29. Cheot Sarang #3
“Or you could just tell me, Jacinda.”
She winked, spinning him away and joining a different conversation, leaving him to sway by himself, feeling lighter than he had a few minutes earlier. Apologizing to people was so freeing! He wanted to figure out who else he’d wronged and hunt them down tonight.
Orrrrrrrr that was the booze talking, and he should just continue to dance.
Jordan showed up past midnight, handed Caleb a fancy bottle of gin, and planted a dramatic kiss on Avery.
“I love you!” Avery yelled in Jordan’s face.
“I love you back!” Jordan yelled, then gave the same kiss to Caleb. She spotted Theo across the room and danced over. “Where’s Dae?”
“I don’t know!” he yelled over the music.
“Why don’t you know?”
“I don’t know why I don’t know!”
She frowned and grabbed his arm, leading him to the back yard.
A few people were outside smoking and chatting, but no one they knew.
The cool breeze cut through the thin fabric of his shirt, which was refreshing after sweating on the makeshift dance floor.
Leaves crunched under their shoes as Jordan marched him across the lawn, then turned on him, arms crossed.
“Are you kidding me?”
“What’d I do?”
She heaved a deep, wounded, existential sigh.
“Did you go back on what you said, Theo? Did you convince Dae you’re not madly in love with him?
” She held up her hand to halt his answer.
“And don’t even try to say it was the near-death experience making you say things you didn’t mean, because that would be the exact time you’d say what you mean the most, and if you try to keep pretending you don’t—”
“I love him, okay!” He waved his hands in front of her face before she could slip into some kind of angry fugue state. “I’m in love with him!”
Her smile was brilliant. “So you’re together?”
“I…think so?” A mosquito buzzed in his ear, and he swat it away, moving them closer to the wall of citronella candles.
She groaned, whiny and high-pitched, letting herself be dragged. “What does that mean?”
“I think he’s avoiding me.”
“Did you avoid him first?”
“No!” Some heads turned at his outburst, so he lowered his voice. “I want to be touching him every second of every day. I want him so much, it’s physically painful.”
She studied him from head to toe like the answer might be on his person. “You must be doing something, Theo. This is what you do.”
Okay, that stung, but it wasn’t untrue. “I’m trying my best not to. I’m going at his pace, following his lead. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
“So ask. Talk to him. Figure it out.” She grabbed onto his shirt and pulled him close. Her breath smelled like alcohol and lemon. “I need love to win today, okay? Give me this.”
“Babe, you okay?”
She shook her head, but didn’t elaborate, instead plunking her forehead against his shoulder. “Can you just dance with me?”
“Any time.” He wrapped his arms around her as the breeze kicked up a swirl of leaves around them. He was a little drunk. Not uncomfortably so, just enough that time slipped by a little faster as they swayed together, and the pop ballad changed to a party anthem, then some boy-band nostalgia.
Just as the singer was hitting a high note that was doing things to Theo’s body, the music stopped. He and Jordan gave each other a grumpy huff then went into the house to investigate.
“Who dares cut off such a beautiful song at such a pivotal part?”
“My bad.” Caleb’s arm was slung around Avery, whose head rested on his shoulder. “We promised the neighbours we’d quiet down at one am.”
Jordan’s lower lip trembled. “You guys are going to fit in so well here.”
Then she was full-on crying, and so was Avery, and they were hugging, and Theo left them there, sobbing into each other’s faces.
Dae stood in the kitchen with Jason and a couple girls who must’ve been Avery’s friends, because Theo didn’t recognize them.
He sidled up to Dae. “I’m fading.”
Dae nodded to the door. “You want to go?”
“If you do.”
“Whatever you want.”
They shuffled their feet at each other for a moment, neither of them wanting to make a decision that may inconvenience the other.
Jason fake-coughed in the way people do when they’re awkward as hell. “It’s getting late, and we can’t be loud anymore. That rules you out, Theo.” He had a point. Put a single drop of alcohol into Theo’s bloodstream and he was incapable of regulating the volume of his voice.
So they said their goodbyes and took a cab home instead of trudging to the subway, which was lazy, but whatever.
“Did you have fun?” Dae asked as they got into the backseat. He sounded like a parent asking their teen how the dance went.
“Yeah, you?” Theo suppressed the urge to point out that they wouldn’t have had to ask each other that question if they’d spent a single moment of the party together.
Dae nodded but didn’t elaborate.
“Did you see Jacinda?” Theo asked.
Dae nodded again. “We talked. It was nice. She seemed well.”
Nice. Well. Even their vocabulary was stilted. The cab arrived, and they climbed the stairs in silence. Dae held the door, then they hung their jackets side-by-side. The tense silence was unbearable until Dae broke it, moving towards the kitchen. “Do you want something to eat?”
Theo’s phone buzzed before he could answer.
#1 Client Extraordinaire
TALK. TO. HIM.
Tell him how you fell
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Let love win tonigt
LET LOVE WIN
“Theo?” Dae was standing in front of the open fridge, the light casting a soft yellow glow on his beautiful face. “Do you want some—”
“No, Dae.” Shit. He hadn’t meant for that to come out so harsh.
The light on his face disappeared as he shut the door. “Okay. Do you want to sleep together tonight, or…”
Theo hated that the question even had to be asked. He hated how nervous Dae sounded, and hated that he desperately wanted to say yes, but didn’t know if he was allowed.
“Um, whatever you want.”
Dae buffered, just like he used to in those first few years, his face freezing and his body going still. Theo didn’t interfere with his processing; he just waited until he saw movement, some blinking, then a nod. “I mean, whatever you wan—”
“Dae.” It came out of him without warning. He couldn’t take it anymore. Talk to him. Be honest. Let love win. “Am I doing something wrong?”
“What?” He took half a step towards him. “No, of course not.”
“Then why did you avoid me tonight?”
“I wasn’t—I mean, I wanted to show you that I wouldn’t be clingy, that you wouldn’t always have to babysit me.”
A frustrated grunt barrelled out of Theo’s chest. “Why do you keep saying that? I never feel like I’m babysitting you. I like having you near me. Be clingy, Dae. I don’t mind. No, that’s not even the right…I mean, I want you to.”
He shook his head. “Jason said I shouldn’t crowd you, that I should let you set the pac—”
“Jason?” What the fuck was happening? Theo thought they were on the same page, he’d thought they’d both taken the leap into whatever this was, but instead Dae was…what? Having strategy sessions with their friend? “You’re talking to him about us?”
Dae froze like he’d messed up. “No, I—well, yes.” He spoke so fast Theo almost didn’t understand him. “I didn’t know what to do, Theo. I don’t want to scare you off.”
“Scare me off? I’m not a deer you stumbled upon in the forest. I’m your...” What was he? His best friend? His roommate? His boyfriend? “I’m your Theo.”
“I’m sorry.” He sounded wretched, his face twisted in pain. “But that’s the problem.”
“Problem?” The word snuck out of Theo’s mouth, cold and hard.
He’d thought they’d finally found the solution, but instead he was a problem.
The trap door was real, and it had just swung out from under him, plunging him into a free fall so dark he was shocked he was able to speak. “So you don’t want me?”
“No, Theo, that’s not—fuck.” He closed the distance almost all the way, his hands hovering in the space that was left, as if he wanted to hold him but didn’t have permission. “Please don’t pull away because of this.”
Except, for the first time in his life, Theo wasn’t the one pulling away. The fear that always held him back had evaporated that night on the fire escape, and he’d known he’d never hurt Dae. But he’d been an idiot not to consider that Dae might hurt him. “Has nothing changed for you?”
“Everything has changed, Theo.”
“Has it? You don’t act any different. I thought you wanted this.” The idea that he’d been wrong rattled through his whole body. Oh fuck, oh god, please, please, please. “You do want this, right?”
“Yes.” The word was a breath.
He wanted so badly to believe him, but his panic was hot in his throat. “So what am I doing wrong?”
“Nothing!”
“Then why do I feel like I’m the only one falling?”
“Because you are!”
Panic engulfed him, burning away flesh and bone. Soon it would swallow him whole.
Dae shook his head and talked fast. “You’re the only one falling now because I fell a long time ago.” He sucked in a rattling breath. “I’m terrified with every move I make that you’ll realize how long and how desperately I’ve been in love with you.”
Love. In love. The universe became a vacuum, sucking away every noise that wasn’t Dae’s voice, every sight that wasn’t his tortured face, every sensation that wasn’t Theo’s overworked heart thudding in his chest.
Dae’s next words came out strangled. “I can’t go through it again.”
Theo’s head was too light and his body too heavy, and he couldn’t follow. He didn’t know why Dae was upset instead of elated. Love. Dae loved him. And Theo loved him back. So why were they standing so far apart? “Again?”
Dae laughed, dark and pained. “I almost kissed you during school, and you pulled away from me for a year, Theo.”
No. That wasn’t what happened. Was it? But he couldn’t search his memory because tears scratched Dae’s voice, and it tore Theo open.