“I went out there a week or so ago,” Gavin said, and Jace swore his cheeks had pinked up.
Was he blushing?
“To draw the lake?”
“Yeah.” Gavin tapped his fingers on his knee.
“In December? Weren’t you freezing?”
“I sat in my Jeep with the heat on the whole time.”
Jace laughed at the mental image. “Why didn’t you finish it? You were nearly done.”
“I kept getting distracted.”
“By what?”
“You.”
His amusement died a fast death, and Jace frowned, confused. “But I wasn’t there.”
“I know.” Gavin shrugged, his dark eyes fixed on the sketch. “You weren’t there and you weren’t answering my texts. I kept thinking I’d messed up the night we went out there together. I almost ripped the page right out of the book, but I promised Mr. Rhodes I’d never do that. He said even the worst mistakes are learning experiences.”
Somehow Jace knew Gavin was talking about more than art. “I’m sorry I ignored you. I honestly didn’t do it to be mean.”
“It’s okay.” Gavin grinned, and Jace believed him. “Besides, I didn’t scare you off totally, so it worked out.”
Jace tapped the sketch. “So does that mean you’ll finish this one? Or move on to something new?”
Gavin’s eyes seemed to darken as Jace’s innuendo hit home. “I’m beginning to quite like that one, actually. I’ve got some good memories there.”
“Anything you want to share?”
“I seem to remember doing this a few times.” Gavin leaned over the sketchbook and kissed him, and Jace forgot all about the drawings in favor of Gavin’s other talents.
Jace spent more time at Gavin’s house than his own over the next two days, and that was absolutely okay with both of them. Not simply because Jace had found someone who actually liked running with him on cold mornings. They also had fantastic sex—although sex in a limited way, since Jace still wasn’t comfortable crossing the intercourse boundary—as well as very plentiful and inventive sex. But especially because he liked Gavin. They talked about everything and sometimes about nothing. He couldn’t explain why Gavin made him feel safe. Being near him quelled the riot of fear and shame in his head. Gavin gave him peace.
He also gave him his undivided attention, which seemed quite a feat for someone Jace remembered as being quite spastic. Gavin never said so, but Jace liked to think he helped quiet some of the crazy in Gavin’s mind. And Jace could be himself with no expectations of good grades and career paths.
He managed three days of peace before it began to crack in all the wrong places.
Jace had tried to get out of dinner with his family so he could spend the evening with Gavin, but Mom wouldn’t budge on it. “I only have you for a few weeks before you go back to school,” she’d argued. She didn’t ask where he went when he left the house, and he loved that about his mother. She wasn’t nosy. She trusted him. But her tolerance only extended so far, and he had to cut her slack to keep her out of his business.
He sat through two boring hours at La Cucina’s and turned the Cobb salad he’d ordered into modern art with his knife and fork. Rachel watched him and did her annoying best to include him in conversation.
“I almost forgot,” she said while Mom and Lauren debated ordering dessert. “Molly is having a party on New Year’s and she invited both of us.”
Jace nearly bit through his tongue as he chomped a piece of ice from his water glass. Molly Hutchinson had been Rachel’s best friend since second grade. She’d had a big crush on him their freshman year of high school, which he’d tolerated because of his sister. He and Molly shared a lot of friends, though, and saying no to the party would look bizarre—especially since most of their friends went to college out of state and he rarely saw them.
He had little interest in seeing his old friends right now, though. Everyone would have stories about school and the awesome things they were doing, the girls they were banging, the parties they were crashing. He didn’t want to think about school, much less make up lies about how awesome the semester had been.
“Yeah, okay,” he said.
“You’ll go with me?” Rachel asked.
“I said yes, didn’t I?”
“Actually, you didn’t. You acknowledged the invitation.”
“Then this is me accepting it.”
Dad cleared his throat—loudly. They shut up. No one ordered dessert.
At least Rachel waited until they were home to barge into Jace’s bedroom with a scowl on her face. “When I said Gavin was cute and you should hit that, I was mostly kidding, you know,” she said.