As I tried to create a coherent thought or sentence while standing in front of Brian after his very revealing statements which convinced me that he was most likely in love with me, the moment was ruined when Michael and the other guys came walking down the stairs out of Woody's.

"God dammit Brian," Michael grumbled, looking a bit teary-eyed. "Will you please talk to me?"

Brian sighed before turning around to face his so-called best friend. "I've made up my mind, Mikey. Like it or not, I'm going to New York."

"But why? New York is so far away!" I heard Michael whine before I took off across the street and down the block to the diner.

I walked in the door and looked around. Being that it was almost 9:00 on a Wednesday night, only a small handful of customers were sitting at the tables.

Debbie was standing behind the counter and came over to me. "Hey Sunshine," she said, her voice tinged with what I guessed was pity.

I was hit with a new wave of tears as I said, "Brian just said that he's moving to Manhattan."

She immediately enveloped me in her arms. "I know. I just got off the phone with Michael."

"He... he said that he was leaving to get away from me," I blubbered, practically melting in her warm embrace. "He'd rather run away than be with me. What's wrong with me?"

"Baby, there's absolutely nothing wrong with you," Debbie cooed into my ear. "You need to understand something about Brian. He-"

Before Debbie could go any further, the bell over the door rang. I could feel Brian's presence before I heard him speak.

"Justin," he called out.

I lifted my head off of Debbie's shoulder and looked over at him. "What?" I snarled.

His mouth opened a bit, and he looked a little flustered over what to say next. "I..."

Debbie took a step back and gave my shoulders a squeeze. "Why don't you sit down Sunshine, and I'll bring you a piece of apple pie? My treat."

What I wanted to do was go home, bury myself under the covers, and stay there until after New Year's.

Crying so much was making my nose run, forcing me to sniffle every few breaths. I shook my head and sniffled hard. "I don't want any pie."

"Bullshit," Brian said while taking off his coat. "I remember you telling me that apple is your favorite. Bring us two pieces, Deb."'

Debbie raised an eyebrow. "You actually want a piece of pie? It's not even a holiday."

"Put a scoop of ice cream on top while you're at it," Brian said before sitting down at the closest empty booth.

Debbie looked at me, back to Brian, and then back to me. "Well? What'll it be, kiddo?"

"Two apple pies ala mode, please," I quietly said to Debbie.

I waited until after she walked away before looking over at Brian.

"Are you going to sit down?" he asked me, gesturing to the bench seat across from him.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Why the fuck should I?"

He gave me an amused smile. "Well, unless you plan on eating your pie standing up..."

I sniffed again before resigning myself to the booth. I then pulled out several napkins from the holder on the table and blew my nose.

"Sexy," Brian said.

"Oh, shut up," I snapped at him. "It's your fault, making me so fucking upset."

Debbie brought us our desserts and smacked a check down onto the table in front of Brian. "Yours isn't free," she barked at him.

I wasn't sure if she was angry at Brian because he was moving, because he had made me upset, because he had made Michael upset, or all of the above.

"I think I can afford $3.75 for the pie," Brian said in a sardonic tone.

"Yeah, he'll soon be pulling sixty thousand a year at his fancy-ass new job at HarperCollins, not to mention a book deal and at least one-point-five million after selling the loft and Babylon," I snarked.

"La-di-da," Debbie sing-songed before going to tend to another table.

I paused with my fork in mid-air before taking my first bite. Brian was looking down at his own pie but made no move to pick up his fork, as if he suddenly realized the mistake he made ordering it.

"Aren't you going to eat that?" I asked, challenging him to consume what must have been at least 1,000 calories of sugar, carbs, and fat. "You did order it, after all. There are starving children in Africa, you know."

Brian gave me a fake smile before picking up his fork, cutting into the pie, and shoving a big bite into his mouth. He closed his eyes and sighed as he chewed, unable to hold back how much he was actually enjoying the scrumptious dessert. Health nut that he was, he couldn't deny that he had a sweet tooth.

We ate in silence for a minute or two before I asked, "How did you get Michael off your back? I thought for sure he'd be in here by now, nagging you."

"Told him I'd take him to see that new Dungeons & Dragons movie tomorrow night."

I curled my lip and shook my head. "What a child... and a nerd."

"I heard that it sucks, but he's been begging me to see it with him since he saw the first trailer on TV. The professor would never take him."

"So that's all it takes to get you to do something?" I asked, dropping my fork onto my plate with a clank. "Beg? Okay, how about this? I'm begging you, Brian: please, please don't move to Manhattan. Please."

He sat down his fork and hung his head. "Justin..."

The tears started up again. "I'll be graduating in less than six months, and after that there will be nothing and no one from stopping us from being together."

"I already told the school board I'm leaving at the end of the semester. Tomorrow is my last day, in fact. I have to go into school in the morning to grade finals, which luckily are graded automatically in the Scantron machine and don't take long to process. Once I turn everyone's grades into the office and clean out my desk, I'm done. You got ninety-nine percent on your Creative Writing final, by the way; only one question wrong. Best score of the class. Of course, your final semester grade will be an A."

"Good for me," I muttered, wiping my dripping faucet of a nose on another napkin.

"I'll grade your English Lit final tomorrow, and I bet you did great on that one, too."

Encouraging words like that from him used to make me light up like the Fourth of July, but not any more. "I probably did. Even if you did quit St. James, it's not like there's nothing else you can do for a living here in Pittsburgh."

"What else can I do, other than go and teach at another school?" Brian asked incredulously.

I shrugged. "Run Babylon full time?"

"I already spend enough time at the club, thanks. If I was there almost every single night, I'd be a full-blown alcoholic, coke head, and sex addict, a lot more so than I already am. Any other suggestions?"

"You can be a full-time novelist while still owning the club. Isn't that your ultimate goal?"

"Yes, but I'm pretty sure that the HarperCollins book deal is contingent on me taking the editor job."

I looked at my half-eaten piece of pie. "Nothing I say is going to make you stay. You really do just want to get away from me, don't you? You're so piss-in-your-pants afraid of having real feelings for me, you'd rather leave your entire life behind just so you don't have to admit how you really feel."

I noticed that Brian was looking down at his right middle finger. "Do you want to know what my tattoo stands for?"

"Okay, what's the important thing you're trying so hard to resist that you got it permanently inked onto your otherwise flawlessly unblemished body?" I asked, genuinely wanting to know.

He looked into my eyes. "This. Giving a damn about somebody. Letting someone in, letting my guard down long enough for it to result in me caring about them."

"You care about people. Michael, Debbie, Vic, Lindsay... maybe even Emmett and Ted."

"Not like-" he said before catching himself, letting out his breath in a quick whoosh of air.

"Not like you care about me?" I guessed.

He bit his bottom lip.

I threw all caution to the wind. "Brian, do you love me?"

He looked back down at his tattoo and winced, as if it had suddenly begun to hurt as much as it must have when he got it.

I waited for several seconds, but he didn't answer. His silence only affirmed my suspicions: he did love me and it scared him to death.

I wiped my eyes and blew my nose again before saying, "You can take me home now. I've lost my appetite."

Brian threw a ten dollar bill onto the table before we left the diner.

After getting into the Jeep, Brian drove us to the end of the block. Where he should have turned right to take me home, he turned left. It didn't take a genius to know that we were headed to the loft.

Once we were inside and the alarm was set, Brian grabbed the back of my neck and smashed our mouths together. We shrugged out of our coats and stripped off our clothes while our mouths continued to be fused. Our naked bodies were pressed together, both of us needing to be as close as possible. Any anger I had towards him earlier was replaced with an overwhelming need to be with him, to let him show me what he couldn't tell me.

Brian put his hands on my ass, prompting me to jump up and wrap my legs around his waist. He carried me into the bedroom and gently laid me down on the bed. He straddled me and ran his hands over my pale skin, admiring my soft, supple body.

I had no doubt that if he actually did move to Manhattan, he would miss me a lot more than he would ever admit to himself or anyone else.

Brian started kissing and licking my neck, sucking on the spot at the base of my ear that he knew drove me crazy. I was moaning and writhing on the bed, my painfully hard cock dripping onto my belly. I reached for it, needing some relief from the throbbing, but he grabbed my wrist to stop me.

"Brian, I need... please," I said, thinking maybe that time he would listen to my begging.

"Put your hands above your head. I'll give you what you need... just wait," Brian answered before continuing on down to my nipples that were just begging to be sucked and pinched. He played with them, teasing with his tongue and fingers until they felt like hard little pebbles.

He rubbed his nose down along my hairless stomach, taking in my scent that he seemed to want to memorize, and dipped his tongue into my belly button which caused me to buck my hips up and almost throw him off of me. Finally, he reached the small pool of precum on my lower belly and licked it up, seeming to enjoy it even more than he had the apple pie ala mode.

Taking the head of my plumy-pink cock into his mouth, Brian stabbed his tongue into the slit and sucked, causing me to cry out and shoot a huge load into his throat. Before I could recover, he flipped me over to taste what seemed to be his other favorite flavor.

He grabbed my ass and spread the cheeks open, burying his face between them and flicking his tongue over my pulsing hole. I pulled my knees under myself and thrust my ass back, trying to get his tongue deeper inside. Brian stopped a few moments later only to begin biting and sucking on the sensitive skin of my ass cheeks, as if he was trying to mark what he considered to be his property.

I was moaning and panting like a bitch in heat, and my dick was hard and leaking again like I hadn't come in days instead of just minutes. I didn't know how much more of his teasing I could take.

"Brian, please..." I panted. "I need you to fuck me... now. I need you inside me. Please... fuck me."

I looked at him over my shoulder and briefly wondered what was going through his head, but I also needed to have his huge cock pounding into me. That was the thing that won out in my mind as the most important objective. I could ask him questions later.

Brian looked up, his hazel eyes glazed over as if he had gotten lost in his own little world while playing with my ass. He quickly grabbed a condom and a tube of lube from his nightstand drawer, sheathing his hard cock and lubing it in record time. He warmed some of the lube on his fingers before preparing me, making sure that I was ready and open enough that he wouldn't hurt me.

I loved that he was so gentle and concerned whenever we made love... or fucked, whatever. What we did was fucking to him, but not to me. During my brief time on Liberty Avenue, I had heard countless stories from various guys about how undetached and sometimes even cruel Brian was when he fucked, but he was never like that with me. I was different from the very first time we had sex at the Library Hotel.

I thought he was going to take me from behind, but he suddenly flipped me over onto my back.

"I want to look into those baby blues of yours when I..." He paused before continuing, "...fuck you."

I didn't care what position he did it in or what term he used to describe our sexual acts, but I needed him to do it now.

He wrapped my legs around his waist before he slowly and steadily entered me until his balls were pressed against my ass. Once he was fully inside, he stopped and just stared into my eyes, a strange look on his face. I laid under him frozen, unsure of what I should do, not even daring to breathe. I thought he was going to pull out and tell me to leave, but he suddenly blinked and started to slowly rock in and out, so slowly that it felt like he was mapping every inch of me with his huge cock.

Several glorious seconds later, Brian smiled down at me and said, "I want you to always remember this, so that whoever you're with, I'll always be there."

I couldn't hold back the tears that started to fall after hearing him say that, because it sounded a lot like he was saying Goodbye, don't forget me. I noticed that Brian's eyes were also shining with unshed tears of his own. He leaned down and captured my lips, reaching deep into my mouth with his tongue. He sped up his thrusting, changing his angle to hit my prostate every few strokes.

We had been going at it for quite a while when he finally grabbed my throbbing shaft and stroked it in time with his thrusts. Brian broke the kiss and looked deep into my eyes, whispering "Now" before our simultaneous orgasms hit.

He rested his head in the crook of my neck, puffing out hot breaths of air onto my sweaty skin. I wrapped my arms around him and tightened my legs around his waist, silently willing him not to move or ever leave me. Tears continued to pour out of my eyes, and I cried myself to sleep with Brian still on top and inside of me.