Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 1

exactly what Casey was dwelling on, but Jared knew it wasn't something Casey would go for.
    "I think it's not about you forgetting after all. Or about someone else, or even you not caring. It's…" Casey bit his lower lip, something he did every time he hesitated, which wasn't often, but he did it now. Looking at Jared for a while before dropping his eyes and shaking his head, Casey pushed himself off from the refrigerator door and moved to the sink again. Jared watched him pick up the ice cream box and empty the melted content to the sink before rinsing the box and the sink.
    "It's what?" Jared asked. He had a bad feeling he was buried way over his head in something he couldn't control, surrounded by something he couldn't fix, but the silence after the outburst was actually far worse. The distance between him and Casey was almost too much to comprehend, even while there was only few feet separating them, but Jared had never felt this misplaced, this dislocated.
    "Casey?"
    "I heard you," Casey said and placed the wet box upside down in the sink, drying the paperboard before recycling it, something Jared was way too lazy to do but what Casey was a fanatic at completing. "I think the problem is that I do care. I shouldn't but I do, and I'm getting real sick of being the only one."
    Jared knew the tone now, heard it in every word and it made his gut grow ill. Genuine hurt. Plain sadness, something he'd never seen or heard in Casey but it was there now, and Jared knew without a thought that it was there because if him.
    "I'm sorry I lashed at you… It's not really your fault, because you haven't really done anything."
    "Casey…"
    "No, really… It's cool. Not your fault, Jared, you've done well," Casey smirked and Jared really couldn't dismiss the sour feel those words had. "So… You wanna fuck now or just get out?"
    "Don't do that, Casey. Don't degrade yourself like that."
    "Degrade myself ? Have you not been here for the past eight months? What else do we do but fucking? Nothing, that's what we do. No, that's what you do. I don't even know what I'm doing anymore, because it sure as hell doesn't feel like exchanging body fluids."
    "Don't talk like you've been resentful and forced to bear this. To bear us."
    "There is no 'us', Jared. There's you and then there's me and occasionally we hit it off and we get laid, but that's it. Nothing more. So, like I asked, you wanna fuck now, or do you just wanna get out?" Casey was looking straight at him now but instead of actually seeing him, it was like those eyes were looking past him. Avoiding and sheltered, so fucking wrong that it was enough to take away any desire of another round between the sheets.
    "No? You don't wanna fuck? For once, could it be you're not horny enough to take full advantage?"
    "Fuck you, Casey. Very convenient of you to point out my habits now, when you've been more than pleased to be 'taken advantage of' for months now." Jared wasn't sure if it was a good idea for him to stay, because he was close to saying something he didn't even mean and would definitely regret later, but when Casey simply pointed at the door, Jared had no intention to take the hint and get out. Casey studied him for a second or two before pushing off from the sink.
    "Fine… Then I'll leave," Casey said. He walked pass the islet, grabbed a sweater he'd thrown on a chair in the kitchen and pulled it on while making his way through the kitchen. Through the house. And Jared didn't stop him, didn't go after him, not even when he heard the front door close, or a moment later when there was a purr coming from Casey's car when he drove off from the driveway. Instead he stood in the kitchen, angry as hell and ready to break the last of the dishes scrambled on the islet.
    What the fuck just happened?
    Jared felt like he'd been tossed around by a hurricane, one shaped like the man he'd been drooling over for months now. He didn't care? Bullshit. He wouldn't be there, wouldn't still be standing there if he didn't care because he felt that if he left, then he could never get back, and that would be just so completely wrong.
    But the longer he stayed and the harder he thought about what Casey had said, the more clearly he saw the truth in everything he had heard. About not remembering and seeing other people and fucking. Being too trapped in his own ways to actually give a shit what it was Casey wanted. Or needed. Or felt.
    Now, this was the part of any human relationship Jared hated more than