Chapter 6 TARAN
At first, I forgot where I was. The ceiling was too high, with dark, elaborate tin tiles on it instead of plain white drywall. Then I turned my head and smiled immediately; Diego was already awake, stretched out beside me and propped up with his chin on one hand.
I tried to sit up, but a plaintive mew from the foot of the bed stopped me. Strawberry Shortcake had settled there sometime during the night and clearly wasn’t ready to get up.
“I’m not a morning person,” Diego said quietly, “but even I gotta admit you look really fucking good in the morning sunshine.”
I flushed. Every time he complimented me, I had this wild urge to ask him what the hell he was thinking, and had he looked in a mirror lately. It took serious willpower to just smile and say, “Thanks.” I held out an arm.
He came in close, curling against my side and burying his face half in my armpit. He took a deep breath, like a sigh.
I laughed. Jesus, I hadn’t showered in twenty-four hours. “Do I stink?”
“Yep. Fucking great,” he muttered into my chest.
Hey, anything he liked about me, I wasn’t gonna complain. I rubbed his back and kissed his curls, then looked back up at the ceiling.
Fuck. This was it, honestly. This was the thing I’d been after since I saw him again—probably the thing I’d been after in school, too, even though I hadn’t known exactly what it was or how to get it. This feeling, right here, with him.
And Shortcake, obviously. She’d hidden from me for the first couple of weeks, so I felt extra blessed with her tiny, warm weight against my foot.
“Thanks,” I told him.
“For sniffing you?”
I laughed, making his head bounce. “For letting me stay.”
“Mmm, yeah… about that…” He pulled away so he could prop his head up again. He kept my arm under his armpit, so I could keep rubbing his back.
I scanned his face for a clue about which way this was gonna go. He could either say this was a one-time thing and don’t get too comfortable… or he could acknowledge that yes, this was the first time we’d slept in the same bed, which was entirely on him, because I’d offered repeatedly at my place.
He smiled, his bright eyes crinkling at the corners. Something about that look soothed me.
So I said, “Go ahead. You might even like it.”
Diego wasn’t a big talker. Okay, no, he was a huge talker, pretty much all mouth, and always had been; he wasn’t a big talker when it came to his own feelings. Or past. Or desires. Which, fair enough. I’d already hurt him once, and it hadn’t been quick and easy.
But I lived in hope. Clearly.
“I doubt it.” He sighed and sat up in bed. “Okay, I gotta brush my teeth before we have a conversation. But yes, we need to have a conversation.”
I watched him go, smiling faintly at his ass in those clingy boxers.
An alarm went off before he got too far, and he returned to the end table to switch off his phone.
“Sorry. It’s weird they haven’t figured out a way to get ADHD meds to people without, like, needing to remember them every day, right?
” He swiped a pill bottle off the table and started back toward the bathroom.
“Now you mention it,” I said. Then, “You have eggs?”
The rest of his studio apartment was separated from the bed area by a massive bookshelf. He disappeared around it, but called back, “Yeah.”
“I’ll make breakfast.”
“Was hoping to have you for breakfast.” He shut the door behind him, and water started running.
I sat up and held out a hand to Shortcake, who sniffed it delicately. Just when I thought she was going to rub her adorable pink-and-black nose against it, she stood and hopped off the bed, following Diego.
Like father, like cat-daughter, huh?
After we both brushed our teeth and washed our faces, I went straight to the fridge and started scraping breakfast together.
He obviously didn’t eat at home much, seeing as it was mostly condiments in there, but he had enough to work with.
No sour cream, so the eggs would be a little flat, but hey. I could impress him some other time.
Once he found a t-shirt to pull on, Diego came to the kitchen island-slash-dining-table and settled, watching me.
I decided it’d be best to open with a joke. “Well, you let me use your bathroom, so this must be serious.”
It worked; he grinned, showing off the adorable gap in his front teeth. “You laugh, but yeah, pretty much. I even found you a spare toothbrush.”
I held up some high-fiber whole-grain keto thing. “I found this weird bread. Breakfast sandwiches?”
“Totally.” He propped his chin up on one hand, elbow on the counter. “You were really sweet last night. Sorry I was such a bummer.”
“You’re allowed to be tired. You deserve rest.”
“You sound like a self-help book.”
“A very accurate one.”
Diego gave a little shrug and licked his lips.
I moved to the other counter, facing him, then cracked the eggs and started whisking.
He watched my hands. Then my face. His brow furrowed.
I cleared my throat. “You want me to start?”
He slumped. “Yeah. Would you? Sorry, I’m bad at… this.” His smile went crooked.
I set the eggs aside, trying to fight off the heavy, heady sensation of fear and excitement that came with saying, “I want to be your boyfriend.”
His eyebrows went up and he gave a little laugh. “Wow, okay.”
Was it too fast? I honestly didn’t know; serial monogamy had warped my concept of how relationships were supposed to start, unfold, even end. But it was the truth, and I’d never felt it more strongly than this morning.
Well, I probably had at some point back in school too. But I was too fucking dumb back then to know what it meant.
“You wanted me to start.” I leaned forward on the counter. “So, you want to explain what I need to do to make that happen someday?”
Diego slumped. “You don’t…” Then he frowned and sat a little straighter. “Okay, no, actually, perfect segue. Sometimes it feels like you’re trying really hard to prove something. To jump through hoops.”
I bit my bottom lip to keep from blurting: No shit. I took a beat, then admitted with slightly less enthusiasm than I felt, “If you want, I will.”
He shook his head. “You are already. And that’s bullshit.”
In the last three weeks of hanging out with Diego, in all the nights we’d spent going out or having dinner or fucking, this had never occurred to me. Was it bullshit, to try and prove myself to him?
I took a few beats this time, trying to work it out.
I had a lot to work on, yeah, and I thought I was making progress figuring stuff out.
But I tried to zoom out and see things from Diego’s perspective.
And after a few seconds, I said, “You mean it’s not really me.
It’s a version of me I think you’ll like. ”
“No.” He shook his head. “You were always shit at lying.”
“Fair.”
He frowned thoughtfully.
Slowly, deliberately, I said, “I haven’t even done anything above and beyond. But if I know you want something, and I have it to give, obviously I’m gonna do it. If that’s jumping through hoops, isn’t that what everyone does when they like someone?”
“What if you don’t have it to give?”
I replied, “I can’t give what I don’t have.”
“Okay, what if you have it but don’t want to give it?”
I had to run up the white flag, at that point. He’d lost me. “What, exactly, are you worried about?”
“I just…” Big sigh from Diego. “I don’t like the idea that you think you have something to prove to me, is all.”
“But I do.” Obviously.
“No. I mean, no more than I do to you.”
I squinted, like that’d help me see his point better. “What?”
He held up one hand, obviously trying to work something out before he spoke again.
I nodded and waited, watching his pretty face go on a whole damn journey.
Finally, he went on with, “The last time we saw each other before you left for school, at that party?”
“In the woods,” I added. Diego had been pissed at me, so he’d stomped away from the bonfire and disappeared into the trees. I’d followed.
“Right. I finally let all the resentment I was building up explode on you. Said you were ashamed of me, said you didn’t want me in your real life, shit like that.”
I winced. I couldn’t recall his exact words, but I definitely remembered the effect they’d had on me.
“Did it hurt?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I looked down into the whisked eggs. “Because you were right. Not that I was ashamed of you, but—”
“No. Stop. Lemme finish. Did it hurt to never see me again, after that? Did it leave a mark at all?”
“Obviously it did. You know it did.” But as I said it, I had to wonder if he did know. We hadn’t talked much about it since that first night at the wedding. Just a little on our first date, when he’d made it clear he wanted to move past all that.
I was trying for his sake, and we’d been having fun. But it was always there, lurking in the background, the massive, teenage elephant in the room.
Diego nodded. “Okay, so, I’m not the only one with scars here.”
I frowned. “But you didn’t—”
“Stop.” He held up his hand again. “Stop taking all the credit for how fucked up it got in the end. I deserve at least half of it. Maybe more.”
“What are you talking about? You wanted to be open, you wanted to be a couple, and I never even thought about it.” Which sounded fucking insane to me, now.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be with Diego back then—It was that I was content being with him in secret, because I hadn’t even been capable of calculating what the fallout would be otherwise.
I was happy with him, I thought he was happy with me, and we both had plans to fuck off and do our own thing after graduation anyhow.