River decided to believe he was joking. “It’s not an easy album to cover with just one guitar,” he said finally. “Or just one voice, really. There’s a ton of great harmonies. I used to listen to ‘Songbird’—”
He closed his mouth before he could finish the sentence.
Jem reached across the table and touched his hand. “Yeah?”
I used to listen to that song and wonder what it was like to know everything was okay just because I was with the one person who could make that true.
Shaking his head, River cleared his throat. “I love to play it, but I could never get it right. The emotion of it. Great song, though.”
Mercifully, Jem let him leave it at that, and the conversation turned to favorite childhood meals as they finished their dinners.
“Did you figure out my sport yet?” Jem asked when they were loading plates into the dishwasher.
River sighed dramatically. He hated to admit to being stumped, but…. “I don’t know. It’s not a team sport, and it’s not swimming or track or weight lifting or shot put or long jump or any of that stuff. So unless it’s, like,golf—”
Jem froze and his ears went red.
Oh. River’s chest filled with glee. “It’sgolf?”
“Why are you saying it like that?” Jem complained with the world’s most adorable pout.
“Golf is barely a sport.”
“Hey!” Jem laughed and tossed a detergent pod at him. River caught it and put it in the compartment. “It is too. It’s on ESPN and everything.”
“Yeah, during the daytime, when no real sports are around to take up valuable air time.”
“What do you know about real sports, River the Flat-Assed?”
River gasped in mock outrage. “Jem! I can’t believe you would use that against me.”
“Don’t start it if you don’t want to finish it, Mr. Golf Isn’t a Real Sport.”
What a little shit. River was keeping him forever.
Unfortunately, their time for the night was up unless River wanted to relinquish driving duties. “All right, all right. Did you get your lesson plan stuff? The sun’s going down. I gotta take you home before my eyeballs turn into pumpkins this time.”
But what if I didn’t, River thought.
Tonight he couldn’t walk Jem to his apartment; there were no visitor parking spots open. He had to make do with watching him go into the building, with biting his lip waiting to see if Jem would look back over his shoulder.
He did.
But what if he didn’t have to look back over his shoulder to wave goodnight to River one last time, because he wasn’t leaving, because he lived at River’s house and slept in his bed and would wake up next to him in the morning with his face mashed into River’s shoulder and one leg slung over his?
It was too soon for a thought like that, and even River, with his zero-percent success rate in dating, knew it, but now that he’d started thinking it, he couldn’t stop. Eric and Ward had partners, families, places and people they belonged to that weren’t River. River had his mother, sure, but she still refused to leave Arizona for more than a week at a time. He’d never really had anyone else. Just his mom and the band.
And he wouldn’t have the band much longer, because they wanted to spend time with their real families.
If River didn’t want to be left behind, he needed to make a family of his own. And he thought maybe Jem was in the same boat. He didn’t have any family close by. His friends were all married. It was fate, right? Well, fate and Amanda’s meddling. River might not have much experience dating, but he knew a sign from the universe when he saw one.
He wasn’t about to take this gift for granted.
Jem didn’tnotice anything amiss until he put his phone in his pocket as he left the house Monday morning. Out of habit, he glanced at his notifications first. One text message—from River.
Enjoy your morning commute, sunshine.
That was… sweet but odd. Jem heart-reacted the message, put his phone back in his pocket, and reached for his keys.
