He was turning to find another carrel when Aiden quietly said, “Cade?”
Cade turned to see Aiden standing up and stuffing his novel into his book bag. “This is where you usually sit, right? I was just hanging out long enough to say hello. You should sit here.”
“Wait.” Ithadseemed a bit strange that Aiden had shown up in Cade’s study carrel completely by accident, but wasn’t it even stranger to think that he’d been there deliberately?
“I met Estelle last night,” Aiden said, clearly responding to Cade’s confusion. “She told me you weren’t coming. Then she told me you hang out here when the engineering library is closed. She said this was your carrel, the one on the far end of this row. So I came here to wait for you this morning.”
“Butwhy?”
Aiden’s smile turned into a little huff of laughter. “Yeah. Excellent question.” He shrugged, using the motion to settle his book bag across his shoulders more easily. “I mean, I’m gay. Did you know that? I don’t hide it or anything, but I’m not sure if we ever actually discussed it, either.”
“I knew,” Cade made himself say. “You used to meet your boyfriend for lunch at the caf.”
“Yeah. Okay. I wasn’t sure if you’d noticed that. I wasn’t really sure you recognized me at all. I mean, I’ve been eating your damn sandwiches for more than a year. And they’re really good sandwiches, bro! But I wasn’t always eating them because I was hungry, you know?”
Cade didn’t think he was ready for this conversation, but he didn’t seem to be able to make his feet move in order to get away. So he stood there staring, his eyes wide and probably panicked-looking, as Aiden continued.
“I guess I… you know. Sometimes you just like the look of someone. I wasn’t sure if you were gay, and Paul said he never saw any sign of it. But then last night I was talking to Estelle and she said you were.” Aiden suddenly looked insecure. “Youare, right? She wasn’t lying to me?”
“She does lie a lot,” Cade said. “But, no. Not about that. She was telling the truth about that.”
Aiden nodded. “Okay. So, yeah. I mean, obviously just because we have that one thing in common it doesn’t mean we’re going to be best friends. But I guess I wanted to… I don’t know. Check in, I guess? Touch base? Establish a beachhead, lay a foundation, take that first step down the path—”
“Whatpath?” Cade interrupted.
“Uh, I don’t know.” Aiden smiled now. “Anypath, I guess. I mean, you can’t really know where you’re going to end up, right? You just pick a direction and find someone to travel with, and you see where things go.”
Cade didn’t know if he had enough words to explain all the things that were wrong with that way of thinking. He wondered if he should pull out his laptop and show Aiden his pathways—daily, weekly, monthly plans for the year and for the decade. If there was a word for a unit of time, Cade had made a plan for that period. He knewexactlywhere he was going, and every step he was going to take in order to get there.
“My path is to study hard,” he said. It was an oversimplification, but it would have to do. “I think you may be heading in another direction. But it was nice to meet you. And I’m glad you enjoyed the sandwiches.”
Aiden stared at him for longer than was really comfortable, then nodded slowly. “Yeah. Okay. Look, I’m sorry about all this. If it was a distraction or whatever. If it was annoying for you, or if you felt harassed. But I had to take my chance, you know?”
No. Cade didn’t know. Not really. But he didn’t say anything like that. He just stepped to the side so Aiden would have room to get by, and when Aiden was gone Cade took his seat at the carrel and pulled his laptop out. He didn’t look in the direction Aiden had gone, didn’t let himself wonder what would have happened if he’d put off his studying for a while and gone to have breakfast. If he’d made a friend, and given himself an excuse to be around Aiden for at least a little longer.
No, he didn’t think about any of that. But he didn’t get to work as quickly as he normally would have, either. It was hard to focus on chemical interactions when he was recovering from an interaction in his own life.
Andthatwas why he needed to stay away from distractions, he told himself. He wasn’t strong enough to refocus properly after something like that. Maybe other people could, but he couldn’t. Maybe Aiden could simply look around and pick whichever path he felt like walking down at any given time, but Cade didn’t have that luxury. He’d chosen his path, and he would stay on it, without letting himself be distracted. No matter how beautiful and intriguing the distractions might be.
Chapter Three
“Honestly, Cade,I’d forgotten how cute you are!”
It was a peculiar thing for Estelle to say, and Cade wasn’t sure if he wanted to unravel her words or not. Fortunately or unfortunately, she didn’t seem inclined to give him a choice in the matter.
She flopped into the chair next to his and propped her chin on her hand to support her head while she stared at him. “Your hair needs work, but your eyes, and your cheekbones… and your skin is gorgeous, and you’re fit! You run, right? And do you do something else too? Weights or something? Yeah, you’re a bit skinny, but I bet there are muscles in there under the sweatshirt, right?” She leaned back and nodded. “You, Cade Martin, are a cutie-patootie! That’s what I thought when I first met you, and then you turned out to be a big gay nerd so I forgot about it, but now that I’ve been reminded, damn! I’ve wasted a year having pointless crushes on unobtainable strangers when I could have been having a pointless crush on someone much closer to home.”
Cade blinked hard. That had been a peculiar speech, but he was pretty sure he could ignore it and move on. “Did you get the lab to work for organic chemistry? I went in and redid it three times yesterday, and the results were completely unpredictable.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I inform you of my intention to fall madly in love and pine desperately for you, and you ask me about homework?”
“Yes. Let’s talk about homework.”
“Cade, Cade, Cade,” she grumbled. “Don’t you even want to knowwhyI was reminded of your cuteness?”
“No, I don’t think so. But Iamreally interested in hearing about your org chem results.”
“You want to see my lab results, big boy?” Her attempt at sultriness was a little disturbing. “First, we talk about your fellow cutie-patootie!”
