I nod my head, then blurt, "Yeah," because I don't want there to be any confusion. Yes. I'm gay. I like boys. I like dick. Thank you very much.
Cael grins like it's the best news ever. We keep talking. His parents want him to take pre-law courses, but he's thinking about environmental engineering. He's on the ski team. Loves the downhill. The Ivy League Championship is this weekend.
I could listen to Cael talk forever. He's switched seats so he's next to me, and as he talks, he moves his long, elegant fingers and taps my hand or my arm with them. I'm aware of what's going on around us, the place is getting more crowded, people claim our table's empty chairs, conversation grows louder, but it feels like Cael and I are alone. His uncle is a New Hampshire state senator, so we talk about what it's like to have a politician in the family.
"I'm in Mower. What dorm are you in?" Cael asks.
I stammer a little. "I'm staying with a family friend, out in Jamaica Plain."
He nods. "Yeah. On-campus housing cost is no joke. Lucky you were able to swing that.”
I breathe a little easier, for once not feeling like a freak for not being allowed to live on campus.
Cael taps the top of my hand. "Hey, how many rooms do they have available? Think they'd take in a ski bum like me?"
I swear I don't want it to happen, but an image of Grady pulling Cael over his lap comes to mind. His face is screwed up in pain as Grady swings the paddle, and I'm both horrified and turned on by the idea.
"I don't think you'd like the commute." I fidget with the empty mug in front of me. "Didn't you say you have an eight a.m. class every day?"
"I do." His expressive face goes mournful. "It's so I can make the meets on Fridays and not miss too much class." He puts his head close to mine. "That's the tragedy of being on the ski team. All our events are away. I never get to be cheered on by cute guys I meet in coffee shops."
"That does seem like discrimination. You should notify the dean."
"I'll get right on it."
He smells like the mocha air of the coffeehouse and a bit like the wool of his sweater. A faint trace of something like a woodsy cologne he might have put on this morning hits my nose because it's pressed into his skin as he kisses me.
It's a question, the kiss. Soft but deliberate.
I don't know for sure how to answer, but I try to kiss him back, returning the pressure, reaching for the back of his neck. I want the tingle in my lips to go on. Our mouths open a little, breaths mingling, and I'm floating on the feeling, like one of those rides that lifts you high in the air and brings you down gently. Not the wild roller coaster of nerves and want and dread twisted together like I feel with Grady.
I like this.
Cael pulls away, his bright bronze hair sliding like silk through my fingers as he straightens.
"Okay, then." He smiles and stands up.
Yes. I want to pump my fist. He likes me. Liked kissing me. Maybe he wants to go do it some more.
We walk out of the coffee shop onto Church Street, and my first alarm goes off.
"Sorry." I grab my phone, tug off a glove with my teeth and subdue the noise. 9:15. Still fifteen minutes before my planned window of commuting time. Our boots squeak against a layer of frozen new snow as we walk. I see the Johnston Gate up ahead and realize Cael's probably leading me toward his dorm room. The T-stop isn't far. We're into the Old Yard when my second alarm goes off.
"Fuck." It hadn't seemed like we were walking that long.
"Popularity is a heavy burden.” Cael arches his brows, breath steaming as we're stopped under a streetlight.
It's cold, so I talk fast. "I think we're headed to your room, and I want to, I really want to, but my brother had an accident his first year at college and now my family—and the family friend I'm staying with—are kind of freaked out, so I have to get home." I trail off at the end. It sounds lame. Maybe I could have come up with a better lie if I’d had time to think.
Cael grabs my face in his thick-gloved hands and kisses me. It's not the same as the kiss from the coffee shop. We're alone, or at least the dark makes it look that way, and his mouth is open, his tongue sliding between my lips.
I grab on to his hips and kiss him back. The stroke of his tongue over mine is an amazing sensation, making warmth sweep through my body until it starts to build in my balls. My hands are on his ass. I don't know how they got there. I squeeze.
He groans and keeps kissing me.
We're both panting big clouds of steam when we separate.
"So. This curfew thing. Is it...?"
"Every night. Usually I have to be back by ten." God, I might as well be twelve.
Cael lifts the scarf from his neck and drapes it around mine. He uses it to tug me close so our breaths are touching each other’s lips. "Your brother. Is he okay now?"
I swallow and shake my head.
"Shit." Cael leans in and presses his forehead to mine. "I'm sorry."
"Thanks." I push that lump of feeling down. It's been a long time since talking about Jasper has made me get so close to crying.
"Far be it from me to dump more despair in an already depressing moment." Cael's dramatic speech has been funny so far, but this feels like a kiss-off. "But I suppose we’d better call it a night, then, before you turn into a pumpkin.”
It is a kiss-off. Complete with the kiss Cael drops on my lips as he steps back.
"But…" he arches his brows again, "…there are many, many daylight hours that I bet you spend on campus during which all sorts of non-dangerous activities could occur."
I smile. "That's true."
My phone goes off with the last alarm. Cael grabs it from me after I silence it and taps at it. "I sent myself a text so you have my number." He slings an arm around my shoulders. "It was nice meeting you, Trevor. Give me a call so I can get to know the rest of you." He backs away.
I stay under the streetlight, watching him disappear into the dark. My feet are numb in my boots. It's too cold for the molecules to move, but I can still smell him. "Wait. Your scarf."
"You can return it next time. Stay warm." He's gone.
Wrapped up in his scarf, thinking about kissing him, I'm warm all the way back to Grady's house. I can't even resent the fact that I'm not naked somewhere with Cael right now because he was so funny and sexy about it.
I have his number. And his scarf. I am so going to have sex with him.
I let myself in the door at 10:30. As I hang up my coat and backpack, I stuff my hat and gloves and Cael's scarf in a sleeve, though part of me wants to bring the soft, Cael-scented knit upstairs and tuck it under my pillow. I unlace my boots, slip them off and put them on the tray near a heating vent to dry.
Grady is on the couch watching the Bruins game. I sit on the opposite end.
"Thank you for keeping your promise," he says, glancing over.
I tuck my still-freezing feet under my ass, but that's uncomfortable. "Thanks for letting me stay out a little later." I stretch my legs out toward his end of the couch.
Grady doesn't care about feet on furniture. His own feet are on the coffee table, plain gray slippers on both. I wonder if he wears the one on his prosthesis to make himself comfortable or me.
"Did you have a good time?"
"Yeah.”
“Get lots of studying done?” He gives me a look under his brows. A little sarcastic like Cael, but so different. Because when Grady does it, I think about him holding me so I can’t get away, and the blood rushes to my dick.
“Yeah, then I met some new people.”
I don't know if I said that loudly or if there was just a pause at the right time in the game on TV. My heart is loud in my chest, pressure I can feel as my stomach fills with nerves. I met a guy, I want to tell him. A guy who kissed me and gave me his number.
He doesn't ask me anything else.
Searching for some kind of reaction, I scootch down so my feet poke into his thigh.
"Jeez, Trevor, your feet are freezing." He pulls them on
to his lap and warms them in his hands.
It's so good. Not just the heat, but the attention.
That's stupid. Cael was flirting with me, talking with me all night. He kissed me and told me he liked me and gave me his scarf to wear home.
Still, I love this, Grady rubbing my feet. "Want me to make you hot chocolate or something?"
"No, thank you." Because then he'd have to stop touching me.
It's not childish. A boyfriend would warm my feet.
Cael would warm my feet.
The score is 2-2 as the minutes tick by in the third period. Grady's hands aren’t rubbing, but my feet are still under them, in his lap.
I want to put the last few hours on repeat.
The buzzer goes off to end the game, no, it's the end of overtime and I dozed off for a while. The question is, did I dream it or was Grady's thumb sweeping over my ankle as I slept?
*
One thing that really freaked me out when I first got to Grady’s was that there’s a small cemetery behind his house. It’s old, I don’t think anyone’s been buried there for at least a hundred years, but it’s still kind of creepy to me.
He’d caught me staring, especially because the windows in my room and the bathroom are at the back of the house.
“Best neighbors ever,” he said. “No noise, and they don’t take up parking spaces.”
I guess after being in a war, living by dead people isn’t a big deal. But Jasper is the only dead person I’ve ever seen. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I don’t like knowing there are people right there decaying, shriveling inside their nice clothes, rotting into bones. Besides, all the logic and science in the world go out of my head when I’m lying in bed and the old house is creaking and the cemetery tree starts scratching the siding. Like tonight. I bury my head under the pillow, squeeze it against my ears, but I swear I can still hear it. Hear steps on the stairs, tapping against my window.
I’m such a baby, but when my heart is pounding into my throat like this, I want someone close by, someone to tell me it’s just a house and a tree. If I were in a dorm, there’d be noise, human noises. I squeeze the pillow harder.
When it happens, I know I’m dreaming, but that doesn’t make it any less horrible.
Jasper comes to visit me.
I've dreamed about him a lot, but he's always alive when I do. This time, though, despite his grave being back in St. Mary's Cemetery in Ohio, he comes out of the Grey Cemetery behind the house. He taps on my window, like he's sneaking in after curfew, and I let him in. He isn't gross or scary, but I know he's dead, and it's a horrible weight crushing my chest.
He pulls out my desk chair, turns the back toward me and straddles it. "Screw you, bro. It's your first date ever and I don’t get name-dropped? Can't I even get enough air time to be a cautionary tale?"
"I wanted him to kiss me, not feel sorry for me."
"Why should he?" Jasper's hands are folded over the top of the chair back, and he drums his fingers impatiently. He'd done that so often in life.
I want to touch him. Hug him. But I know he's a ghost.
"You've got a pretty sweet setup here. Big, hot man to keep you in line, keep your engines revved. Maybe you should feel sorry for ski-team dude."
"Why?"
"Duh. Because you're always going to be hung up on Grady, you little freak."
The edges of the dream dissolve. I try to hold on, to keep Jasper there. If he's going to climb out of his grave and give me advice, he could at least stick around until he's finished.
Because he's a ghost, he reads my mind. "I am finished. Except, you know, you could say my name every once in a while. It makes me feel less dead."
"Jasper."
Chapter 7
Grady
TREVOR’S voice, low but urgent, jerks me awake. My hand slaps my crutch on the first try, and I’m levering myself up and out of bed.
Is he on the phone? But his room is at the back of the house. I thump out into the hall, and my body floods with adrenaline, muscles tight with fear at the sight of him. T-shirt, skinny bare legs, leaning like a ski jumper at the top of the stairs.
I’m limping as fast as I can. “Trevor.”
“Jasper. Don’t be pissed at me. C’mon.” He’s asleep, swaying, dreaming. Talking to his dead brother.
Chills chase over my skin. I can’t remember if it’s bad to wake a sleepwalker, and right then I don’t care because I’m not letting him take a header down the stairs.
As soon as I’m close enough, I grab him, jerk him back against me. I forget I don’t have two good feet on the ground, and we both land on the floor of the upstairs hall, him on top of me.
He’s wet and cold from sweat, soaked through his shirt. I know all about nightmares like that. People who are gone. People you can only see in your head. He fights me then, squirming and shoving back. I wrap him up, arms over his chest, but he gets downright frantic. Scary, strangled sounds come from his throat, so I roll him away from the stairs and then let him go.
He curls up, then shakes his head, and when he looks at me, I know he’s awake. His focus darts around the dark hall, then finally to me. He licks his chapped lips. I have a weird impulse to touch them with my thumb, like I could somehow fix them, smooth the roughened skin.
He doesn’t say anything but wraps himself around his knees.
I don’t know what the fuck to say either. “You okay?” Stupid, yeah, but maybe his answer will help me get a handle on what to do.
He shrugs and looks at the top of his knees. “Sorry.”
“What for?”
His hand comes toward me then darts back. “Did I knock you down?”
“I knocked us both down. You were about to jump without your parachute.” I jerk a thumb at the stairs. “Might have been nice to know about you sleepwalking.”
I watch him chew through that, taking in the hall, me with my crutch and no shirt, him in shirt and skivs. “I didn’t know I did.”
So there’s a question for Frank. “Must have been some dream.”
He lurches to his feet, muscles twitchy and balance wobbling, but his motion is a defiant shutdown of my unspoken question. He starts back toward his room, then stops, holding a hand down to me.
I’ve still got both knees, so it’s not that bad getting up. I think about brushing away his offer, but instead I grab his wrist, push with the crutch and press up, hanging off him for balance. He does pretty good. Those skinny arms are stronger than they look. I check out the muscles in his forearms, the growing peak of biceps under his sleeve. Tight, wiry.
I hang on to him and pull him toward me, pinning the crutch under my arm and dragging a hand through his damp hair. “Dreams can really screw with your head. It’s okay, brat.”
He rests against me for a minute, then jerks free. “No. It’s not.”
I almost miss his muttered words because I have to grab fast for the handgrip on the crutch or I’ll go over again. Still, I swing fast behind him and get to his door the same time he does. Trusting my balance to the wall, I bar his way with my crutch.
He looks at it, then at me. “What? I’m not allowed to go back to bed?”
He’s got me there. But there’s something he’s pushing for, something he wants from me. If it isn’t comfort for a dream about his dead brother, fuck if I know what it is.
I drop the crutch. “Good night, Trevor. Try to stay in bed this time. Curfew’s still twenty-two hundred.”
He closes the door behind him, but I still stand there, hating my indecision and helplessness. If he won’t take reassurance, there’s not much I can offer. Nightmares suck, but the way he’d pulled free, the way he’d challenged me, said something else was going on, not that I’m claiming to be an expert on psych issues. I listen at his door for a bit but there’s no further clues coming that way.
I’ll talk to him tomorrow when he’s not hopped up on stress hormones. I hobble back to my own room, wondering what the hell Frank had gotten me into.
&nbs
p; *
No text. No call. I can’t very well find out what’s up with Trevor if he’s not here. And it’s twenty-one fifty. Ten minutes to curfew. He can’t be stupid enough to pull the same shit twice in one week, not if he expects to negotiate any more extensions.
But time ticks on while I wait for the local news—and Trevor. With how he was acting last night, I’m actually worried. If he’s just pushing boundaries again, I swear I’m going to lay into him so hard his grandkids won’t be able to sit comfortably.
The rerun of a sitcom can’t hold my attention, and I stand. Through a gap in the curtains, I catch a glimpse of light on the street where no light should be.
A quick sidestep to the window shows the light’s from the screen of a cell phone. A cell phone held in the hand of one soon-to-be-damned-sorry brat.
What the hell is he doing?
I stay hidden at the side, but I can see him just fine through that space in the curtains, standing in front of the house next door. He pokes around on the phone, glances up toward my door, then goes back to poking.
The little shit. He’s deliberately provoking this. Oh, son, you have no idea how much trouble you just bought yourself. At exactly eleven minutes past, his key turns in the lock. I’ve moved into the hall, hugging a shadow from the dark kitchen while I wonder how far he wants to take this.
He hangs up his coat, but his boots get dropped casually on different sides of the hall. He’s holding his backpack in front of his waist by the top loop when I move.
He jumps, guilt and surprise all over his face. “You—uh—I didn’t see you.”
I wait, watching. His body language is nervous, shoulders hunched, teeth pulling his lower lip in, fingers twisting in the nylon loop. But his eyes stare straight back into mine. Bold. Challenging me.
Smart-assed brat, you are writing a check your ass ain’t gonna want to cash. I already picture him facedown over my lap, legs kicking as I bring that paddle down on his ass until he’s begging.
I fold my arms and see how he wants to play this out. “Just get in?”
“Yeah.”
The Trouble with Trevor (Off Limits Book 1) Page 4
