Chapter Nine
UNLIKE LAST night, Tad isn’t tired enough to block out that Lewis is lying next to him in the tent.
Right next to him. Their sleeping bags are touching, which means the two of them are almost touching. That, combined with replaying Lewis’s fall, and how good it felt to hold him, is a recipe for sleeplessness.
The fact that Lewis looked like he was going to kiss Tad?
Yeah, Tad’s going to be lucky if he sleeps at all tonight.
He just keeps seeing it. Lewis’s eyes, big and brown, dropping to his lips, and the way he leaned forward.
Tad panicked. Yesterday, Lewis said they couldn’t do this. He didn’t say why, but there must be a reason. Lewis was honest and up front, and then—fuck, who knows. It was probably the adrenaline from almost tumbling down the trail, but something made him nearly go back on the line he drew, and Tad isn’t going to be responsible for that.
He wants Lewis to like him. He wants that so bad. But he also just, like… he got scared that if Lewis kissed him, Lewis would regret it by the time they made camp.
Is Lewis asleep? His breathing isn’t deep and even like it was last night. Fabric hisses as Lewis shifts. His breathing doesn’t change. Maybe he moved in his sleep.
“Are you awake?” Lewis whispers.
Or maybe Lewis can’t sleep, either.
“Yeah,” Tad whispers back.
“Oh.” Lewis just breathes for a minute. “Me too.”
Outside, embers from the fire crackle softly. The faintest orange glow wavers over the side of the tent. Give it another hour, and the moon will be up, but now it’s too dark to see inside the tent, even with the remnants of their fire burning out.
“I didn’t wake you up, did I?” Lewis asks.
Tad wants to reach out to him. He clears his throat. “You don’t have to whisper.”
With an embarrassed laugh, Lewis says, “Oh, yeah, I guess not.”
“You didn’t wake me up.”
“Okay. Good.”
Silence again. Then: “I, um. I owe you an apology. For earlier. I didn’t mean to be weird.”
Tad isn’t used to people apologizing to him. “Don’t worry about it.”
“No, I mean.” There’s a slither of fabric. “I was the one who made a big deal about… you know. Nothing else happening between us. And I feel like I owe you an explanation.”
“You don’t.” Tad means it. If Lewis doesn’t want any relationship at all, not even a friendship, he doesn’t need to explain anything. All explanations do is open the way for connection.
“I want to explain,” Lewis says quietly. “Is it okay if I do?”
In the darkness, Tad raises his hands to his eyes and digs the heels in. He should say no. Nicely, of course. But no.
“Okay,” he says, because apparently he likes getting close to guys who seem perfect for him, only to find out he’s not enough.
Lewis’s breathing seems shallower. God, he’s really nervous about this. Even though he can’t see shit, Tad tentatively reaches out a hand. His fingers finds Lewis’s shoulder.
Bare shoulder. Lewis is sleeping shirtless? Is Lewis sleeping nude?
Tad’s cock perks up. Tad’s brain tells it to settle down.
“It’s fine,” Tad says. “Whatever you want to explain? It’s okay.”
“God, you’re being nice,” Lewis mutters, sounding despairing. “Um. So, the thing is, I’m on a break from dating. A total break. So it wasn’t ever you. I didn’t want it to be anything more than a hookup because I’m just….” A sigh. “I’m just really shit at dating.”
“Oh,” Tad says carefully. “I get that.”
“No, but every guy I’ve dated for the past, like, decade, has turned out to be awful. I fall head over heels and I get my heart broken. Over and over. It’s gotta be me. I’m horrible at picking boyfriends. So I’m not dating. Not until I figure it out.”
Tad’s hand is still on Lewis’s shoulder. He’s so warm, and his skin is soft, and the ache in his voice makes Tad want to pull him close and hold him. Without the perked-up dick. Which, yeah, his dick is interested in Lewis, but the raw sadness in Lewis’s voice scrapes an exposed nerve in Tad’s heart. He knows how it feels. He knows exactly how it feels to fall head over heels and be found wanting.
“I guess what I’m saying is, I just have to not fall into all my old patterns.” Lewis pauses. “Not that I think you’re like all those other guys.”
Trying to be fair, Tad says, “I might be.”
Another pause, longer this time. “I don’t think you are,” Lewis says so softly that Tad barely hears him. “That’s what makes this hard.”
Tad bites his tongue. But then, Lewis snorts. “That’s what he said?”
“I kept my mouth shut!” Tad says. “We’re having a very serious conversation, and I wasn’t going to derail it with childish innuendo!”
“Childish, huh?” Lewis asks. There’s a smile in his voice. Tad can picture it perfectly, for all he’s only known this man for a sum total of forty-eight hours.
“Well, when you say it, it sounds super sophisticated,” Tad says solicitously.
Lewis laughs, his shoulder bouncing under Tad’s palm. It’s time to move his hand, but it doesn’t seem to be bothering Lewis. If anything, after he laughs, Lewis leans into the curve of Tad’s fingers. “Thanks. That’s me. Mr. Sophisticated.”
“Sounds like your stripper name.”
The way Lewis laughs makes Tad’s entire chest glow. He knows his face is a happy pink. “What happened to you respecting our serious conversation?”
“That was before Mr. Sophisticated came on the scene,” Tad says, grinning into the darkness. “Do you have like, a signature move?”
“Yeah,” Lewis says, deadpan. “I call it the mechanical bull.”
Tad loses it, and after a second, so does Lewis. They’re both giggling and snorting in their little tent, wrapped up in their sleeping bags, Tad’s fingers still on Lewis’s shoulder as he laughs and hurts with how easy this is.
As their laughter dies away, smooth, strong fingers slide over Tad’s. “I wish I’d met you when I had my head on straight,” Lewis says.
The humor of the previous moment drains away like water through sand. Tad’s throat tightens. “Yeah. I do too.”
Lewis’s fingers curl around Tad’s. It’s their left hands, and Tad feels Lewis’s wedding ring slide over his skin. “Maybe we can be friends, though.”
Friends. Sure. Tad doesn’t know how he’ll be able to be just friends with Lewis, but it’s better than nothing, right?
“I’d like that,” he says. He doesn’t know what else he can say.
Lewis’s hand remains where it is, his warmth seeping into Tad. His arm is getting stiff, but moving isn’t possible.
After a minute, Lewis’s breath grows deep and even. The sound is what finally lulls Tad to sleep.
THE NEXT day’s hike takes them higher into the mountains. The trail skirts the peak, getting two-thirds of the way to the top. Both of them are breathing heavily by the time they get to the trail’s highest point. The treadmill doesn’t really prepare you for hiking a mountain.
It’s a hell of a lot colder up here. When they stop for a break, Tad puts on a sweatshirt. Lewis doesn’t put on anything warmer. “Aren’t you cold?” Tad asks.
He’s positive he sees Lewis shiver, but Lewis shrugs. “I’m fine.”
There’s not much Tad can do but take him at his word. Or give Lewis the shirt off his back, which he tries. Lewis won’t take it.
The plan is to bypass the campground at the higher elevation in favor of one farther down the slope. The most difficult part of the trail is the final steep stretch that will see them lose a thousand feet of elevation per mile.
And then they get there and Tad stops dead, small rocks skittering over the ledge.
The trail is impassible.
Okay, it’s not impassible. But it’s in bad shape. Looks like a flash flood, maybe, and a rock fall? Tad’s guessing, but the specifics don’t matter. They can get down this way, but it’s going to take hours. They’re quickly losing the light, so they don’t have hours.
Lewis is pale and his mouth is set in a thin, determined line. “We have to try it.”
“No way.”
“We have to!” Lewis repeats. Flinging out an arm to encompass their surroundings, he says, “We can’t just stay here . ”
“No, we can go back to the campsite we passed up the trail,” Tad replies. “It was only like forty-five minutes back. We can get there before dark.”
Lewis looks like he’s going to be sick. It makes Tad want to put his arms around him and soothe him and tell him everything’s going to be okay. He’d do just about anything to put some color back in Lewis’s face and take away that wan, pinched look.
Well, just about anything, except descend this mountain in the dark.
“I don’t want to backtrack,” Lewis says. “We’ll have to make up the miles if we want to make our pickup.”
“We’re not going to make our pickup if you break your leg trying to get down this trail in the dark.”
“Why do you assume I’d be the one to break my leg?”
“Okay, sure, fine. Maybe I’d break my leg. The point is, we’re better off pushing ourselves on a safe part of the trail tomorrow instead of risking dying on this part tonight. I mean, we still have four days. That’s plenty of time. Trust me, okay?”
It doesn’t strike him as ridiculous until the words are out of his mouth—the trust me part. People don’t tend to trust Tad with important stuff. He’s never been, like, the gay best friend with the platonic soul mate who loves him more than family. And yeah, he knows that’s a dumb stereotype from a movie industry that’s afraid gay cooties are going to hurt their bottom line, but it’s one of the few gay fairytales he’s been sold.
Instead, he’s got a boss he’s close to. He had some friends in college, but they drifted apart, and every time Tad thinks about maybe getting back in touch, his shyness shuts it down, even though he was close with those people once. When he was dating John, he got invited out. Because he was part of a couple, and they could do couple things with all the other couples. Because John had friends. But obviously John’s friends chose John in the breakup, not Tad.
Even though Lewis doesn’t know any of that stuff—Lewis doesn’t know anything about him, really—Tad can’t help being afraid it’s coming off him. Like pheromones or something. Like he just emanates this overall loser vibe. A this-is-not-a-person-you-want-to-listen-to vibe.
Lewis deflates. “You’re right. You’re obviously right. Sorry. I just—ugh. Dammit. I just hate when things don’t go the way I planned.”
“That’s camping for you,” Tad says.
Now Lewis looks like he’s going to cry. “I don’t know what made me think this would be a good idea. I’m a control freak. Why would I go on a camping trip when I don’t know anything about camping? God, I’m such an idiot. I figured it would be like all the other stuff I’ve figured out how to do from YouTube videos.”
Tad goes to Lewis’s side. Without second-guessing himself, he grabs Lewis’s hand and twines their fingers together tightly. It seems like Lewis could use the physical comfort, but Tad’s also like, mildly concerned Lewis might fling himself over the edge of the trail. “This was a good idea,” he says.
“You told me it was a bad idea.”
“The going alone part! Not the entire concept of camping.” He squeezes Lewis’s hand, encouraged that Lewis hasn’t tried to pull away. “You’ve been having fun so far, right?”
Lewis stares into the middle distance. “Yeah. Until this.”
Tugging Lewis around until he looks at him, Tad says, “It’ll be okay. It really, really will be.”
And then—Lewis! Squeezes his hand! Back!
“Okay,” he says. A smile tiptoes onto his face. “I trust you.”
Those words shouldn’t turn Tad’s heart into a Catherine wheel, spinning and blazing and crackling in his rib cage.
They shouldn’t, but they do.
Tad has to take a deep breath before he trusts his voice to come out normal. “I promise we’ll make our pickup. And I promise this is just going to be a little blip. It’s not going to ruin anything. It’s not even going to ruin the night! I promise.”
Lewis looks at Tad like he believes him.
Tad isn’t going to let him down.