Beautiful.
“You don’t believe me?” Jake asked, and Rye shook his head, still smiling. “Just ask Kris about it sometime. She’ll bemorethan happy to tell you.”
Rye scrunched his eyebrows together and shook his head, and Jake groaned dramatically.
“Ugh, fine,” he relented, and Rye’s smile grew eager as he pulled his knees up and turned to face Jake. “Alright, so, I was in tenth grade, I think. And I’d just had this huge growth spurt. I’m talking like six inches in a matter of four or five months. It was awful. And not just height, either. I gained probably thirty or forty pounds, and a lot of muscle. I was probably the most uncoordinated person you’d ever meet too. Anyway, Kris had just started dating Sheila, and she invited Sheila over to my dad’s when he was out of town. And they both thought it also a good idea to invite over a bunch of other friends too. So suddenly there’s like fifteen people at our house, all mid-twenty-somethings like Kris and Sheila. They’re all drinking and dancing and swimming and having a good time, and I’m there, this awkward teen, trying to look cool, like I fit in—”
Rye snorted a laugh, and Jake shook his head. “You laugh now, just wait. It gets better. We had this old, rickety porch swing that dad had been meaning to replace. It had no business being sat on at all, much less by the giant of a teen I’d suddenly become. And Iknewthat.”
Rye’s grin twisted a bit, and he looked up at where the chains holding up the swing attached to the rafters, then back to Jake. He bit his lip as though trying not to laugh again.
“No, it was the wood of the swing itself,” Jake explained. “It was old and rotted. And, god... So, I was outside on the porch, watching Kris and her friends mess around in the pool. One of Kris’s friends, Rob, came up onto the porch and asked me something. Maybe where the bathroom was in the house, I don’t really remember. I just remember that I turned to point toward the house to, I dunno, direct him or something, and my darn feet tripped over themselves somehow. I did some weird thing where I stumbled backward, and I thought I was going to fall into the swing, but I managed to stop myself just before I did. Then, the lunkhead that I am, I was so relieved I hadn’t fallen into the darn thing that I forgot it would be an awful idea to sit on it. So I did. Right in the middle. And the wood snapped, and I went crashing down to the ground. Very,verygracefully, I might add.”
Rye’s eyes had grown wide, and his cheeks turned red as he covered his mouth, maybe trying to hold back his laughter. He shook his head, and Jake just grinned.
“Nah, it’s fine to laugh, really. It was hilarious,” he said. “Rob felt so awful that he helped me up, and then he came back the next day, and he and Kris and I spent hours building a new porch swing together before my dad got back from his trip. It ended up being the only ‘evidence’ of the ‘party.’ Kris totally had to fess up to my dad about the whole thing. And I mean, she was an adult at the time, and she’d been helping my dad out with his mortgage for a while, so it wasn’t like she wasn’t allowed to havefriends over. But...” Jake trailed off and shrugged, then he rested his arm across the back of the porch swing, shifting slightly. The swing creaked again, and he cringed. “This one is nice and sturdy, really. But every time I sit on it... ugh.”
He glanced at Rye, who was still watching him with an amused expression, his deep, stormy blue eyes filled with curiosity and intrigue. Jake sighed quietly as he let himself linger there for a long minute, lost.
Beautiful.
God. Rye was beautiful. Everything about him.
Jake inhaled deeply and smiled again, and then turned and looked out across the backyard.
“He trusts me, Kris. And I wish . . .”
“Jake.”
“I know. I have to be patient. I just... sometimes I just wish I could tell him.”
“That you’re head over heels in love?”
“Kris, I’m not—”
“You sooooooo are. Don’t even try to deny it.”
Up in one of the taller trees just on the other side of the fence line, two squirrels raced around, chasing each other as they circled the trunk. When they were about halfway down, one stopped suddenly, and the other seemed caught off guard. It leapt over the first and then spun back around and chirped loudly, as though scolding its friend.
Rye laughed, the sound carrying out over the yard, and the swing moved a bit, forward and back. Jake closed his eyes.
“I’m being serious here, Kris. What do I do?”
“The same thing you’ve been doing. I know that’s not the answer you want, but it’s the truth. You show up, you be there for him. And you wait. And if he does feel something for you, he’ll tell you when he’s ready to.”
“. . . Yeah, you’re right.”
“I usually am. But Jake?”
“Hmm?”
“It’ll be worth the wait, little brother. I promise.”
Remnants of an unfamiliar heat spread through his fingertips and palm where they’d touched Rye’s cheek the night before. He glanced sideways, and his breath caught as he saw Rye still staring off toward the trees, his eyes expressive and bright.
Krista was right, as always. It would be worth the wait.
Ryewould be worth the wait.
