I blinked. “There’s no need to get personal,” I said. “I was just being nice.”
Except, I wasn’t, obviously. It was a fishing expedition, and I’d come up with the equivalent of an old boot at the end of my line. Shut down right away. As if the atmosphere needed to be any more uncomfortable.
Wait a second…
I went over all of our interactions in my head as quickly as I could, scanning them for some kind of sign. Ace talked about sex freely, but he talked about other people having sex. I couldn’t remember him having a partner or going home with anyone on any of the occasions when we’d met before. He changed in front of me as if it was nothing – no shyness around his body. Almost as if it wasn’t a sexual thing for him, just something commonplace.
He was called Ace.
But until now, I’d never even stopped to wonder whether that was his real name or just a nickname.
He called me Leather Jacket because that was what I wore – a literal interpretation. Could it be that his name was the same?
Was Ace… asexual?
Because if so, that would explain a lot.
“Are you ready, then?” Ace asked impatiently, making me realize that I’d been standing there staring down into my suitcase for answers for a while. I probably looked like an idiot – again.
“Yeah, yeah,” I nodded, swiping a hand backward through my hair and then immediately regretting it. I’d probably messed the whole look up. I bent to use the same mirror he had, pushing my hair back into the right shape. “Yeah, I’m ready.”
“Then let’s go,” Ace said, already turning to leave. He swiped one of the key cards from the counter by the door and I took the other.
At least I would be able to get back to the room quickly if things got awkward.
I hoped and prayed it wasn’t going to come to that – but if I’d said I wasn’t intensely nervous about this dinner, then I would have been lying.
Ace
We walked to dinner like some kind of comedy show: me out in front not even looking back, Brody trailing behind me. I wondered what people who saw us would think. Maybe that we were an arguing couple. After all, there was me with my lip piercing and him with his leather jacket – which went straight back on over the button-down shirt. We looked like we could be a couple.
He was hot, too. Not that it made any difference to me.
I cared more about a guy’s personality and behavior than his looks, and Brody’s terrible past was a thing of record. No way I wanted someone like that in my life.
The guests of honor – Olly and Keaton, both looking adorable in matching relaxed-cut suits – were already at the table as I came around the corner and into the restaurant. So were Ace, Taeho, Cade, and Aiden, although there were a few empty seats yet to be filled. We weren’t the last.
Good. I hated the attention of being first or last. Better somewhere in the middle.
“Hey,” I said casually, sliding into the booth seating side next to Xavi. Taeho was opposite his roommate, and Brody did the same – sitting next to him and opposite me. Great. Now I had to look at this guy all the way through dinner, as well as in the room? Couldn’t it have been one of Olly’s hot friends, even if they were supposedly all straight?
“Hey,” Xavi replied, but he was quickly drowned out by a much more enthusiastic reaction from Keaton.
“Oh, my god,” he exclaimed. “You know what I just realized? This is the first time all of us have been together on a trip since the avalanche.”
I glanced around the table. Olly and Keaton, Aiden and Cade, me and Xavi… yeah. It had been a while. There were some faces missing from that trip, but for the six of us, we hadn’t been together all at once for a couple of years now.
“Let’s just hope this trip goes better than that one,” Olly said darkly. I knew what he meant. It had been a stressful time – buried under snow, not knowing when rescue would come or whether anyone else was hurt. I’d been stuck in a cabin with Xavi. It hadn’t taken too long for us to get out, but Cade and Aiden had stayed in there for the longest.
“I don’t know,” Cade said slyly, leaning closer towards Aiden – who already had his arm slung around the back of Cade’s chair. “It might not necessarily be that bad, even if something does happen.”
Of course; he and Aiden had gotten together under the snow. They were still going strong all this time later, just like Olly and Keaton. Actually, they were probably the next ones who were going to get married.
The sharp sting of jealousy had me reaching for the pitcher of water on the table, pouring myself a glass just for something to do.
Other than the odd casual fling and friends with benefits, I’d been alone for two years. College was supposed to be when you could experiment and sow your wild oats, but apparently, that memo had passed me by. I was starting to feel like I might be chronically single, and events like this didn’t help at all.
“We should decide what we’re ordering,” Olly suggested. I had to hold back a chuckle. Even though he’d quit football after college and gone into running a business, he still had a football player’s body. And a football player’s hunger, apparently.
