“Hal’s apartment.”
“Who’s Hal?”
Skyler looks down at his lap, messing with the frayed knee of his jeans. “My other security guard.”
“You’re the worst,” Trevor tells him.
He doesn’t mean it though. He really doesn’t.
And Skyler must know, because he laughs quietly and reaches out to trace one finger delicately over the shell of Trevor’s ear. He quickly seems to realize what he’s doing and pulls away with a sheepish expression, but Trevor’s still holding his breath long afterward. Because. Whatwasthat?
“I’m surprised you walked all the way down here to get me,” he finally says, trying to recover.
Skyler shrugs. “I like walking. And it’s not that far. The driveway curves, and the trees hide the house, but it’s right up here.”
“Uh-huh,” he says. As they keep driving.
“Trevor?”
“What?”
“Please don’t feel weird or anything about the house, okay?”
Damn. Skyler can read him like a book.
He shakes his head and tells him, “I make no promises.” But when he glances over, Skyler’s giving him a serious, pleading look. “Yeah,” he amends. “Yeah, okay.”
“I’m still me.”
For some reason, Trevor’s forgotten how to breathe again, but he manages to say, “I know.”
He tries not to let his eyes grow too wide when the mansion comes into view. He expected this, after all. But as Skyler lets him inside, he can’t help but gape in the entryway at all the open space.
As Skyler leads him farther through the house, Trevor takes note of the expensive looking art, a far step up from the musical posters that once lined Skyler’s walls. The abstract paintings look kind of dumb to him, but Skyler’s always been more artsy than him, and he likes that.
They round a corner.
“So what do you want to get for din—” Trevor cuts himself off and freezes in the doorway to the kitchen. “—ner.”
“Huh?” Skyler says, turning back to him.
There’s food everywhere. Bowls and cutting boards and utensils spread across all the countertops. It looks like Skyler’s auditioning forTop Chefin here. And why? For him?
Is this a date?
No. No way.
Skyler loves to cook, that’s all. Trevor remembers teaching him the basics when they lived in the house with the rest of the band, because at first, Skyler could barely make toast. But Skyler wound up getting so into it that soon he’dfilled their kitchen with actual cookbooks, and whenever they had a free night (which was rare), he’d make dinner for all the guys.
And that’s how it always was with Skyler. He throws himself whole-heartedly into everything. Anything he decides he’s interested in, he becomes insanely good at.
When he decided he loved Trevor, he was insanely good at that.
Trevor realizes he hasn’t moved from the doorway and Skyler’s watching him curiously. “When you said, ‘come over for dinner,’” he starts, feeling incredibly awkward now, “I figured you’d order takeout. But here you are making a whole ass meal.”
With a straight face, Skyler says, “Your ass is a whole meal.”
Trevor gapes at him. Then Skyler breaks, laughter spilling out of him uncontrollably, and that makes Trevor lose it too. What a way to break the tension.
