by Anna Martin
Things had definitely cooled between them; that was unavoidable. Occasionally Jared wondered how on earth the rest of their friends hadn’t noticed. They had been so, so close at one point, spending hours alone together and plenty of time by each other’s sides at school, too. Now things were different, irreparably so.
As the days edged toward Christmas, Jared resigned himself to a trip to New York to spend time with his family. He hadn’t seen most of them since August, and since Hadley was coming too, he didn’t have much of an excuse to stay in Washington.
“Come on,” Hadley said, leaning against the open door to Jared’s room. “We have a plane to catch.”
Jared looked up from where he’d been fiddling with the laces on one of his sneakers.
“Do I have to?” he asked, only partly joking.
She gave him a sad sort of smile. “It’s three days, sweetheart.”
“Five,” Jared corrected, grumbling.
“Fine. Five if you count two days of travelling. But it’ll be fine. I’ll be there, and your sisters.”
Jared sighed heavily and gave up on the sneaker, tossing it into a corner. It only took a moment to pull on a sweatshirt and shoulder the duffle bag he’d already packed for the few days they’d be spending with his parents.
“You wanna talk about it?” she offered.
“Is it that obvious?”
Hadley nudged him back down on the bed and took the desk chair, echoing the talking-to he’d been given by Chris, not that she could know that.
“Hadley,” Jared sighed. “I’m not great at girl talk.”
“Excellent. Neither am I.”
She pushed her long, hair over her shoulder, then twisted it into a knot, securing it with a Bic pen from the desk. Jared was always bemused at the hundred or so ways girls tied their hair back.
“I don’t want to go home.”
“I want you to tell me what’s going on, so I can protect you from what’s there,” Hadley said, her face fixed and serious.
Jared huffed and rubbed his hands over his face. “I did something incredibly stupid.”
“Tell me,” she demanded.
“I’m in love with him,” Jared said with a humorless laugh. “I’m in love with him, and I can’t have him, and that sucks.”
The last word was delivered with such hyperbole even Jared heard it and the teenage angst that had inspired his outburst. Most of the time he kept that under wraps, the teenager and the outbursts, so he was almost surprised at himself.
“Being in love isn’t always candy and roses, Jared,” Hadley said with a soft smile. “Especially when you’re still….”
“If you call me a kid, I’ll punch you in the mouth,” he said with a grin.
“You’re so young,” she sighed. “I wish I was. You have so much still to come in your life; this is just the beginning for you. Don’t let one person steal your attention from the great things that are out there waiting for you.”
“Very inspiring,” Jared said drily. Hadley reached over and smacked his arm, but she was laughing. “You didn’t even ask who I was talking about.”
“I didn’t need to,” she said.
“Is it that obvious?”
“What, that you spend more nights at his house than you do here? That half of the conversations we have are about Adam Hemlock? That when you’re with him, there’s this glow between you?”
“Bullshit,” he muttered.
“I don’t know what happened. And I don’t know why you think that you can’t have him. So as someone who’s completely outside this whole situation, I can tell you with a fair degree of certainty that whatever you feel for him, he feels it right back.”
Jared rubbed at his eyes again and pretended very hard they weren’t stinging.
“And now that I’ve almost certainly made sure we’ve missed our flight, can we please leave for the airport?”
Hadley was joking, and they had plenty of time to get to the airport if the driver floored it.
“It’s going to be constant gay digs,” Jared said as they walked out of the house to the waiting town car. It looked like Hadley had already loaded up her suitcase, gifts and all, in the back. “My mother won’t look at me in the eye, and my sisters are too self-obsessed to do anything for anyone other than themselves.”
“That’s a stunningly accurate description of the family, yes,” Hadley said, pulling the door closed behind them. “Three days, Jared. We can do this.”
They did. Of course.
It was awful, naturally. Jared would have been disappointed with anything less. By the time they got back to rainy, murky Washington from snow-clad New York, he was grateful for the peace and quiet. The pace and activity of the city had always been its own kind of thrill, but Jared hadn’t had the energy to deal with it.
After only a few days away, flopping onto the bed in the house that had become his home was such a relief. Things with his parents and sisters had been as tense as expected, Christmas dinner laughable, really, all of them drinking to be able to stand the sight of each other.
There was no love lost between Hadley and his mom, and his father seemed to think that Jared’s aunt was a negative influence. Jared had never quite understood how his father thought, so anticipating which vitriolic rant he’d go on next was something of a minefield. Still. It could have been worse. Probably.
School didn’t start again until New Year, but Jared had plenty of work to keep him occupied in the week following Christmas. He snuggled down with mugs of hot chocolate that would almost certainly make him fat, sugar cookies that wouldn’t help, and foot-high sandwiches which Hadley delivered to the study on a regular basis. He thought she was trying to make amends for forcing him to go to New York for the holidays, because there seemed to be a constant stream of food coming his way.
Then there were the inevitable parties Hadley was going to throw despite her guilt. If she wasn’t hosting, she was at a friend’s place, leaving Jared to deal with an achingly cold, empty house or one so filled with noise and people, he was left with no option but to retreat. It was a strange back and forth, each end of the spectrum too hard for him to deal with.
And then, of course, it was New Year’s Eve.
Clare was hosting this time, which was apparently as traditional as Adam’s back-to-school and Chris’s Thanksgiving bashes. There was no way Jared could get away with not going, even an “I’m sick” excuse would surely be met with a “Boo, you whore.” Plus, he had a sneaking feeling Mia, or Ryder, or both, would come out to the Saunders house and drag him there by his feet if he didn’t make an appearance.
Jared had far too much dignity to subject himself to that.
There had been an offhand “oh, the usual” when he’d inquired about the dress code for the evening, a clear dig at how he hadn’t been at Harbor Academy long enough to know all the ins and outs of social etiquette in this neck of the woods.
“Glitter,” Mia had told him in a hiss on the last day of classes before they’d all split for the holidays. “Clare’s parties are always glitter and ice.”
Jared had forced a smile and nodded. There was no way in hell he was going to dress in anything glittery for the party. Since his waistband had grown tighter on his diet of cinnamon buns and foot-high baked ham sandwiches, he went with a loose, comfortable pair of dark jeans and a black button-down shirt. The black was strategic; if anyone threw any damn glitter at him, it would show up and possibly hide his lack of effort.
“Going out?” Hadley asked as he stopped in the kitchen to grab a bottle of liquor. They had enough of the damn stuff to open their own store, so he wasn’t about to go and buy any.
His aunt was sitting at the island in the middle of the kitchen with a sketchpad, and her glasses perched on the edge of her nose, drawing aimlessly as Nat King Cole crooned over the stereo.
“It’s New Year’s,” he said with an incredulous look. “You aren’t going out?”
She laughed, a tinkling sound. “Of cour
se I am. We’re going into the city tonight. But I don’t think anyone’s leaving ’til eleven.”
Jared sighed. Of course, his aunt was way too cool to be seen anywhere before midnight.
“Well, don’t turn into a pumpkin,” he said and snagged a bottle of Jack from the counter.
She grinned at him and waved good-bye with her pencil as he went to the garage. The truck stayed parked out front. The pink Cadillac though, she got special treatment, and was kept locked up, under cover.
The car purred to life, and Jared pulled smoothly out onto the drive. He was good at this now, knowing how the car handled, when to let it rumble and when to push her to the max. Chris had kept his vow and bought a vintage white Mustang to replace the car he’d given away, and seemed enamored with the new vehicle. Jared was pleased for him.
Clare lived in possibly the most exclusive corner of the already-expensive island. Sure, Adam’s place was quirky and cool, and Chris’s was bold and brash, but Clare’s parents were clearly old money. He wasn’t surprised. She held herself with the sort of snobbery that spoke of deep-rooted entitlement.
He left the Caddy parked haphazardly in front of the stone steps that led up to the house, forcing other guests to walk around it.
This party was different from the others, and Jared, at first, couldn’t put his finger on why. He did the same as always, exploring on his own until he found the kitchen, then fixed a drink and wandered some more. The house was almost clinically white, and smelled of beeswax and something expensive. The carpets were thick and luxurious under his feet, and he winced as freshmen in inadvisable shoes ground their icepick heels into the plush.
The difference between the two parties dawned on him as he found a parlor room where the DJ was set up; there were far fewer people here than usual. The lack of partiers wasn’t likely to be due to Clare’s lack of popularity, more like her attempt at exclusivity. Clare wasn’t going to let the hoi polloi into her expensive Georgian-style home. Only the very best got a pass.
For that reason alone, Jared wondered why he was here.
After a nod at Chris, and raising his glass to Clare, who was dressed in a blood-red gown that made her skin look paler, her hair darker, Jared continued to wander. He wasn’t in the mood for them tonight, the king and queen of Harbor Academy with their sense of entitlement.
In the basement, Jared found the real party.
It had been converted into the game room of many a teenage boy’s wet dream. Two pool tables competed for space at the end of the room, then game stations lined the walls, each with a sixty-five-inch TV and proper gamer’s chairs.
Boys he recognized from around school were either absorbed in Mortal Combat or Grand Theft Auto while others cheered them on in little clusters. There was a small bar tucked away in one corner; Jared guessed more than bottles of Bud were crammed into the small fridge space.
A group of people were congregated on sofas and beanbags in the center of the room, half watching the revolving games of pool, some with an eye on the video games. Most of them, around thirty or so, were just chatting.
Jared let his shoulders sag in relief. This, he could cope with.
“Jared!” someone called, and he met Mia’s smile with a genuine one of his own.
“Hey,” he murmured, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “You look great.”
It was a standard greeting now. All the girls liked to be told how good they looked, and Jared was happy to oblige.
“You know most people,” Mia said to him rather than the group at large. “That’s my cousin, Ben, and my other cousins, Emma and Piper.”
Jared nodded a greeting and raised his glass to the now infamous Ben “Macklemore” Haggerty. “Nice to meet you,” he said, wondering why on earth the guy was at a high school New Year’s Eve party. Whatever.
He couldn’t see Adam anywhere, and that was good, for now. Settling on the arm of one of the leather couches, he watched and listened for a while, occasionally adding to the conversation when he had something worth saying.
It would probably always be like this for him—included, but on the outskirts of the Harbor Academy social group. Even if he could go back in time and enroll at the tender age of thirteen with the rest of the kids, he wouldn’t have done it. The outsider’s perspective had made him appreciate things in a different way. He looked down on snobbishness and entitlement, and worked hard to eradicate it from himself.
The pink Cadillac was an exception.
After a little while, Ben stood and excused himself. There was somewhere else for him to be, and Mia escorted him out of the house while two of her girlfriends descended into giggles and whispers behind their hands. Jared sighed to himself and slid into the vacated seat.
“See,” Mia said triumphantly when she returned. “I told you he’d come if I asked him.”
Jared suppressed a smile and fetched himself a beer from the fridge. He couldn’t be bothered to go all the way upstairs for another whiskey. There wasn’t any danger of him throwing a big New Harbor party before they graduated, but if he did, it would be like this. Not upstairs, with Queen Clare presiding over the peasants, but like this easy atmosphere in her basement with people he thought might be his friends after all.
After Jared’s third beer, he was starting to get a little fuzzy, enough to relax into the corner of the couch with his arm around Ryder, hugging her close. She still wasn’t drinking after her overdose and seemed as tired and weary as he was. It was nice, having her small, warm body pressed into his side, even if her fake boobs were uncomfortably hard. Her hair smelled nice, and Jared wondered if he could ever go straight for a girl. Probably not. But it was interesting to think about.
When a strong, warm hand landed on his shoulder, Jared knew who it was without turning. Not Chris or the surprising return of Macklemore, but the one person he’d been avoiding for months.
Conversation in the small group silenced immediately as thirty pairs of eyes swiveled in Adam’s direction.
“Can I talk to you?” Adam said in a low voice.
Jared paused for a moment, during which those thirty pairs of eyes moved to look at him. If he said yes, they’d gossip as soon as he left. If he said no, he’d look like a dick.
They were going to talk anyway.
He got up.
Without saying anything else, Adam walked out of the room, not waiting for Jared to follow. It was a habit that had made Jared crazy before, and not much had changed. He didn’t look back as he used his long legs to catch Adam up and followed him wordlessly through the Metagos’ house.
Outside it was freezing. A bitterly cold wind whipped at the corners of the house and stung Jared’s exposed hands and face for the few moments they were outside. Adam immediately ducked into a doorway Jared hadn’t noticed before.
“Jeez,” Jared muttered, rubbing his hands together for warmth.
“Sorry,” Adam said to Jared’s great surprise and flicked on both lights and heaters.
It was a huge, luxuriously appointed pool house with a deep, half-Olympic pool and a Jacuzzi at the far end. He guessed the wood-clad room next to the Jacuzzi was a steam room.
Under the surface of the water, more lights glowed, casting flickering shadows on the low ceiling. It was a beautiful space, but Jared didn’t know why he was here.
For a moment he looked at Adam.
Still slim, still perfect, still needing a haircut where the soft brown waves fell into his eyes. Jared itched to reach over and push them back from Adam’s face. He reined in his impulses and bit down on his self-control, willing it to stay strong.
Adam was wearing a shirt and jeans, like most of the guys at the party, although his looked far more expensive. He was playing with the cuff of his shirt, not looking up, not making any move to tell Jared what the hell he’d dragged him out here for.
Making a snap decision, Jared turned to leave.
“Don’t go,” Adam said immediately.
Jared sighed. “Okay. What do you want?
”
Adam’s nostrils flared, like he was supremely uncomfortable. He probably was. Jared noticed everything at once—the twitching fingertips, the one knee bouncing in place like it did when Adam was upset or annoyed or bored. The eyes that still wouldn’t fucking meet his.
“I want to go back,” Adam said, so quietly Jared had to strain to hear him over the sound of gently lapping water.
“Go back to what?”
“Being able to sleep. To the day before Chris’s party and tell Clare to fuck off. To the moment before you left after… after… and tell you what I was going to say.”
“What were you going to say?” Jared asked. His stomach knotted tightly and his fingertips were cold again.
Adam looked up, eyes pleading, as if begging for Jared to not make him say it. They were long past Jared doing anything to make Adam feel better, though, and he waited patiently for the next words to fall from Adam’s lips.
“I was going to say… to tell you… I was in love with you. Am,” he corrected, looking down at his shoes. “I am in love with you.”
“No you’re not,” Jared said sharply.
“It would be a lot easier if I wasn’t, believe me,” Adam said with a harsh, humorless laugh.
Jared waited for a few moments while the silence hung thickly between them. “So, what now?”
“I think,” Adam said slowly, “That I’d like you to let me. Love you, I mean.”
A piece of Jared’s carefully constructed armor cracked, with a tiny fissure that spread and grew until it was all threatening to come down around him.
“I don’t know if I can do that,” Jared admitted. His voice didn’t sound like he remembered it. There was a new roughness that probably had something to do with the hard lump lodged in his throat.
“Okay,” Adam said. “I suppose I deserve that. I just had to know….”
“I don’t want to go back,” Jared said. “I don’t want to hide in your room from the rest of the world. I don’t want there to be something no one else is allowed to see in case they get the wrong impression. If there’s something there, I want everyone to know about it. I want it to be out there for judgment and criticism and comment, and I want you to own it. Own it, Adam, not hide from it.”
