The apartment had gone quiet. He realized Scott was staring.
“Where are you from?” Avery’s question was a hushed croak.
“South Carolina. Near Columbia.” Scott spun on his heel and went to the door. His back in the smooth stretch of his T-shirt was beautiful. When he reached the first step, he glanced over his shoulder. “Are you going to help me with the big box?”
Avery leapt into motion. “South Carolina. I went to—” He bit his lip, because the rest of the story was embarrassing and too personal to share with someone he’d only met recently. Avery had a tendency to overshare, but he was working on it.
The only place he knew in South Carolina was a Bible camp north of Greenville he’d gone to a few times as a kid. The last summer, he’d kissed a boy for the first time. The experience had scared him so badly he’d called his parents in tears, begging them to let him come home.
He didn’t know it then, but two years later, he’d be begging them to let him stay. In both cases, his mother had cried and his father had been intractable. Both times, Avery lost the argument before he’d barely started. He’d often wondered, especially in the first months at his aunt and uncle’s, if things would have been different if he’d been allowed to come home from camp. He’d kissed that boy more than once that summer. By the time he got home, he knew what it meant for him and what it would continue to mean for the rest of his life.
Of course, Scott knew none of this, and he was standing next to the sofa box in the yard, waiting for Avery with no pity, no sympathy. Which was a little bit awesome. Not many people in Seacroft didn’t know at least part of the story of how Theo and Brenda brought their disaster of a nephew to live with them in the middle of the night.
The box was heavy. Or Avery thought so, anyway. Scott barely looked like he noticed. If it weren’t so long, he’d probably carry it himself.
“Did you measure to make sure it would fit?”
“No?” Avery nearly dropped his end of the box. “Was I supposed to?”
Scott grunted. “I guess we’ll find out.”
Avery had a moment of panic at the bottom of the stairs, where they had to get the box turned around, or even stand it on end, and slide it through the door. He envisioned having to carry it all back up to his car, drive the two hours back to the store, and try to return it. Did he even have the receipt? He’d meant to remember where he’d put it and not just toss it onto the passenger seat as he’d driven away from the loading area, but—
In the end, Scott, managed to work some wizardry and angle the box through. It involved sliding Avery’s dining room table against the wall, but better that than navigating the return.
“I think I’m going to have to live here forever,” he said.
“Why’s that?” Scott had his hands on his hips, looking pleased with himself.
“Because I’ll never figure out how to get it back up the stairs without you.”
Scott grinned. “It’s not that hard. It’s about finding the angles and using all the space, not only what’s right by the door.”
“You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”
“I worked for a moving company for a few months.” He let out a long breath. His torso was the perfect shape: wide through his chest and narrowing through his waist and hips. “Can I get a glass of water or something?”
“Oh my God. Yes. Of course you can! Sorry.” Avery only managed to tear his eyes away from his ogle-fest when he stumbled over a box. He nearly smacked his head on the kitchen counter, except suddenly Scott was there, and instead, Avery face-planted directly into the chest he’d just been gaping at. Scott was marginally softer than the counter, but he was definitely warmer and smelled great and—
“You okay?” Scott’s voice rumbled amazingly through him, sending little sparks over Avery’s cheekbones.
“Fine.” Except he had nowhere safe to put his hands, just pecs and chest and—“I’m fine.” Man, Scott smelled good. Somehow, Avery got himself disentangled while only making things thirty percent more awkward in the process. “I have juice, almond milk, and I’ve got—” he spun around, “—one of those countertop water carbonators, but I haven’t had a chance to set it up yet.”
He was such a dork.
Scott was not only new in town, but also apparently completely oblivious to Avery’s ridiculousness, because he said, “Juice,” without any other snide comments or judgment.
“Great.” Except not so much because he opened the door and remembered his idea of juice was not the same as other people’s. “Uh—”
“Something wrong?”
He could say he was out, but what he was actually out of was almond milk, so he literally had nothing else to offer him except—“I have carrot turmeric ginger, or kale and spring pea.”
“Is that juice or a salad?”
“It’s juice. I...made it myself?”
Dork. Dork. The dorkiest dork to ever—
