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“You’re such a pretender.” It was meant as a joke, but ended up hitting too close to home, because the award for pretending went to me.
“Where to next?” he asked.
“Now we visit the city’s hidden treasure. Do you have room for some of the best Dim Sum you’ve ever had?” I could’ve sworn I heard his stomach say yes. “Come on.” I caught his hand, steering us out of the fray to walk the dozen or so blocks to Dim Sum Palace.
The street was fairly residential, the restaurant itself sat below a three-story apartment building, and the inside wasn’t much to write home about. I knew the owners, though, and had considered it my lunch sanctuary ever since stumbling in there for directions my first week in New York. I hadn’t brought anyone there before. It was my something-for-me, but I couldn’t wait to share it with Cole.
We were in luck, my usual table by the window was available, so we showed ourselves over with a nod from Mr. Yan.
Cole rubbed his cold palms together to generate warmth while I shrugged my coat over my shoulders. Without thought, and as natural as it had once been, I covered his hands with mine, providing added friction. “You were always more warm-blooded than me,” he said.
“That was a lie I told so you’d let me into your bed at night,” I confessed. Franklin hated the heat, and for him, anything above freezing was a degree too hot. We’d survive below mountains of quilts and roaring fireplaces at night. During the day, we took advantage of his absence by turning the house into a tropical oasis with the heat set to maximum combustion. Mom would join in on the action, too.
“You think I didn’t know that?” Cole snorted, picking up his menu. “I’d end up being the one keeping your lanky limbs warm.”
My phone vibrated on the table with a text from Daniel. I powered it down and shoved it into my pocket. Cole’s cell phone chimed next, and at the shake of my head, he turned it off, too.
He relaxed in his seat, drumming his fingers on the table as he worked out what to say on the topic. “Don’t you at least want to let him know you’re alive? You’re going to have to face him eventually.”
“I sent him a text earlier saying I was with you. The rest will have to wait.”
“Alright,” he said, “but I get the feeling the silent treatment is more about punishing yourself than Daniel.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked. Cole waited until the server had filled our kanto mugs with hot tea before continuing.
“You were always harder on yourself than other people. You make a mistake and you can’t seem to let it go, but you’d brush aside my wrongdoings with such grace.” He folded himself in closer. “You remember the kiss last night and you feel bad about it, don’t you? Is that why you’re avoiding him?”
In all honesty, I didn’t feel bad. Maybe because I hadn’t truly faced the kiss yet. That would change once I forgave Daniel. Once I forgave him, I would then be the one needing to be forgiven. Letting go, forgiving him, would have to wait. I wanted to feel good just a little longer. “He could’ve shown up just this once. I mean, he could’ve even called.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Cole agreed. “But if he had shown up, I wouldn’t have, and I don’t regret a thing about last night.” His gaze turned predatory, and my insides clenched around a knot of hunger having nothing to do with needing to be fed, at least not with actual food.
Our waiter returned to take our order, buying me precious minutes needed to divert my thoughts away from the images coming back to me from last night. Of the darkness, both his and the night sky. Of his rough handling of me, and the way my heart had skipped a beat because of it. Of the admissions I’d made,and the one I hadn’t.
“Do you remember that time Dylan came over to study with me?” Cole asked once we were alone again, forearms pressing into the table. “And you’d come up with every excuse to barge into my room and interrupt us?”
“Yeah, because the only studying happening in that room was the study of your tonsils.”
Cole shook with laughter. “You were such a brat about it. Popping your head in to remind me my company had to leave before dinner. And showing up every fifteen minutes after that to let us know how much time we had left.”
“And when you locked your door, I climbed the tree outside your window and knocked on the glass so hard it webbed.” I must have been twelve, and it was the first friend he’d ever brought home. I hated it from the start, because until Cole had started high school, all we’d needed was each other. Our two-year age gap didn’t matter. And when Dylan came over, it felt like Cole had forgotten about me. Catching them kissing through the window had raised the stakes. I’d been equal parts angry, sad, and murderous. I’d thought the fire roaring in my gut, and the tears budding behind my eyes came from believing Dylan was taking my brother—and my best friend from me. In reality, it had been so much more than that.Somuch more. It had taken a while longer to understand that, though.
“He never showed up again after that,” Cole said.
“Yeah, I’d scared him off,” I replied, feeling the same measure of accomplishment I’d felt back then.
“No,” he said solemnly. “He’d called you weird, and I told him no one was allowed to speak about you like that.”
I smoothed an invisible wrinkle out of the tablecloth. “Well, if it’s a battle of the crazies you want, how about the night you stormed in and cut the phone line in my room with a razor blade because I’d made another friend.” I was fourteen, a freshman in high school by then, and scared of my ever-shifting and intensifying feelings for Cole. Figured I needed some other friends. Jeremy was cool, too. We’d shared a lot of the same interests.
“I was jealous,” he said, stating the obvious, like his jealousy was the good answer for everything. It normally was with us. I’d purposely keep Jeremy on the phone late, laughing loud enough to be heard from Cole’s bedroom next door.
Jeremy was a victim of my obsession with Cole. And maybe Dylan was a victim of Cole’s obsession with me, but neither of us understood that at the time. We were just boys, then young men, trying to hang on to what we had for dear life, even while what we had was changing.
My mother could be added to the list of casualties. And Franklin. And maybe Daniel, too.
I peered at Cole from beneath my lashes, careful not to let the neighboring tables overhear. “You were my first, but I wasn’t yours.” I could tell by the way he’d moved inside me once he’d finally given in. So sure, so confident. Joy and rage had made a potent cocktail in my veins as he’d taken his time with me in bed. “I’d racked my brain trying to figure out where you even found the time to be with someone else like that, because we did everything together. The free period you had after biology? Boys’ locker room? The private, wheelchair accessible bathroom next to Mrs. Delaney’s classroom?”
“All of the above,” he said, which of course I’d eventually found out. Needing to know had driven me insane. I didn’t speak to him for days after that. Not until he’d told me who, when, and where, and swore to me it was over, and that from then on it would only ever be me.
