9. Nate #2
We drove in companionable silence. The old rock music from my speakers filled the car, and Carter occasionally said how much he liked the song that came on.
Each time, he surprised me. I would have imagined these songs being totally foreign to him.
And if he wasn’t humming and mouthing and even singing along, I might have suspected he was only saying it to give us things in common.
By the end of the ride, I knew without a doubt that our tastes in music were a match.
“It’s timeless,” Carter pointed out when I expressed my surprise. “Besides, these songs are twenty years older than you, and you like them.”
I had to laugh.
“They are,” he said. “You keep pretending you’re old, but you were a kid yourself ten years ago.”
“I was twenty-eight ten years ago,” I said as we walked through the underground garage in my building toward the elevator. “And at the height of my popularity.”
“Not true,” Carter said. “You peaked in the last couple of years, according to every source I ever read. We’re not talking about those shitty online blogs, by the way.
Just this morning, The Metropolitan Observer published a piece questioning if your retirement had come too soon.
I don’t know if you’re paying attention, but your old team isn’t doing so great. ”
I hadn’t been paying attention. It hurt too much to know what was happening. It hurt that I was out if they were losing, but it hurt the same if they were winning without me.
“You’re a real little stalker, aren’t you?” I accused him as we entered the elevator.
He shot me a pout. “I’m not little.”
My eyebrows moved up and down playfully before I could stop them, and Carter easily read the suggestion off my face. He was little in one particularly delicious way. And the closer we were to total privacy, the harder it was to keep that out of my thoughts.
“And I’m not a stalker,” Carter said, his voice a little more airy and his face flushed. “I’ll admit, I have all the magazines with you on the cover, but how’s that different from any other pop star or actor or sports celebrity?”
It was different in that he had slept with me, but I didn’t say it. I was stunned that he had those as much as by the fact that he would so readily admit it. “Even the…”
“The underwear ones? Hell yeah.” His heated tone and pink cheeks revealed more than he planned, I was sure.
The elevator dropped up in the elegant hallway that led to my spacious apartment.
We walked there, and Carter observed how nice the building was.
I hadn’t exactly paid much attention to where I lived.
I owned properties across the country, vacation homes, luxury apartments, office spaces, and more.
Those I lived in from time to time were all the same to me.
I’d spent most of my life on the go, living in hotel rooms. Before that, I had been dirt-poor and sharing one small room with my big brother.
I unlocked the heavy door and pushed it open, letting us into my apartment.
“You weren’t kidding” were the first words from Carter’s mouth.
“About what?” I asked before I remembered.
He simply gestured at the apartment. “It’s like those viewing models. Very clean.”
I chuckled. “You’re getting cheeky.”
“I take liberties after sixty-nining someone,” he replied with a guileless shrug.
His words made me heat up, but I hurried into the kitchen to get us something to drink.
Carter followed me all the way to the fridge, where I searched for Coke.
When his gaze grew too heavy, I pulled a can out and set it on the island, finally turning to look into his eyes.
He was patient, but there were expectations in that look.
“I want us to talk about things,” I said.
He pulled his lower lip between his teeth. “After you kiss me.”
My heart thumped so loudly that it felt like it had climbed into my skull. I took a step forward and cupped the boy’s cheek, looking into his big, warm eyes. He was daring, far braver than I had ever been, and the desire to be kissed was painted across his entire face.
It lured me in so easily that I didn’t even consider not doing it.
When my lips grazed against him, he sucked in a shallow breath of air, then pushed himself up onto his toes. He rose and pressed his mouth against mine just as I leaned in a little lower, kissing him deeply and carefully as if I would never get another chance.
When I pulled away from him, he had that glazed look in his eyes and a silly smile on his lips. After a moment, he blinked and nodded. “That’s better.”
My chest was tight with all the feelings I wouldn’t let run wild. Even if we talked and found a way to see one another, he was still nearly twenty years younger. I couldn’t let myself feast on all the good things he made me feel. I couldn’t do that to him.
I stepped away, keeping my hands busy by putting ice into two glasses. Carter filled his with Coke, and I searched for something stronger for myself.
“Was that whiskey you had the other night?” Carter asked.
The fact that I feared he would ask me for a glass of whiskey was a terribly pointed example of the age gap between us. “Yes,” I said carefully.
“You should have some,” Carter said matter-of-factly. “I really like the smell of it.”
A shudder passed through my chest, but as it calmed down, I realized it wasn’t anything other than the flutters of anticipation.
I wanted him again. This brief, brilliant kiss was enough to seduce me into obedience to a nineteen-year-old.
It was enough to make me want to give everything up just to have him again.
I poured myself two fingers of whiskey over the ice and turned to Carter. “Let’s get comfortable.”
He grinned. “You don’t have to tell me twice.” He reached for the top button of his light gray shirt, which had a small, dark pattern splattered over the fabric. When I laughed and shook my head, he shrugged and lifted his glass instead.
We settled in the living room on the long sofa. Despite so much room, we found ourselves inches apart, turning so that we faced one another. The entire right side of my torso was leaning against the back of the sofa, my eyes on Carter, my right leg folded under my ass.
“You wanted to talk about things,” Carter reminded me gently. I could hear a tiny note of anxiety in his tone.
I nodded. The fact that I made him nervous was killing me, but we had to establish some rules and clear some things up. “I’m thirty-eight,” I said clumsily, and Carter rolled his eyes.
“I’ve read your Wikipedia, Nate. I know how old you are.” He took a sip of his Coke while looking at me. After he swallowed, he spoke again. “I have never been attracted to someone my age, okay? You can be fifty for all I care. I like men who had some time to find themselves.”
If he thought I’d found myself by this age, he was in for a disappointment, but I didn’t digress. “And you see nothing wrong with this?” I asked instead.
“Not a thing,” he assured me. “If it weren’t you, it would be someone like you.”
I breathed in and out slowly. “That doesn’t solve the real issue.”
“My dad?” Carter asked.
It felt like a needle stabbed me right through my heart, but I shook my head. “It’s not that, Carter. Don’t get me wrong, Dana wouldn’t be happy.” Won’t be, I corrected myself. I hesitated, wondering how to approach this.
Carter watched me anxiously, sipping his Coke twice in the time it took me to find the right way to start.
“Let me be absolutely honest with you,” I said. “I like you, Carter. I find you attractive. I think you’re hella smart and funny. And your talent for music is breathtaking.”
“That’s a good start,” Carter said with a small smile. “But there’s a ‘but.’”
I clenched my teeth and watched the rising disappointment in his eyes.
I would have told him immediately that we didn’t need to give this up, but I couldn’t go in that direction.
He had to have a clear way out after I said the things I had to say.
I continued as gently as I could. “I’m not a regular guy.
You know that. I’ve been famous for longer than I had been an anonymous nobody.
Being in the spotlight is like saying hello.
And turning up the charm for others to admire is second nature to me.
You have to know this, Carter, because you wouldn’t be the first person to be blinded by the things I wanted everyone to see.
It’s what I was taught to do. When I was much younger, I had an entire team of advisors teaching me exactly how to smile to take a breath away.
They wanted me to break a million hearts because I was young, good-looking, and had a camera-friendly face.
My first manager put me in front of every microphone and camera he could find.
” I paused. Carter’s expression grew ever so slightly darker, his lips pressed a little tighter, and his gaze never moved from my face.
“What I’m trying to say is that I can’t control this.
My instinct is to hide a lot of things about myself and only show the stuff people want to see.
Stuff that makes people like me and admire me…
” Crush on me and fall in love with me. I avoided saying those words.
“But there’s more to me than that. I flirt with alcohol when times are tough.
I’m not a drunk, but I don’t shy away from a few shots of whiskey when I sit here all alone.
And this summer’s been the hardest in my life since I was a broke kid getting bullied for wearing my hand-me-downs from my big brother.
” I snorted to conceal how badly the taste still lingered in my mouth from thirty years ago.
Carter nodded slowly and licked his lips as if he would speak.