Chapter 10. #2
“I was afraid you’d find Spruce … boring,” he confesses.
I glance at him. “Really?”
“As well as tonight.” He rubs at a small spot on the window, as if to wipe away a smudge. “Thought you’d think bowling was lame. And I had no idea what else we might do afterwards.”
His constant concern with me is so endearing. “Tonight was the exact opposite of lame, Timothy.”
He looks at me, surprised.
I almost want to laugh, seeing the shock on his face. “And I had a great time in Spruce. Even the first time when I ran into that stupid pole. I don’t get out much, believe it or not.”
He lets out a breath, as if his instinct was to laugh in disbelief, then he goes quiet for whatever reason. “Is that what inspired you to follow your favorite star across Texas?”
I can’t look away from his eyes. “Something like that.”
“So this is, like … your first big adventure or something?”
My eyes are lost in his. “First one that counted.”
He presses his lips together. His gaze drops to my mouth, as if remembering the back of the movie theater.
I can’t help but smile, try as I might to hold it back. “So really I should thank you. For helpin’ pull my head outta my own ass.”
His eyes flick back up to mine.
He panics.
Then he turns back to the window. “I don’t really like crowds, either.
Just like you. I’m … much better in an intimate setting, just a couple of friends hanging out, or just one really special one.
” He frowns. “Not that I’m doing a good job of proving that right now.
I’m … clearly so nervous around you for some reason. ”
“Why?” I absently put my hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay. I’m easygoing, Timothy. Nothing to be nervous about at all. We’re not doing anything, remember? We’re just hangin’ out ‘cause it’s late, and neither of us wanna take a long drive back to—”
He cuts me off with a kiss.
Right then, right there.
All my words are gone.
All my thoughts, with them.
My hands are on him, too, completely incapable of controlling them. From the way his body responds, he’s no better, wanting my hands on him as badly as he wants his on me.
And his mouth.
Goddamn, his mouth …
I’ve been craving another kiss since the millisecond the last one ended in that movie theater. And as soon as this one starts, you better bet I’m locked right back in.
As if our kiss in the theater never ended.
An unfinished song.
Begging for another chorus. Another crowd-pleaser. Can’t get enough of his lips. His taste. The way he’s both fierce and gentle at the same time.
Then his hands find my shoulders. He turns me, and my back presses to the window, hat knocked off, tumbling to the floor.
He means business suddenly.
This is the stuff of love songs, but I’m too in the moment to appreciate it. This is what drives people crazy, whether wanting it and not having it, or tasting it and never getting enough, or loving it so much you’re scared you’ll lose yourself and never come back.
It’s a beautiful terror, giving yourself to someone.
Remembering every betrayal you’ve felt.
Your body remembering the pain of every past breakup.
The second you kiss someone new, you risk feeling all of those debilitating poisons again. You risk heartbreak. You risk pain.
You also risk basking in paradise.
Could this finally be the set of lips you’ve been looking for? The ones that won’t abandon you? The ones you can wake up next to every morning? That will say all the right words to capture you in the sweetest prison you’ll never want to escape?
That’s what your heart asks you without words.
With every beat—Could he be the one?
Suddenly he pulls away. “Sorry. I-I know. I said it, too. Just to spend time together. This wasn’t an ambush. I didn’t mean—”
“Hey, do you see me resisting?”
Our hands are still on each other.
Our breaths, crashing out and rushing in.
His desperate eyes meet mine. “I just … don’t want to ruin this thing between us. Whatever it is. Whatever’s happening. I really like it. I … I want more of it. A lot more.”
“Me too,” I assure him.
“I don’t want this to just … vanish, y’know what I mean? And I learned quickly, I really learned, the first guys in college I dated—if I can even call them dates—the quicker the fire burns, the faster it goes out, and this is burning awfully fast—”
“Hey, I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
He catches his breath, staring at me for a while, out of words.
It’s killing me, to resist him any further, to practice any more restraint.
But maybe that’s what he’s begging me to do, even if his eyes and his body and his hands are telling me something totally different.
He wants me to be the bigger guy. To put on the brakes.
To assure him in all the ways our horny bodies can’t.
“How about …” Jesus, this is killin’ me.
“How about we … go and get settled on the beds? Separate beds. See? Two queens. And we can order room service … unless it’s closed for the night.
We could eat microwave popcorn, right over there, couple of bags.
Put the TV on. And just … hang out. All of our clothes on. ”
He’s clenching his jaw. The restraint is killing him, too.
Now I’m wondering if I read it wrong and he actually wanted the opposite—for me to reassure him while taking his clothes off, to kiss him tenderly on his exposed body, to treasure him as I lay him on the bed, to give him one hell of an experience he and his body will never forget …
“That sounds perfect,” he decides, voice slightly choked.
Now is he lying? Or being serious? “Uh … yeah?” I ask, like a test. “Is … Is that what you want?”
“I want lots of things,” he says, again slightly choked. “But … I think I’d like that. Us. Just hanging out.” His eyes drop to my lips. Then my chest. “That … sounds perfect.”
He’s still in his head.
I’m still in my feels.
You really aren’t makin’ this easy, Timothy.
In a few minutes, we end up doing just that: chilling on our own beds, TV on something neither of us are paying attention to.
After a few minutes, Timothy’s stomach growls, and we both look at each other—then laugh.
I hop off the bed to make that popcorn, say something witty like, “Free or not, let’s try to keep these ones from spillin’ all over the floor.
” He snorts at that and says it was totally my fault the tub spilled in the theater.
The next minute, we both have our own bag, chomping down on an airy tasteless snack notorious for doing absolutely fuck-all about appetite.
Then he has a thought and excuses himself from the room, only to come back a handful of minutes later with a can of soda, a bottle of Gatorade, and two packages of Oreos lumped in his arms. He dumps them on the end of my bed with a cute, “Didn’t know what you drink, but definitely knew your snack of choice,” winks at me, and I guess that becomes his excuse for abandoning his own bed and sitting next to me on mine, chomping down on Oreos.
Spending time with Timothy is effortless.
He says something simple. I pick it right up.
Then I make fun of whatever’s on TV. His laughter comes easy.
He says we probably reek from the bowling alley and movie theater and just haven’t noticed because we smell the same.
I say something weirdly cute about liking how we smell the same, like it’s meaningful, and he finds that hilarious and laughs way too hard.
In no time, we’ve lost all the nerves and discover something disturbingly natural between us that I haven’t found in anyone my whole life. He’s like an old friend. And I don’t have old friends.
Don’t have many new ones, either, I guess.
He’s a magical person who dropped into my life and made me aware of all these empty pits inside me. Then he fills them, every last one, until I’m so complete, I don’t know how I survived before.
After he returns from a quick trip to the bathroom (since the Dr. Pepper ran straight through him, in his words) he plops back onto the bed right next to me, and I get the full story behind his best friend AJ and the girl whose name is a city in France.
So this AJ dude totally hijacked the Vegas-and-desert-and-cave-exploring adventure that Timothy had carefully planned for nearly a year—just to chase after his college crush he thinks he’ll marry someday.
“It’s romantic, I guess,” he decides to call it.
“It sure makes for a good story they can tell their pretty kids someday. They’re gonna make pretty kids,” he quickly adds, “and I better be the godparent, or so help me.” He then plucks an Oreo out of the package in my lap and pops it into his mouth whole.
We’re shoulder-to-shoulder on my bed, backs against the soft headboard, faces close. “You’re a forgiving friend,” I point out.
He thinks it over while he chews. After swallowing, he shrugs.
“If everything had gone to plan, I wouldn’t have met you.
I’d have screamed alongside AJ out in that audience watching Chase Holt, and right about now, I’d be in a Vegas hotel room instead of this one, with AJ and I drooling over all the sweet merch we snatched at M I’m happy to learn whatever he wants to tell, keeping my happy ears open.
At one point in his storytelling, I swallow a yawn and stretch my arms, and while continuing to talk without missing a beat, he slides his head onto my chest just as my arm comes down.
And just like that, I’m cuddling him against my side.
It was so natural, I barely noticed it happen.
And now it’s all I notice.
How alarmingly perfect it feels, holding him in my arms.
“I could get used to this,” says Timothy after our conversation starts fracturing into pools of comfortable silences as the TV hums and rambles, volume too low to discern actual words.
We must’ve been talking for well over an hour by now.
“Do you ever feel …” He goes silent, the question vanishing the moment it’s started.
I run my hand up his arm, still holding him against me, his face on my chest. “Do I ever feel …?”
“Do you ever feel … lonely in a crowd?” he finishes.
His words come slowly. “I’m constantly surrounded by people back home.
All around me, every minute of the day, people who keep telling me what’s best for me, who talk at me rather than to me, who assume so much and know so little.
” He lets out a huff of breath, almost a chuckle.
“It’s such a strange feeling … being surrounded by people, yet still feeling … so alone.”
I stare ahead. My eyes find the painting on the wall, the one of the sunset over a field of golden wheat. I hear the roars and the cheering and the whistling from mere hours ago when I stood on a stage with my guitar. All that howling and crying and shouting.
And the emptiness inside me.
“I feel so safe with you,” he murmurs. “Like I can be my real self. No filters. No secrets. You’re actually getting to know the real me, and … and I didn’t realize how much I needed that.”
The deeper his words get, the harder they land. I wonder if he feels more comfortable saying these things because he’s not really looking at me, with his head on my chest like it is. It’s probably a good thing, because my face is showing too much.
The real me …
“Yeah,” I finally say, if anything but to break the silence. “I … I know how it feels like. To …” My throat tightens. I swallow hard. “To feel lonely in a room full of people. Feel like everyone’s lookin’ my way, but no one sees me.”
“Let’s always ‘see’ each other.” His hand is somewhere on my belly, gently caressing over the thin material of my shirt. “I’ll do that for you, and you can do it for me.”
I smile into his hair. “Deal.”
After that, we drift into another lull.
The only light on in the room other than the glow of the TV is a small lamp next to the window, where my eyes drift.
Don’t know if it’s the weight of his body on mine or the blurry reflection off the window next to that lamp that has me thinking whether anyone on this whole planet knows me at all.
If I’m not, in so many ways, like a person who doesn’t exist.
At least not anymore.
Chase Holt has eaten the real me alive.
What do I have to offer this sweet, small-town guy other than a shell of what I used to be?
Young Austin, he’s gone. Timothy would have made the best boyfriend for him.
I don’t even have to spend energy imagining the life they’d share.
Their road trips and exciting adventures … the song writes itself.
That beautiful, imaginary life of ours, it’s just another clichéd love song I haven’t written yet.
Fodder for lonely fools in a crowd of brokenhearted fans, desperate to believe in love.
People who’ll inevitably go home totally alone, then realize Monday morning that every love song ever written is just a dream you’ll wake up from eventually.
It’s not much longer before I realize Timothy’s fallen asleep.
And I’m wide awake.