Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99399 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99399 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
I glanced at him, my stomach swooping with nerves. “Oh. Shit.”
His smile dimmed. “Oh shit?”
“No. Sorry. I just meant… I already have plans. Here. With everyone. For dinner.” I sounded like an idiot. I took a breath and repeated, “Sorry.”
Jake tilted his head. “You know, if you’re not interested, you can just say that.”
“I’m not not interested. I’m…”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re not not interested.”
I closed my eyes and exhaled. “Sorry. I just… There’s a friend of my dads’ in town. The one from this morning, remember? They sent him here to check up on me, and I told him we could do dinner here with my friends before he… leaves.”
Okay, that last part was a lie. But I was grasping at straws and not at my best.
Jake’s eyebrows lifted. “Oh. Does your dad not know you’re into guys? And you’re worried what this guy will think?”
I laughed. “No. My dads, plural, are gay. And Trace is gay, too.”
Jake hesitated before making a noise in his throat. “Ah. That makes more sense.”
“What do you mean?”
“He wants you.” Jake shrugged. “That much is clear.”
His words took me off guard. I croaked, “What?”
“He touched you. Made you uncomfortable.” Jake eyed me carefully. “Has he ever done something inappropriate to you, Will?”
Memories of a couple of hours ago slammed into my mind. The gentle touch of Trace’s fingers on the back of my head. The arch of his back as I pleasured him. The sound of his voice rumbling, baby, baby, in my ears before he came apart.
“No,” I breathed. “Definitely not. Nothing inappropriate.”
I felt like Jake could see right through me. That maybe my cheeks were mottled red with the memory of my encounter with Trace. I scrambled to think of a way to play it off. “I just don’t want my personal business getting back to my dads, that’s all.”
That much was true.
Jake seemed to accept what I was saying as truth. He reached over to squeeze my arm. “Then promise you’ll come to the restaurant for breakfast tomorrow? Let me feed you there, and we can plan something. If the weather’s nice, I can take you up to this overlook I know about. It’s a great hike with killer waterfall views.”
I thought back to when Rosie and Lennon were in high school. She’d had a crush on a guy in her French class. A guy who flirted with her during class but hung out with his actual girlfriend every other hour of the day. Meanwhile, one of Rosie’s good friends in the theater program had asked her to prom. At the dinner table one night, she asked the rest of us what she should do.
“If I say yes to Ethan, then what happens if Terrell breaks up with Amanda and asks me to prom?”
We’d all looked at her like she’d lost the plot. Papa had spoken first. “What are the chances of that happening, sweetheart?”
Her face had dropped. “Slim to none.”
Dad had exchanged a look with Papa, as if getting permission before speaking. “Baby, maybe if Terrell sees you out with Ethan, he’ll get jealous enough to realize what a catch you are. If so, he’ll be even more interested. If not, you didn’t miss out on having fun at the prom with a good friend.”
Was that how clueless I seemed right now?
I glanced up at Jake—the guy who’d made it clear all along that he wanted me. Who’d been nothing but kind and appreciative. Who’d kept my secret. Who’d never broken my heart.
“Yeah, okay,” I agreed. “That sounds fun.”
He smiled and nodded before moving toward the picnic table to include Shay in the conversation. “So this looks like a pretty nice guitar, yeah?” he asked her.
She nodded. “Way better than the one I had before. And it has built-in electronics!”
I pulled my camp chair around to sit in front of her so I could show her a few things. “This is called a piezo pickup. It doesn’t make it sound like an electric guitar or anything. It just amplifies the acoustics when you perform, like playing at the bar.” I began telling her how to use the controls and connect to the amp I’d noticed on their stage.
We spent a little while playing around with it. At one point, Brennan heard us and came walking over with Pup on his leash. Shay finally put her new guitar down long enough to approach the friendly cat and ask Brennan a lot of questions about her.
After taking a few photos and asking Brennan’s permission to post them and tag his account, Shay finally turned back to where Jake had been idly plucking at the new guitar’s strings.
“Can you drop me off at Teeny’s?” she asked. “I have my bag in the truck. Sorry to leave you alone on your night off.”
Brennan bounced his eyebrows at me before glancing back at Jake. “You should come to our cookout tonight. We’re making a big group dinner. The more, the merrier.”