Chapter 26 #2
“Emily can help.” Miles ate a handful, licking salty butter from his fingertips. “You never told me you were such a big fan of popcorn.”
“It’s Bram’s favorite, he always makes it for our movie nights. I suppose it’s grown on me.”
Everyone cheered as the teams ran back onto the field. Miles waited until they were done to say, “I got you something else too.”
He held up his choice from the merch, a sparkly green headband with googly frog eyeballs on long springy stalks that bobbed and dipped with the slightest movement.
Gabriel took one look at it and declared, “Over my dead body.”
“C’mon, it’s your first game and the Toads are winning. Don’t you think you should show a little support for your team?”
“Excuse you, I’m wearing green.” Gabriel gestured to his sweater vest. “You’re the one lacking in the school spirit department. You need it more.”
“I have all the school spirit I need in my heart,” Miles proclaimed loftily. “And this isn’t about me. This is about you getting the full high school football game experience and embracing your toady love.”
Gabriel’s face scrunched in disgust. “Never say that again.”
He wasn’t going down without a fight. That was okay. Miles had the ultimate weapon.
“Emily!” He reached past Gabriel, ignoring his sputtering protests, and tugged on her scarf to get her attention. “Look at what I got Gabriel.”
Her whole face lit up. “Oh my God, that’s so stupid cute.
Put it on!”
“I don’t think—”
It was too late. Emily snatched it from Miles, spreading the headband wide and perching it on Gabriel’s head. Emerald glitter shed into his dark hair, the ridiculous eyes bobbing around on their springs.
Miles cackled into his jacket while Emily cooed. “I’m so glad you guys are here,” she said, giddy. “This is seriously the best night ever. Let’s bring Charlee to the next one, okay?”
“For sure,” Miles promised, despite knowing he’d have to drag her kicking and screaming.
Emily turned away, gesturing to her friends and pointing at Gabriel’s headband with a joyful squeal. Two of them got up to go buy one, poking the bouncing eyeballs as they scooted past.
“I’m going to kill you,” Gabriel muttered, shifting so Emily wouldn’t see his murderous glare. “The second she’s distracted, I’m taking this thing off and throwing it as far as I can.”
“Even you aren’t cold enough to crush her happiness like that.”
“As if I care,” he scoffed. But he watched Emily for a moment and left the headband on.
The night went on, getting colder until Miles could see his breath in the air and his fingers started to get numb. Emily’s friends pulled out blankets and passed them around, a plaid fleece one ending up down by Miles.
“Oh, that’s okay,” he protested, not wanting to take someone’s blanket.
“Don’t be silly, there’s plenty for everyone.” Emily unfolded it and draped it over him and Gabriel, tucking the ends around them to create a cocoon of warmth. “No one wants to freeze their butt off.”
Miles gave Gabriel a sheepish look. They were practically wrapped up in a burrito together. Emily looked immensely satisfied with herself.
“Want me to grab my own?”
“No.” Gabriel shifted, moving under the blanket, his cold hand finding Miles’s. He intertwined their fingers and rested them together on Miles’s leg. “This is perfect.”
* * *
The Toads ended up pulling off an unexpected win.
Emily celebrated the entire walk to the car where she hollered goodnight.
The moment she was out of sight, Gabriel ripped the frog headband off.
He still had the smear of green on his cheek, stray flecks of glitter caught in it that gleamed when he turned his head.
Miles pulled onto the road leading out of Thistle to take Gabriel home. If he drove a little slower than usual, that was his business. He wasn’t ready for the night to be over yet.
“I appreciate you coming with me,” Gabriel said once the flood of headlights leaving the school had faded in the rearview.
“Thanks for inviting me. Did you have fun? Get the night off you wanted?”
“I did.” His tone wasn’t particularly happy, and as the streetlights flashed by, they illuminated his conflicted expression.
Concern squirmed in Miles’s core. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Gabriel ran his thumb over the headband, sparkles raining onto Charlee’s seat. “I’m not quite sure how to put it into words. Being there tonight made me feel… as if I saw an alternate life. My life, if things had gone differently.”
“You mean, if the curse hadn’t happened?”
“Or if I wasn’t a Hawthorne at all.”
Miles understood. He carried the burden of his own name constantly, the expectations of being a Warren heavy on his shoulders. He could never kid himself into thinking his life would be normal.
“I think about that a lot,” he admitted, making a slow turn. For a moment, he was back in Blanche, driving home in the dark after a job, and calm washed over him. “What my future could be if I was like everyone else.”
“What do you picture?”
Miles had never shared this part of himself with anyone else before, but he trusted Gabriel to be gentle with his silly dreams. “Leaving Thistle. Going to art school in Seattle. Making friends and staying out late watching movies or walking around the city, trying new places to eat. Having my own place, small but cozy, with like, the perfect spot at the window to draw and a couch big enough that I could stretch out all the way on it.” He gave a self-conscious shrug.
He didn’t want his entire life and all his memories confined to one small Washington town.
“Literally the most boring stuff ever. I guess I’m not a very exciting person. ”
“It sounds perfect,” Gabriel murmured.
“I haven’t thought about it as much lately.” Miles had a surge of bravery, not caring how much the words revealed. “It’s hard to dream about leaving when you have something that makes you want to stay.”
They’d left the streetlights, the other cars, and the town behind.
“I didn’t bother pondering the future much before now.
What was there to look forward to?” Gabriel’s fingers knotted together in his lap.
“I never wanted to die, but it was sometimes difficult to remember what exactly I was staying alive for.”
Miles hated to hear him say it as much as when he’d said he felt like a ghost in his own life. Intangible. He wished he could rip the feeling out of Gabriel’s head and toss it into the rushing darkness outside the car. Leave it on the side of the road to rot.
“It’s rather ironic, isn’t it?” Gabriel continued. “Now that I’m looking forward to the future for the first time, it might be snatched away from me. Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned there.”
“The lesson is that the universe has a sick and twisted sense of humor.” Outside, the clouds shifted, revealing the milky moon. “Tell me what you’re looking forward to now. What you’re going to do once we break the curse and everything gets back to normal. Well, normal for us.”
Gabriel pondered. “I’m not sure. I’d like to do more of this.”
“Football games?”
“Spending time with you,” Gabriel responded bluntly. “Going on dates.”
“Oh.” Miles had to refocus on the road before he drove them off the side by accident. Death by charming distraction, what a way to go. “How about… we go to the movies next time? So we don’t have to freeze our butts off outside. Or, if you want to be cold, we can go get ice cream.”
“I enjoy ice cream. Mint chocolate chip, if they have it.”
Mint chocolate chip fit Gabriel perfectly. “Ice cream it is. There’s a place right in town that has the best waffle cones. You can smell them a whole block away.”
A small smile curled in the corner of Gabriel’s mouth, the one that Miles sometimes selfishly thought was only for him. “What about homecoming? Would that qualify as a date?”
The car swerved for a second before Miles righted it. “Homecoming? Are you—did you want to go? Are you asking me to go? You said you’d rather stand in front of a speeding truck.”
“I said that about taking pictures in front of that horrific backdrop, not going with you. One of those things is much more agreeable than the other.”
He had to be trying to make Miles blush. “What if that’s my stipulation for going? A minimum of three cheesy pictures together in front of the backdrop I put my blood, sweat, and tears into making.”
“Then I suppose I’d have to agree. But only three, and I never want to see them.”
It’d been a joke, but Miles still wanted to lean across the middle console and kiss him. No one had ever wanted him before, or been willing to do even silly little things to have him.
The Hawthorne gate loomed ahead, and Miles pulled off the road to park beside it.
“I want to go with you.” He shifted in his seat to face Gabriel fully.
Gabriel could read him too easily. “But?”
“But… going with someone usually means things. Slow dancing together. Taking couples’ photos.
Sneaking off to make out in the hallway.
” He ignored Gabriel’s arched eyebrow. “I’m not out, and while I’d love this to be my heartfelt teen drama movie moment where I stand in front of my classmates and tell them I don’t care about what they think…
” The thought made anxiety claw at his chest. “I don’t think I can. ”
No disappointment flashed across Gabriel’s face, not a hint of frustration. “I have no expectation that you would, and I would never want you to compromise your comfort or privacy for my sake. All I’d like is to be there with you, however you’d like. We could conveniently show up at the same time.”
“Even if we just awkwardly lurk near the punch table the entire night?”
“I can’t think of anything I’d rather do,” Gabriel said solemnly.
It astounded Miles that he’d once looked at Gabriel and thought he was cold and uncaring. Heartless.
“You wouldn’t mind? If people knew you and I were… together?”
“Because you’re a boy? No. I imagine most people have more pressing reasons to dislike me.
” Gabriel flicked his wrist dismissively.
“Strangers making assumptions about me is nothing new, I’m sure my sexuality has come up before.
And they’re welcome to speculate as much as they’d like. I’m still figuring it out myself.”
“Oh.” Miles was surprised, only because Gabriel seemed to know himself so well. “Well, you like me, I suppose that’s a start. But labels don’t matter.”
“I do like you,” Gabriel agreed, so easily that Miles’s breath caught. “This is… new for me. At the risk of sounding terribly cliché, I’ve never felt like this about anyone before, never got to know anyone well enough outside of my family to consider attraction or affection.”
If Miles could get away with a T-shirt that read “Gabriel Hawthorne’s First Crush,” he’d wear it every day. It would be a badge of honor, sharing the precious thing he’d been entrusted with.
“It’s the debilitating anxiety.” He pitched his voice into exaggerated seriousness. “Most people don’t realize this, but it’s irresistible. You never stood a chance, I’m sorry.”
Gabriel smirked. “That must be it.” His seat creaked as he leaned closer, eyes searching Miles’s face.
Miles moved slowly, hoping he was reading this right, but leaving Gabriel plenty of time to pull back, turn away, stop him, but he tilted his head up to meet him eagerly.
They kissed, tender and aching with the promise of the future they’d talked about.
Sealing a pledge to each other that they’d survive and make it there together.
He wasn’t nervous. There wasn’t anything to be nervous about when Gabriel pulled him closer by the collar of his coat, other hand curled over his shoulder and thumb notched into the bare skin of his collarbone.
When Miles shivered and stroked the dark curl of hair behind Gabriel’s ear and the silky skin where his pulse pounded.
When Gabriel melted against him, letting out a quiet noise that made his own stomach freefall.
Miles felt simultaneously boneless and steadier than he’d been in forever.
When they separated, Gabriel didn’t let him go far, nudging his nose against Miles’s. “You never said if you’d go with me tomorrow,” he remarked, the words fluttering against Miles’s jaw.
“You know my answer’s yes. Of course it is.”
Miles was gifted with a smile so stunning, it lit up the entire car. It overwhelmed him for a moment, made his head spin that he could cause such an expression. That he had made Gabriel smile so beautifully.
“It’s a date.”