Page 61 of Summer Holiday Lifeline

Myles’s breathless “maybe not” was worth every second of the slightly blue balls Steven was about to suffer for having cut off their make-out session sooner than he’d intended.

“Right,” Myles said after a moment when Steven—valiantly, he thought—refrained from kissing him again. “A-book-counting we shall go.” He held out a hand, like he expected Steven to take it and pull him to his feet.

Steven obliged, and even helped him straighten his T-shirt and button up the overshirt. He couldn’t be blamed if he interspersed the redressing with a few pecks to Myles’s fine, fuzzy torso before covering it up with the annoying T-shirt, though.

“The layers were an interesting twist,” he observed as he slipped the last button through its hole.

“What’s wrong with layers?”

Steven shrugged and patted Myles’s chest. “Didn’t say there was anything wrong with it. Just wasn’t expecting it on a date.”

Both of Myles’s eyebrows rose.

“Never mind.”

“Oh.” Myles clasped Steven’s wrist before he could step away. “I’m minding. How many dates have you had with men old enough to be your father?”

Steven squirmed. “I wasn’t meaning to⁠—”

Myles kissed him, and he let that happen, because forceful Myles was almost as good as melting Myles. When they parted, he gazed into Myles’s eyes.

“First of all, my father would be…” He did some maths in his head. “Fifty-one, so older than you.”

“By four years.”

“Oh.” Steven stared at him. “Oh!”

“So I remind you of your father.”

“God no!” He actually laughed, because Myles was opposite in just about every way from Steven’s short, bookish father who left chaos so much room in his life he’d ended up with a literal labyrinth of book-filled boxes in his basement. And still he’d managed to ground Steven’s artist mother in a way that made him seem old and set in his ways.

“But I am old enough to theoretically be⁠—”

“Shut up.” Steven flattened a palm over his mouth and grinned. “It’s a number. In all the ways that matter, you are way younger than I think my father ever was. And even than I am, in some ways. Just not in the wearing an undershirt way, because yeah, that’s an old-guy thing.”

Finally, Myles reared his head away and Steven let his hand fall from his face to let him speak. “So I should stop wearing a T-shirt under my button-up?”

“No. Wear what you like. When I want you naked, you will get naked.”

“Hmm.”

“That sounded bossy, didn’t it?”

“It did. But I’m surprisingly okay with it. Which.” He cocked his head, still carefully studying Steven. As if this new angle would make what he was seeing more comprehensible in some way.

“Which you don’t quite get,” Steven offered.

“I don’t quite, no. I’m used to being the aggressor, I guess. Also, I doubt Ozzy and I talked this much about our feelings in all the years we’ve known each other.”

“And this is our second date.” Steven tweaked the row of buttons on Myles’s shirt again. “If it’s any consolation, Jake has taught me a great many lessons in not beating around the bush about things. So I don’t anymore. Makes things less… messy.”

“But I am messy, Steven.”

Steven waved his arms around the room, deliberately refocusing the conversation. “I’m messy. Look around you.”

“I meant on the inside.”

He should have known Myles wouldn’t be led off track that easily. “Aren’t we all?” He spent a fair space of time fiddling with Myles’s perfectly tidy button-up.