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“Peter, wow, you’re looking great.” He pulled back and ran his hand through his short blond hair, his green eyes sparkling at me.
“You look good, too,” I offered. “But I’m confused. What are you doing here? I thought you got in at Vanderbilt?”
“Financials fell through,” Millar said, shrugging. “I had to pull out at the last minute.” His lips twisted up in a gleeful smile as redness rushed up his neck and into his face. “Damn, that sounded dirty.”
I snorted, surprised to see this playful, if embarrassed, side of him. He’d always been so businesslike at Kingsley. Of course, he’d been hiding his sexuality then. He had to feel a lot freer to be himself now. I knew I did.
“I’m sure there were plenty of people ready to fill your position,” I said with a touch of innuendo, too, and we both giggled like twelve-year-olds.
“But seriously, you’re really looking great.” He waved at my face. “So confident and mature.”
I smiled. “Thanks.”
He glanced at his watch. “Hey, so what’s your morning like? I’ve still got an hour to kill before Econ.”
“Same for me, only it’s a meeting with a professor.”
His face lit up. “Awesome. What do you say you ditch that crappy vending-machine coffee—”
I tilted my head. “Is it crappy?”
“Have you tasted it? It’s terrible.”
“I haven’t yet. I was waiting for it to cool off.”
“Go on. Try it.”
I took a sip, and my face twisted up in disgust. “That cost me fifty whole cents,” I moaned.
Millar put his arm over my shoulders and steered me around. “C’mon. Let’s get somegoodcoffee and catch up. I know just the place.”
“Catch up” was a strange way to put it since we’d never been friends, but I did want to find out what was going on with Millar. He seemed like a nice guy, and I admired the way he’d come out to the entire school last year.
On the walk down to Cuppa on Cumberland, the latest coffee place to crop up, Millar rattled on about the people we knew from Kingsley who he’d already run into on campus. I realized that for someone else in the future, I’d be on that list.
“That’s about it, I guess,” he said. “Oh, wait, I saw Travis Wilkins. Have you seen him?”
I shook my head. I’d never even known Travis.
“Well, he’s looking hot. Put on some weight over the summer. I think he’s trying to bulk up for sports. Wasn’t he on the wrestling team?”
“Yeah, but don’t you cut weight for that?”
“Maybe. Oh, and I saw Marie Donatello at Stella’s Jazz Club the other night. She was holding hands with a chick. I’m pretty sure she’s a lesbian.”
“I didn’t know her. Was she in our class?”
“Oh, right!” Millar said, holding the door to Cuppa open for me. “She was a grade above us. I forgot you were only there last year.”
“Well, I’m sure there were plenty of queer kids at Kingsley,” I said, thinking of Susan. The scent of coffee filled my nose, and I breathed it in. A cup of anxiety might not be what I needed before my appointment with Marta Neuheim, but it wouldn’t hurt too much either.
“Absolutely. I wish it was a better environment for coming out. But it will be. One day,” Millar said. “And we helped make that happen.”
I’d reached the counter just as those words left his mouth. My mind hung and whirred, stuck on his acknowledgment that I was gay, too. I hadn’t come out to the school or to him. How did he know?
The barista glared at me as I stared at the menu, unable to read through the din of alarms going off in my head. Finally, I ordered a latte and stepped aside.
Once we both had our drinks, I followed Millar to a booth in the back of the coffee shop. Twinkle lights hung down from the ceiling and he sat across from me looking almost handsome in their yellow glow, despite being too thin and way too jumpy. His eyes shone and there was an angle to his jaw that was attractive enough. I wondered if he had a boyfriend. Then I wondered if Antonio or Windy might be his type. Or even Minty.
