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“Not a question. My point is, I’m not straight. Actually, I was wondering…”
Before Dmitri could finish his question, the door swung open and a guy walked in with low slung shorts and a skateboard tucked under his arm. His boat shoes were a size too big and his heels flopped out when he walked, and Dmitri wanted to know why he bothered wearing shoes at all, but he wasn’t about to ask.
“Back again, Mr. Foster?”
The guy grinned. “You know me. I can’t stay away.”
Dmitri felt suddenly out of place when he realized he was a newcomer. And he probably wouldn’t be the only one, but more students trickled in, and Rian seemed to know almost all of them. It was like he was intruding on some secret club, and suddenly he was very glad he hadn’t asked his question.
The one thing he didn’t need that afternoon was abject public humiliation.
* * *
“So.”
Dmitri didn’t wince, but only just. He wasn’t thrilled with being the center of attention, but Jayden had eyes like a hawk, and he commanded the room with the single syllable word. All eyes were on him, and he let out a heavy sigh.
“It’s just college.”
“Yes, but that’s where all the good shit happens.” Jayden pushed the tray of cupcakes toward him—all of them a pile of mistakes that Dmitri was pretty sure had been on purpose. Especially considering they were his favorite. His friends had left him alone for most of the week, but Dmitri was adamant about working weekends at Whipped, even if he had piles of homework to get through.
He had a feeling he’d start to notice the strain as the semester wore on, but so far, most of his teachers had gone easy on him as far as workload. A handful of short papers, a lot of reading, but those could be done late at night when he would be trying and failing to sleep.
“It’s community college. It’s not the same thing,” Dmitri said, then seized a cupcake and stuffed it into his mouth. He decided not to care about the frosting that smeared on his cheek, though he took the napkin Luca handed over and ignored the faint look of disgust on his face. Dmitri kind of liked that he was such a priss, even after living with Wilder for so long. “There’s not like ragers on the weekends or any fraternities.”
Jayden’s nose wrinkled. “That’s stupid.”
“What the hell would you even know?” Luca asked, and Jayden flipped him off with a cheerful smile. “Anyway, doing the whole party scene in college isn’t worth it. Believe me, I went there.”
“Like a hundred years ago,” Jayden muttered.
Dmitri was glad to let the conversation get off track, but he was under Jayden and Luca’s gaze again, and he rolled the cupcake wrapper into a little ball, then let it roll to the edge of the table. “I don’t know what you want me to say. The first two days were terrifying, and then the next two were not so terrifying.” He dragged a hand through his hair, then pulled on the front of his apron to smooth out a wrinkle. “I think I’m going to be exhausted by the time the semester is over.”
“Well, Jayden’s right, it’s been a damn long time since I did it, and I wasn’t good at it,” Luca told him, laying a hand on his arm for a minute. “I was stoned for almost all of it, and I spent way too much time not studying.”
Dmitri sighed, then pushed away from the baking table and moved toward the mixer. They had a wedding to cater, and Wilder was out trying to get last minute décor for the tiered cupcake centerpiece. None of them in the shop were great with the fine details, but Dmitri was determined to get the bulk of the baking done before his boss returned.
“I just want to do a good job.” He turned the mixer on low, then began to add his scoops of sugar to the butter. Watching it incorporate with the huge paddle was almost hypnotic, and he realized he missed this being his life. Not enough to go back to it fulltime—not enough to disappoint Roman and to back out of school, but he had been content there. And sometimes he’d even been happy. At the very least, he knew what to expect, and he enjoyed the fact that Wilder had never been a moving target.
His professors, on the other hand, confused him. His biology professor was enthusiastic but intimidating—about a foot shorter than Dmitri with a thick Spanish accent and hair like he’d just rolled out of a nineteen-seventies episode ofCharlie’s Angels. He made the work fun, but his expectations were on the verge of suffocating, and Dmitri had panicked more than once.
His English teacher was bland. He used little inflection and had a mental hard-on for Whitman. Spanish felt almost pointless—he’d learned a lot of it from Rose growing up, and he felt only a small measure of guilt for the easy A.
And that left his history class with Rian, and Dmitri still didn’t know what to make of the man. He was at least Raphael’s age, maybe older. His background was confusing because he’d talked about his small town, but he’d been all over the world. His opening lecture was a story about the time he and a friend had gotten drunk in Warsaw and woke up in Kyiv, then couldn’t get back across the border for six days when their passports went missing.
“I learned a lot of Ukrainian very quickly,” Rian had said and winked, “then forgot even quicker when we finally got back.”
Dmitri felt a sort of stabbing envy every time Rian talked about his adventures, because he’d been so afraid to set foot outside of his little world. Even when his father dragged him kicking and screaming out of Savannah on his misguided attempt to track down his mother, Dmitri had existed within a little bubble.
In truth, he’d never wanted to be adventurous. Even at the height of his discontent, Dmitri just wanted to settle down and be loved. Rian was bigger than him, and brighter than him, and maybe that’s why he thought about Raphael every time his teacher caught his eye and smiled. Rian saw the same things in Dmitri that Raphael did—the sorry, pathetic man who would never be brave enough, but was maybe worth caring about anyway. In Rian, he didn’t mind that friendship. It didn’t leave him aching and hollow the way it did with Raphael.
“Hey.”
Dmitri glanced up from the mixing bowl to see Luca watching him with his arms folded, and he realized they were alone in the kitchen. “Sorry. I was thinking.”
With an easy grin, Luca shook his head and leaned against the counter. “I’m going to finish up the books before I meet Wilder for dinner. Jayden already took off, but I can call someone in if you want help?”
Dmitri shook his head. “I’m good. This part I can do. Tell Wilder I’ll toss the batches I get done in the walk-in.”
