Coda Books 04 - Strawberries for Dessert (MM)

him toward me—and he came. He let me wrap my arms around him. My face was against his stomach, and his hand was in my hair, holding me against him, and any control I had been trying to maintain was gone. I let myself cry, not caring where we were or who was around to see.
    “Please don’t leave me again. I can’t stand being apart. I miss you so much.”
    For some immeasurable amount of time, it may have been only seconds, or an hour—whatever it was, it was far too short—he held me.
    “I miss you too, Jon,” he whispered at last, “but nothing has changed.”
    And then he let me go. He walked away, out of the coffee shop and out of my life. Again. By the time I had composed myself enough to look up from the table, he was gone.

Date: August 6
    From: Cole
    To: Jared
    He knows where I am. He knows how to find me. But he doesn’t. I love him, Jared, more than I can say. He says he loves me too, but still he let me go.

    I HAPPILY quit my job at the accounting firm and submerged myself in my new role as Cole’s accountant. It took several meetings with Chester—and Cole hadn’t lied. He really was an arrogant, homophobic asshole. But it was also obvious that he was thorough and incredibly honest, and I had to admire him for that.
    It took me a bit to brush up on personal accounting and to get a grasp on where all of his money was. There were multiple holding accounts, but only one account that he used actively. It had to have enough in it at any given moment to cover spontaneous purchases or traveling expenses, but not so much that it would be disastrous if his debit card was lost or stolen. There was an account for his mother. Her stipend was deposited into it at the first of each month, and she spent every cent. There were accounts set up for each of the housekeepers at his various homes. I realized then that they did much more than clean.
    They were more like property managers, and he paid them generously, although he probably didn’t even know it. They used their accounts to pay expenses on the properties as needed. One of my jobs was to make sure they had enough to cover those expenses but didn’t take advantage of the easy access to his funds.
    I realized something else. He really did have a lot of money. He was also right when he said that it would have been unbelievably easy for me to steal it and nobody ever would have known. Needless to say, I didn’t even consider it.
    The weeks went by. There were still days when I missed him like crazy—days when the tiniest things would make me ache for him. I missed dinner together and having him laugh at me and just waking up next to him each and every morning. But there were other days when I could think of him and smile, and that pain in my chest would be almost bearable.
    I missed the sex too. The two were not necessarily connected. On multiple occasions I debated visiting the bathhouse, but in the end, I never did. Somehow I felt that finding a new partner, even an anonymous one in the glory hole of a bathhouse, would be the final straw. It would be admitting defeat, accepting the fact that I had lost him forever. I wasn’t ready to do that yet.
    I found that I could live vicariously through his accounts. He used his debit card for everything. Although it took a couple of days for the charges to come through, I could piece together a picture of what he was doing. I knew at all times which city he was in. I saw when he made a purchase for eight thousand dollars at a gallery in New York, and wondered what exactly he had bought. I saw when he ate at his favorite restaurant in Paris, and I wondered if he had been alone.
    I knew it wasn’t necessarily healthy, but it helped me cope. It gave me a connection to him, however tenuous.
    My days had no discernible rhythm. My time was my own. He had given me a freedom I hadn’t had since college, and I reveled in it. I slept late. I donated most of my suits to Goodwill, although I kept every single tie he had bought for me. I wore jeans or shorts, like a regular person. I didn’t shave every single day. Sometimes my house felt like a tomb, and I would take my laptop to the coffee shop to work.
    I still jogged almost every day, but rather than rising at five in the morning to beat the Arizona heat, I often waited until nine or ten at night, after the sun had set.
    And finally, nearly a year after he had given me the gift certificate, I went skydiving. It was at once the most frightening and the most