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“Hey. I didn’t expect to see you tonight.”
“Good surprise?” Lee asked, like he was honestly not sure. Huh.
“Great surprise,” Alex told him, and the line of Lee’s mouth relaxed slightly in response. “But I thought your mum and sisters were staying over?”
“They are. Bit of a tight fit, though—four people to a bed, and I didn’t want Shelly to sleep on the carpet. She said she didn’t mind, but, you know.” Lee lifted one shoulder in a shrug, and Alex nodded, not quite sure what he was supposed to do with his hands. Put them in his pockets? Put them on Lee? The air felt heavy with something Alex couldn’t quite pinpoint.
“What did you tell your mum?” he asked, partly to fill the space between them. “About where you’ll sleep tonight, I mean.”
“The truth.”
“You mean…” Alex trailed off because—the truth. Did that mean to Lee what it meant to Alex? “How did she take it?”
A faint smile quirked one corner of Lee’s mouth. “Gave me a hug and told me to be with my boy.” The words, said lightly, were at odds with the weight of Lee’s focus on Alex’s face.
Lee’s boy.
Was this a declaration of some sort? It felt like one—and he’d told hismumabout them. Granted, Alex had told his dad, but that had been less about Lee and more about blatant defiance.
Come to think of it… Well. How often was it Lee who’d jumped first—came clean about his sexuality and his mum’s condition, admitted he’d had a crush on Alex back when they’d first met, told Alex he didn’t want this thing to end? Lee, Lee, and Lee again. And as for Alex…
He’d kissed Lee first. But how big of a risk had it really been when he’d known that Lee found him attractive? Oh, it had backfired initially, sure—and even though they hadn’t discussed it down to that level of detail, Alex didn’t think it was just because Lee had been upset about Alex taking the long way towards honesty. No, it was more than that, wasn’t it?
It was… Okay, so Lee had mistaken it for Alex using him as a gay experiment. But even after, once they’d cleared that bit up, Lee had been reluctant to act on their mutual attraction, had held on to the notion that for Alex, it was a convenient way to explore a side interest, just a bit of fun with an expiry date. And then, Christ, how quickly Lee had leapt to conclude that Alex wanted an easy out—that morning when Alex had slipped out to talk to Jeff. All Alex had needed were a few seconds to sort out his head, and by the time he’d returned to the room, Lee had been ready to let him go.
“Alex?” Lee asked, and right, yes, they were having a conversation.
Alex blinked. “Sorry. Just thinking.”
“Thinking.” Lee repeated it slowly, a careful undertone to his voice.
“Yeah.”
“About?”
Okay.Okay. Alex could do this—be the one to take the plunge, for once. He sat down on the edge of the bed and patted the space next to him, smiling. “Here, let me show you.”
Lee was watching Alex closely as he approached and sat down, their knees bumping together. Alex unlocked his phone and passed it over. “Here.”
It took a moment—Lee’s eyes narrowing at the display, a frown washing over his face. Then he glanced up sharply, eyes clearing. “Is that…?”
“Some thirty-five minutes.” Alex nodded, still smiling, and fuck, it feltgoodto put himself out there. “Give or take—traffic, for one, and I didn’t have your exact address. But it’s not like Knutsford is that big, right?”
“No, it’s… Uh. It’s not. And I live near Tatton Park.” Lee sounded like words were proving just a little evasive, staring at Alex with what seemed like a mix of hope and uncertainty.
“Tatton Park, right.” Alex took the phone to enter the revised location, and the predicted travel time dropped from thirty-five to thirty-four minutes. He glanced at Lee from underneath his lashes. “So that’s driving from the Liverpool training centre to your place, okay? It’s a bit longer from where you train to my house—some fifty minutes. So it might make sense for us to spend more time at your place than at mine, but I figure we can work out a schedule, see what makes sense. Or maybe, you know, we could look for something that’s kind of halfway, like around Birchwood or so. Not immediately, I mean. But … eventually.”
Okay, so he hadn’t quite planned to add the part about Birchwood. But fuck it—no regrets. No regrets either about tripping all over his own words, about getting tangled up in discourse markers because he wasdonetrying to satisfy his father’s voice in his head.
“Alex…” Lee drew a visible breath, his chest rising with it. He didn’t continue, though, and after a few seconds of silence, Alex ducked his head, a lot less confident all of a sudden.
“I mean—if you want?”
Lee exhaled, the corners of his eyes crinkling with a slow smile that pulled at his mouth. Without averting his gaze from Alex, he locked the phone and placed it next to them on the bed. Still he hadn’t said a word.
“Saysomething, please?”
“So, just before I left my hotel room” —Lee’s smile was fully pronounced now— “Shelly dared me.”
