“Yes, but?—”
“I don’t want you to always choose to make me comfortable.”
“I want to make you comfortable.”
“Yeah, and I love that. You have no idea how much I love that. But these are your friends.”
“Torin—”
I sigh. “Pull over.”
Hugo looks at me briefly before pulling off the road into a random parking lot. Once he puts the car in park, I unbuckle my belt. “Push your seat back.”
It’s electric, so it takes a moment for there to be enough roomfor me to climb onto his lap. Hugo smiles, a big, beaming smile. I kiss him—just the press of my lips to his until his arms wrap around me. This seat isn’t made for two grown ass men.
“I really,reallylove how conscious and considerate you are of my anxiety,” I promise, staring into his pretty smokey blue eyes. “It means everything to me. But I don’t want you to stop hanging out with your friends. And I also love that you want me to come with you when you hang out with your friends. It’s just going to take me some time to not feel quite so… visible.”
“You are visible,” he says, frowning.
“Being invisible is a double edged sword. On the one hand, I really appreciate when I’m invisible because then people aren’t staring at me and I don’t feel quite so on the spot. When people don’t see me, I can just live. But the ugly side is that I’m invisible and no one sees me.”
Hugo’s hand cups the back of my head and brings my forehead to his. “I wish I could take away your anxiety.”
I smile. “Me too. But for now, it’s here and I’ve learned to live with it. What I don’t want is for you to change your life to accommodate it.”
“I want to accommodate it.”
“I know. I love that and I need it sometimes. But right now isn’t one of those times. It helps that we’re going to someone’s home instead of out in public. It helps that I’ll know everyone there. The piece that’s making me feel a little more anxious is that you’ve changed their understanding our relationship and now theywillbe looking at me and having questions.”
“I’m sorry. I should have asked?—”
I cut his words off again with my mouth on his. Hugo’s fingers dig into my ass and I have half a mind to force him into the backseat.
“No, Hugo. I’m really…” It takes me a minute to find the word I’m looking for. I’m not sure I find the perfect ones but it’ll work, nonetheless. “I’m going to admit something really embarrassing.”
He tilts his head, his eyebrows knit with curiosity.
“I’ve had a crush on you for years. Not just a while, like weeks or maybe months, butyears. Since I started with the Golden Tides. You’re always so nice, and thoughtful. You’re sweet and kind andjust… you’re such a good person. Every single time you said hi to me it was like only you were seeing me when no one else did. You have no idea how much it meant to me. That I get to live in some dream where I actually get to be with my crush in real life is… well, it’s a dream. Better than a dream. I never thought you could be better than how I always saw you, but I was wrong. It means the world to me that you want people to know I’m your boyfriend. I don’t want to hide at all. I amnotupset that you told your friends. Not at all.”
A moment of silence passes between us as he stares at me. “You had a crush on mefor years?”
I laugh. Of course, that’s what he gets stuck on. “Yes. A big crush. That’s why I accidentally texted you the first time. I was being really embarrassing and creepy and pretending we were friends and somehow managed to actually send that text through.” My cheeks have probably never been redder; I think I’m melting a couple layers of skin off my face at this point. Not just my face, my neck and ears feel hot. Even my chest feels hot.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Hugo, you had a different girl with you every night. I didn’t think you were even a little bit open to guys. Besides, if that weren’t enough, I’m cripplingly shy. You don’t think I could have actually said something to you, do you?”
His mouth opens but then he shakes his head. “No. I guess not. But I wish you did.”
“Why?”
“Because maybe I’d have had you sooner.”
My heart skips and I press my head against his again. “You’re amazing,” I whisper.
His arms tighten around me. “Maybe I wouldn’t have had you sooner,” he concedes, “but I have to think that I would have seen then what I do now. I didn’tthinkto look at you, Torin. Not because I wasn’t interested in you or into men, but because I didn’t know you were an option. The weeks before our date, I didn’t know it was an option, so I was struggling with how I felt.”
“Take me to your friends’ house. Then I want to go home and get naked,” I say.
