tell him that I was letting Brian go.” He slowly brought his head up. It felt good to finally let the truth out. And the truth was, he had chosen him over Brian. His mother knew, he knew it and now it was about time that everybody else knew it. “Ask my mother, Katy. She was there when I finally realized that it was Brian that needed to go, not Adam.”
“Then why the hell did you let Brian think otherwise?” she questioned, throwing Kris a questionable look.
His jaw tightened. “I never came out and said that I chose Brian over Adam…never. Not to him and not to anyone. I thought I pretty much made it perfectly clear that Adam handed me over on a silver platter.”
Katy swung her body around, letting her shoulders slump. “You never made anything perfectly clear, Kris…never. You may have never said the words, but you sure as hell acted like Brian was the one you wanted.”
Kris’s heart raced with every minute that ticked by. Katy was right, but at the same time, so was he. He never told Brian that he chose him over Adam. But then again, he did act like he had chosen Brian to a certain extent. “I was hoping that things would work out between us, but it’s obvious that they aren’t going to and probably never will.”
“Probably,” Katy huffed, turning around. “Isn’t good enough. You need to make damn sure that Brian isn’t the one for you before you go pushing him away, Kris.” She shook her head and sank back into the chair. “Have you even mentioned anything about this to Adam yet?”
Kris shook his head.
“Then how can you be so sure that this is something he even wants?”
“I’m not, Katy, but I owe it to myself to find out.”
Katy dropped her head into her hands and moaned. She was obviously having a hard time dealing with what she was hearing. But who could blame her? He’d put Katy through a lot in the last year. He’d put everyone through a lot in the last year, himself included.
“Have you and Adam been seeing each other?”
Katy’s question startled him. He didn’t see that one coming. Thank goodness he had his hands stabilizing him on the edge of the bed or he might have actually fallen right over. Fighting the urge to get involved in another lie, he simply nodded his head.
“Oh my God,” Katy moaned, scrubbing her face with her hands. “You two are hooking up, aren’t you?”
“Well…um…we’ve been hooking…” he trailed.
Katy shot up from her seat again. “You’ve been screwing him, Kris. And now you’re getting attached again.” She walked towards the door of the room and stopped. “I hope to God that at least you two are spending some time together talking this time around because I would hate to have to hold your hand through another nervous breakdown.”
“Stop it!” Kris barked, standing to his feet. “Stop throwing my past and my nervous breakdown into the conversation. That’s in the past and right now I’m not worried about the past, I’m worried about the future. My future!”
When his cell phone rang, it practically made him jump right out of his skin. He was on edge and anxious to get out of Katy’s house. Instantly, he reached inside his pocket and brought the cell phone to his ear. “Yeah?”
“Hey, it’s me.”
Kris closed his eyes at the sound of his voice. His ears must have been ringing. Kris covered the mouthpiece and pushed his way past Katy. “I have to run.”
“I never thought in a million years, Kris that you’d be one to resort to booty calls.” Katy followed behind him in the hall and quickly made an exit to her bedroom.
Cale walked past the kitchen table and threw the mail down. “Okay, Katy,” he replied flatly. “First of all, you need to butt out and let Kris deal with this the way he wants to. It’s not your business.” He pulled out a chair from the table and took a seat. “And second of all, you should be happy that he is finally coming to terms with what he wants out of life. You and I both know that since Adam stepped out of his life, he hasn’t been the same.”
Katy glanced up from the mail and snarled. “I will not butt out of this. He’s my friend and friends look out for each other.”
He scrubbed his face with his hands and sighed. “Friends may look out for each other, but friends don’t tell each other what they should or shouldn’t do. This isn’t your choice; it’s Kris’s choice.” He threw his hands up in the air. “If he wants to be Adam’s booty call, then that’s up to him.”
“He’s using Kris,” she growled, shooting her husband a dirty look. “He’s just using Kris for one thing and we all know what that one thing is.”
“Oh now…wait a minute here,” he retaliated. “It takes two to tango, dear so I could just as easily say that Kris’s using Adam too. It works both ways.” He grabbed the mail and stared shuffling through it. “Why do you care anyway? You were always on Adam’s side in the first place. Don’t even try and deny the fact that you wanted him to end up with Adam.”
Katy jumped up from her seat and walked into the kitchen, but not before she hit Cale on the head. “That was before he did the unthinkable,” she huffed, grabbing the phone. “I lost all respect for him after he walked out on Kris like that.”
Cale shook his head and turned back to see what his wife was up to. “You’re not calling Kris, are you?”
She nodded, walking into the living room for privacy.
“He only left here a little over an hour ago!” he snapped, grabbing the newspaper and digging into it. “Stop butting in where you’re not wanted!”
Adam was sprawled out on the bed, his arms and legs open wide as if he were creating a snow angel, his smile as wide as it could go. He could get used to this, he really could. Hell, he was already getting used to it. Seeing Kris in his bed and in his house sure beat seeing him only in his dreams. At least this was reality. As screwy as it was, it was still reality.
Yet again, he lingered in the aftermath of their sexual romp.
As soon as Kris set foot on his porch, Adam grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the house, slamming the door shut and then slamming Kris’s body up against it. They didn’t say one word to each other the entire time either.
They started out having sex right in the foyer and then ended it in the bedroom, on the floor at the foot of the bed. It was like something out of a porn movie. Not that he watched porn movies but it was intense, rough and hot.
And all the while, William was out shopping at the mall. They still had a few hours before they had to leave for the airport and he insisted on making a run to a store he’d been dying to hit ever since it had its grand opening just two weeks prior.
Adam didn’t even ask him if William wanted him to go. And William didn’t ask him, which was a good thing since he had other things on his mind. Mainly…Kris.
Adam knew that it’d be a while before he returned to Hollywood. In fact, he probably wouldn’t be coming back until the house sold and he was required to be there for the closing. He had work to do in New York.
This would be the last time that they would see each other for a while.
And as much as he didn’t want to admit it, he was going to miss Kris.
He knew he shouldn’t be feeling that way. Kris didn’t belong to him anymore, but damn, it was hard not to miss him.
When Kris’s cell phone started ringing, Adam resisted the urge to yell for him. They still hadn’t spoken a word to each other since he first arrived. Reaching down, he pulled the phone out of Kris’s pocket and checked the caller ID before even contemplating to answer it. He wasn’t stupid.
“Hey, Katy,” he said softly into the phone.
“Is Kris there?”
He jerked the phone to in front of his face and scrunched up his nose. He could tell that Katy wasn’t in the mood to talk. Or maybe she just didn’t know who it was. “Katy…it’s Adam.”
He heard a long sigh come through loud and clear.
“Well…hello to you too.”
“Is Kris there? I need to talk to him?”
“Actually…” he trailed, turning to look over at the bathroom door. “He’s in the bathroom right now.”
“God,” she moaned loudly. “He actually is your booty call, isn’t he?”
Booty call? It took a minute for the words to actually set in, but when they did, they rang over and over again in his mind. Booty call? He wouldn’t use those words exactly, but in all honesty, they did hold true. “I take it he has filled you in on what’s been going on with us?”
“Not really,” Katy moaned. “I just kind of guessed it and of course, he isn’t one to lie…normally…so I just figured it out on my own.” She took a deep breath and expelled it loudly. “I’ll call him later. Goodbye.”
“Katy!”
“Yeah?”
“Can I ask you something?” he questioned, closing his eyes and rolling over to his side. “Why is it that you don’t want to talk to me? At your wedding, you made it perfectly clear that you’re pissed at me about something and for the life of me, I can’t figure out what it is.”
Katy didn’t make any attempt to answer his question, which made him even madder. How could they work out whatever it was that needed to be worked out if he didn’t know what it was about?
“What have I ever done to any of you, Katy?” The sound of silence was starting to wear on his patience. “Walking out of Kris’s life was the hardest damn thing I have ever done but I did it because it needed to be done. You know that, you were there to see what was happening to him.”
“You need to leave him alone, Adam,” she whispered with authority.
“He’s a big boy, Katy,” he retorted. “I’m pretty sure he’s capable of making his own decisions.”
“Evidently Adam…” she trailed, clearly becoming frustrated with the conversation. “He doesn’t make very good decisions, does he?”
He knew a slam when he heard one, and as far as he was concerned, that was definitely a slam. “And to think I actually considered you to be a friend,” he mumbled, shaking his head.
“Just tell him I called.”
The phone went dead. He pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it for a few good minutes. He couldn’t figure out what the hell had just happened. What had he even done?
“Is that my phone?”
Adam turned quickly to see Kris making his way towards him with a frown on his face.
“It is, isn’t it?” He grabbed the phone out of Adam’s hands. “What’re you doing?”
Quite honestly, he hadn’t a clue to what he was doing. He hadn’t a clue to what they were doing either. “Katy called,” he mumbled.
“What?” he gasped, opening his eyes wide. “Please tell me you didn’t answer it.”
“I answered it.”
Kris threw his head back, clutching his phone tightly to his chest. “Why would you do something so stupid as to answer my cell phone, Adam?” Kris slowly brought his head down to look at him. “No one is supposed to know about this.”
Adam shrugged, showing his indifference. “If no one is supposed to know, then why did she know?”
“God,” he moaned, turning his back and heading to the door of the bedroom. “I can’t deal with this right now. She’s pissed at me already about doing whatever it is that I’m doing with you. This is only going to add fuel to the fire.”
“Why the hell is she pissed about this? It’s none of her damn business,” Adam threw back, getting frustrated with everyone and everything. “And furthermore, what did I do to her?” he trailed, scratching his forehead. “I have no clue about what I’ve done that’s made her so damn mad at me.”
Kris took a step out of his room and turned around. “Just forget about it. She’s pissed at me right now and unfortunately, she’s just taking it out on you too.”
Adam heard what Kris said, but it still didn’t make any sense. Nothing made sense. He turned to look out the window while he thought about everything that had happened in the last couple weeks.
“Am I just a booty call to you?”
Adam’s head flew back to face him. He could tell that just the thought of being a booty call was upsetting to Kris. His face was evidence of that. “I don’t know how to answer that,” he said carefully, making damn sure he didn’t confirm or deny his suspicions.
“You just did,” he whispered.
Before he could reply, Kris was out of his line of vision and out the front door.
Rating: R
Pairings: Adam Lambert/Kris Allen
Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. The characters and events portrayed are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
Note: A huge thank you to
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Chapter Eleven
Kris could barely function because he had let himself become so tired. He didn’t get any sleep the night that Brian exploded into his bedroom, mainly due to the fact that he hadn’t really ever let herself cry over his failed marriage with Adam. It wasn’t that he never shed a tear over it; he just never had a good cry over it.
Brian repeatedly told him that he just needed to forget about it and move on. Obviously, it wasn’t meant to be and it was God’s way of showing him that Adam wasn’t meant to be part of his life. To a certain extent, he believed Brian. Now, he wasn’t so sure. If Adam wasn’t meant to be in his life, then why were they thrown right back at each other?
God was sending him mixed messages.
He yawned repeatedly, fighting to find sleep but not being able to actually succumb to it. Added to the fact that Adam was scheduled to leave for New York that very day, he truly couldn’t function. He was an emotional and physical wreck.
After fighting with his blankets for the last time that early afternoon, he finally gave up and headed to Katy’s house. He hadn’t talked to her since the ceremony and right now, he just needed to talk to someone. He needed to spill his guts. He needed a friend.
Kris pulled into the driveway and quickly got out of the car. He made his way to the front door, knocking twice before letting himself in. “Katy!” he yelled, making his entrance known.
“Up here, Kris!”
He climbed the stairs, taking them two at a time. “Hellllllooooo?”
“In the spare room!”
Kris took a step toward the spare room and stopped. He hadn’t set foot on the second floor of Katy’s room, let alone the spare room, since the time he babysat Cassidy when Katy and Cale went on their weekend retreat. The last time he and Adam had made love was in the spare room.
“In the spare room!” Katy repeated louder.
“I heard you,” Kris quipped, fighting to put his left foot in front of the right one. When he finally took charge of his feet, he found it increasingly more difficult to breathe the closer he got to the room.
“Hey,” Katy said, waving him in. “I’m just finishing up this cute sweater dress I started for Cassidy way back when.” He held it up and smiled on cue, looking to his friend. “Well, what do you think?”
“It’s beautiful,” Kris sighed, smiling back. He finally made it inside the room entirely at that exact moment and then did the unthinkable…he looked towards the small twin-sized bed in the corner. The exact spot where they had made love for the last time. Placing his hand over his heart, he was relieved when he felt it still beating. “This is where we made love for the last time,” he whispered, letting himself walk over to the bed.
“What?” Katy put the dress down and turned around in the chair. “You had sex in my house?” she joked, scrunching up her nose. “Thank God you didn’t do it in my bed,” she continued, growing serious. “You didn’t, did you?”
Kris smiled, taking a seat on the bed. “No, we didn’t do anything anywhere but right here and don’t worry, I washed all the bedding afterwards.”
Katy stood up from her chair and made her way over to the bed, taking a seat next to her best friend. “I was only kidding,” she stated, putting her arm around Kris’s shoulder. “Are you okay, Kris? You don’t look okay.”
Kris shook his head, letting his gaze drop to the floor. “I’m not okay, Katy,” he whispered. “Not at all.”
Katy was silent for a moment. Her feet tapped against the floor. “Okay, so what’s going on? Problems with Brian?”
“You could say that,” he sighed, still staring at his friend’s feet. “I’m going to be real honest here.”
“Okay,” Katy whispered. “Let me hear it.”
“I’m not in love with Brian,” he blurted out. Looking over at his friend, he pressed his lips together and shrugged. “I mean…I love him I guess. I’m just not in love with him. Does that make sense?”
Katy shrugged.
Kris let his head fall again. “I’m pretty sure that he’ll always hold a special place in my heart as he was my first true love and all.” He took a deep breath and froze. “But I can’t see myself spending the rest of my life with him. He isn’t the same person he was when we were married.”
“You aren’t either, honey. I tried telling you that many moons ago.”
“I know,” he affirmed, nodding his head in agreement. “I guess I just didn’t want to hear it then.”
Katy sighed loudly before getting up and moving back to the chair. She took a seat and rolled the chair over so that it was in front of Kris, directly between his legs. “And you want to hear it now?”
“It’s not a matter of wanting to hear it.” Kris slowly brought his head up, looking at Katy head-on. “It’s a matter of me finally admitting to myself that what Brian and I had isn’t something I want now.”
The silence lingered between them for quite some time, each one lost in their own thoughts.
“Have you told Brian this yet?”
Kris shook his head diligently. “God, no,” he moaned, closing his eyes momentarily. “It won’t go over well.”
“If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times, Kris,” she moaned, shrugging her shoulders. “You need to do what’s best for you and if that means cutting him loose, then that’s what it means.” She sat back in the chair and folded her arms in front of her chest. “Personally, I think you needed to be on your own from the get-go. You need time by yourself so that you can sort through these issues before you can even think about jumping back into a relationship with someone you barely know anymore.”
Kris’s thoughts turned to Adam. “I don’t need time by myself to sort anything out. I already know what I want. It’s just a matter of whether or not it’s something Adam will want.”
“Adam?” Katy spat out. Her feet pushed back, causing her chair to go sliding against the wood floor. “This is about Adam?”
Kris could already tell that the subject of Adam wasn’t going to go over well just by the way she said his name. “It’s always been about Adam,” he whispered. “I just never had the guts to admit that to anyone, not even myself.” Looking at his friend, a couple of tears escaped from the corner of his eyes. “Katy, I love Adam. I have always loved him and I’ll probably go to my grave loving him.”
Katy jumped up from her seat and began pacing the floor at a snail’s pace. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” she gasped, placing her hands over her ears and shaking her head. “He put you through hell.”
Kris’s shook his head from side to side. “No, Katy. I put both Adam and myself through hell, not to mention the hell I’m about to put Brian through.”
Katy’s eyes narrowed. “He let you go, he left you,” she growled. “Have you forgotten that?”
With each word his friend spoke, Kris’s stomach twisted into knots. “I haven’t forgotten anything, but I can’t continue to ignore the fact that I love him and if he hadn’t given up on me so soon, we’d probably still be together.”
“You don’t know that!” Katy spat, marching towards her friend. “You don’t know that.”
Kris’s head dropped, his heart dropping too. “What I do know is that on the very day that he decided to let me go, I was going to tell him that I was letting Brian go.” He slowly brought his head up. It felt good to finally let the truth out. And the truth was, he had chosen him over Brian. His mother knew, he knew it and now it was about time that everybody else knew it. “Ask my mother, Katy. She was there when I finally realized that it was Brian that needed to go, not Adam.”
“Then why the hell did you let Brian think otherwise?” she questioned, throwing Kris a questionable look.
His jaw tightened. “I never came out and said that I chose Brian over Adam…never. Not to him and not to anyone. I thought I pretty much made it perfectly clear that Adam handed me over on a silver platter.”
Katy swung her body around, letting her shoulders slump. “You never made anything perfectly clear, Kris…never. You may have never said the words, but you sure as hell acted like Brian was the one you wanted.”
Kris’s heart raced with every minute that ticked by. Katy was right, but at the same time, so was he. He never told Brian that he chose him over Adam. But then again, he did act like he had chosen Brian to a certain extent. “I was hoping that things would work out between us, but it’s obvious that they aren’t going to and probably never will.”
“Probably,” Katy huffed, turning around. “Isn’t good enough. You need to make damn sure that Brian isn’t the one for you before you go pushing him away, Kris.” She shook her head and sank back into the chair. “Have you even mentioned anything about this to Adam yet?”
Kris shook his head.
“Then how can you be so sure that this is something he even wants?”
“I’m not, Katy, but I owe it to myself to find out.”
Katy dropped her head into her hands and moaned. She was obviously having a hard time dealing with what she was hearing. But who could blame her? He’d put Katy through a lot in the last year. He’d put everyone through a lot in the last year, himself included.
“Have you and Adam been seeing each other?”
Katy’s question startled him. He didn’t see that one coming. Thank goodness he had his hands stabilizing him on the edge of the bed or he might have actually fallen right over. Fighting the urge to get involved in another lie, he simply nodded his head.
“Oh my God,” Katy moaned, scrubbing her face with her hands. “You two are hooking up, aren’t you?”
“Well…um…we’ve been hooking…” he trailed.
Katy shot up from her seat again. “You’ve been screwing him, Kris. And now you’re getting attached again.” She walked towards the door of the room and stopped. “I hope to God that at least you two are spending some time together talking this time around because I would hate to have to hold your hand through another nervous breakdown.”
“Stop it!” Kris barked, standing to his feet. “Stop throwing my past and my nervous breakdown into the conversation. That’s in the past and right now I’m not worried about the past, I’m worried about the future. My future!”
When his cell phone rang, it practically made him jump right out of his skin. He was on edge and anxious to get out of Katy’s house. Instantly, he reached inside his pocket and brought the cell phone to his ear. “Yeah?”
“Hey, it’s me.”
Kris closed his eyes at the sound of his voice. His ears must have been ringing. Kris covered the mouthpiece and pushed his way past Katy. “I have to run.”
“I never thought in a million years, Kris that you’d be one to resort to booty calls.” Katy followed behind him in the hall and quickly made an exit to her bedroom.
Cale walked past the kitchen table and threw the mail down. “Okay, Katy,” he replied flatly. “First of all, you need to butt out and let Kris deal with this the way he wants to. It’s not your business.” He pulled out a chair from the table and took a seat. “And second of all, you should be happy that he is finally coming to terms with what he wants out of life. You and I both know that since Adam stepped out of his life, he hasn’t been the same.”
Katy glanced up from the mail and snarled. “I will not butt out of this. He’s my friend and friends look out for each other.”
He scrubbed his face with his hands and sighed. “Friends may look out for each other, but friends don’t tell each other what they should or shouldn’t do. This isn’t your choice; it’s Kris’s choice.” He threw his hands up in the air. “If he wants to be Adam’s booty call, then that’s up to him.”
“He’s using Kris,” she growled, shooting her husband a dirty look. “He’s just using Kris for one thing and we all know what that one thing is.”
“Oh now…wait a minute here,” he retaliated. “It takes two to tango, dear so I could just as easily say that Kris’s using Adam too. It works both ways.” He grabbed the mail and stared shuffling through it. “Why do you care anyway? You were always on Adam’s side in the first place. Don’t even try and deny the fact that you wanted him to end up with Adam.”
Katy jumped up from her seat and walked into the kitchen, but not before she hit Cale on the head. “That was before he did the unthinkable,” she huffed, grabbing the phone. “I lost all respect for him after he walked out on Kris like that.”
Cale shook his head and turned back to see what his wife was up to. “You’re not calling Kris, are you?”
She nodded, walking into the living room for privacy.
“He only left here a little over an hour ago!” he snapped, grabbing the newspaper and digging into it. “Stop butting in where you’re not wanted!”
Adam was sprawled out on the bed, his arms and legs open wide as if he were creating a snow angel, his smile as wide as it could go. He could get used to this, he really could. Hell, he was already getting used to it. Seeing Kris in his bed and in his house sure beat seeing him only in his dreams. At least this was reality. As screwy as it was, it was still reality.
Yet again, he lingered in the aftermath of their sexual romp.
As soon as Kris set foot on his porch, Adam grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the house, slamming the door shut and then slamming Kris’s body up against it. They didn’t say one word to each other the entire time either.
They started out having sex right in the foyer and then ended it in the bedroom, on the floor at the foot of the bed. It was like something out of a porn movie. Not that he watched porn movies but it was intense, rough and hot.
And all the while, William was out shopping at the mall. They still had a few hours before they had to leave for the airport and he insisted on making a run to a store he’d been dying to hit ever since it had its grand opening just two weeks prior.
Adam didn’t even ask him if William wanted him to go. And William didn’t ask him, which was a good thing since he had other things on his mind. Mainly…Kris.
Adam knew that it’d be a while before he returned to Hollywood. In fact, he probably wouldn’t be coming back until the house sold and he was required to be there for the closing. He had work to do in New York.
This would be the last time that they would see each other for a while.
And as much as he didn’t want to admit it, he was going to miss Kris.
He knew he shouldn’t be feeling that way. Kris didn’t belong to him anymore, but damn, it was hard not to miss him.
When Kris’s cell phone started ringing, Adam resisted the urge to yell for him. They still hadn’t spoken a word to each other since he first arrived. Reaching down, he pulled the phone out of Kris’s pocket and checked the caller ID before even contemplating to answer it. He wasn’t stupid.
“Hey, Katy,” he said softly into the phone.
“Is Kris there?”
He jerked the phone to in front of his face and scrunched up his nose. He could tell that Katy wasn’t in the mood to talk. Or maybe she just didn’t know who it was. “Katy…it’s Adam.”
He heard a long sigh come through loud and clear.
“Well…hello to you too.”
“Is Kris there? I need to talk to him?”
“Actually…” he trailed, turning to look over at the bathroom door. “He’s in the bathroom right now.”
“God,” she moaned loudly. “He actually is your booty call, isn’t he?”
Booty call? It took a minute for the words to actually set in, but when they did, they rang over and over again in his mind. Booty call? He wouldn’t use those words exactly, but in all honesty, they did hold true. “I take it he has filled you in on what’s been going on with us?”
“Not really,” Katy moaned. “I just kind of guessed it and of course, he isn’t one to lie…normally…so I just figured it out on my own.” She took a deep breath and expelled it loudly. “I’ll call him later. Goodbye.”
“Katy!”
“Yeah?”
“Can I ask you something?” he questioned, closing his eyes and rolling over to his side. “Why is it that you don’t want to talk to me? At your wedding, you made it perfectly clear that you’re pissed at me about something and for the life of me, I can’t figure out what it is.”
Katy didn’t make any attempt to answer his question, which made him even madder. How could they work out whatever it was that needed to be worked out if he didn’t know what it was about?
“What have I ever done to any of you, Katy?” The sound of silence was starting to wear on his patience. “Walking out of Kris’s life was the hardest damn thing I have ever done but I did it because it needed to be done. You know that, you were there to see what was happening to him.”
“You need to leave him alone, Adam,” she whispered with authority.
“He’s a big boy, Katy,” he retorted. “I’m pretty sure he’s capable of making his own decisions.”
“Evidently Adam…” she trailed, clearly becoming frustrated with the conversation. “He doesn’t make very good decisions, does he?”
He knew a slam when he heard one, and as far as he was concerned, that was definitely a slam. “And to think I actually considered you to be a friend,” he mumbled, shaking his head.
“Just tell him I called.”
The phone went dead. He pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it for a few good minutes. He couldn’t figure out what the hell had just happened. What had he even done?
“Is that my phone?”
Adam turned quickly to see Kris making his way towards him with a frown on his face.
“It is, isn’t it?” He grabbed the phone out of Adam’s hands. “What’re you doing?”
Quite honestly, he hadn’t a clue to what he was doing. He hadn’t a clue to what they were doing either. “Katy called,” he mumbled.
“What?” he gasped, opening his eyes wide. “Please tell me you didn’t answer it.”
“I answered it.”
Kris threw his head back, clutching his phone tightly to his chest. “Why would you do something so stupid as to answer my cell phone, Adam?” Kris slowly brought his head down to look at him. “No one is supposed to know about this.”
Adam shrugged, showing his indifference. “If no one is supposed to know, then why did she know?”
“God,” he moaned, turning his back and heading to the door of the bedroom. “I can’t deal with this right now. She’s pissed at me already about doing whatever it is that I’m doing with you. This is only going to add fuel to the fire.”
“Why the hell is she pissed about this? It’s none of her damn business,” Adam threw back, getting frustrated with everyone and everything. “And furthermore, what did I do to her?” he trailed, scratching his forehead. “I have no clue about what I’ve done that’s made her so damn mad at me.”
Kris took a step out of his room and turned around. “Just forget about it. She’s pissed at me right now and unfortunately, she’s just taking it out on you too.”
Adam heard what Kris said, but it still didn’t make any sense. Nothing made sense. He turned to look out the window while he thought about everything that had happened in the last couple weeks.
“Am I just a booty call to you?”
Adam’s head flew back to face him. He could tell that just the thought of being a booty call was upsetting to Kris. His face was evidence of that. “I don’t know how to answer that,” he said carefully, making damn sure he didn’t confirm or deny his suspicions.
“You just did,” he whispered.
Before he could reply, Kris was out of his line of vision and out the front door.