Chapter Ten
TAD IS totally right about the whole trail-being-destroyed thing not being a big deal.
Okay, well, no. It’s totally a big deal. But like, it doesn’t have to ruin anything. Tad isn’t going to let it ruin anything, and Lewis isn’t, either. Tad knows what he’s doing. If he says it’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal.
Lewis recognizes that he’s just shifting the responsibility for control from himself to Tad, but it’s better than beating himself up. Maybe? If he can relinquish control, that’s progress?
As they head back up the trail, Lewis tries not to agonize over retreading the same ground—and knowing they’re going to have to do it again tomorrow. To distract himself, he asks, “Did you ever have any camping disasters?”
“Um.” Tad laughs, sounding embarrassed. “Kinda hoped you wouldn’t ask? I feel like I have this cool mystique right now. Like, a whole rugged outdoorsman thing going on.”
“I promise I’ll still think you have a cool outdoorsman mystique if you tell me.” Lewis makes his eyes big and bats his eyelashes. “Pleeeeease?”
Tad looks helpless, but he laughs. “Okay! Fine. So my sophomore year, I went camping with this guy I really liked. We weren’t, like, official, but we fooled around in his dorm room. I thought I could bring him camping, and it would be super romantic, and he’d ask me to be his boyfriend.”
Lewis keeps his mouth clamped shut, because he’s pretty sure this story ends with the guy not asking to be Tad’s boyfriend, and it’s sweet that Tad’s telling him an embarrassing story to make their current predicament not seem so bad.
“We went to the Catskills to this campground I knew—Sundown Wild Forest, have you heard of it?”
“No, sorry.”
Waving a hand, Tad says, “It’s gorgeous. I’ll bring you someday.” His voice stutters and his steps falter. “Um, anyway. So, it was just a three-day weekend thing, and I was super excited to show him the forest, you know? But he mostly seemed to want to, uh, fool around in the tent. Finally I got him on a hike to this waterfall. And we like, started making out, which, you know, I was nineteen, and I was horny all the time, and I liked this guy.”
He takes a deep, slow breath in through his nose. “Lewis, you have to understand. I really liked this guy. So, we were like, getting down to things, and we’re on the ground, and suddenly this guy lets out this bloodcurdling scream.”
Embarrassment and amusement war on Tad’s face. “He starts yelling that a snake bit him, he saw the snake, and he’s going to die, and we need to get to a hospital. So I.”
He takes a fortifying breath. “I said. ‘No. It’s okay. I’ll suck the poison out.’”
“No.”
“ Yes . Yes, I did, Lewis. So there I am, sucking on an alleged snake bite on my not-boyfriend’s mossy, dirty ass, when who should come upon us….”
“ No .”
“When who should come upon us,” Tad repeats, his tone sepulchral, “but my advisor .”
Lewis just lets the silence take that and float away with it.
Then, he asks, “Did you at least get the venom out of the guy’s ass?”
“There was no snake. He sat on a stick.”
Lewis claps a hand over his mouth to muffle his laughter. “I’m sorry.”
Tad lets out a snort, then a laugh. “Go ahead, I told you because it’s funny. I mean, mortifying, but funny.” The sun is slanting low and turning the world gold, while everything in shadow is purple. It catches copper strands in Tad’s hair and makes him look haloed. His eyelashes look like they’re tipped with gold.
It’s the hardest thing not to stare. It’s only slightly harder not to tell him how beautiful he is.
Shit.
“I’ve actually never told anyone that story,” Tad says, sounding embarrassed.
“You were a teenager. Teenagers pretty much just lurch from one embarrassing story to the next.”
With a laugh, Tad says, “True. I pretty much always felt like I was falling on my face in high school.”
“Yeah?” The sun is sinking fast, bringing the red out in Tad’s hair. Lewis wants to sink his fingers into it and tease out all the different colors. “You mentioned you have a brother—were you guys close, or was he part of the embarrassing?”
Something unreadable flashes across Tad’s face. “He’s older, so I was probably the one embarrassing him. But he’s….” There’s that expression again. Is it sadness? Shame? “He’s okay. He mostly looked out for me when we were kids.”
“Mostly?”
Tad shrugs. “Do you have siblings? God, I don’t know anything about—anything. Where did you grow up? That was your friend—Stacy?—Stacy’s bachelorette party you were at the other day, right? How long have you two known each other?”
The barrage of questions makes Lewis laugh. “I have an older sister, her name’s Taylor. I’m from Weehawken.”
Tad’s grin flashes in the rosy light, and he gives Lewis’s shoulder a light smack with the back of his hand. “You are not from Jersey.”
“Guilty,” Lewis says with an overblown wince. “Stace and I were neighbors. I’ve pretty much known her my whole life.”
“Neighbors in Weehawken. Weehawken. New Jersey. ”
“Okay, okay, Mr. Big Shot New Yorker. We can’t all be from the center of the universe.”
After a few steps, Tad admits, “I’m not from New York City, either.”
“Wow. And you just disrespected Weehawken. Weehawken, Tad! We have the Hamilton Monument!”
“Oh shit, the Hamilton Monument?” Tad gasps, then grins when Lewis pretends to glare. “No, I’m from upstate. Watertown?”
Lewis screws up his face in thought. “Um, sounds familiar?”
“It’s close to the Thousand Islands. And only like ten miles from Lake Ontario.”
“Oh, so you’re from Canada.”
Tad sighs. “At least when we put irreconcilable differences as our reason for divorce, we’ll mean it.”
“I’ve never been up there,” Lewis says. “Do you like it?”
“It’s okay, I guess,” Tad replies. “It’s definitely, like, really beautiful. The lake and the St. Lawrence. I got into camping because we camped on the Thousand Islands every summer when Walt and I were kids.”
“But?”
Tad arches an eyebrow. “Did I say ‘but?’”
“You heavily implied it.”
Tad adjusts the straps of his backpack. “It’s upstate New York. You spent much time upstate?”
“No.”
“Well.” His gaze unfocuses, and Lewis swears he feels him withdraw. After another minute, Tad sighs. “Being a gay boy in Watertown was… not easy. It’s the kind of place where you might decide to stay in the closet.”
Lewis doesn’t know what to say, so he bites back platitudes. That must have been so hard. It got better, right? Small towns suck. All of that is true, but c’mon. What gay boy hasn’t heard all that? Finally, he says, “Maybe the kind of place you’d leave and not go back to?”
Giving him a sidelong look, Tad says, “Maybe.”
He wants to know more—he wants to ask Tad all about everything and learn everything about him, and that’s a terrifying feeling. An expansive and out-of-control feeling. It’s a good thing they reach the campsite, because making camp gives Lewis an outlet for the energy that’s telling him to ask ask ask get to know him learn everything about him.
Why is his dumb rom-com heart so set on getting trampled? Tad is an amazing guy, that’s increasingly clear, and he’s not the kind of guy who’d want to stay with Lewis for the long haul.
Maybe he should stop looking for the long haul?
Maybe if he doesn’t look for the long haul, it doesn’t count as breaking his Dating Break?
He doesn’t realize he’s staring into space until Tad comes up beside him and unzips the tent flap to roll out his sleeping bag. “I can do you too,” Tad says. His face goes bright red, freckles on his cheekbones like reverse constellations. “Um. Yours. Your. Sleeping bag. I can. Yeah.”
Lewis gives Tad his sleeping bag and tries not to think about Tad doing him.
Casual definitely isn’t cheating on the Dating Break.
Anyway, it’s his Dating Break. He makes the rules! Something casual would be good for him. Because, like, then he wouldn’t be tempted to do his whole falling-for-the-first-guy-who-smiled-at-him routine. Stacy says all it usually takes is dimples and he’s ready to sign a lease, which is so not fair. He’s a hopeless, romantic idiot, but at least he’s never moved in with any of the giant mistakes he’s dated.
They get a fire going and cook dinner. There are a couple weathered logs around the fire pit for seating. Lewis dithers, trying to decide if it’s weirder to sit next to Tad or across from him. Then the smoke blows toward the log across from Tad, so the decision is made for him.
They refill their empty water bottles from a stream nearby. There’s a bite in the air, which feels nice after getting roasted by the fire. When they sit again, they’re closer than before. Their hips brush.
The fire spits. Sparks scatter at their feet, flaring across Lewis’s vision. “I’m kinda surprised you didn’t ask what made me stop dating,” Lewis says.
Tad glances over. The firelight makes Tad’s eyes look deep blue like the ocean, and Lewis could fall into them and drown. “I didn’t think it was any of my business,” Tad replies.
It’s not, but Lewis feels a weird pull to tell him. Maybe it’s because Tad told an embarrassing story just to make Lewis feel better.
Looking back to the fire, Lewis says, “I was dating this guy. Jonah. We were together for six months, which—well, for me, that’s like, a record. I thought we were actually going to work out.”
“And then?” There’s a sad smile on Tad’s face.
“And then I walked in on him with his face buried in another guy’s ass.” Lewis tries to say it like the image doesn’t still haunt him, but he doesn’t think he’s fooling Tad. “This dude he met working out. In hindsight, he was probably pumping something other than iron during all those hours at the gym.”
Tad grimaces. “God, Lewis. I’m sorry.”
“You wanna know the worst part?” Lewis rubs a hand in his hair. It feels greasy. “I refused to talk to him, even though he called me, like, a million times. I texted and told him to leave his key to my apartment on my kitchen counter when I wasn’t home because I didn’t want to see him. Which he did. But he also helped himself to my favorite pair of shoes.”
“Fucker . ”
“Yeah. They were Pride Chucks. They had this fabulous pink glitter tongue. And the sole was rainbow-y. Ugh, and the gold eyelets. I loved those.”
“Fucker!” Tad looks infuriated on Lewis’s behalf. He puts a hand on Lewis’s knee and squeezes. The contact makes Lewis’s body tingle. “Seriously. Fuck him. Wanna describe him to me so I can beat him up and steal your shoes back if I ever see him?”
Lewis laughs. “I can’t picture you beating anyone up.”
“Me either.” Righteous anger is still burning in Tad’s eyes. “But I’m willing to give it a shot for someone who’d do that to you.” The anger dims to something sadder. “I’m really sorry, Lewis. I—”
He presses his lips together and looks like he’s trying to choose his words carefully. “I—get why the whole thing with us was just, like, more than you needed to deal with. You’re on a totally understandable break, and I was acting like being married was a funny joke.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” Lewis’s voice comes out gruffer than he means it to. “You didn’t know.”
Tad’s hand is still on Lewis’s knee. He snatches it back and sticks his hands between his thighs, like he has to trap them. “Still feel like a jerk,” he mumbles.
Lewis just shakes his head. Damn. Now things feel heavier than they have since the hotel room, when they realized they were married and Lewis freaked out.
He wishes he knew how to fix it. He wishes Tad would put his hand back on his leg. He wishes… he wishes Jonah, and all the guys before him, hadn’t broken his heart, because what he really wishes, so much that the longing is a physical ache behind his sternum, is that he wasn’t so broken that he had to stop dating.
What he really wishes is that it would be okay to let himself fall for Tad.