“What?”
“And it took you until college to figure out you were bi?” she asked eventually, bouncing Charlie on her hip. “Is your skull made of like… one of those super-dense elements they name after dead guys?”
“It tookyouuntil college,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but I didn’t have the world’s most tender moment with my gay best friend. Holy shit.”
“Well… the densest element is osmium, and it’s not named after a dead guy,” I said, which I knew wasn’t the point. “It’s Greek.”
I’d told myself it was stupid, that I just really liked being Ryder’s friend, that everyone felt a little tingly when they made their best friend in the whole wide world smile or laugh. That it was normal to feel like the bottom of your stomach had dropped out when he leaned his head against your shoulder.
In my defense, I’d never felt any of that with anyone else back then. I didn’t have a frame of reference.
I still wasn’t sure I did. Nothing else had ever quite felt like being with Ryder did.
“I’m not gonna ask how you know that,” Liz said.
“I’m gonna install your new stairs,” I responded, grabbing the chance to change the subject with both hands.
My head was all over the place when it came to Ryder right now, and talking about it wasn’t making it better.
Work would. Doing things with my hands always cleared my mind. Almost always, anyway.
“Well, tell Ryder I say hi,” Liz bounced Charlie one last time before she stepped away. “And that I taught you all those little tricks with your tongue.”
“Did not,” I called after her as she walked away, the tips of my ears so hot I was a little worried they’d singe my hair. “Notallof them,” I mumbled to myself as I hauled the stairs out of the truck.
Work would help. It always had before.
Almost always.
* * *
When I got backto the cabin—sweaty and gross again, which was how I usually turned up here and why I’d put so much effort into the bathroom—Ryder was standing outside, pacing up and down the porch. His phone was clutched so tight in his hand that his knuckles were white.
Work hadn’t helped. All it’d done was give me time to think. Time to replay Ryder kissing me in my head a million times, to remember a different thing about it every time. The way my heart had jumped up and down in my chest like a sugared-up kid on a new trampoline, for example. How warm Ryder was in the cool night air, like being pressed up against the sun. How he’d put one hand on my chest for balance and it’d felt like a wild deer coming up to me and eating right out of my palm.
Fallen leaves crunched under my boots as I got out of the truck. Ryder mustn’t have noticed I’d arrived before—too caught up in whatever he’d been doing with his phone—but he turned at the sound.
He opened his mouth, and then closed it again without saying anything.
“Should’ve told you about the key under the flowerpot,” I said.
“I found it.” Ryder shrugged, holding the spare key up. “Your dad kept one in the same spot at your old place.”
“Could’ve gone inside. Cold out here.”
“I’m not that cold,” Ryder said, shoving his hands in his coat pockets. It wasn’tquitecold enough at this time of year for his breath to fog in the air, but it was getting close. Hehadto be cold. “Just wasn’t, uh… positive I was still welcome.”
“I said you were.”
Ryder shifted his weight. “That was before… before…”
“Before Seth told me your career was on the line and you wouldn’t even ask me for the help you needed?” I asked. “‘cause I gotta be honest, that did hurt a little.”
Ryder’s face fell, and I wished I hadn’t said that. Wasn’t he having a hard enough time already?
“Not enough to kick you out,” I said, taking a step toward him. I wanted to reach out and pull him into a hug, but I wasn’t sure he wanted that right now. Enough people had trampled over his boundaries lately. “Just enough to ask why you wouldn’t come to me.”
