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Something to fall back on. Another thing Nick admired about him. “You want me to take a look?”
“Sure.”
Nick expected him to turn the book around, like Gabriel would, but Adam didn’t move. So Nick took his pencil and moved to the other side of the table.
The table wasn’t tiny, but it was small enough that his thigh brushed Adam’s when he sat, and he could feel the warmth of his body in the space between him and the wall.
Chemistry. Focus.
“Here,” he said, writing the first formula on a new line. “I think you’re trying to make it too complicated. I always find it easiest to start with the element that only shows up in one reac-tant and product. Like here, it’s oxygen, so double the H-two-O
on the right side of the arrow.”
“Then I have too many hydrogens.”
“So double it on the left.” Adam did, and Nick said, “Now look at the carbon.”
They worked through the rest of that problem and then started a new one. Nick walked him through that, too. By the third, he shut up and let Adam work through it alone.
“It seems so simple now.” Adam glanced up. “You’re a good teacher.”
Nick flushed at the praise, but he shrugged it off. “Do you want to do another one?”
“Sure.” Adam started writing. When he got to the end of the line, he hesitated, his pencil stopping on the paper. He kept his eyes down. “Do you remember how I told you that my parents wanted me to pretend to be straight, after I got out of the hospital?”
“Yeah.”
“It sucked. I was determined to show them just how g*y I was. I started dating someone right away. It wouldn’t have mattered who it was; I needed a guy so I could show my parents that I was in a relationship. At the studio where I danced then, they rented the space once a week to a martial arts school. One of the instructors was a guy named Matthew. Cute as hell, built like he was born on steroids—you know the type.”
Adam set the pencil down and stopped there. His eyes were still on the chemistry paper. “I flirted with him,” he said. “I flirt with everyone—gay, straight, whatever, I’m not shy.”
Nick remembered. Adam had flirted with him the first night they met, before he even had a clue that Nick might be interested in boys.
“Was he straight?” Nick said.
“I thought he was. But he wasn’t. He’d ignore me when I flirted in public, but once he caught me in the back room and asked me out. I didn’t know anything about him, really, but he was hot, I was shallow, and that was that.”
That wasn’t that. Adam’s voice had gained tension, and Nick waited, listening, glad for the privacy and the dim lighting.
“He wasn’t out,” Adam said, “but he was a few years older.
He had his own place, so we only went there. The first time he kissed me, he was all hesitant and tentative. I thought it was charming. When he invited me back the next night, of course I went.” He shook his head. “He kissed me again, but this time it went further—a lot further.”
he spoke, his voice was gently teasing. “Do I pass muster?”
Nick jerked his eyes away. “You look great. Good. Yeah.
Fine.”
Jesus, was he going to sound like a raving idiot every time he saw this guy? Me Nick. Me like boys. Me especially like how you look in that pea coat.
Adam smiled, and it chased some of the tension from his eyes. “You look great, good, fine, too. Are you hungry?”
“Starving, actually.” He hadn’t eaten dinner before meeting his brothers, and there sure hadn’t been time once he’d gotten home. Nick reached for the keys, but he couldn’t start the car.
His brain was screaming at him. Public! Public! Public! He didn’t know whether that was better or worse than going down to Adam’s apartment. He had to clear his throat.
“Where do you want to go?”
