Carver got the wild impulse to reach out and stroke the thigh he was staring at. To do that, then climb onto Scott’s lap. His brain was buzzing in his head.
“I’m not sure where to start,” Scott said. “I guess — I’ve wanted to apologize for how pissed off I got when you turned me down.”
“You weren’tthatpissed off,” Carver said, turning toward Scott and arranging himself seductively.
“For me, I was.”
“You were eighteen.”
“It’s still on my conscience.”
“Well, take it off,” Carver said. “You felt rejected. It made sense to me then and it still does.”
He knew he was being disingenuous — of course some of what Scott said had hurt his feelings — but none of it badly enough to stop Carver from wanting to have sex with him ever again, and he was really trying not to think about anything else right now.
Scott leaned his elbows onto his thighs and glanced over at him. “I said some mean shit.”
Carver shrugged. “I did, too,” he said, out of both honesty and dismissiveness.
He didn’t want Scott to start apologizing for anything specific he’d said, because he didn’t want them to rehash any of it. He had some paranoia that Scott might be using an apology as a pretext to revisit his own predictions, eighteen years out. So,areyou madly in love with the woman you married, or no? Did the goal posts finally stop flying around, or no?
“I should have been more ready to hear a no,” Scott said.
Carver was relieved to hear him take it in that direction. His body relaxed enough to allow him some magnanimity. “But I kept hyping you up about it,” he said. “I kept, uh… I… I encouraged the fantasy.”
Scott’s dark eyes grew slightly wider and more liquid. “Right. Why?”
Carver’s mouth went dry. He sipped his water. “Escapism, I guess.”
“When we fought, you swore you’d been considering it.”
“I did consider it.”
“But only as a fantasy, you’re saying. No part of you was ever serious?”
“I didn’t say that. See, this is why I didn’t want to do this,” Carver said, exhaling a wry laugh. “You just want to make me explain myself.”
“Maybe I do,” Scott said with some defiance. “Wouldn’t you?”
“I would.”
“So?”
Carver stared into his glass. “You know why I said no. We’re adults now. You get it from a logical standpoint.”
“No, I’m not sure I do,” Scott said. “I know it was a crazy idea, I got that at the time, but people do crazy shit. It was pretty long odds for you to get where you are now, career-wise, but you still chased it like I chased music. So I guess it just makes me wonder if you truly thought it wasn’t worth it, or what.”
Carver’s temper started outrunning his mouth. “What, you want to know if I have regrets now?”
“That wasn’t what I said,” Scott said, too quickly to be convincing.
“Doyouhave regrets?”
“About what?”
“Running off to fucking California.”
Scott hesitated. “Not in terms of my career, no. L.A. was where I needed to be to start getting my foot in the door.”
