The Delicious Series: The First Volume

by Stella Starling

  Nick would still end up back in Seattle.

  And Jeremy wouldn’t.

  “Ava’s the reason I’m moving,” he said, answering Beck. “Heather’s decided to take her old job back. Just got off the phone with her. She and Ava are flying out next week.”

  “I’m happy to hear it,” Beck said, the smile coming through loud and clear in his voice. “I miss my best girl. I’ll have to get in touch with Heather once they’re back so I can take Aves to a Mariners game.”

  “She’ll like that,” Nick said. Thanks to Beck, Ava had practically grown up at Safeco Field. “Heather says she’s been struggling in school here, so the move will be good for her all around.”

  Which was the important thing, as far as he was concerned, even if it hadn’t been Heather’s motivation for going back.

  “Ava’s having trouble in school?” Beck asked, sounding genuinely shocked.

  For a man who had no interest in having kids of his own, Beck had all but adopted Ava from birth. Since both Nick and Heather were only children, he was the only “uncle” she had, and Beck had embraced the role with the same dedication as he did everything else he cared about. Nick couldn’t ask for better extended family for his daughter, even if it wasn’t by blood.

  “Your girl is a fucking genius, Nick,” Beck said earnestly. “There’s no way first grade should be a problem for her.”

  That’s what Nick had thought, too, but it was good to hear Beck say it. He couldn’t quite bring himself to trust his own opinion when it came to anything school-related.

  One of the most amazing things about having a kid, in Nick’s opinion, was getting to see little glimpses of himself and Heather show up in Ava’s personality. Not that either one of them could claim credit for the entirety of their daughter’s awesomeness—Ava had just come in that way—but in a lot of ways, she was just like Nick. Still, she definitely had some Heather in her, too. The best parts, thankfully, like her amazing brain. Regardless of Heather’s faults, the woman had one of the sharpest minds he’d ever come across.

  “I hope you’re right about that, Beck,” he said, having to work a little to keep his current levels of pissed-off at Heather in check and out of his voice. “Hopefully smarts will be one way Ava will take after her mother. God knows she’d be screwed if she got my genes for school.”

  “Stop it, Nick,” Beck said.

  “Stop what?” he asked, letting the chair crash back down onto all fours.

  He shoved away from the table, wedging his phone between his shoulder and ear so he could be hands free. Pulling open the fridge, he grabbed out a bottle of water and a few things for a sandwich. He honestly couldn’t remember if he’d bothered with breakfast, but the way his stomach sat up and paid attention once he had everything laid out on the counter, he was inclined to think the answer was probably no.

  “Stop thinking you’re not smart,” Beck said, going all stern-voice.

  “What, I can fool even you now?” Nick asked, giving Beck a patented Jeremy-eye-roll, even though the effect was obviously lost in translation, since the call wasn’t on FaceTime. “Shut up, Beckworth. You of all people know I’m just good at faking it.”

  He was half-joking. Well, maybe less than half.

  Just saying the words gave him an uncomfortable pang, though. How many times had he said something similar to J in a different context? And even though the thing between them had started out that way, and Nick had gone out of his way to keep up the charade at the park, he still found it hard to believe that Jeremy hadn’t seen right through him.

  The idea that he’d hurt Jeremy killed him, but he didn’t know how to make it right, other than letting J have the space to move on.

  Which also killed him.

  Nick had never gotten so attached, wanted so much.

  He’d never imagined the kind of future that had someone like Jeremy in it, and not because J was another man, but because Jeremy felt like it for Nick. Nick had felt connected to him from the start, as if, even before he’d gotten to know Jeremy, a part of him had recognized that J was his perfect fit. The only possible other half of Team Us. And the idea that Jeremy would find that, be that, with someone else—someday—was almost more than he could bear.

  But Nick couldn’t stay, and there was no way Jeremy was going to leave. Nick would never ask him to. He couldn’t expect J to walk away from his entire life for something that they’d never even taken a real shot at.

  And that, now, they didn’t have time to.

  “You can’t fake intelligence, Nick,” Beck said, pulling his attention back to their conversation.

  Nick huffed out a breath, the comment seeming all too relevant to the direction his thoughts had just gone. Maybe if he’d been smarter, he’d have been able to see a way for it to work out between him and Jeremy, a solution that would give him the right to ask Jeremy for more. But then again, maybe it wasn’t that Nick wasn’t smart enough to find that solution, maybe it was just that it simply didn’t exist.

  Some things couldn’t be faked, and no matter how many different scenarios Nick ran through his mind, he hadn’t found the one that changed the facts.

  But Beck wasn’t talking about Jeremy. Somehow, the phone call had veered toward Nick’s least favorite subject. Well, his least favorite subject other than losing J. Still, at the moment, he’d take the distraction—anything was better than staying stuck in the endless mental loop of heartache.

  “Sure I can,” Nick answered Beck. “I’ve got you, Siri, and YouTube in my corner. Anyone would look smart with that line up behind them.”

  “Resources,” Beck said, dismissing the claim.

  “I’m just saying—”

  “I know what you’re saying,” Beck said, cutting him off. Dude was starting to sound genuinely annoyed. “I’ve been listening to it for half my life, Nick, and I’m just saying, it’s time to stop. Remember that client you told me about last year? Lost his arm in the motorcycle accident?”

  Nick nodded. Another response lost in translation. “Greg,” he said for the record.

  The guy had been inspiring as shit. Talk about a never-give-up, never-surrender attitude.

  “Right. Did you expect him to deadlift the barbell without his prosthesis?”

  “Jesus, of course not.” Although what the guy had been able to still do when he wasn’t wearing it had actually been pretty fucking amazing. Greg had been the epitome of “where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

  “You judge him for that?” Beck pressed. “For using what he had to in order to get the job done?”

  Nick frowned. Was Beck being serious? Of course he hadn’t. He couldn’t honestly believe that his friend would think he was that much of an asshole, but he still didn’t see where Beck was going with this little trip down memory lane.

  “Disability, bro,” Beck said, answering that question. “His arm, your brain. Same thing, different package.”

  “You offering free therapy on your lunch breaks now, Beckworth?” Nick joked, ready to move off-topic. Beck was apparently in a mood though, and wasn’t going to let him.

  “Remember when I came out to you?”

  Nick scowled. Maybe Beck was willing to go off-topic after all, but what the actual fuck? Of course Nick remembered, but they didn’t usually talk about it. Was his friend on a mission to hammer on every shitty part of their mutual lives? Beck’s father was a first-class dickwad, and even fourteen years later, the day Beck was referring to pissed him off.

  Although to be fair, everything about Beckworth Senior pissed him off.

  Nick couldn’t remember exactly how old he’d been when he’d first met Beck. They’d played in various pee wee leagues together for as far back as he could remember, sometimes on the same team, sometimes not. They’d always gotten along, but it wasn’t until they’d ended up at the same middle school—ten, maybe eleven years old?—that they’d really become friends. And then, at some point shortly thereafter, inseparable. But for the first few years,
they’d still had their secrets.

  Nick had always had a pretty good understanding of what made people tick. Mostly it was just a matter of paying attention. Throw a little intuition and a dash of empathy into the mix, and the end result was that people rarely surprised him. Case in point: Beck.

  Nick may not have had any gaydar, but around the time he’d started getting interested in girls, it had seemed pretty obvious to him that his best friend wasn’t. Most of the time, he hadn’t given the matter much thought. Nick wasn’t naive. He knew how people were, and how shitty they could be, but if other guys were what did it for Beck, it made absolutely no difference to Nick. He’d never been able to understand why so many people had such a problem with something that was fundamentally none of their business. Still, he knew what it was like to have a secret he couldn’t bring himself to share, and he’d respected Beck’s right to keep it to himself until whenever he was ready to talk about it.

  That had turned out to be the summer they were fourteen.

  Beck had missed baseball practice. Even back then, the guy had had an epic commitment to scheduled activities that approached OCD levels of dedication. Missing practice was so unlike him that Nick had been genuinely freaked out when he’d failed to show, and as soon as coach let them loose, he’d biked over to Beck’s house to find out what the hell had happened. When Nick finally found him in the backyard—laying on his back in the middle of the grass and staring blindly up at the sky—there had been one nauseatingly horrible minute when he’d actually thought that Beck had died.

  He’d crashed his bike against the side of the house and found himself on his knees next to Beck with no memory of even crossing the lawn.

  “Jesus, Beck! What’s wrong with you?” he’d shouted, adrenaline making him shake.

  Beck had blinked, his eyes shifting away from the blue nothingness above him to meet Nick’s. Other than that, though, he’d barely moved. Alive, thankfuck, but still scaring the shit out of Nick.

  “I’m gay,” he’d whispered.

  “No shit, dude, but what’s wrong with you? Are you hurt? Why weren’t you at practice?”

  Beck had sat up so quickly that their heads had cracked together. They’d both ended up with goose eggs for a couple of days afterward, and later—after Beck had finished both freaking out and calming down—Nick had taken to calling them their “gay bumps.” At the time, it had seemed hilarious. In retrospect, though, Nick would admit that they’d gotten way more mileage out of the silly label than it had warranted. Probably just because they’d both needed some tension relief after finally revealing their big secrets to each other.

  Still, at the time, Nick hadn’t even registered the pain.

  “‘No shit’?” Beck had repeated back, his voice rising as he’d said it again. “‘No shit’? What the fuck do you mean ‘no shit’? You knew?”

  “Roger,” Nick had snapped, hoping the use of Beck’s never-to-be-mentioned first name would jolt him out of it. “Stop with the gay freak out for a second and tell me what happened today. Why weren’t you at practice? Seriously, Beckworth, I was worried about you.”

  Beck’s eyes had narrowed at the “Roger,” but even though he’d continued to give Nick a serious case of crazy-eye, it had obviously worked. When Beck had finally answered the damn question, his voice had toned down to a more non-manic level of intensity.

  “Liam was over.”

  Nick hadn’t known Liam well—the guy had been a grade ahead of them—but he’d always suspected that Beck had had a bit of a thing for him.

  “And…?” Nick had prompted when it started to seem like that was all Beck had to offer. “What, Beckworth? Liam kicked your puppy? Broke up with you? Started speaking in tongues? Jesus, dude, what?”

  “Nick, you really knew I was gay?” Beck had asked, grabbing onto his arm hard enough that there had been bruises afterward. “Seriously?”

  “Sure. I mean, I assumed. Did Liam do something that’s gonna require an ass kicking?”

  “Don’t you care?”

  “Of course I do. You’re my best friend, Beck. If he was a dick, you know I’ve got your back.”

  “No, I mean about me being gay.”

  “Nope,” Nick had answered truthfully, although the fact that Beck had still been cutting off the circulation in his arm made him immediately second-guess whether that had been the correct answer.

  “No…?” Beck-the-tourniquet had pressed him, sounding incredulous.

  “I mean, sure, if you want me to,” Nick had tried instead, trying to guess what answer Beck needed. “Yes? Look, I know it’s a big deal, and you’re bound to get some shit about it, but… sorry, bro, am I not saying the right thing? Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  Beck had finally let go, flopping back down on the grass again. After a minute, he’d started laughing.

  “God, I thought you’d hate me.”

  “I do,” Nick had said, just to make him feel better.

  “Shut up.”

  “So seriously, what happened?” Nick had asked, laying down on the grass next to Beck and folding his arms under his head. It had been June, or maybe early July, but also Washington, so the summer sky had been dotted with a few clouds. He’d managed to find a starfish, a banana, and something that could have been a catcher’s mitt in their drifting shapes before Beck had finally answered him.

  “My dad walked in on us. Liam and me, I mean.”

  Nick’s stomach had clenched at the news. Beck’s dad was ex-military, and the definition of a hard-ass. Beck had never complained—not his style—but it had been easy to see that he had an uneasy relationship with his father at best. Also easy to guess that his dad wouldn’t have been thrilled to find his son doing things he didn’t approve of, at least, not when they were being done with another boy.

  “So your dad is the one who needs an ass kicking?” Nick had asked, even though, at fourteen, he’d known he wasn’t up to the job.

  “He thinks I do,” Beck had said, his voice cracking. “I swear he wanted to beat the gay out of me.”

  “He hit you?” Nick had felt sick, rolling onto his side so he could look his friend over. Beck’s face was fine, but who knew what evidence might be hiding under his clothes.

  “He tried,” Beck had answered. But he’d also moved a hand to hold his ribs, like maybe it really had gone farther than just trying.

  “Fuck him, Beckworth,” Nick had said. Okay, shouted, maybe. “If he ever tries that shit again, you come to my place. You know my mom loves you. You can move in with us.”

  Beck actually had, a few years later, but at the time, he’d just nodded, not meeting Nick’s eyes. After a minute, he’d added, “Don’t tell anyone, okay?”

  “Okay,” Nick had promised, not sure if Beck meant the gay or his dad, but more than willing to give his friend whatever he needed.

  “What about you, bro? You have any big secrets you’ve been keeping from me all this time?”

  “Sure do,” Nick had answered. Beck had elbowed him in the ribs like it was a joke, but he’d still sounded too un-Beck-like for Nick’s taste. A weird-ass mix of desperate and sad, as if he’d actually bought into his father’s brand of utter bullshit. Nick still didn’t know if he’d just been trying to make Beck feel better—trading a secret for a secret—or if he’d just needed to finally say it out loud to someone, but before he could second guess himself, he’d said, “I can’t read, Roger.”

  Beck probably would have laughed if Nick hadn’t called him Roger again. Instead, he’d just rolled up on one elbow and stared at Nick in silence for a painfully long moment before saying, “Yes you can. I’ve seen you.”

  “Nope.” Nick could still remember the feeling of fear mixed with relief he’d felt, the word carried out in a whoosh of breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in. “Memory tricks and misdirection, dude. I’m just really good at faking it.”

  Beck’s brow had crinkled, and for a moment he’d looked like he was going to argue
about it. “Okay,” he’d finally said instead. “What do we do? Do you want me to help?”

  Nick had let out a frustrated sigh, feeling a familiar tightness start to squeeze the air out of his lungs. He’d appreciated the offer, but he knew it was useless. The way the letters swam in front of his eyes, wouldn’t seem to make their way properly into his brain, it was maddening.

  “No point,” he’d said tightly. “I’ve tried, Beck, but I just can’t get it. I don’t think I’m smart enough. Words just don’t make sense the way they should.”

  “Who else knows?” Nick had asked, instead of pressing him on it.

  Thank God.

  “No one. Just you.”

  “Feather Woman?”

  “Nope. Mom’s got too much on her plate. I don’t want to stress her out.”

  She’d tried to help Nick back when he’d been a kid, back at the age when everyone was learning to read, but as hard as she’d tried, he’d been able to tell that his failure to get it had been as frustrating for her as it had been for him. Especially since she’d always been tired, constantly juggling a shitty combination of too many crap-tastic jobs just to make ends meet.

  He still remembered the shame he’d felt when it seemed to come so easily to everyone else, and he had vague memories of overhearing his first few teachers talk to his mother about their concerns, which had only made him feel worse. It had always been just the two of them, and seeing how much she’d worried had made him resolve to stop bothering her about it and just figure it out on his own.

  That had been a fail, but he’d figured out ways to compensate along the way. Memorizing helped. And it hadn’t taken him long to figure out that the easier he made it for people to get along with him, the more slack they’d cut him. He’d excelled at being agreeable, and since he was good at reading people, if not words, he’d managed to get passed from grade to grade without ever letting on that it was all smoke and mirrors.

  His mom’s relief once he’d started “doing better” in school had felt like confirmation that hiding the problem had been the right choice, and once he’d started to shine on the baseball field, keeping the attention off his academic performance had become even easier. By the time he’d finally confessed to Beck, Nick had known there was no way to go back and start over, or even ask for help.