“Evan!”
He turned quickly, only just managing to catch the armful of girl.
“Hi,” he laughed, hugging Katie tightly and breathing in her cinnamon-sweet smell. “How are you?”
“Awesome. It’s good to see you.”
“You too.”
Katie slipped her hand in Evan’s and walked with him through to the kitchen.
“You got half the neighborhood here?” he teased.
Katie rolled her eyes. “I know. It’s mostly my brother’s friends, though. He’s back from college too, and apparently they’re doing the whole reunion thing.”
“Is that not what we’re doing?”
“Huh.” She stopped short. “I guess so.” After a second, she shrugged and tugged Evan’s hand to make him follow. “Most of us are downstairs. Andy is here. Did you see him yet?”
“I only just arrived.”
“Let me get you a drink.”
“I’m driving,” Evan said, holding up both hands.
Katie pouted. “One beer? Or someone made mulled cider if you’d prefer that.”
“I’ll take a cider.”
She poured him a glass of the rich, spicy hot cider that was being kept warm in a huge soup pot on the stove. Evan wrapped his hands around it, appreciating the warmth, then followed her downstairs.
It was almost a relief to see a room full of people he knew.
There was hugging and backslapping and a lot of laughing, and Evan was forced to admit his mother had been right. These were his friends, and his sexuality apparently made no difference to them. It was a relief.
Despite trying very hard not to look, Evan couldn’t help but notice Scott wasn’t in the basement room that Katie’s parents had turned into a cozy den. He tried not to hide his disappointment and took a seat on a low, squashy sofa, strangely pleased when Katie deposited herself on his lap. He accepted her with a laugh, wrapping his arm around her waist. It was different now he was out. There wasn’t the same pressure to act “straight” while trying not to lead girls on, just in case they got the wrong idea.
About half an hour later, someone tapped Evan’s shoulder while he was refilling his glass of cider—that Katie had promised him wasn’t alcoholic. He turned sharply, then felt his face flush as he laughed.
“Evan fucking King.”
“Hey, Captain.”
Evan set his glass down so he could accept Scott’s ferocious hug. His best friend was wearing a worn black leather jacket, which smelled of the cold, and a thick wool scarf around his neck. His cheeks were cold too, suggesting he’d only just arrived, and Evan settled into the hug. They weren’t likely to break it any time soon.
“Fuck, I missed you,” Scott said. His voice sounded a little gruff.
“I missed you too.” Evan pulled away first, immediately missing the warmth of Scott’s chest against his own. “How are you?”
“Good, man. I just got here.”
“Well yeah. I guessed that.”
“Back in town, I meant,” Scott said with a laugh. “My mom isn’t expecting me until tomorrow, so she won’t be mad that I’m not at home.”
“Jeez. Where have you been?”
“Well, I spent the past couple of days driving back from fucking Wisconsin.”
Evan gave a sympathetic wince. “Should have gone to ECU like some sensible people you know.”
Scott just punched his arm.
“Want a beer?” Evan offered.
“Fuck, yeah.”
He fixed both their drinks and led Scott back down to the basement. Evan couldn’t help but stare and feel more than a little possessive as his friends went through the same hug-and-back-slap routine Evan had experienced. After Scott finally shed his jacket and added it to the pile growing in a corner of the room, he took a seat next to Evan and clinked his beer bottle to Evan’s glass.
“So. How the fuck have you been, man? You worked all fucking summer.”
“Yeah.” He made the word an apology and winced. “Sorry. I needed the money.”
Scott nodded. “I ended up working in a pizza joint on the boardwalk.”
“Andy get you a job?”
“Yes,” Scott laughed. “The tips were pretty good, though, even if I did go home every night feeling like I was covered in grease.”
“Well, at least you weren’t covered in kids.”
“You worked at a summer camp, right?”
Evan nodded and took another sip of the cider. It was amazing. Katie had always been good at mixing drinks. “Yeah. Just outside Fredericksburg, way out in the middle of fucking nowhere. Like you said, though, it paid well, so I can’t complain.”
Katie came over and plopped down on Scott’s lap. Evan had to bite back a grimace of jealousy, remembering vividly the last time he’d seen the two of them together like this. The fact that Katie seemed to like sitting on other people’s laps didn’t matter.
Whatever.
“What were you doing at camp?” she asked. Her lips were painted dark red for the holidays, matching her nails and the turtleneck she was wearing over a short black skirt. “Just herding kids, or….”
“No, I got a job as an art teacher,” Evan said. “It was all right, actually. You remember Ms. Martinez? She recommended me.”
“Oh, awesome,” Katie said.
It had been, Evan supposed. They’d given him his own classroom that looked out over the lake, plus a seemingly endless supply of art materials. The camp’s administration was fairly laid-back, so he could set his own curriculum for the summer. The younger kids went home with macaroni landscapes and pinecone mobiles, the older kids with their first attempts at painting landscapes.
Evan had time in between his classes to work on his portfolio, concentrating on capturing the fine expanse of nature around him. He would always be more comfortable with abstract work, or portraits if he was going for realism, but the opportunity to capture some of his home state had been too good to miss.
“I think I’d take kids over another year at the pizza place,” Scott mused.
“You say that now. The reality is far different to what you’re thinking.”
“Oh?”
Evan rolled his eyes. “I had groups of up to twenty kids that I was supervising on my own. The time they spent with me was time their regular counselors got to nap. Or call home, whatever. It was their downtime. So I didn’t have any help. There’s always a few kids who don’t want to do whatever I set them. Then there’s the overachievers who are frustrated they can’t draw like fucking da Vinci when they’ve never put in any effort to being good, and my personal favorite—the ones you have to watch carefully because otherwise you’ll find them in the corner eating paste.”
Scott threw his head back and laughed. “Shit, man. How long were you there?”
“Ten weeks!”
“Wow,” Katie said sympathetically.
“Yeah. It was fine, though, I suppose.”
“Are you going to do it again next summer?”
Evan nodded. “They’ve already asked me to go back. I probably will. They pay really well. I work on the weekends teaching a few watercolor classes at a seniors’ center close to campus. Both jobs combined should keep me out of having to work retail or in fast food for the rest of my college career.”
“Damn,” Scott said. “Wish I could do that.”
“Your parents are paying your way through your whole degree, asshole,” Evan said, punching him in the arm.
“Yeah, but I still don’t know what I actually want to do with my life.”
“You’ll figure it out,” Katie told him. “At least you know now what you don’t want to do, right, Evan?”
“It’s such a shame,” Evan said, mocking him. “You had such a glittering career as a pizza delivery boy ahead of you.”
“You’re such a dick.”
“Douche.”
It was like no time at all had passed.
AFTER A couple of hours, the party downstairs started to grav
itate up. Scott’s former football teammates seemed very interested in Katie’s brother’s female friends, and the girls, for their part, seemed fairly interested in Katie’s brother. It was a win-win situation.
In a bigger crowd of people, especially ones he didn’t know, Evan felt himself closing in again. He was a little tired, it was getting late, and his instinct was to lope off without anyone noticing. But Scott was there.
“Hey,” Scott said, leaning in to murmur close to Evan’s ear. “I’ve got some weed. You want to smoke? I already checked with Katie, and she said it was fine, just to take it back downstairs and crack a window.”
Evan snorted. “Okay. Sure.”
It was far more comforting to be back in the gloomy coziness of the basement. The open window let in a curl of cold air that cut invitingly through the muggy heat of the room. It took a few minutes for Scott to assemble the joint. Evan walked around the room, looking at the various family photos that hung on the walls. Apparently this was where Katie’s parents hid all the annual school pictures of their kids. He rounded back to the couch when Scott lit the joint.
“So,” Scott said, leaning back on a sofa and kicking his feet up onto the table in front of them. “What have you been up to this year? I heard you came out.”
Evan huffed a humorless laugh. “Yeah.”
“You could have told me first.”
“What…. What?”
“You heard me,” Scott said. He looked over, and Evan’s stomach twisted at the hurt expression on his face. “It would have been nice to hear it from you, rather than my mom.”
“Scott… we kissed. I kissed you. I thought you knew.”
“No.” Scott took another long drag on the blunt. “I kissed you. Then you ran away.”
“I walked back into the house to see you making out with Katie fucking McCarren,” Evan said, the words bursting out of him like they’d been contained for too long. They probably had.
“That definitely didn’t happen.”
“It fucking did,” Evan said. He shifted on the couch so he could look over at Scott properly. “I went and got water. Then you were in your family room with her on your lap.”
“Jesus,” Scott said with a sigh. “I barely remember that.”
“Yeah, well.” Evan sighed as he slumped back in his chair. “That was a long time ago now.”
“She was asking me if there was anywhere she could go hook up with someone,” Scott said. He looked up at the low ceiling. “I told her to take Tom’s room, since I was pretty sure you weren’t going to be sleeping in there. I didn’t tell her that. I just told her to take the room.”
“You were…. What were you thinking?”
“I dunno.” Scott shrugged. “I just wanted to find some space with you. Where we weren’t likely to get walked in on. Then I spent thirty minutes tearing my fucking house apart trying to find you before someone said you’d left. I thought I’d fucked it all up. Our friendship, everything. Then when we saw each other at school, it was like nothing happened.”
“We were stupid.”
“Yeah. Anyway. Long time ago.”
“Yeah,” Evan said, thinking maybe it wasn’t so long ago after all.
“So, you seeing anyone?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?”
“Yep.” Evan took the blunt as Scott passed it over and inhaled deeply. “His name’s Cael. He’s a second year at ECU.”
“Oh. What’s he like?”
Evan wriggled to get his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans, flipped it open, then pulled up a picture of the two of them together.
“He’s pr—good looking.”
“Were you going to call my boyfriend pretty?” Evan asked, teasing now.
“No,” Scott mumbled.
“He is pretty,” Evan mused.
“Where’s he from?”
“Jacksonville,” Evan said with a laugh. “His mom’s from Puerto Rico, though.”
“Hmm.”
“So, what about you? Are you seeing anyone?”
“Not anymore,” Scott said, stretching his toes until they cracked.
“So you were.”
“Yeah.”
“Go on, tell me.”
“Just a girl I met on campus,” he said, being evasive in a way Evan had never attributed to his best friend before. Normally Scott was an open book. “Her name’s Rachel. She, uh… I…. Fuck.”
“What?”
“She got pregnant,” Scott said, rubbing his hands over his face. “I got her pregnant. Back earlier in the year.”
“Shit, Scott,” Evan said. “Did she…?”
“Get rid of it? Yeah. She told me first, just to see if I had an opinion, I suppose. I said I’d support her whatever she decided. That’s what you’re supposed to say, right? That it’s her body, her decision.”
“Yeah,” Evan said softly.
“I sort of wanted her to keep it, though. I know how stupid that is. We only hooked up a couple of times. I didn’t really know her, not as a person. She was just a girl I hooked up with. But it was like there was this whole world of possibility existing there between the two of us. Even if it only lasted a couple of weeks. I was going to be a father.”
“You still will be, one day,” Evan told him. “I’m sure of it. You’ll be an amazing dad. But a family made when both parents are still teenagers, first-year college students? It wouldn’t have worked, Cap.”
Scott smiled. “No one’s called me that in ages.”
“Cap?”
“Yeah.”
“It suits you,” Evan said with a grin.
Scott huffed a laugh. “I’m not a captain anymore.”
“Do you still play?”
“Football? Nah. Just the, you know, intramural games. I still wanted to play after I got injured last year, but I was nowhere near good enough to get back up to the sort of level to play for the college.”
They fell quiet for a moment, and then Evan sighed.
“You want some of this?” Scott offered, holding the joint out to Evan.
“Nah. My lungs hurt.”
“Shit. I smoked way too much weed this year. You get good shit in Wisconsin.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s cheaper than booze too. Doesn’t make you sick. No hangover.”
“I’ve definitely had a weed hangover before.”
“That’s because you don’t smoke the good stuff,” Scott said, leaning back and exhaling heavily.
“Don’t tell me you’re turning into a stoner,” Evan laughed.
“Nah. I only do it every few months. Probably ’cos I know I’d get really into it if I let myself, and I don’t want to turn into one of those guys.”
Evan snorted. “Sure you aren’t already?”
“Hmm. You’re sobering up.”
“I told you my lungs hurt.”
Scott narrowed his eyes for a moment, then moved decisively.
They’d taken the huge couch, each backed into a comfortable corner. Scott straddled Evan’s thighs, one of his strong legs either side of Evan’s, boxing him in. Either the weed or the late hour was making Evan’s head fuzzy, and he frowned, moving too slowly to do anything to stop Scott’s advance.
“What are you doing?” Evan asked.
“Here,” Scott said. He sat back on his heels and took a long, long drag on the joint. He held it in his lungs for a moment, then grabbed Evan’s chin, leaned forward, and exhaled into Evan’s open mouth.
Evan pulled the smoke in, breathing deeply, and couldn’t help but focus on Scott’s ocean blue eyes. When he let the smoke go, Scott was still gripping his chin, and Evan blinked, not daring to move.
“Fucking hell, Evan,” Scott said and leaned in for a kiss.
Evan was stunned into place as Scott’s lips moved decisively yet so, so slowly over his own mouth. After a second, his body jolted into action, and he wrapped his hands around Scott’s waist, leaning up into the kiss and slipping his tongue between Scott
’s lips.
Scott tasted like weed and tobacco and beer, and Evan wanted so much, so badly, it was a deep twist in his gut that almost made him cry out with the shock of it. Scott leaned over and stubbed out the joint in the ashtray on the coffee table, then pushed both of his hands into Evan’s hair.
Evan jolted his hips up, desperate for more contact, and Scott moaned as he ground back down to meet Evan’s inelegant thrusts.
It took Scott tugging at his sweater for Evan’s brain to finally catch up with him. He couldn’t do this. He had… fuck. Cael. A boyfriend.
“Scott. Stop. Stop.”
“Hmm?” Scott hummed, pressing tiny kisses up the side of Evan’s neck.
“I have a boyfriend.”
“What, some asshole at college?”
“Please don’t.”
Scott sat back on his heels again and frowned. “Are you fucking serious?”
“Don’t do this.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Scott said.
Evan rubbed his hands over his face. He was rock hard in his jeans, his whole body straining for Scott. He wanted so desperately to touch and kiss and take whatever it was Scott wanted to share with him.
“I need to go,” Evan said. His chest felt tight, his whole body aching with something more than the physical.
“You’re running away again.”
Scott sounded more annoyed than Evan had ever heard before. He was usually fiery and passionate, but never angry.
“I’m removing myself from a situation I can’t be in right now,” Evan corrected. He shuffled out from under Scott’s lap and went to the corner of the room where his jacket had been piled.
“This is such bullshit,” Scott said. He knelt on the sofa, scowling as Evan layered up in his jacket and scarf. “If you want to do this, then fine, we’ll do it. Don’t just walk away, though.”
“I need… fuck, I need time, Scott.”
“Why?”
“Because I have a boyfriend!” he exploded. Evan knew this was totally out of character for him too. In their whole lives, he’d never yelled at Scott. Not like this.
“And what are you planning on doing about that?”
“I don’t know,” Evan said. The fight drained out of him in an instant, and he felt himself physically slump. “I don’t know, Scott, which is why I need to leave. Before I do something I regret.”
Dreamspinner Press Year Nine Greatest Hits Page 11
