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Maybe it was the effect of not seeing him as he spoke. Of not letting his size and his age and his strength suggest things to me about how he felt. I was ashamed to think I had let them.
“I don’t want someone else,” I said.
He made a choked sound.
“I just don’t think of it like that,” I told him. “I mean, I know you’re older than me. I know we don’t have the same, like, high-school-prom final dance song or whatever. Not that I went to my prom. But anyway, I don’t care about that. I—” Adore you, can’t get enough of you. “I love spending time with you, and I don’t care about our ages. Unless…unless it’s that you think I’m too…that you don’t take me seriously ’cuz you think of me as a kid.”
“No,” he said slowly. “I just don’t know why you’d want me when you could have someone with less…less shit.”
“I like your shit.” He snorted. “You know what I mean,” I grumbled.
He sighed again, but this sigh sounded like capitulation, not hesitation.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll, uh, I’ll call you more.”
“You don’t have to,” I said.
“I know.”
* * *
—
Dane picked me up from work in a borrowed car, and we drove out of the city to Stormville, where Theo Decker and his partner and Dane’s best friend, Caleb Blake Whitman, lived. I was hella nervous but it felt momentous, to be going out of town with Dane, to be meeting his friends. I knew Caleb in particular was really important to him. Dane grumbled about how it was a pain in the ass to get to Stormville, but I could tell he didn’t mean it.
I’d brought a change of clothes to work with me and gotten ready in the bathroom, but I still felt self-conscious about showing up smelling like coffee and everything bagels. I said as much to Dane, and at the next stoplight he leaned over and sniffed me.
“Mmm,” he said, nuzzling my neck.
“I’m just nervous to meet them,” I said.
“You already met Theo.”
“Yeah, under false pretenses, when I lied and used him to get my sister an audition!”
He snorted with amusement.
“What’s Caleb like?”
“He’s solid,” Dane said, nodding.
“What does that mean?! That means nothing! Ugh, never mind—I’m putting on my audiobook.”
He chuckled, then slid a hand onto my thigh and squeezed gently. He left it there, a comforting weight as he wound toward the highway.
“His cooking’s a bit iffy, so proceed with caution.”
* * *
—
It was dusk when we turned onto a dusty dirt road and Dane parked in front of a faded wooden farmhouse with a screened-in side porch and huge garden sprawling from the house to the road. Lights gleamed warmly from the windows, and the air was still and quiet. It seemed unbelievable that one of the biggest rock stars in New York lived here. But then the door opened and Theo called, “Hey!” Then immediately, “God dammit, no, Solo!” as a blur of fur ran straight toward us.
Dane reached for the dog, but it streaked past him and jumped directly onto my chest, knocking me backward into the dirt. It nuzzled at my neck and whined, wagging tail thwapping against my knees.
Dane crouched beside me. “You okay?”
“God dammit, I told you I still smelled like bagels!” I said from flat on my back.
“I’m so sorry, Felix,” said Theo, suddenly at my side, pulling the dog off. “No, Solo! Sit!”
The dog dropped into a sitting position and looked up at Theo sincerely. Theo shook his head.
“Damn dog. He’s an angel with me and then he pulls shit like this. I’m really sorry. You okay?”
It took a moment to sink in that I was lying in Theo Decker’s vegetable garden, with Theo Decker looming over me, having rescued me from a dog.
“Um, yeah, fine. No harm done.”
Dane took my arm and plucked me from the ground easily. I brushed the dirt off my jeans and then offered my hand for Solo to sniff.
“Hi, buddy. Wanna be friends while standing?”
Solo licked my fingers and nuzzled my thighs. I took that as a yes.
Theo gave Dane a hug and then stood awkwardly, like he couldn’t decide whether to hug me or offer his hand.
“We can hug if you want,” I said. “Since I already hugged your dog, it seems only fair.”
Theo smiled and gave me a squeeze. He was a few inches taller than me and leanly muscled. His black hair framed his face like feathers, and his bluish-silver eyes seemed to glow in the dim light. He was intimidating even though he was being nice to me, and I decided to address the elephant in the room so I could stop thinking about it.
“Are we over the whole super-embarrassing I-lied-to-you-to-get-my-sister-an-opportunity thing, or is that still in play?”
Theo grinned.
“Nah, we’re cool. It all worked out, right?”
