Food. Aaron’s belly, full of alcohol, gurgled unhappily. “Thanks again. This is nice of you.”
“Not a problem.” Giles focused on navigating his way through the clutch of parked cars and onto Viking Boulevard. “You said you’re leaving tomorrow for your dad’s place. I take it your parents are divorced?”
“Yeah. Five years.”
Giles frowned. “But you’ve only been here since last fall. I mean—I guess I figured it had to be some kind of epic event to get you to move out of your high school during senior year.”
“We lived in Eden Prairie at first after they split up, but then Mom realized he wouldn’t…” Aaron pursed his lips, unwilling to admit out loud the complicated relationship between his parents. He drew a breath and redirected. “She wanted to move closer to her sister.”
“Couldn’t you have stayed with your dad?”
“He’s gone a lot, sometimes for months at a time. So, no.”
“Huh.”
Aaron thought he could hear the judgment in Giles’s tone—Why didn’t your mom stay nine more months until you graduated?—but he said nothing more. It was a kindness Aaron appreciated, because usually people wanted to know why, leaving Aaron to sputter helplessly.
Funny how Giles’s silence made Aaron want to talk. “I go to Dad for the summer once I clear my birthday. Unless he’s out of town. That’s the custody arrangement.”
“How does it work when you’re eighteen? Can you tell him to fuck off and do what you want?” When Aaron shivered, Giles laughed. “Okay, clearly not. Sorry.” He shifted his hands on the wheel. “I can’t get over the fact that you haven’t picked a college. Can you get in anywhere this late?”
“I don’t know.” His head swam a little, panic breaking through the alcoholic haze. “Where are you going?”
“Saint Timothy.”
Aaron frowned, mentally indexing his pile of brochures. “The name rings a slight bell.”
“Small liberal arts college east of St. Paul, by Battle Creek Lake. Lutheran background, which of course half the colleges are in Minnesota.” He smiled as he turned onto the highway. “I’m excited to go. We’ve visited twice, and it feels right, you know?”
No, Aaron didn’t. “How does it feel right?”
Giles considered a moment. “It just does. Probably helps that I fell in love with it on paper ages ago. It has a great orchestra program—whole music department is top-notch.”
Aaron missed music. “Is that what you’re going to major in, music? What do you play?”
“I play violin, but no, I’m not majoring in music. Are you kidding? I want a job.” Giles settled into his seat. “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. I’d always told myself I was going to be an LGBT activist for marriage equality, but the state came to its senses before I could get out of A-Hell, and now with DOMA staked too, I’m kind of over it. So I’m still thinking.”
“A-Hell?” LGBT activist. Aaron’s belly stopped gurgling and started…something. Giles was gay. He kept mentioning it too, as if it were no big deal.
Giles glanced at Aaron with an arched eyebrow. “You’re going to tell me you loved Alvis-Henning now, right?”
“What? No.” Aaron pulled a face. “God no.”
Giles’s laugh tickled Aaron inside. “Good.”
A lull descended. Aaron thought Giles might be trying to say something but couldn’t quite find the words. Aaron tried not to stare at him, because this was reminding him a lot of the night with Tanner, when everything was so amazing…then so terrible.
Aaron sat up straighter. “Tell me more about this college. Saint Somebody.”
“Saint Timothy. I don’t know, it’s a college. Two thousand people, lots of trees and buildings, big lawn.”
“Tell me more about why it feels right. You like the music program, but you’re not going to major in it?”
“Well—” Giles frowned. “I guess I think they’re mostly interchangeable, these colleges, so I might as well pick the one that makes me feel comfortable and happy. I checked out the LGBT rating at Timothy right away, but unless you’re somewhere freakishly evangelical, having an LGBT support group is almost standard now. So I walked around campus a lot, trying to decide if I could imagine it as home. I could. They have a wide variety of majors, their sports teams are kind of whatever, not the main focus, and their dorms are decent. I can play orchestra and maybe take a trip or two with them, and the school is an hour’s drive from my parents, less with good traffic. Decision made.”
Aaron’s mind boggled. “You make it sound so easy.”
“It’s not rocket science. It’s just college.” He nudged Aaron with his elbow. “So what are you looking for in a school?”
“Something my dad won’t call stupid.”
“Ah.” Giles’s tone was full of understanding. “Well, what’s he think is important?”
“I have to go somewhere with a strong reputation, where I can get a good job after. Except I don’t know what job I want.”
“Have you gone down the U.S. News & World Report lists? Do you want to stay in the Midwest or get the hell out?”
“I want everything to stop. The pressure. All the stupid—” He thought of Colton and yet another disastrous evening. “I don’t want to join a frat and start high school part two. I want real friends. I want…”
Tanner flashed in his mind, and he put his hands on his stomach.
“You okay?” Giles slowed the car. “Do you need me to pull over?”
“I just need to eat,” Aaron lied.
“Food coming right up. I see the sign up ahead. What would you rather, a burger or chicken sandwich?”
“Burger. Big one. With bacon and cheese.” Aaron tried to fumble for his wallet, but Giles waved him away.
“I got this, birthday boy. Stand down.”
Warmth flooded the hollow place inside Aaron. “Thanks. You’re…really nice.”
Giles flashed him a smile that made everything inside Aaron hum, but when Aaron smiled back, Giles looked away.
He ordered Aaron a full meal: burger, fries, Frosty and bottle of water, getting himself a pop. “I got a large order of fries, figuring we could split it. Sound okay?”
“Yeah.” Aaron took a bite of his burger and felt his soul realign. “Oh my God, thank you so much. You’re saving my life.”
“Pretty easy save, and at value meal prices.” Giles sipped his drink and grabbed a fry as he navigated onto the road. “Where to now? You want to head home or cruise around?”
“I don’t want to go home.” Aaron scowled at the streets of Anoka. “Not like there’s anywhere else to go, though.”
“Sure there is. I’d say we could get pizza, but we bought all this food. You’re a bit drunk to bowl, and there’s no way either of us can get in a bar, but a few of the parks are still open. Plus there’s always the lake. We could midnight picnic.”
A midnight picnic sounded fun, especially with Giles. “Are you sure you don’t care? I don’t want to keep you.”
“What is it, exactly, you think you’re keeping me from?”
Aaron shrugged. “I don’t know. Stuff?”
“In Oak Grove?” Giles sighed as he headed north. “Honest to God, college has got to improve things. My friend Mina is going to Saint Timothy too. She says it’s going to be the same, and oh my fucking God, no.”
“I hadn’t thought that far ahead. College seems so scary.”
“Why? What’s to be scared of?”
“Everything.” Aaron felt the burger leak around his lips and fumbled for a napkin. “Tomorrow my dad’s coming, and I have to have a college and a reason for picking it. A reason he’ll accept. Otherwise he’ll choose for me, and I’m sure to hate it.”
“So pick one first. Grab one at random, see what they’re known for, find the thing that will make your dad
happy and tell him that’s the reason you chose it. Rush out your app, and boom, you’re done.”
Could it actually be so simple? “Is this friend of yours from A-H, the one who’s going with you?”
“Yeah, we’re being lame and using the buddy system. So I guess I am scared enough to take my BFF security blanket with me. But mostly it worked out. She’s going to be pre-med, and they have a great program. Pre-med, pre-law and music. That’s Timothy.”
“Has to be nice, though, having her along.”
Giles waggled his eyebrow. “You could go to Mankato with Colton.” He laughed when Aaron groaned. “Still blows my mind that you don’t like him. Why do you hang out so much if you can’t stand him?”
Aaron tried to swallow the truth with his fries, but he and alcohol didn’t make much for censorship. “He was the only one who showed interest in being my friend when I moved here. So I went with it.”
Giles looked at him as if he’d grown an extra head. “Shut up. No way.”
“No way what?”
“No way everyone else at A-H snubbed you.”
Was this a trick question? Aaron eyed Giles carefully. “Um, yeah. Nobody talked to me.”
“You hang out with the pack of popular kids. You’ve dated half the girls from their herd. Pull the other one, buddy.”
“What?” Aaron put down his Frosty, Giles’s angry tone making him uneasy. He wanted to argue he’d gone out with two girls, and both instances had been such disasters he’d quit dating full stop. But this confession invited a question as to why they’d been so awful, so he only shook his head. “Whatever. It’s over. You’re right, college has to be better.”
Giles was pissed now for some reason. “What do you mean, whatever? You telling me you didn’t hang out with those guys or date those hookers, it was an optical illusion?”
Aaron’s stomach hollowed out. “Why are you so mad at me?”
Giles deflated. “I don’t know.” He let his hands slide to the sides of the wheel. “Let’s say in my experience, guys who hang out with your people, then seek me out are a particular class. I wouldn’t have pegged you for that.”
“They’re not my people. I hung out with them because I was lonely. I went out with the girls because they asked me.” The last comment made Giles glance sideways at him, and Aaron had about had it with these weird looks. “What?”
Giles said nothing for several minutes. Aaron ate, but the food was now ash in his mouth. He had the vague sense he’d fucked things up, but he couldn’t figure out how.
Well, at least everything was normal.
Eventually Giles spoke. “Mina says I’m too harsh and judgmental. I decide who people are before I get the truth.”
The statement felt important, but Aaron couldn’t unpack it. He ate his Frosty in silence.
Giles continued. “In my defense, every time I don’t do that, if I let my guard down, I get burned.”
Aaron still had no idea how this had anything to do with who he’d hung out with in high school. “Okay.”
Giles’s gaze was heavy with meaning, but Aaron still didn’t have a clue about what was going on.
Averting his gaze, Aaron stared at the road. “I try not to be in a situation where I have to guard at all. I hunker down.”
Giles’s expression was softer now. “So you’re a full-on shy boy. Huh. Would never have guessed. I figured you were bored with A-H, or pissed at it.”
Aaron frowned at his food. “I’m not.”
“I’m starting to understand that.”
Giles turned onto an access road. Aaron held on to the door with one hand and tried to stabilize his food with the other as the car went over some serious ruts. “Where are we going?”
“Side way into Hickey Lake.”
Aaron grinned. “Seriously? I always wanted to check that place out.”
“Well, now you can. This isn’t the main recreation area, but it’s got a nice view. Also no one will come down this road.”
Aaron braced himself against another rut. “I’m not entirely convinced this is a road.”
Giles shot him a quick glance and a grin. “You seem to be doing better. Food helping?”
“Company more than anything.” He hadn’t meant to say that out loud. “Sorry. When I’m drunk, I talk too much.”
“Alcoholic truth serum? Yeah. Probably why I don’t drink often. That and nowhere to drink. And no way to get it.”
“I think I drink for the wrong reasons. Usually it’s like tonight, when I want to shut the world off.”
“Happen often?”
“I can’t think of a time I didn’t want to shut the world off.” Except for right now. He shoved his mouth full of fries, really stuffed it so he couldn’t speak. When he’d swallowed and made sure he had his sappy self muzzled, he continued. “Colton tries to get me out every weekend, but I can only take so much of him.”
Giles laughed, a tinkling nasal cascade. Aaron loved the sound. He finished off his burger and digested Giles’s observation along with it. “So you must have thought I was a jerk like Colton.”
Giles hesitated before confessing, “Pretty much.”
A lake appeared before them, framed by trees and moonlight. Giles pulled over into a dirt patch that would have been muddy had it rained more. Killing the engine, Giles gestured at the water. “Behold. Hickey Lake.”
Aaron grinned, the tension between them falling away. “How the hell did it get named, anyway? Too many teenagers in the ’50s?”
“Would have been named in the 1850s. Probably somebody’s last name, but I suspect plenty of hickeys are given here. Who could resist?”
And the tension returned.
Giles cleared his throat. “So. You want to sit here in the car, park our butts on a blanket or keep driving?”
One hell of an invitation lurked inside Giles’s list of choices. This was the drunken dance with Tanner all over again. Without the alcohol, Aaron probably would have gone into cardiac arrest trying to work out what to do. But he had alcohol—lots of nice, swimmy beer. The pretty, blue-black lake lay invitingly before him.
The soft, spicy scent of Giles, his smile and his laugh, which somehow aligned Aaron’s spiritual spine, allowed him to calm down. In so many ways it was a choice more nightmarish than which college to go to—and yet at the same time it was the easiest decision of all.
“Blanket sounds good.”
Taking a deep breath, Aaron told himself everything would be okay, then waited to see if he was right.
Chapter Three
Giles had no idea what he was doing with Aaron.
He dug in the trunk of the car for the winter emergency blanket he thought he remembered seeing back there, though he told himself if he didn’t find it, it was a sign from God he should get in the car and drive Aaron Seavers the hell to his house, where he belonged. He had no idea what it meant when he found the blanket immediately, neatly folded on top of the spare tire. Somehow he doubted it was a thumbs-up from the Almighty to get laid.
Was he actually going to sit on the beach of Hickey Lake and deep throat the guy he’d had a crush on since the moment he’d first seen those baby blues peeking beneath dark, shaggy bangs? When he shut the trunk, he saw Aaron standing beside the car, hands tucked in the front pockets of his jeans, shoulders hunched, with a hungry, terrified expression on his face.
Yep. Getting laid was definitely on the table.
The thing he didn’t know, the thing making Giles’s brain run around like a squirrel in a cage as he spread the blanket on the most level spot he could find, was whether this was another case of closeted “straight” boy or if this was Aaron coming out to him. Normally Giles didn’t ask. As much as he hated these hookups after, as much as it made him batshit the only action he ever got was with recoil-fucks—well, Giles had a hard time looking gift sex in the mouth
. He told himself it was his sweet revenge, a power trip, but if he were honest, mostly it was because he was lonely.
In short, at the bottom of his barrel he was alarmingly pathetic.
He wanted to find out if this was another shame-and-blame or…something different. Dumb, because it wasn’t like this could go anywhere. Aaron was gone tomorrow, and come this fall Giles would be too. At best they would maybe hook up on breaks, but if Aaron was about to come out, Giles would never bag him again. Aaron was Grade A Prime for whatever gender he chose to take to bed. Giles was lucky to be a C+ on a good day. Too skinny, too geeky, too awkward. No way Giles could ever score an Aaron for real.
Yet here he was, spreading a blanket and settling down on it beside Aaron, who sat a hell of a lot closer than a straight boy would. Looking a lot more eager and vulnerable than Giles’s hookups usually did. None of this was on the scripts Giles knew.
Whatever was going on, Giles doubted if he resisted he’d think back on this moment and admire his own nobility.
“Good thing it hasn’t rained much, or we’d already be half-devoured by mosquitoes.” Giles kicked off his shoes and wiggled his stocking-footed toes in the blanket’s nap. “Nice summer so far, actually. Not too hot, not too wet.”
“It has been nice.” Aaron didn’t sound like he wanted to talk about the weather, but it was equally clear he didn’t know what to do next, wound so tight that if Giles wasn’t careful, the guy would sproing right into the lake.
Yeah, well, baby, follow my lead. Boy do I know this dance. Giles eased onto his elbows and let his legs fall open. Ostensibly he stared at the water, but mostly he allowed Aaron to admire the way he filled out his jeans, an invitation his companion took. It was a subtle peek, but it was there. Giles wasn’t a Jon Hamm or anything, but he had a decent package.
Before his dick saw any action, though, Aaron needed more idle conversation to loosen him up. “Eden Prairie, you said. Did you grow up there?”
“Yeah. Well—mostly. I was actually born in California—Oakland—but we moved when I was four. I have vague memories of the house we lived in there, and maybe the bridge and a house on a big hill with an orange flowerpot on a stoop, but that’s it.”
Fever Pitch Page 3
