Chapter 17. #2
I come out of it—“Sorry.”—and return to situating our plates in the dishwasher.
“So this … Austin …” She’s already finished at the sink, toying now with an oven mitt for whatever reason, choosing her words slowly. “You two have gotten closer?”
“Yeah.” The answer comes out so fast, I feel the sudden need to elaborate. “I mean, we just hit it off back at the concert, and he and I have a lot in common, and …” I glance at the upstairs landing again. “Dad’s gonna torture him with that telescope all night. I … should probably go check on him.”
“They’re fine. Why don’t you let them continue hitting it off?” She tosses the oven mitt onto the counter, then leans against it, gazing at me thoughtfully. “Austin’s easy to talk to, huh?”
“Yeah,” I answer distractedly, my eyes still upstairs.
“Tell me more about him. You both bonded over music? At a concert? I still can’t picture it,” she adds with a light chuckle. “I’m still trying to imagine you bouncing around in a mosh pit.”
I snort. “Not really a ‘mosh pit’ situation. Opening act, maybe, but a lot of their music is too whiny for a mosh pit. It’s metal-lite, goth-adjacent rock with both a softer and harder edge …? I dunno. Miranda is obsessed with them. Or their guitarist, at least.”
“Miranda?”
“Someone else I met at the same concert as Austin. She’s kind of cuckoo bananas. Cusses a lot. I gave her my spare ticket.”
“You had a spare—?”
“It’s a long story. I didn’t even want to go.
I’m … awfully glad I did, though. Austin and I …
we just … sort of … happened.” I catch myself smiling—then forget who I’m talking to—and let out a sigh.
“I really should go save him. Dad has a way. Y’know how it is.
” And before my mom can protest again, I’m out of the kitchen heading up the stairs to rescue Austin.
He didn’t need rescuing.
They’re literally laughing at something when I find them, like the two are best friends already with a secret handshake and a members-only tree house they’re about to climb into together.
Who the hell did I invite into my life?
“I like your parents,” he tells me later as we chill on a pair of loungers by the guest wing swimming pool, out of sight. The stars are out. Moon, too, almost full. Our first day together is already on its way out. “Think they’re warmin’ up to me.”
“For now,” I mumble, curled onto my side, just a throw of my arm away from cuddling him. I’m tempted to do it anyway, Mom and Dad be damned. “You’re just lucky my dad’s as much of a nerd for astrology as you are.”
“Astronomy,” he softly corrects me—I blink—then says, “and I can’t help lovin’ on those stars. When I’m out on the road, they’re my only companions. Those little guys up there remind me how teeny-tiny I am in this big-ass universe. Makes my problems look a lot smaller, too.”
I just want to be on the same lounger by his side, kissing him.
Then he says, “It’s not a bad thing to be small.”
Something in his tone changed. I lift my eyes, listening.
He chuckles to himself, as if at a private joke. “I guess I wish some other people would realize that.”
“Like who?”
“You can fight to be at the top your whole life, but what’s the point if you’re up there all alone?
” He turns his face away from the stars and brings his eyes to mine.
“Sometimes, TJ … I wish I never wrote Hate Me. Wish I’d stayed small …
just hittin’ bars, laughin’ it up with my friends who still called me Austin.
And it … it wouldn’t be anything at all to just …
” His eyes drag down my body, the rest of his sentence left hanging.
My chest tightens. I think he’s looking at my hands. Or maybe my dick? Every word he ever says drips in sex even when asking for directions to the bathroom, I can never tell with this guy.
But I’m also seeing the picture he’s painting. I wonder what it would be like, to have known him during those “smaller” times, to use his words.
It moves me to speak. “You know what’s the first thing about you I appreciated? Back at the Horseshoe, when we first met?”
He lifts an eyebrow. “My stunning hair?”
“Your ears.” He frowns at me. I smile. “You listened to me. All of me. I feel like you even somehow heard the things I didn’t say.”
“That so?”
“And after your ears—which are also super cute, by the way—it was your voice I noticed. But not in the hall. Outside, after I left. I didn’t know it was you. I thought it was that overhyped country singer called Chase Holt—who I was instantly proven wrong about. Your song that night, it saved me.”
He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t have even written it had we not met.
Can’t even think how different things would be right now if you hadn’t found me.
Probably would’ve just gone on that stage like any other night, never having written that song that sent me on this …
this wild path to you … to here and now, on these sweet-ass chairs under the stars. ”
Without thinking, I put my hand on his arm. His eyes drop to it. Then, perhaps also not thinking, he takes my hand into his, our fingers gently entwining.
I smile. “Guess we’re one-for-one with saving each other.”
“Guess so,” he agrees, and like that, we give in to a kiss across the arms of our side-by-side loungers. There’s a desperation in our kiss, the first one we’ve managed since he arrived, long overdue.
It’s so different this time. Without the sterile, lemony aroma of hotel carpets. Without the fear of someone spotting us. Without a TV on for background noise. Without windows drawn shut.
Just me and Austin.
The silence, punctured by a smacking of lips from our kisses, against a backdrop of crickets singing.
Austin makes it easy.
He makes everything easy.
“Feel tired yet?” I ask him when our kissing finally ends. He shakes his head no. “Feel tired enough … to retire to my room?” I ask, revising my question—and pushing what I’m actually asking. It hits him, and with a smirk, he slowly nods.
I take him from the spot, head inside, cut through the guest wing into the main house, fly up the stairs, and pull him right into my room.
The kissing resumes the second that door shuts.
I peel off his shirt. He grabs at the button of my shorts, working it open, then slides his fingertips over my waist, grazing my sensitive skin.
Our clothes fall off our bodies like butter.
My back hits the bed.
He crawls over me.
I reach to the side and pull open the nightstand drawer like I’m displaying a fine collection of jewelry for sale.
He stares at it. “That’s a lot of just-in-cases.”
“I’ve missed you,” I answer back, before grabbing his face and pulling it to mine, dive-bombing into more kisses.
There’s something about our energy tonight.
Is it being with him in the privacy of my house?
Away from the nauseating stench of sterile hotel rooms?
Away from the sickly bluish glow of TVs we kept on just to diffuse our noise?
I don’t think we realized that in the seeming fun of sneaking around to see each other on tour, we were also suffocating.
In this bedroom, there’s no suffocating. Just freedom.
Three empty wrappers on the floor. Sheets a total mess. Both of us on my bed the wrong way, feet pointing at the headboard. Our eyes on the ceiling as we catch our breaths.
“Thirsty,” he murmurs.
“Me too.”
“Should we—?”
“I’ve got you, just stay put.” I pat his sweaty chest, press one more kiss to his lips, then slide off the bed.
It’s almost 3 AM, so I figure I’m safe to hop downstairs in just a pair of shorts. I head to the kitchen, grab a couple bottles of water from the fridge, then make my way back.
I make it to the foot of the stairs before the gentle clacking of slippers from behind startles me. I turn to find my mom in a blue silk robe under the archway leading into the study. “Mom,” I blurt out, sounding both offended and surprised somehow.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” she chuckles sleepily.
Her hair’s a mess. Her eyes, dark and puffy. “Couldn’t sleep?” I ask. The bottles hang from between my fingertips by their plastic necks as I hug myself awkwardly, feeling naked despite the shorts. “What’re you still doing up, Mom?”
“Too much running through my mind. You know how it is. I … I just came to check something down here, something your father left on the …” She waves the back of her hand at the study behind her. “Whatever, I couldn’t find it, it’s no big deal.”
“Uh, alright.” I nod slowly, decide there’s nothing left of this conversation, then mutter, “Well, goodnight,” and turn to go.
“TJ,” she says, stopping me before I’ve made it even one step. “I was wondering … um …”
I half turn back to her, trying to be patient. “Yeah?”
“I was just …” She also crosses her arms, a mirror image of me, just without water bottles. “I was noticing so many things lately. About you. Your summer seems … so …”
A squirrel is racing around inside my shirt. Except I’ve got no shirt on. It’s the same squirrel that stole my Cheetos. Yes, I’m still holding a grudge. “Austin’s waiting,” I remind her, squirming out of this exchange, panicking, then start up the stairs again.
“Austin and you just sort of happened?”
I stop again.
“Your summer seems so lively,” she then says. “That’s what I was going to say. Especially these past few weeks. Booking these last-minute flights to see your Jason Holt concerts …”
“Chase Holt.”
“Right, Chase, yes, that’s what I meant.” She shuffles her feet. “I’m just … I’m very happy that you’ve … that it seems like you’ve found someone who … makes you slouch less.”
Huh? I turn around. “Slouch less?”
“It’s just a thing I noticed. Every summer. When we have our big parties. Too many people over. Or another event outside in the pavilion. You’re always … fading in the back a bit.”
“You think I’m fading?” I can’t believe this is what I’ve decided to take offense to. “What does that mean?”