That should be the end of it. Thathadto be the end of it. Aiden had asked, and he’d been rejected. How he dealt with that rejection was his problem, not Cade’s. But it was hard to let go. “‘No’ for tonight? Like, we could do it some other time? Not dinner, necessarily. That’s a big commitment. I get that. And you’ve got lunch covered on weekdays, right? You eat here? But how about lunch on the weekend? Like, tomorrow! You’ll be at the library, right? What ifIwas at the library too? And we both needed to eat?”
Cade looked frustrated. “I’m not interested, Aiden. It’s not that you’re not a nice guy. And attractive, or whatever. You’re great. But I’m really, seriously, no kidding around, focusing on my schoolwork right now. I’m not looking for anything else.”
“Not even friendship?” It wasn’t quite what Aiden wanted, but it was better than nothing. And not only in a sleazy “say you want to be friends but really be planning your seduction” way. “Like, just hanging out? If you don’t want anything more, that’d make me sad, but I could live with it. I’d still want to be your friend. I’d still want to have lunch with you, even with zero chance of making out. Really, seriously, no kidding around. I’d like to be your friend. If you’re at all interested in that.”
Cade didn’t say anything right away, and Aiden wasn’t much good with long silences. “It’d be efficient,” he found himself saying. “Right now, if you got a really, really bad cold and wanted to go home to bed butalsowanted to go to the store to get some medicine, you’d be screwed, right? No way to get both. But if you had afriend, you could go home and go to bed, and thefriendcould go to the store for you. You’d recover faster and be back at your books with less lost time. It’s carelessnotto have a friend on campus, really.”
“Careless,” Cade echoed doubtfully.
“Almost irresponsible,” Aiden assured him. “But don’t worry about it. I’ll help you out. Even if youdon’twant to have lunch tomorrow, or, you know, ever, I can still be your cold-medicine buddy. But there might be other ways I could help out that I wouldn’t even know about yet, because we haven’t hung out enough. If you give me a bit of time, I bet I can find new ways to be useful.”
“So I’d be your project. Your mom does a breast cancer gala, you do nerd outreach.”
“No!” Aiden frowned. That denial had been a little more emphatic than was appropriate for a public place. He tried to be a bit quieter but no less intense when he said, “This is getting stupid. If you don’t want to hang out because you don’t like me, you should say so. But you haven’t yet. You’ve given me a lot ofotherreasons, or sometimes no reason at all. So I’ve tried to find ways to work past the other reasons. Not because I’m doing nerd outreach. Because I like you. I mean, I’m interested in seeing you naked and probably touching you in whatever ways you’d agree to, but if that doesn’t work for you, then, okay. I would still like you. I’d still be really interested in hanging out.”
He saw Cade gearing up for a response and quickly added, “Not as charity! Or at least not charity benefiting you. If you could find sometime to do a little frat-boy outreach and help me out of my Cade-deficiency funk, that’d be really generous of you.” His intensity left him as suddenly as it had arrived, and he was much more subdued when he said, “But maybe you don’t like me. Maybe I’ve been over the line this whole time, like a spoiled little kid who just can’t hear someone telling him ‘no.’ So maybe I need to stop.” Yeah, that sounded right. He couldn’t keep harassing some innocent guy just because the guy wouldn’t give Aiden what he wanted. “And you’re a nice guy. You wouldn’t want to hurt my feelings by being too clear about not liking me, maybe.” Dammit, that made sense too. “So, okay. You don’t have to spell it out. If you say ‘no’ now, that’ll be it. I promise. I won’t ask you to do stuff anymore.” He frowned as he thought it through. “I guess I’ll probably stop eating here too. It’d be awkward for you, and kind of hard for me, to see you every day and know that you don’t like me.” He held his hands up quickly. “But that’s my problem, not yours. I’m not trying to guilt you into something. I’d hoped we could—”
“The engineering library opens at eleven tomorrow,” Cade said. He was staring at some spot over Aiden’s shoulder, his expression desperate enough that Aiden kind of wanted to turn around and make sure they weren’t being attacked by aliens. But Cade’s words were pretty mundane for an alien attack. “I usually walk over from the main library sometime shortly after that, and I usually eat my lunch on the way. If you wanted to walk with me, that’d be okay.”
“Okay!” Aiden agreed quickly. “But, like, you literally eat as you walk? Or you walk over and find somewhere on the way and stop in for a quick bite….”
“I eat as I walk,” Cade said firmly.
Of course he did. “Okay,” Aiden agreed. Food that could be eaten while walking. He could do that. Finger food of some sort. Sandwiches were an obvious solution, but surely Cade had enough sandwiches in his life. Well, Aiden could figure something out. “I’ll bring lunch, okay? For both of us? And I’ll wait for you by the main doors at the library, but I’ll have a book or something, so don’t rush. Whenever you feel like coming out, that’s cool, I’ll be waiting.”
“You don’t have to bring the food. This isn’t a date.”
“No, but I have nothing else to do all morning. I can take care of that while you study. Okay?”
“Theoretically,youcould probably study too.”
“I save that for exam times,” Aiden said. “I have to conserve my energy.”
Cade nodded resignedly. “Yeah, you wouldn’t want to burn out.”
Aiden grinned. “Exactly!” There was movement behind him, and he turned to see a line starting to form, so he shuffled to the side and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll be waiting. And reading. Maybe even something for school. That’d be impressive, right?”
“Overwhelming,” Cade agreed. Then he turned to the person at the head of the new line. “What kind of bread?” he asked, and just like that, Aiden had been dismissed.
But that was okay. They had a plan. It wasn’t a great one… the undergrad library and the engineering library weren’t all that far apart, so it wasn’t like Cade and Aiden were going on a hike together or anything. But it was something. And more importantly, it was a sign that Cade wasn’t completely against spending time with him. Aiden had given Cade a chance to say no and get rid of him entirely, and Cade hadn’t taken it.
It was a good sign. A step in the right direction. A tiny step, and one that was going to involve eating while walking, but that was okay. It was great, even.
Aiden left the cafeteria and decided to skip his afternoon class. He had a big opportunity coming up and he needed to make sure he was completely prepared. He couldn’t waste time sitting in a lecture hall!
He thought about going back to the frat house and enlisting his brothers’ brainstorming powers, but dismissed the idea almost immediately, in part because he was planning to woo another guy instead of a chick. He’d been open about being gay when he’d pledged, and there hadn’t been any objections, but as far as he knew he was the only gay brother in the chapter, and he kept a pretty low profile on his sexuality. That bugged him, sometimes, but he wasn’t going to let it get in the way of his current excitement.
Because there was, after all, another good reason not to expect anything useful from his frat brothers on an issue like this. The frat was all about scoring. Getting some. As much “some” as possible, generally.
The frat culture wasn’t about romance, or love. If Aiden had been trying to find a way to bag a particular trophy, male or female, heprobably could have found brothers accepting enough to help him out with that. But he was doing something different with Cade. Something more important, and he didn’t want to waste his time trying to explain that to a bunch of frat boys who couldn’t see beyond the next score.
He knew guys in the frat with serious girlfriends, of course. But those relationships were protected, and private. They weren’t for public consumption.
And neither was whatever Aiden was trying to build with Cade. It was special, and personal. He wasn’t going to share it with his frat brothers.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t want some help figuring out what to eat. Luckily, he happened to know the perfect accomplice. He pulled out his phone and hit the speed dial. “Mom? Hey. I need some suggestions on something….”
Chapter Eleven
