“Maddy said they were good for long legs,” said Kell, his mouth a little dry. “She’s the one who told me you had a pair.”
“She did?” The surprise on Marston’s face was quite evident, at least to Kell, and he wondered why Marston was surprised.
“She did,” said Kell. Then he added, “She seems to be the kind of person who remembers a lot of stuff.”
“She is.” Marston pulled his pant leg back into place, lowered his boot to the ground, and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.
Kell leaned forward in the same way, his head turned slightly toward Marston as everybody moved closer to the leaping fire to roast their marshmallows, either on knobby sticks from the woods, trimmed to suit, or shiny metal skewers.
“Do you want me to exchange my boots for a different pair?” asked Kell, almost whispering this, unsure why his heart was jumping so hard it was bruising his breastbone from the inside.
The answer came without hesitation.
“No.”
For a long moment, Marston stared at the fire, his hands clasped together as if he were on the verge of praying.
They were close to the fire, so Kell felt like he was basking in heat from the front, the cool air whispering across the back of his neck at the same time. And all the while, Marston seemed lost in his own thoughts, the firelight glittering in his eyes. Then someone needed to move in front of him, so he sat up and leaned back, his broad palm, long fingers, splayed on the red blanket.
“Of course not,” he murmured in Kell’s direction, looking down as if avoiding anyone’s, everyone’s, gaze. “They suit you.”
When he looked up at Kell, his hazel-blue eyes were blazing, not just with firelight, but as though something burned from within him.
Kell couldn’t help making a little gasp, as if someone had struck him. As if Marston had reached down and opened his chest and shown Kell his heart.
There was a sheen along Marston’s cheek, the plane of his jaw, the leaping light from the fire turning his hair into burnished gold.
Kell didn’t mean to stare, didn’t mean to let his gaze linger along the long, strong column of Marston’s neck, the way the long muscle there jumped when Marston turned his head to look at the fire. Didn’t mean to memorize the slow rise and fall of Marston’s chest beneath his pale-patterned shirt, the point of one collar brushing gently against his skin with each breath.
Feelings he didn’t quite know what to do with sprang upward inside of him, bubbles of energy, curves of excitement shining along those bubbles, each one exploding when it reached his throat, coming in succession so quickly he could hardly breathe.
“Shall we make s’mores?” asked Marston, now. He turned his head away from the fire, focusing his gaze on Kell, and the tone of his voice said that he had no idea, no idea at all, the effect he had on Kell.
And maybe it was better that way, at least for now.
Kell knew he needed to get a grip on whatever was going on with him, to pull back on whatever energy was arcing between him and Marston. For surely, surely nothing would come of it. Nothing good, at any rate.
“Okay,” he said, standing up.
“Get sticks,” said Marston. “Marshmallows taste better when roasted on sticks.”
Focusing on the task at hand, Kell got two of the sticks from Blaze’s pile and brought them back to the hay bale. There, Marston had assembled a small pile of raw marshmallows, graham crackers, and one still-wrapped bar of chocolate.
Kell made himself busy with his stick and his marshmallow, as if everything was fine, and he wasn’t still reeling from Marston’s intense gaze, or the way he’d pulled back from that intensity at the same time Marston had, like both of them were dancing backwards intent on escaping an incoming lava flow.
The darkness of the woods, the cool wind from the nighttime lake, all of this was held back by the glowing, leaping fire into which many skewers and sticks were now pointed, the sweet smell of burnt sugar rising in the air.
“I call this a level four char,” said Marston, somewhat unexpectedly, as he pulled his stick out of the fire, his marshmallow bubbling black along the edges as he pursed his lips and blew on the marshmallow to stop it burning. “It’s a little burnt, but it’s still good this way.”
“It is,” said Kell, pulling his stick out and blowing on the burning marshmallow in the same way.
Together they assembled their s’mores, as if they were the only two at the fireside, their heads bent together, and with a quick hand, Kell took off his cowboy hat and placed it behind the hay bale, and now Kell and Marston were even more alike, bareheaded in the firelight.
Maybe there was no escaping that lava flow. And maybe Kell didn’t want to. It was certainly easy to smile at Marston as he bit into his s’more, the marshmallow squeezing out, the chocolate starting to melt and dripping along his fingers.
So good. It was all so good, it was hard to believe it was real. Him in this place, warmed by the fire, safe at Marston’s side.
There was no telling what it would look like in the morning, but for now he had a s’more, the fire, the starlight above peeping through the pine trees. And Marston, his smile-less face, the smile all in his hazel blue eyes, the smile only for Kell.
