Lucas bolted out of the coffee shop without looking back and raced down the sidewalk until his lungs started to burn and his legs refused to carry him any further. He stopped in a relatively deserted park between two high-rises, pressed his forehead against the cold brick wall, and tried to take a deep breath, but the air got stuck in his throat in a heavy lump of shame.

Why the hell did he do that?

The thought pounded in his temples with such relentless force that he simply couldn't take it anymore. Lucas slowly slid down the wall and sat right on the cold asphalt in the middle of the street, throwing his head back and staring at the gray sky.

"What just happened?!" he screamed at the top of his lungs, and the echo of his desperate, self-flagellating cry rang out across the quiet space.

He exhaled heavily, feeling some of the pent-up tension escape from his chest, and slowly opened his eyes, looking around. A couple of passersby froze, their eyes wide with shock; an elderly woman with a shopping cart hurried to turn away, and a young mother instinctively covered her child's ears, quickening her pace sharply away from the crazy guy.

Lucas blinked, realizing the full extent of his humiliation. He slowly got to his feet, brushed the street dust off his pants, and took a deep breath, trying to regain at least a shred of composure.

"Well, it's done and done," he muttered under his breath, forcing himself to take the first step. "It's over and forgotten. Let's move on."

He forced himself to walk, making wide circles through the neighboring blocks, trying to physically shake that absurd episode out of his head. His cheeks still burned with a treacherous heat, and his heart was pounding somewhere in his throat, but he stubbornly kept walking, convincing himself that he was just clearing his head and cooling off.

When he finally returned to the same street, his gaze instinctively drifted toward the small square in front of the hotel. And he froze abruptly.

A few dozen meters away stood Adrian. Next to him was a little girl in a bright coat. Adrian was holding out to her that very plush fox with tiny glasses that Lucas had bought just a couple of minutes ago. The girl joyfully snatched the toy, pressing it to her chest, and for a moment a soft, weary, yet utterly sincere expression flashed across Adrian's face, one that Lucas had never seen… ever?

Something inside Lucas snapped. He was overcome by a sharp, blind wave of rage and a burning, irrational jealousy.

Had he really given away his gift? To the first kid he met?

"Bastard. Son of a bitch. Public toilet."

Lucas bolted from his spot. His target was a single silhouette in the distance. Adrian was walking annoyingly slowly, but still, with every step he took, the distance between them grew inexorably.

He ran without looking where he was going. A red traffic light forced him to jump over the curb right as the sharp honks of braking cars rang out. A dense stream of cyclists blocked his path on the sidewalk, and Lucas roughly shoved them aside, ignoring their indignant shouts.

“Young man, please give me at least a dime,” said a man in smelly, dirty clothes who blocked his path, holding out his hand for some change. Lucas didn’t even slow down; he simply walked around him, nearly knocking him over, because there was only one person in his line of sight, and that person was slipping away.

Adrian was getting farther and farther away, turning into a blurry speck among the evening pedestrians. Panic squeezed Lucas’s throat with a suffocating grip. His lungs were bursting from lack of air, a throbbing, deafening pain pounded in his temples, and his legs felt as heavy as lead, but he dared not stop. The thought of losing him drove him forward with an animal, desperate force.

This frantic, chaotic rush finally spat him out at the glass doors of the hotel where they were all staying. Lucas burst into the lobby and immediately saw the elevator doors on the opposite wall begin to close slowly, hiding Adrian’s silhouette behind them.

He couldn’t wait. Lucas dashed toward the stairwell and raced up the steps, skipping two at a time, driven by a panic-stricken fear of being a few seconds too late. His heart was pounding in his throat, drowning out the sound of his own footsteps.

“I’ll kill him, I’ll beat him.”

Reaching the right floor, he saw the massive door to Adrian’s room, located directly across from the elevator, begin to close. Lucas lunged forward and, at the very last moment, wedged his foot into the opening, blocking the lock. The door sprang back with a dull thud.

Adrian spun around abruptly, his eyes widening in shock. 
Lucas stood in the doorway, breathing heavily and unevenly. His hair was tousled, his chest heaving convulsively, and his eyes…

“Are you crying?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Lucas blurted out in a disjointed, trembling voice, stepping over the threshold. “I don’t know why I gave you that stupid toy, why I ran after you, why it drives me so crazy that you gave it away, why I hate seeing Noah with you so much...” I just can’t take this anymore. Idiot. Trash. Womanizer... Oh, I’m going to lose my mind!"

Adrian tensed, casting a quick glance down the empty hallway.

“Get out,” he said firmly. “You’re drawing too much attention.”

Those words stung worse than a slap. Lucas’s eyes, though he didn’t feel it himself, filled with tears again.
Adrian endured the heavy silence. Seeing that Lucas wouldn’t budge, he sighed heavily, grabbed the guy by the wrist, and dragged him inside, closing the door tightly behind them and clicking the lock.

“Calm down,” Adrian walked over to the mini-fridge under the table, took out a bottle of cold water, unscrewed the cap, and handed it to Lucas. “Drink this. Then leave.”

Lucas obediently took the bottle. He drank the water in greedy gulps, sniffling loudly and wiping his red, swollen eyes with the back of his hand.

“What is this? Dust? Or did someone spit in my face?”

“Wha-?”

Adrian watched him from a distance, his eyes wide with astonishment. Deep down, he noted once again that Lucas was behaving in a completely immature way, like a moody teenager, but, to his own surprise, the corners of his mouth twitched into a slight, barely perceptible smile.

“You need to calm down,” Adrian began, his voice once again steady and detached. “Maybe you just don’t understand how you’ve felt about me ever since we stopped being partners. I see everything, Lucas. And I don’t want to complicate my life with a relationship with just one person.” Especially with someone I’m connected to through the university.
Lucas froze, bottle in hand. His gaze darkened.

“Do you want a relationship with me?”

“Don’t you?” Adrian smirked, folding his arms across his chest.

“Me? Of course not! What kind of romantic relationship could I possibly have with a slut?”

“…”

Silence filled the room. Lucas, now completely cooled off, gradually began to return to his usual state.

“Lucas, don’t you think that over the last five minutes, I should have slapped you at least ten times?”

“For some reason, you didn’t threaten to punch Noah in the face, ha!”

Adrian frowned, not immediately catching the connection.

“Why did you mention Noah again? What are you even talking about?”

But Lucas wasn’t listening anymore. His irritation spilled over. The conversation had long since turned into a pointless argument that was only stirring the pot.

“Enough,” Adrian replied sharply, raising his voice. “You need to leave right now. And when you get home, you’ll keep pretending you don’t know me. Just like you were doing so enthusiastically last week. And why can’t you just leave me alone? Keep seeing your Mia and all the other girls.”

Something clicked in Lucas’s head. He closed the distance abruptly, grabbed Adrian by the shoulders, and slammed him hard against the wall.

“And why are you so obsessed with this Mia?” Lucas hissed, looming over him, a note of aggression and defiance in his voice. "Have you got your eye on her too?"