11. Blaze
Blaze
We’re four jump scares into the movie, which isn’t half bad, when the light shifts and we get a glare on the screen.
I draw the curtains, dousing the room in darkness.
When I sit down again, there’s little more than a couple of feet between me and Shawn.
We’ve been watching in companionable silence, but now that it’s darker and the movie’s getting scarier, I realize what a cheesy setup this would be—if I were someone else.
If I were hoping he’d hide his head against my chest while the dumb college kid trapped in the haunted insane asylum gets slashed to bits, I’d be disappointed. He’s watching the screen without a hint of fear, while I’m the one jumping at every loud noise.
Good thing I’m not trying to get in his pants, because as cliché as this setup is, it clearly wouldn’t be working.
Then something truly deranged happens on screen, and I leap involuntarily. “Holy shit,” I say, laughing a little at my own reaction. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Yeah, right? Pretty inventive.” He smiles sideways at me. Somehow I’ve moved closer to him, or he’s moved closer to me, and we’re barely a foot away from each other now.
It makes it hard to concentrate on the movie when I can imagine feeling the heat coming off him. I can smell him underneath the scent of beer and chips.
He’s taken off his ball cap at some point, and I can see the fine short hairs on the back of his neck. I want to feel them, to cup the back of his head and stroke them. I’d bring his head to mine, lick his mouth, and see if he tastes salty like the chips or bitter like the beer.
And it’s all so pointless—he came over because we’re starting to be friends, and I don’t know what he thinks is happening, but I’m certain he doesn’t believe this is a date or anything.
That I have intentions.
That I’ve had a hard time not thinking about him for longer than a couple of minutes in a row. That every time we hang out, it’s better than the time before. That it’s getting harder and harder to remember that I’m not supposed to let myself feel this way about a guest.
When Shawn goes back to his real life, I’ll take a couple days off and go to Portland, get back on the apps. I’m clearly missing sex if that’s where my mind keeps heading when I’m around Shawn.
“Blaze?”
“Hmm?”
“Movie’s over,” he says, looking at me as if maybe he’s been trying to get my attention for a minute.
“Oh, right.” I guess I zoned out during the last part.
“So what did you think?”
“It was good,” I say, hoping like hell that’s the right answer. “Yeah. Really good.”
“You want to watch something else?” he asks.
Another two hours sitting next to Shawn without being able to touch him? Sounds like a very specific kind of torture. I look at him, scouring my mind for an alternative suggestion. It’s not like I want him to leave. But I don’t know how to get him to stay without showing my hand.
“We could…” I trail off as his green eyes lock onto mine.
The color is familiar to me—it’s the particular green of the moss that grows on rocks on the north shore of the lake.
Right now, his eyes are bright like the moss gets on a misty, gray morning—otherworldly and vibrant.
It feels like they’re searching mine for something I’m scared for him to find.
Shawn’s mouth is slightly parted. His top lip is a little chapped, as if he’s been licking it. Barreling into my mind is an intrusive thought so powerful I wonder if it has formed an actual thought bubble over my head—I should reach out with my tongue and lick his top lip, feel it for myself.
Two things happen simultaneously—Shawn’s gaze drops to somewhere near my mouth and my tongue peeks out from between my lips. If I rocked forward just a little, we’d practically be kissing.
I push off from the couch so fast I ram my shin into the coffee table and knock the chip bowl onto the ancient rug. Crumbs spill all over. Misty executes her main passion in life, eating people food spilled by her idiotic humans, and vacuums them up before I can scold her away.
I pick up the bowl and head to the kitchen without looking at Shawn or acknowledging my clumsiness—or the fact that I was actively fantasizing about him while he was inches away on my couch.
“Maybe I should go,” he says as I blurt, “We could go out.”
“What?” we say at the same time.
“I should—wait, you want to go out?” he asks, joining me in the kitchen carrying our empty beer cans. I motion toward the returnables bin, and he chucks them inside.
It makes sense he’d want to go back to the retreat, do his own thing away from my awkward self. But I find myself offering something else. “We could go to town. I could text Brooke, and we could meet her there for dinner. What do you say?”
He folds his arms over his chest. His sweater’s seams are tested and found sturdy enough to contain his flexing muscles. “An encounter with the outside world,” he muses. “Think I’m ready?”
“I don’t know,” I answer seriously. “Are you? Because if you aren’t, we can ask Brooke to get takeout, put on that second movie.”
It’s not weird. Two friends doing a double feature. I’m not angling for anything except to spend more time with him.
“Honestly, I think it would be good for me to interact with civilization,” he says. “If you don’t mind the company.”
“Great,” I say, instead of something cheesy like, I don’t mind the company as long as it’s you. “Just let me feed Misty an early dinner.”
I prep Misty’s meal while Shawn looks at the framed photos on the fireplace mantel.
“Are those your parents?” He points to a picture of Mom and Dad when they were first married and building this house in the woods. They look impossibly young, and very happy.
“Yeah.”
“Brooke looks like your mom.”
“Yeah, she does.” I smile because it’s a nice thing to notice.
“And you look like your dad. But no beard.” He motions to my facial hair.
“He grew one later, when I was, oh, eight or so?”
“Sometimes I wish I could grow one,” he says, stroking his clean-shaven chin.
“You can’t?” I ask, surprised.
“It comes in patchy as hell,” he admits.
I squint, attempting to picture him with facial hair, but come up empty. “You don’t need it.”
He lifts his eyebrows, and I realize how that could sound. “I mean, you’ve got a strong, uh, jaw.” I feel my face heating up because I’m making it worse, though I stand by the comment. His jaw is firm, perfectly proportional, and offsets the prettiness of his eyes.
He doesn’t say anything, just smiles a little, and points to another picture on the mantel.
“Who’s that?” he asks.
“Oh, uh.” I hesitate. It’s me and the only guy I could technically call my boyfriend.
We met during my first and only year of college.
I never even introduced Michael to my parents, though they knew I was gay.
He calls from time to time to check in. I always liked that picture of us, posing in front of the student center.
“Michael. College friend. Boyfriend,” I amend, because even though it was a short relationship, it counts.
“University of Southern Maine,” he reads off the sign in the background. “What was your major?” he asks, not commenting on the boyfriend thing. Why should he?
“I don’t know—would have been environmental science, probably.”
“Would have been?”
“My parents died, and I came home to take care of Brooke. What was your major?” I don’t feel like talking about what might have been. This is what is.
He shrugs. “I was a business major. It’s the fallback for all of us meathead jocks.”
“So you’ve invested wisely, I take it?”
“I’ve done okay.” He looks at another photo, this one of my dad in his shop in the shed out back, making the very coffee table that’s in the living room right now. “I took a woodworking class once, for an art credit I needed. It was probably my favorite class I took all of college.”
“Is that why you chose construction work?”
“I guess so. That job was mostly strip mall remodeling. I watch those old-school carpentry shows sometimes.” He turns away from the mantel. “So, where are we going?”
I get that he’s changing the subject. We’re both pretty good at doing that when we want to. Since I’d rather not be a hypocrite, I let him.
“Laketon’s the nearest outpost,” I say as I gather up my wallet and keys. “You would have driven through it on the way here.”
I pause our departure to drop down to my knees next to Misty. “Hey, we’re going to town. I’ll be back later. Be good.” I kiss the top of her head and rise to find Shawn smirking at me.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he says quickly. “It’s nice. If I had a pet, I’d definitely talk to them, too.”
“She’s a smart one. I don’t want her to worry while I’m gone.”
“Of course not,” he says, and it doesn’t sound like he’s making fun of me.
“Just so you know, there’s not much to the town. Grocery store, post office, a couple of restaurants, the elementary school Brooke and I went to. For everything else, you have to go to Naples. That’s where Brooke’s work is, and the high school. It’s about a forty-minute drive from here.”
“Wow, so you grew up rural, rural,” he says as we climb into the truck.
“Pretty much. Hang on, let me text Brooke while I still have Wi-Fi.” I shoot her a text letting her know we’re going to town and that we might get dinner there.
“It’s so weird to not even have my phone on me,” Shawn says.
“You want to go back to get it?” I fire up the truck and pull onto the lake road.
He thinks for a second, then makes a dismissive noise. “Nah. Forget it. If I bring it, I’ll be tempted to look at my email and messages, and none of that is going to be good for me.”
“Smart.” I check my watch. By the time we get to town, it’ll be too early for dinner, but too late for the coffee shop that closes early. And then I get a genius idea.
“Hey, I have the perfect place to take you.”
“Where’s that?”
“Let me keep it a surprise, in case they aren’t open when we get there.”
He rubs those big hands on his thighs. “I like surprises.”
I like you, I want to say.
I don’t.
I drive, and soon Laketon appears out of the trees.
It’s not a very big town, just a couple of residential neighborhoods branching out from the two main streets that intersect in a town green.
I turn onto the higher road, the one with the bed-and-breakfast and the town hall.
Across the way is the historical society building, which houses the town’s archives and photographs going back to colonial days.
And next to that is our destination. There’s a parking spot right out front.
“We’re here.”
Shawn peers through the windshield at the carved wooden sign. “Laketon Woodworks?”
“They have classes and stuff. Let’s go check it out.”