Chapter Four
Harper
“That shirt, for starters.”
Harper listened to the low, deep tones of Banks’s voice, so unfamiliar to him despite the years they’d shared navigating the public school system back in their small, redneck town.He’d heard it before, of course.During pep rallies or when Banks had to give oral reports in this class or that, or simply in passing, shouting across the cafeteria at his jock bros or giving a low, sexy wolf whistle to one of the cheerleaders in the hallway.But in all their time as classmates, Harper had never just sat and talked to him before.Never followed the lilt of his conversational style, felt the tremor of his low, deep voice or watched his full, thick lips move as he cracked an off-color joke or asked a heart stopping question, just to see how the other person would react.
Harper found he liked it.A lot.
Damn him...
He glanced down at his spiffy new t-shirt, struggling not to blush as he imagined what it might look like to Banks, with its puffy rainbow letters and the way it clung enticingly to his hungry torso, a veritable billboard that said, “Come and get it, boys!”
Jutting his chin out defiantly, he grunted.“What about it?”
“I just...”Like Harper, Banks seemed to be struggling with the sudden intimacy of their mini-reunion.“Did you donate all your old concert tees to Goodwill on your way out of town?”
Harper stifled a grin, surprised Banks remembered them.“Burned them, actually.”
“No shit?”
Harper bit his lower lip wickedly, recalling the bonfire in his backyard, the very one that nearly caught his mother’s prized rose bushes on fire.He nodded, almost secretively, hardly believing it was Banks Principle, of all people, hearing his confession for the very first time.“It was like a little ceremony I held for myself, getting rid of the old, making way for the new.”
“So, no more flannel and skinny jeans for Harper, huh?”
Harper snorted.“I never knew you noticed what I wore to school back then, Banks.”
“Kind of hard to miss, Harper.It was like your uniform, never wavering.”
Harper considered the word choice, already shaking his head.“More like a costume,” he blurted.“Or a disguise.”
“What were you hiding?”
Harper glanced across the table, surprised that Banks was such a good listener.Guy like him?Spoiled rotten by life and, what’s more, the people in his life?Harper figured him for a bad listener, someone unaccustomed to other people talking except, perhaps, to praise or flatter him.“Everything,” Harper blurted, as if he was racing against one of those clocks they use in chess, having to vomit all this up before Banks tired of him and moved on to some other diversion.Namely, some comely coed with a tramp stamp just above the low-slung waistband of her neon miniskirt.“Nothing.I just wanted to blend into the background, not have anyone notice me.”
“Did it work?”
