He was a cute and confident senior, totally extroverted and fun. When I’d hooked up with him the year before, I hadn’t known it at the time, but he was evidently the right hand man to Preston Beaumont, and second in command at the GSA club.
I wondered if Preston had ever reached out to Aspen after that rave party, or if I’d shot enough imaginary daggers into him from my eyeballs to give him the hint to back off. Either way, it wasn’t Lazaro’s fault.
“How are you feeling?” I asked. I’d sent him a get well soon text after finding out he’d been in the hospital for theappendicitis thing, which he’d thanked me for, but we hadn’t spoken since.
“Living the dream,” he responded, but he was grinning. “I haven’t seen you around much.”
“Ah, I’ve pretty much just been studying and working. You know how it is.”
“Mhm,” he agreed. “But I’m all set for finals. I want to have some fun before I go home for winter break.”
Winter break would start in only a few days, and just hearing the words shot a beam of unhappiness through me. Maddox had delayed going home for a week of break the year before, but this year I’d be completely alone the entire time. I’d be miserable, probably pining over Aspen all day and night until I couldn’t stand it. But he needed to spend time with his mom without feeling guilty over me, so I’d stifled any complaints I had. We hadn’t even discussed it, and part of me was sure he hadn’t even considered what I’d done for break last year or what I’d be doing for it this year.
Stifling the urge to grimace, I popped up my eyebrows to feign an expression of excitement for Lazaro.
“You missed out on a pretty fun party,” I commented, and he sighed.
“Yeah, Preston and I are going to plan something else for spring and I should actually be able to participate,” he said. “The club made a fuck ton of money from that rave, you know.”
“I saw two guys fucking on the hood of a car that night,” I said, snorting when he groaned melodramatically, an exaggerated look of anguish on his face.
“That should have been me!” When I laughed in response to his assertion, he leaned forward a bit, staring into my eyes with a little more intent. “Do you have any more classes today?”
“Nope. I’m all done.”
“You should come back to my dorm room,” he offered, his sculpted mouth twisting up into a flirtatious grin. “We can… Catch up.”
He was hot. Very hot. I thought about how simple it’d been when I’d hooked up with him, the easy chemistry and how compatible we’d been in bed. No awkward morning after, no insecure ramblings, and no complicated discussions. It was exactly the kind of offer I would have jumped at, before all my feelings had started tangling up around Aspen.
“Uh, yeah, I would, but…” I hesitated, and he tilted his head, cocking up an eyebrow. “I kind of… Have a thing with somebody right now.”
“You’re dating somebody?”
“Uh, not exactly,” I admitted. “It’s complicated.”
“Who is it?” He wondered. I thought about it for a second, but I didn’t think there was any reason to hide it. He hadn’t been hiding it either.
“Aspen.”
“Aspen Davis?” Lazaro asked, and I nodded. He scoffed. “Yeah. I bet it is complicated.”
Oh, right. Aspen had said that he and Lazaro had messed around before too, so they knew each other. His tone was kind of… Bitter. Or something. I couldn’t exactly place it.
“You don’t like Aspen?” I asked, and he shook his head.
“I like Aspen,” he corrected me. “IlikedAspen. A lot, actually. Back when we were hooking up last year.”
“Oh,” I said, realizing now why his tone had shifted. It was a little awkward. “You guys had, like… A weird breakup or something?” I guessed, even though I wasn’t exactly sure I wanted to hear more. But I was too excited by the idea of learning more about what Aspen had been like back when he’d refused to even give me the time of day.
“We would have had to have actually been together to break up,” Lazaro pointed out, that slightly bitter tone again clearly evident in his voice. “It wasn’t bad, it was just… I mean, you know how Aspen is,” he said. “All of his strict rules. As soon as I started liking him and trying to get closer, he completely backed off.”
“Ah, yeah,” I conceded. “He’s weird about feelings.”
“Feelings and everything else,” Lazaro stated. My eyebrows furrowed together, and I guessed he could tell I was confused by his statement, because he went on. “I mean, you’re with him now, so… You know. How weird he is about body stuff and doesn’t want to be touched and all that,” he said. “I mean, you know, I get it, I think? If it’s about dysphoria or whatever, but it didn’t bother me that he’s trans.”
“Right,” I said, still not exactly understanding what he meant. Aspen was weird about body stuff? Since when?
“I mean, like I said, I liked him a lot and I would have dealt with it, but it makes it really hard when the guy you like won’t, you know, let you go down on him or touch him or whatever. It was hard for me, anyway,” he tacked on.
