Of moonshine and memories | BoyXBoy

Chapter fifteen

For the next few days, we slipped into something that almost felt like normal.
I'd go to work, come back to find Lucian lounging around, and we'd spend our nights together. Talking. Smoking. Having sex. Eating takeout on the couch like some ordinary couple.

It was a life I didn't know I needed, and one I knew he wasn't used to either.

But Lucian wasn't the type to sit still for long. I could see the restlessness in his eyes, the way he'd pace the apartment when I was gone. He wasn't built for waiting around, and I knew he was getting bored.

That's when it hit me. I thought about taking him to the old warehouse where we first met, twelve years ago, at a party neither of us should've been at. We were barely adults, the kind of kids who didn't care about the next day, let alone the future. Everything back then felt reckless, wild. We had nothing to lose and everything to throw away, but we didn't care. We were invincible or at least we thought we were.

It was a stupid idea to go back there. Maybe I was just desperate to hold onto something, to remind us both of what we used to be. Maybe I thought if we could revisit that part of our lives, we could carry it forward, without losing what we had now.

At that moment I didn't care about the risks.

"Get dressed." I said one evening, keys already in hand. "We're going out."

Lucian raised an eyebrow, intrigued but suspicious. "Out? Where?"

I flashed him a grin. "You'll see. Trust me."

He didn't smile back, not fully, but there was a flicker of something familiar in his eyes. Curiosity, excitement, maybe even nostalgia. As reckless as the idea was, I knew he was in.

The engine hummed softly as we drove through the city, streetlights flashing in and out of view. I kept my eyes on the road, but my mind was miles away, back to the first time I saw him. It was at said party...If you could even call it that. More like an illegal rave thrown together in an old, abandoned warehouse. I was barely out of high school, barely old enough to be there.

I remembered that night so vividly. I was already half-wasted, stumbling through a crowd of bodies, the bass thumping loud enough to make my head spin. It was the kind of chaos I loved back then. Reckless, lawless, like nothing else mattered.
And then, there he was.

Lucian.

Barely eighteen, but he carried himself like he knew everything about life. He was loud, confident in a way that drew me in instantly. He had this smile that made it seem like he was in on some joke no one else got, and I couldn't help but want to be part of it.

We got wasted together that night, laughing at everything and nothing. I didn't even remember what we talked about, only that I couldn't stop looking at him, couldn't stop wanting to be near him. It was as if the whole room faded, and there was only him.

By the end of the night, we hooked up in some dim corner of that warehouse. It wasn't anything special, not in the way people talk about their firsts. But it was the start of something that neither of us knew how to define.

After that night, we were inseparable. Best friends, maybe even more. He was the closest thing to a relationship I'd ever had, back then and even now.

I glanced at him from the corner of my eye as we pulled up to a red light. He was staring out the window, the faint glow of the streetlights reflecting off his face. In that moment, sitting there next to him, I could still see traces of the kid I met all those years ago.

And despite everything that had happened since, despite the distance and the mess we were in now, I felt that same pull. The same connection that had kept me coming back, no matter how much time had passed.