Alex groped through the darkness and found the doorknob. He rested his hand on it. “Besides, I don’t put out on the first date.Sorry.”
With nothing more said, he opened the door, winked over his shoulder at the befuddled man standing in the darkened studio, and blended back into thecrowd.
All night, he thought ofpurple.
3
Alex
“You gave him your card?”
Alex peeked over the top of the canvas. Gage, naked, eyed him from the stool he was perched on, eyes widened with surprise. “Idid.”
“You don’t give anyone yourcard.”
“I was feeling…generous.”
“Was he really that good?” Gage’s head moved, just slightly, but it was enough that the integrity of the pose was ruined. Alex put down his charcoal pencil, scooped up his robe from where it laid on the table, and tossed it Gage’s way. Gage caught it and slipped into it, then rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck from side to side. He tucked each half of the robe over his chest and tied the belt, then answered his own question. “I guess he was, if you went and did something like that. Iknewsomething had happened. You seemed kind of weirdtoday.”
“Howso?”
“Just… different. I don’t know. Happier?” Gage scrunched his nose and gave Alex the same imploring look he always did when he wasn’t sure how to describe what he was feeling. “You look like what I imagine I look like when I talk about Aaron. Glowy, orsomething.”
It was Alex’s turn to scrunch his nose. “Gross.”
“It’s not gross!” Gage laughed. “It’s… um, kind of pathetic on my part, I’ll admit, but I’ll fight you if you call it gross! I just didn’t think I’d see you ever look that way. Are you changing your mind about giving guys anotherchance?”
Alex cracked the plastic seal on the lid of his water bottle. He handed it to Gage, who had wandered over—presumably to beat Alex’s ass for calling his infatuation with a man halfway around the world gross. “No.”
Gage accepted the water bottle. “Whynot?”
“Because I’m not readyto.”
There was a silence as Gage drank. The thin, cheap plastic crinkled. Gage parted the water bottle from his lips, gasped for air, then handed it back to Alex. Alex accepted, but didn’t drink. Instead, he brooded. Maybe he shouldn’t have shared tales of last night’s debauchery with Gage after all. Magenta flashed before his eyes, and he blinked it back. Gage meant well, but there were times when he acted without thinking. This time around, it had come back to bite Alex in the ass. He hadn’t expected such hurtful words from his bestfriend.
Of all people, Gage knewbetter.
“It’s okay not to be ready,” Gage said delicately. He laid a hand on Alex’s arm and stroked his thumb up and down. “I was stupid to bring it up. It’s just… you’re different today, that’s all. I thought that maybe something had changed—not that it needs to. No matter what you feel, and no matter what decisions you make, your path in life is equally as valid as anyoneelse’s.”
“You make me sound like I’m a charity case.” Alex laughed. He drank from the bottle, then set it aside. “God. Am I really thatpathetic?”
“No.”
Alex raised an eyebrow. “Do you meanthat?”
“I mean, have you even been seeing all the poor life decisions I’ve been making?” Gage laughed nervously, then shook his head. “You’re fine. I think, at our age, it’s okay to mess up. I mean, they say to get your mistakes out of the way early in your life so you have plenty of time and energy to fix them, right? That’s how you learn and become a roundedadult?”
“I think you mean ‘well-rounded.’”
“Well, one way or the other, I don’t think it’s wrong for us to be at weird, crossroad-y parts of our lives, you know?” Gage tugged at one side of his robe and shifted his weight from foot to foot. He cast an eye at Alex’s canvas, then looked back to Alex again. Light shone through the huge windows across the room and hit his hair in just the right way so that it lit up like gold. Last night, that window had been covered by a heavy curtain, plunging the room in darkness. Alex shivered. “But… it’s easy to say that, and not so easy to do. I know. If it was easy to do, I’d have already told my dadseverything.”
“You don’t need to tell them anything you’re not comfortable with. It’s your life.” Alex’s lips tightened. Whenever the topic of Gage’s home life came up, it never failed to make him uneasy. He valued Gage’s friendship more than he could ever hope to convey, and he appreciated Gage’s help when shit hit the fan, but he hated to see Gage languish. Independence was a wonderful thing, especially at their age, but Alex was of the opinion that Gage needed more help than he was currently getting—and that Gage was limiting himself on purpose for selfish, unnecessaryreasons.
But the heart did what it wanted. Alex had learned that the hardway.
It was why he intended to never listen to his ownagain.
Gage was silent. He stood on one foot and used the other to scratch his calf. At last, he looked at Alex again, his eyes brimming with emotion Alex couldn’t quite pin. He parted his lips to speak, but as he drew breath, a chime sounded from the heap of Gage’s discarded clothes in the corner of the room near the privacyscreen.
