I assume he means a guy.
“Not sure,” I admit. “Would you help me?”
Oakley coughs around his bite of food. “Help you find a fuck buddy?”
“I guess.”
He groans slightly. “I don’t know, Law…”
“You don’t have to,” I tell him seriously. “I’m just asking. I think… I’d like to do it soon. I’ve waited long enough for answers. It’s time I go and find them.”
Oakley watches me closely, the blue and brown of his eyes like the earth and sky in one. “All right.”
“All right, you’ll help? Or just all right?”
“I’ll help,” he says, twirling spaghetti onto his fork. He shakes his head, letting out a sigh that sounds almost like laughter. “Lord, what am I getting myself into?”
I don’t have an answer for him, hardly knowing myself.
But I do know it won’t be a mistake, sex with a man. Because one way or another, it’ll give me a piece of the puzzle I haven’t yet solved.
Chapter 10
Oakley
Lawson has a gentle smile on his face as we ride along the trails at the back end of his family’s property. He seems at peace.
My head, on the other hand, is a chaotic swirl of emotions I don’t know how to begin setting to rights.
Lawson is going to find someone to fuck him. Tonight, if he can. And for some inexplicable reason I still can’t identify, I agreed to help.
The man’s voice floats over in a murmur. “‘All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.’”
I turn my gaze Lawson’s way. He’s squinting against the gentle dappling of light coming through the trees, motes of dust curling in the air in front of him, his hand waving through the specks.
My heart beats wildly at the sight, the memory of a much younger Lawson doing the same an ache in my chest. Lawson has always had a sort of unshakable faith in the world. Not a religious kind. More that he believes people to be good onthe whole, and he lives his life trying to prove it. Trust, on the other hand, is a trickier thing.
But he trusts me. Even still. Even after the bumps we’ve traveled over and all the life we’ve lived, he trusts me to help him figure out something he doesn’t trust a single other soul with.
Faith, trust, and pixie dust. All a person needs to fly.
“Oakley?”
Wendy’s voice comes from the front of our little group, and I reorient my gaze, as well as my thoughts, her way. “Yeah?”
“Why didn’t you and Stevie work out?”
My chest pangs at her question, but the sensation quickly sloughs off. “Just weren’t meant to be, I guess.”
“Didn’t you love them?”
Well, shit.
I meet Lawson’s eye, the man’s amused expression telling me I’m on my own with this one. Heaving a breath, I explain as best as I can to a seventeen-year-old who hasn’t yet experienced the complexities of romance. “Yeah, I loved them for a long while. But not all love is the same. I thought… I dunno. I guess I thought our love was stable, but that’s not always enough in the end.”
Lawson grunts.
“What?” I ask, curious about that grunt.
