Chapter 30 Dane
Dane
Randy’s and my last hurrah is a winner-take-all cosmic bowling grudge match after our last class of the semester.
As disappointed as Randy was when I broke the news, he swears he’s happy for me.
As much as I’ll miss him, I’d be missing out on a lot more by not giving Sacramento a chance.
Besides, Randy only has one semester left before he jets off to whoknowswhere to put his international business degree to work.
And I never intended to stick around San Diego past getting my own diploma.
Transferring schools with only three semesters shy of graduating is daunting, but I’ve done scarier things for a lot worse reasons than love.
Not only my love for Connor but for my mom too.
As brittle as our relationship is, it won’t get any stronger with me here and her there.
I want to spend time with her, and the phone calls aren’t enough.
I want her to see me graduate. I want her to watch me play soccer for the first time since sixth grade, back when she was the only one who’d show up.
“You can do long-distance,” Randy suggests with a jalapeno popper filling half his mouth.
Electronic remixes and neon lights dust the ten-lane bowling alley, giving a lazy Thursday afternoon a heart-thumping disco flavor while I finger a mustard-yellow ball and lug it to our lane.
“I’m too needy for long-distance,” I answer back, “and too horny.”
“That’s valid.”
Ten pins challenge me at the end of the lane. Fueled by resentment that Randy’s beating me, I line myself up, take aim, and give myself a three-stride lead before shooting the ball down the lane.
“Gutter ball!” Randy cheers on my demise. He pumps his fist while zipping a victory lap around the bench and taking the basket of poppers along with him.
“Whatever! I was trying to do that.” I almost eat it on the sleek floor trying to toe out of these dumbass bowling shoes before I reach the carpet.
As soon as my ass is on the bench, I tug at the laces and free my feet.
“Besides you, Randy, Connor’s the only good thing I got down here.
At least in Sacramento, I got a chance at more, you know? ”
Plopping down beside me, Randy sweeps his arm around my shoulders and asks, “You really think your mom’s gonna step up after all these years?”
The last month has been an opportunity to think and reflect on what it is I actually want from Mom.
Promises she’s made during emotional weeknight phone calls give me hope that she wants the same things.
But it’ll be a while before I heal enough to trust that she means what she says.
I don’t know if my dishonesty came from Mom’s side or Artie’s, or if I absorbed it through the emotional turmoil of their marriage, but I know how hard it is to start telling the truth and that change doesn’t happen overnight.
Sometimes, I still lie to Connor, like when I tell him I can’t remember my nightmares, or when I say he’s the only family I need.
“I dunno. But I miss her. And I think if I’d gotten to go to Sacramento with her in the first place, my life woulda been a lot better.”
“Wow, I see how it is,” Randy teases, giving my arm a pinch.
“You know what I mean,” I laugh and elbow him away.
Jumping his hand to my hair, he says, “Yeah, I get you. And I think it’s a good thing. I’m glad you decided to go.”
“Really?” I’m surprised, only because when I initially brought up the possibility of leaving SD for good, Randy threatened to handcuff himself to me and swallow the key.
When he’s done messing up my hair the way I’m always messing up Connor’s, Randy says, “Yeah, man. If I was you, with your dad, I would’ve gotten the hell outta here the second I turned eighteen.
Hell, when you left for that internship in Yosemite last summer, I half-hoped you’d stay up there.
As long as it’s your call and no one else’s—not your mom’s; not Connor’s—I’m proud of you.
And San Diego will always be here if you miss it that much. ”
“Honestly…” I slouch low on the bench, lulling my head back to stare at the rafters. “I don’t think I’m gonna miss it at all.”
Once we trade the bowling shoes in for our sneakers, I ask Randy for a ride to the UC campus.
It’ll be another half hour before Connor’s last class lets out, but there’s something I’ve been wanting to check out inside the Fine Arts building.
I text him where to meet me then pull up the campus map on my phone.
Like a typical December in San Diego, it’s a sunny seventy-five with a hint of sea salt in the cool breeze. I follow a path between academic buildings and a vast quad until I’m in the subdued halls of the Fine Arts building. A flashy banner guides me to the open doors of a student gallery.
There’s a desk just inside the doors and a girl behind the desk wearing a UCSD Dance t-shirt and her hair gelled back in a sleek ponytail. She looks up from her phone and asks for my student ID.
“I’m not a student here,” I say. “Just a, uh, photography enthusiast.”
She lays out her palm and sighs, “Five dollars then?”
“For real?” I dig whatever cash I have left over from those jalapeno poppers and pick a fiver out. “Since it’s for the arts.”
“You look familiar,” the girl says as she takes the bill from me. A manicured eyebrow hooks as one eye squints. “Are you, like, an influencer?”
“I could be, and maybe I should be. But, no, I’m not.”
“Hmm.” Her lips purse, arms folding as she reclines in her swivel chair. “Eh, it’ll come to me at some point.”
“Well, if you’ve seen a TikTok video of a hot guy in a diner making out with another guy who kinda looks like me, that’s not me.”
A quiet giggle brightens her face. “I gotchu, bad boy.”
I point past her. “This gallery better be worth five dollars.”
“Hey, I don’t set the price. I just take the money.”
I carry on, following the white walls until they widen into a large room that eventually forks into two smaller rooms. Angled pendant lights emphasize every displayed photograph. I take them all in until I find what I’m looking for.
Myself.
Burnished in sunlight and speckled with sweat, windswept curls across my forehead and an adrenaline-blush across my cheeks and chest. A photo captured at the very moment in time that I saw the boy who would be the man of my dreams.
I still haven’t figured out what made me more special than Randy, or Bryce, or any of my other friends that I was Connor’s fantasy and they weren’t.
Maybe there isn’t a reason beyond the universe’s whims, but it bothers me sometimes how different things may have turned out had Connor not gone to that beach that morning.
“Hey.” My puppy’s voice in my ear and his warming touch on my back shiver me out of my thoughts. He’s in jeans and a white shirt, backpack on, and a dreamy glint in his blue eyes. “What’re you doing here?”
Slipping an arm around his waist, I trade glances between him and the me who hangs on the stark white wall. “Well, you did tell me that if you ever made prints, you’d give me one.”
“Ah, so this is a heist.”
“I’ll distract the girl at the desk. You grab it and run.”
Chuckling and rubbing my back, Connor says, “You don’t have to distract anyone. It’s my photo. I hung it on the wall. I can take it whenever I want.”
I kiss the side of his head. “Leave it. We’ll come back for it tomorrow before we hit the road.”
“You can always change your mind,” Connor reminds me for the hundredth time since last month.
Flashing him an amused smile, I ask him if it looks like I’ve changed my mind.
“I’m just saying, you don’t have to move for me. I’m fine to stay here as long as you wanna stay here. I just want you to be happy.”
“Connor.” I draw him in front of me and look him in his stunning eyes. “It’s decided, and I’m happy about it. I’m especially happy about getting to eat more of your dad’s chili and not having to live in a Holiday Inn. Stop overthinking and be happy with me.”
Finally, that scrunched up smile of Connor’s unravels into a gleeful grin as he slips his arms around my neck. Before his mouth touches mine, I inch back.
“And if you’re having second thoughts, you can just suck those right back in,” I warn him. “‘Cause we’re doing this. It’s gonna be good for us. For you, and for me.”
Connor steals that kiss like it’s owed to him. “No second thoughts.”
“None?”
“None whatsoever.”
“Hmm, that doesn’t sound like my puppy.”
Connor’s only answer is to take my hand and lead me to the exit as if he’s just as antsy to get out of this building as he is to get out of San Diego.
He asks me about cosmic bowling, and I tell him I won before admitting that I lost, pouting enough for Connor to suggest stopping for consolation pizza.
In the student parking lot, Connor hits his fob until his Jeep beeps from farther down the row.
I look at him, but my focus catches on a statuesque woman two rows down and walking in the opposite direction.
She’s tall enough and looks enough like Mom and Artie that I’m ninety percent sure it’s Thalia.
My eyes follow her while my mind entertains an outlandish hypothetical where, had Mom brought me to Sacramento when I was eleven, maybe Thalia and I could have had a better relationship. Or any relationship at all.
She would have seen how much better I am away from Artie—less explosive, less angry, less desperate for attention. Maybe she would have even come to love me at some point, the way older sisters begrudgingly love their mischievous little brothers. Maybe I would have loved her too.
But what ifs are just fantasies mixed with regret, and the only thing I regret about Thalia’s and my nonexistent relationship is that I wasn’t able to, somehow, find Connor before she did, to spare them both from wasting their time.
While I’m not proud of myself for sneaking around behind her back, Connor’s been ten times happier since they split.
I do hope Thalia’s happier now, too, that she’s free of Connor and free of me.
And if she isn’t happier, well, that’s fine too.
Connor’s nonchalance suggests he didn’t see Thalia walking past, and since Thalia didn’t shout curse words this way, I’m guessing she didn’t see us either.
All the better. When Connor presses me against the side of his car and kisses me, I’m certain he didn’t notice Thalia.
He may have moved on, but he’s too much of a sweetheart to make out with me where Thalia could see.
That’s one thing I love about him—that he’s a better person than me.
We kiss to a symphony of rustling palm fronds and singing Amazons. The heat from Connor’s black car warms my back while the heat from Connor warms my front.
“I missed you,” he says, holding my waist and licking his lips.
“Mm, since this morning?”
“Yeah.”
I meet his restrained smirk with one of my own.
Rubbing his arms, I feel the prickle of his arm hair under my palms, the rough patches on his elbows, and the firm muscle below his short sleeves.
He was too busy giving me head this morning to shave his blond stubble.
I feel it when I kiss his cheek and murmur that I missed him too.
Then I kiss his lips and ask if he said his goodbyes to Margot.
“She’s actually having a get-together tonight at her place,” he says. “I told her I’d stop by, if you wanna be my date.”
“Date?” I beam. “I’ve never been on a date.”
“What? We go on dates all the time. We went to the movies last weekend.”
“But that wasn’t a date. That was just going to the movies.”
His eyes crinkle and his nose scrunches. “What would make something a date then?”
“If you ask me, and I say yes.” I fold my lips to hold in my chuckles as Connor works through the interpersonal math equation in his head.
His expression soon softens into a knowing smile, as if he’s realizing I’m messing with him. He clears his throat and says, “Dane McKenzie Calvo—”
“Ahckkk, I never should’ve told you my middle name!”
“Will you go to a party with me tonight, as my date?”
“Connor Penelope Whitlock—”
“That’s not my middle name,” he laughs.
“I would love to be your date.”
“Yay,” Connor says before smooching my mouth. “I’ll let Connor Penelope know. He’ll be super stoked.”
Holding Connor’s shoulders, I bring my mouth to his ear and whisper, “Be sure to tell him not to drink too much, because I want him to fuck me tonight.”
“Yeah?” Connor’s head turns, looking at me starry while his hand slips behind my neck.
Instead of reiterating, I connect our mouths in a slow, impassioned kiss. Parted lips and teasing tongues taking the same liberties as they would in private. But if we truly were in private, I’d strip Connor naked and let him mount me right here and now.
I’d thought it would take months to muster the courage to bottom again, but it only took two weeks after checking into the hotel room the Whitlocks booked.
Something about spending every night together—talking, cuddling, laughing, and fucking—lulled me into such a comforted state that I eventually stuck my ass in Connor’s face, and it was game on from there.
I’ve never been more right about something than when I told Connor his dick is perfect.
Before we end up dry humping each other in the student parking lot, I slip out of Connor’s embrace and tell him to get in the car.
There will be time for fucking later tonight.
Right now, all I want to do is eat pizza slices on the beach and talk with Connor about all the awesome shit we’re going to do together in Sacramento, and how great life is going to be.