Page 36 of Snow Globe Secrets

“It’s not?” I couldn’t look at him, so I concentrated on our knees instead, lined up in alternating shades of gray. The wind howled from behind me. It was the only sound I could hear aside from the beating of my own heart. I don’t know how long we sat there staring down at our hands and knees before Austin spoke.

“Tell me how I make you feel, Randall?”

“Why …” I said, and I had to clear my throat, embarrassed at the emotion there. I’d been going for obstinance. I had failed.

“Because I’m gonna tell you how I feel, and I don’t want to be left hanging.”

The words escaped me before I’d really thought them through, which was so unlike me. “You make me want to sing.”

“Sing?”

“Yeah, I putter around this place all alone. I cook, I do laundry, I drag firewood in. I even use the bloody hot tub outside every once in a while. But with you here? I want to compose a musical to all of those activities, and I want you and me to sing and dance our way through them.” I paused, my heart pounding in keeping with the exuberance I felt. I tempered my emotion, though I couldn’t stop the beating of my heart. I sighed.

“I thought I wanted to be alone. The man who’d been the biggest part of my life just wasn’t anymore, and that barely phased me. I didn’t reach out to my old friends, your parents,” I clarified. “Or my homophobic family. My only friends are thousands of miles away, writing code, which we can still do together from any computer even if the company we work for keeps getting bigger and changing names. I even bought a home that is not very conducive to having guests over.”

“Oh,” Austin said softly before letting out a shuddering breath. “When you left me up there”—he tilted his head toward my bedroom loft—“I just assumed you were mainly wigging out about my parents, of course.”

“I should be wigging out about your parents! And I should be wigging out about telling you all this, about telling you anything. I should be wigging about your age and … and … Bloody Christ, Austin, we just met!”

Another gust of wind hit the side of the house, and Austin got up, grabbing the neatly folded blanket off the chair before sitting at my side and wrapping us both up in it. His bare chest was cold, but I felt an immediate warmth as he snuggled into me, and I put my arms around him.

He rested his head on my chest.

“I like you,” he said simply. “I like you, and I want to keep getting to know you, and I get that makes your life complicated. But maybe … You’ve tried to simplify your life here, and I get that, too, but that’s not how it works. That’s not how it should work. I mean, you’re up here trying to hide, and my mother still hunted you down, for God’s sake. Sometimes messy life just gets in the way.”

“I didn’t want to see them,” I said quietly, unable to keep the truth from coming out.

“I know that.”

“You do?”

“I mean, I think I do. I was mostly asleep, but I didn’t dream it, did I? You said you couldn’t come out to my dad? I can’t imagine that was because you thought he was homophobic. Is it because … Did you have a crush on my dad, London?”

I nodded but didn’t respond otherwise, requiring him to look up at me.

“So is this all some weird …”

“No! It absolutely is not. You’re nothing like your dad. No, that’s not entirely true. You have his kindness.” I sat up straight, forcing him to do the same. “But I need you to know that my very first thought was that you looked nothing like your dad. And more to importantly, when I got to England, I realized what I felt for your father … He was the first person, one of the only people in college, who was nice to me, hell, one of the only people to even pay attention to me. I didn’t have a lot of other friends, so I inflated how I felt about your dad. I know that now. Hell, I knew it years ago, but I just felt too … awkward to reach out to them after all those years. Hi, it’s Randall. I ran away from you, but I’d like to be friends again. Oh, by the way, I’m married now. To a man.” It wasn’t that funny, but I scoffed at my foolish younger self.

“That is not what this is about, Austin. I don’t know what this is about.”

He leaned in and kissed me, lightly, tentatively. I felt like my body was exploding just the same. I relaxed into his touch and was about to encompass him in my arms and pull him down with me when he pulled back.

“This is about you and me. We may have just met, but there’s something here. Something worth exploring, isn’t there?”

“I …” I wanted to say that yes, of course there was, but what came out instead was, “I’m not very good at relationships. I’ve only had the one, and as it turns out, I was in it for the wrong reasons.” Instinctively, I was pushing him away, but why wouldn’t I? The beautiful young man in front of me couldn’t really want to explore something with me. He’d see that once his snowy world consisted of more than two people and one romantic fireplace.

“That’s okay,” he said with such kindness in his tone and such a soft smile on his face that it made me feel as if he understood everything about me. It hurt to have those eyes on me, embarrassed as I was with what he might see.

“I’m not in a rush,” he continued. “HU is less than an hour from here. I get that you’re not out, and I would never rush you in that, so if we ever get out of this cabin, I think we just put whatever this is on pause when we get to Jersey. But after the holidays ...”

“After the holidays?” I repeated as he paused, my voice sounding rough, like the new year was the sexiest thing I could imagine. What I couldn’t imagine was what the vibrant young man next to me could possibly see in someone quite literally old enough to be his dad. One look at how he’d reacted to my tone had all my doubts floating away.

”Maybe …” he shrugged but then lifted himself until he was straddling me, his hands on my shoulders, his face quirked in a vibrant smile. “Maybe we can find the time to get to know each other. It doesn't have to be complicated. There don’t have to be expectations. We just”—he started to rock his hips, seating himself above me and looking me in the eyes—“get to know each other.

“For instance, I don’t even know what you like.” The rocking was becoming distracting, but his next words brought my whole body to attention. “Should I get myself ready, so I can sit on your dick and ride you just like this?” His moves were pointed as he ground into me on those last three words.

My glasses started to fog up as he continued to move, crushed our laps together, and squeezed his thighs to mine.