He took in a sharp breath, sent the message, and then typed out the next one with shaking fingers.
“I think I’m in love with him.”
His phone buzzed no more than five seconds later with Aspen’s reply.
“No fucking duh.”
Chapter Five
JAMES
“Ireally appreciate you coming over, but you didn’t have to,” James said, cracking his knuckles in front of his chest as he led Noah into his kitchen.
“Since Aspen absconded with Leon for the evening, I assumed you’d be free and would maybe like some company,” Noah said, in the matter-of-fact way he so often did.
He looked around the kitchen, eyes skimming over all the photos of James and his mom, as well as the copious amount of Valentine's Day decorations.
“No baby photos?” he asked, his tone detached as he finished scanning the picture frames.
“Mom took them all down,” James said, chewing on the side of his lip. “Do…your parents still have yours up?”
Noah’s expression was hard to read as he slowly nodded his head. “Yeah. When I was home for Christmas, they managed to use my pronouns at least, but my name was still wrong on the stocking and at least half of the gifts.”
James waited in case Noah wanted to share anything else, but when all he did was place the bottle of wine he’d brought on the counter, James decided to let the topic rest.
“I don’t really have any plans for tonight, other than prepping for tomorrow,” James said as he walked over to one of the tall cabinets he hadn’t been able to reach as a child.
He pulled down the fancy wine glasses–the ones with actual stems, not the ones made of the non-breakable plastic his mom had insisted on when she started developing neuropathy–to go with the fancy wine Noah had brought over. He wasn’t a sommelier by any stretch of the imagination, but there were a few signs he looked for, like embossed labels and the names of certain regions in France. Sometimes he also just liked to drink from the fancy glasses, and the night before his big Valentine's Day date felt like as good a time as any.
“Honestly, anything is better than what Aspen and Leon are doing,” Noah said, and James could hear the shiver in Noah’s voice even without turning around to look at him.
“Yeah, I can’t say a torture museum sounds like fun to me.”
“Me neither. I don’t know where Aspen finds these things. Last year, it was a discontinued candy museum, the year before that was something about wigs, and before that, I think it might have been a sex museum. Those sound fun and even educational, but I genuinely do not understand the appeal of this one.”
A candy museum actually would have been a really fun pre-Valentine's Day Date. Torture museum? Not so much.
James placed the wine glasses down and retrieved the corkscrew, offering it to Noah, who held his hands up and shook his head. “I cannot be relied on for that. Ask Aspen. I manage to break the cork nine times out of ten.”
“No problem,” James said, as he easily twisted the corkscrew. “I still need to finish my gift for Leon, while also trying to figure out if I’m doing too much–or too little…or somehow both, because it feels like it might be both.”
The cork came free with a loud pop, and James fought to unwind it from the screw while Noah poured them both generous glasses. “I know what you mean, but given what little I’ve seen of your relationship, I think it’s safe to say you’re not at risk of doing too much, so why don’t we focus on adding more to it?”
The ball in James’ stomach, which had developed an anticipatory thrum since the moment James admitted to himself that he loved Leon, gave an anxious pulse.
“I don’t know. It’s definitely possible it’s too much. It…well, let me just show you,” James said, grabbing his glass and leading Noah up the stairs to his room.
Noah was behind James on the stairs, but as they entered his room, Noah stepped around James to approach the bed, and his eyebrows disappeared behind the fringe of his bangs.
“Yes, I’m aware that it looks like a Hallmark threw up in here.”
Noah nodded cautiously. “It does, but do you want to tell me about it anyway?”
James’ bed was covered with his mom’s leftover decorations and quite a few new ones James had picked up at the dollar and party stores. He had wanted to decorate the basket with garland and hang some of their takeout menus from it, to create a mobile-like effect. He’d transferred the most important items from the memory box into a much more organized memory book, and his plan was to fill the bottom of the basket with pretty tissue paper to hold the book and some of Leon’s favorite snacks.
Unfortunately, the garland had been too long, and instead of cutting it, he’d decided to rim the border with it and coil the rest at the bottom of the basket. That would have been fine, except it was the exact shade of red as the memory book, making it appear almost invisible when placed inside. It was also much fluffierthan the tissue paper, leaving little room for snacks—and there were alotof snacks.
James had panicked in the grocery store and bought every food he’d ever heard Leon talk about. There was now enough to fill the entire basket, which he’d gone ahead and done, and then there was some leftover, and still no place to put the memory book.
