“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I say, thinking of my own dating disasters. “My last Grindr date showed up an hour late for dinner, then suggested we skip the meal, buy vodka, and go straight to some cheap motel.”
Connor gives me a look. “You’re kidding.”
“I wish.” I kick a twig off the path. “And the one before that spent the whole dinner playing footsie with my dick under the table until I faked a work emergency and bailed.”
“Jesus Christ.” Connor laughs. “Romance is dead.”
“It’s so dead,” I say, and he laughs again. “What about you? Any horror stories?”
Connor huffs out a breath that sounds a lot like a laugh. “I once went on a date with someone who brought their mother.”
I turn to him. “No.”
“Yes.” He grins. “They didn’t mention it beforehand. Just showed up with her and said she was screening potential partners.”
They.
Does he mean a non-binary person, or is this his way of dodging gender markers again? By now, I’m starting to think he’s doing it on purpose.
I don’t let the brief flare of frustration show on my face. I just laugh and say, “Absolutely not.”
“I’m serious,” he says. “She spent the whole dinner asking about my finances and family medical history.”
“Oh my God.”
“Yeah. There was no second date.”
I laugh again, and some of the awkwardness finally starts to loosen as we keep heading down the trail.
Then Connor says, “I’ve noticed you don’t really like being touched.”
His voice is casual, but there’s a question under it.
I glance over at him. “What do you mean?”
“Yesterday, especially at first, you seemed uncomfortable,” he says. “Tense. I couldn’t tell if I was overdoing it with the touching.”
Heat floods my face so fast it almost hurts. “That’s—that’s not what it was.”
“No?” Connor says, turning his head slightly toward me. “Then what was it?”
I stare at the ground. At the bushes growing on the sides of the path. Anywhere but him.
“I…” I start, then get stuck.
I can’t exactly say because I liked it. Probably more than I should have.
“I…”
But before I can force anything else out, we hear footsteps on the path ahead. Connor and I both turn toward the sound. A second later, Rick comes around the bend, and my stomach drops straight to my feet.
He looks up, spots us, and something in his face brightens when he sees me.
“Noah,” he says, catching my eye. “I was looking for you.”
CHAPTER 8. Connor
I tense the second I see Rick, my body reacting before my brain catches up. Noah goes completely still beside me too, like prey catching the scent of a predator. The easy, vulnerable moment we were sharing vanishes, replaced by a taut, ugly silence. Of course Rick would find us here—alone, in the middle of the woods, right when Noah was finally starting to open up.
