I coughed back my laugh. “Umm, nah. I’m good. Thank you, though.” A moment later, he risked a glance in my direction, and I saw the unspoken question in his eyes. Smothering a grin with my hand, I asked him in a faux-serious voice, “Did you want to take a look for yourself?” I let my hand hover over the waistband of my sweatpants.
Jonas’s mouth opened and closed like a fish, and he angled toward me. “Would that be weird?”
“Oh, I think we’re well past weird now, Pickles.” I wasn’t really going to let him get an eyeful of my dick in his drunken state, but this was certainly entertaining.
He leaned closer…closer…hiccupped, and fell over, throwing his arms out in a last-ditch effort to stop himself. Arms that, unfortunately, were tangled up in his mound of blankets. I reached out and caught him just before he face planted into my crotch. A string of muffled nonsense hit my ears.
“What’s that?” I asked him as I began to prop him back up. Too slowly.
A meek voice whimpered, “Don’t feel so good,” and then he puked in my lap.
Puke aside, I’d gotten a laugh out of the conversation and took it as evidence that things were maybe not as one-sided as I’d thought. After cleaning myself and him up and getting him settled in his bed, I’d left, assuming things would be normal afterward, and started to seriously consider asking him out. I wasn’t exactly sure how that would work with him in North Carolina and me in New York, but I’d wanted to try if he was into it.
However, cue the awkward avoidance on his part after that. Where before, we’d talk or text a few times a week, I started getting his voicemail more and more. The length of time between my texts and his responses grew until eventually, I got left on read, and that was that. To say I’d been pissed was an understatement. I was mad at myself too. If I hadn’t been too chickenshit to tell him how I felt up front, maybe it all could have been avoided.
Jonas hadn’t come to the mountains this past spring, and I was sure it was because of me. I saw him once since then, when Matthew Stuckey—my business partner and best friend—and I had taken a quick detour home on our way back from a business trip to Florida. We’d stayed over Memorial Day weekend, and Jonas and I crossed paths one evening at my parents’ neighborhood barbecue. I’d refused to leave without him acknowledging my presence because I was not all about that bullshit behavior, and I’d used Matthew as the conversational icebreaker.
Matthew’s eyebrows had raised as I introduced them. “Ah, so you’re Jonas,” he’d said, his smile becoming more forced as they shook hands. Jonas’s face had drained of color, and he’d stammered a reply. Matthew was well aware of what had happened between us. His take on it all? Jonas needed to get over himself and grow up. He wasn’t necessarily wrong. But still. Matthew had walked away to talk to someone else after that, andJonas and I had a short conversation that mainly consisted of him blushing and sweating bullets. Over the course of the night, I’d caught him casting wistful looks my way, only to turn when our eyes met. So, I still had hope. I just needed some patience and a way to get him alone again so I could get inside that head of his.
Two days ago when Brooklynn had told me that Jonas would be on this trip, a quick change of my work plans was in order. The next client Matthew and I had on the calendar—an accounting firm that we’d be helping implement a new SaaS HR system—had recently pushed out their timeline by a few weeks, and we already had all our prep work done. It was the perfect time for me to take some vacation days, so I packed a duffel, bought a ticket, and hopped on a plane. Matthew’s parting words to me at the airport were, “Do what you gotta do, just please, for the love of God, don’t come back without your balls, man.”
I understood the sentiment well enough, and appreciated his concern, but I wasn’t going to miss my chance to see Jonas. The little fucker was altogether too squirrelly and skittish around me, and I wasn’t having any more of that. He had no choice but to be near me up here in the mountains, and I planned on taking full advantage of that fact.
4
Phoenix
“Ma?” I wandered into the kitchen after greeting everyone else and spending some time shooting the shit with them in the family room. Jonas had sat on the opposite end of the couch, side-eyeing me every so often and rubbing his palms along his shorts, one of his nervous tics. I’d smiled each time I caught him, hoping to calm his nerves. But that appeared not to have helped at all. I’d be surprised if he had any skin left on his hands by the end of vacation if he kept up with it.
My eyes widened as I took in the food spread on the counters that I was assuming my mom had just spent the last hour preparing, since we were in danger of otherwise being underfed this evening.
“Good lord, Ma. Were you planning on two weeks of leftovers from this one meal?” She swatted me on the rear with a towel and then put me to work loading the dishwasher.
“Did you need something, sweetie?” she asked a few minutes later. “Or did you just come in here to help?”
“What?” I stuck the last few glass bowls on the bottom shelf and shut the dishwasher door. “Oh, umm, so, what’s the bedroom situation this time? Where’s everyone sleeping?”
Her brows furrowed. “Well, let’s see.” She folded the towel in her hands in half and hung it on the oven handle, then leaned against it. “Your father and I are in the purple room. Amberly, James, and Maddie are in the yellow room. Brooklynn is in the blue room. Jonas is in the green room.” She’d named the bedrooms based on the bedding and curtain color. “That puts you in…hmm. Let’s go have a chat with everyone.”
She pushed off the edge of the stove, and we walked back to the family room. She clapped her hands twice as we entered. “Listen up, my beautiful people. Two things. The first is that we eat in ten minutes. The second is that we need to figure out the sleeping arrangements now that Phoenix is here.”
“That’s simple,” Brooklynn said. “We fit before. You and Dad have the main bedroom. Jonas in the green room. Phoenix in the blue room, and me, Amberly, and Maddie in the…oh yeah…” She grinned at James, who shrugged and smiled back.
Ma nodded. “Right. Brooklynn, you can sleep in the purple room with us. It has a huge bed. Throw some pillows down as a barrier, and you’ll be good to go.”
“Mom. No. Dad snores like a chainsaw.”
“Hey now!” Dad exclaimed, and Brooklynn blew him a kiss.
“I can sleep on the couch,” Jonas piped up, patting the cushion softly. “It’s comfortable, and I’ll be fine.”
“No, you won’t,” I interjected before anyone else tossed around any ideas. “There’s no need for that. Ma and Dad in the main. Amberly, James, and the rug rat in yellow. Brooklynn in blue. Jonas and I in green.”
I was a genius when I needed to be. I planned to try to work my way through Jonas’s misguided avoidance shields over the next two weeks and see where his head was. This bedroom situation was perfect. That would give me at least eight hours a day where he wouldn’t be able to completely avoid me, even ifthose happened to be overnight hours. I’d take whatever I could get.
“That would work, I suppose,” Brooklynn said slowly, eyeing me with the tiniest amount of suspicion. I widened my eyes, aiming for innocence, and she narrowed hers further. “Assuming that you’re okay with it, Jonas,” she added, turning toward him.
He gulped quietly and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, sure. That makes sense.”
