When he got back to the campground, he got his things in order and stashed some of them in the car. He told Stanny he ought to do the same, but Stanny rolled his eyes and said, "I have this backpack and this bookbag and this sleeping bag. I seriously doubt I am going to lose anything when I have only this much to keep track of."
"Okay, but when we're a hundred miles down the mountain I am not turning back so you can retrieve your phone or something, okay? I have to be at work the day after tomorrow."
Stanny just shrugged and returned to his game.
There was another hot springs event, but this one was optional, and also not just the men. Everybody who went wore a swimming suit this time, which was a lot more comfortable for Rob. He squeezed into the box where his mother and George were and whispered to his mother, "I think I got a job."
"You did? A good one?" Her eyes lit up like she wanted to scream, but she followed his lead and whispered.
"I think so," Rob said. "Charles is hiring me, I think."
She whooped wordlessly and wrinkled her nose and flapped her hands in front of her face, which was a clear signal to anyone who knew her that she had exciting news.
George leaned over. "What did you tell your mother?" he asked.
"Shh," Sera whispered. "Charles is probably giving him a job. When, honey?" she asked Rob.
"Don't know. He just said to come down to SLO
before too long.
Whatever that means."
"It means as soon as you can. Quit that restaurant job, honey, you hate it anyway."
Rob smiled as he looked up over the meadow. It was a very pretty world, and he had a job.
Somebody was running up the river bank towards the hot springs. It was Jack. He stopped just below the tub where Rob was sitting and stood there gasping for a moment. When he caught his breath, he said, "Will you come out with me?" Rob climbed out wordlessly and followed Jack as he made his way upstream. They followed a curve in the stream and found themselves under a stand of willows, out of sight and probably out of hearing of the campsite. "A great place to murder someone," Rob said.
"Nah, too well-traveled," Jack said. "Look, thanks for coming. I just wanted—you didn't get what I was trying to say earlier."
"Probably. After all, I'm the stupid one," Rob said, without rancor. He had a job, nothing could be too bad right now.
"Maybe not, because I'm the one who was trying to do one of those love confession things and ended up insulting the guy I want to get together with."
"That's what you were doing?" Rob said. "I didn't notice."
"Right, you're the one who doesn't notice things and I'm the one who can't say things directly. It's probably not a good idea for us to try to get together, but—"
"Considering I haven't been actually chasing you, you're finding an awful lot of ways to shoot me down," Rob said.
"Crap, I'm doing it again, aren't I? That's not why I asked you to come here."
"Then why?"
"One, I wanted to apologize but whenever I try I make it worse so if it's okay I could skip that and go to two, which is I wanted to tell you I do like you a lot and I'd like to try to be with you, and three, if that's okay with you, I want to make out with you a bunch before we go back tomorrow because god knows when we'll have a chance again."
Rob just stared.
"Right, I figured you'd probably had enough of me, but I also figured I'd better just get that out there before we start working together, get the awkwardness out of the way and stuff," Jack went on.
"You want to be together?" Rob asked.
"Yeah, I was trying to say that yesterday but I kept screwing it up," Jack said. "All I did was make you cry."
"I wasn't crying," Rob repeated.
"Right, but the point is, even after I've been an asshole to you, do you want to try something? Because I do. It'll be a little awkward at work either way but one thing I know about you is you take awkward in stride and I'm pretty sure I can handle it too—"
"Did you tell Charles to hire me because you liked me?" Rob asked.
"No, it was Chuck's idea all by his lonesome," Jack said. "Would it matter?"
"I'd take the job for whatever reason it was offered but I would rather it was because he liked my work. Being there because the boss's son has the hots for me would be more than awkward." Wait—he had just acknowledged that
Jack had the hots for him
. "This is so weird anyway."
"Life's weird. I suppose it's only fair you're making me wait for an answer. After what I did."
"Now it's my turn to say you didn't do anything to me," Rob said. "But I'm just trying to make sure I understand what's going on before I say anything. That I'm not just making shit up about you liking me."
"Oh, I like you. Am I right about you liking me?"
"I've been kind of trying not to in the light of me thinking that you didn't like me. But I do. It was going to be a project, undoing that."
"Well, so you don't have to undertake that project. Let's start a project together instead. Like a living together kind of project."
"Okay," Rob said. "But I don't think we ought to move in together right away."
"We couldn't even if we wanted to. We'd have to make do with dating and stuff for a while."
"You said something about making out before we go back down the mountain," Rob said. "Why don't we?"
"All right," Jack said, dropping to the ground and patting the spot next to him. "We could be doing that right now."
Rob settled in next to Jack and reached for him just as Jack did the same. They collided, but it wasn't as painful as the laughter that followed. Then suddenly, they were rolling on the ground, getting sand and seeds in their hair and their clothes, hands grasping, mouths reaching. Jack rolled over on top of Rob and gazed at him so seriously Rob could almost think he was scowling again but then he broke into a grin and leaned his forehead against Rob's. Jack's hand slipped between them and worked open their zippers and took their penises together.
"Yeah," Rob said, arching up to close the tiny gap between them. It took no time at all before they both fell back, spent and sticky.
"Crap, now we're both a mess," Rob said. "My sisters are going to hassle me forever about this."
"Let's not care about it," Jack said. "And start thinking how we're going to rearrange the tents tonight."
Six Years Ago
"Hey, check it out." Andre nudged Kyle and pointed at the ticket line. It took Kyle a second to understand what he was getting at, but then he saw. The line—which had been a steady stream of girls all day—now had a guy in it. Kyle sort of recognised him as being in their year, but he couldn't put a name to the face.
The fact that he was standing in line for an all-male kissing booth made him a whole lot more interesting, though. Kyle looked back at the other guys and saw that most of them had noticed, too. There was a general air of discomfort, and the guy in the line was gaining a bit of a crowd in general, and all of a sudden Kyle understood why Andre had thought this was not the best idea anyone had ever had.
It had sounded good at the time—raise money in a cutesy old-fashioned way and, as Gwen had pointed out, it was a chance to let the boys be sex objects once in their lives. She may have strongly hinted that this would be a valuable lesson for Kyle. So they decided to recruit someone for every taste. Andre was there for people who were into musicians, there were a couple of jocks for people who liked that kind of thing, Kevin was hanging around for the sapiosexuals—Gwen had taught Kyle that word—then they had Cole, flaky emo bad-poet, and finally, Kyle. Piercings, black nails and too much eyeliner, always in detention for smoking. If the other guys there—besides Andre—knew how many girls were into that, they'd all be doing it, too. Not that Kyle was doing it for that, but it was a nice side effect.
So far they'd been keeping a running tally, and Kyle was behind Andre by one. Might've been because there was something attractive about a guy who could even
attempt
to play a saxophone, let alone get it to do what Andre could. Plus the whole warm aura he had about him. If Andre wasn't Kyle's best friend and Kyle thought there was even a
chance
he swung that way, Kyle would've been all over it.
Which brought him back to the cute, skinny kid rapidly approaching the front of the line. They'd never said anything about girls only—Gwen would've killed them—but it hadn't occurred to Kyle that it'd come up, either. He knew statistically that there had to be a few people who were at least a little bit gay, or bi, or whatever, but he didn't know who any of them—except himself—were, and he was still keeping that quiet. Better to keep his head down and cruise until he could get out of the hellhole that was high school than make a spectacle of himself trying to explain that while he really liked girls, boys seemed like a lot of fun, too.
Of course, he was only hypothetically bi. On account of the 'keep your head down' thing. Like any time in life when something's about to change, though, Kyle could see what was about to happen from a mile away. The two jocks—Kyle didn't care enough to remember their names—had already backed off. Kevin was hovering awkwardly. He'd probably go through with it if he was asked, but it'd be humiliating for everyone involved and Kyle liked Kevin enough not to want to put that on him. Andre was still steadfast beside him and Kyle was actually pretty sure he'd give it his best shot if he had to, because Andre was one of the good guys and he wouldn't leave some poor dude standing there with everyone else backing off.
Cole would do it and then write the worst poem in the history of poems about it in the men's bathroom and Kyle didn't want to inflict that on anyone, including otherwise innocent bystanders who just needed to pee.
So that kind of meant that he was about to test out his hypothesis. The guy had now gotten to the front of the line, and Gwen was handing him his dollar ticket with a huge grin on her face. Kyle loved her like a sister but she was a complete and total asshole. It was probably part of the reason he loved her.
As he approached, the guy kept his eyes on all of them. Kyle could feel everyone else backing away, so he stepped forward to compensate, and leaned against the less-than-stable edge of the booth as seductively as possible. Which probably wasn't very seductive at all, but at least he was giving it a shot.
"Hey." Kyle smiled warmly, and then licked his lips. "I'm Kyle. I don't think we've met."
"We haven't. Jamie." Jamie glanced at the other guys as if to challenge them. Kyle kind of already liked him. "You wouldn't have been my first choice."
Kyle laughed, the dry delivery pitch-perfect. It was probably even the truth, but he couldn't bring himself to be insulted. "Charming. Gimme your ticket." He held his hand out.
Jamie smirked and handed it over.
"This ties me for the lead, you know." Kyle smirked right back.
"I'm flattered to be a notch on your booth post." Jamie rolled his eyes. "You're quite the charmer as well."
"Do you want a kiss or not? Because I'm more than happy not to do any work and still gain." Kyle was actually starting to get excited about the chance to kiss a boy—especially since he could say later that it was for a good cause, because it
was
—but he wasn't about to let Jamie know that.
"You're not getting out of it that easy. Last chance to back out."
"Never let it be said that I walked away from a challenge." Kyle shrugged, then reached out to hold Jamie's head steady, laying his thumb next to his ear and wrapping his fingers around to the back of his head. Jamie raised an eyebrow but allowed it, and held Kyle's gaze as he leaned in, tilting his head just enough so that their noses wouldn't bump against each other—he was really improving his kissing technique today—and just brushing his lips over Jamie's. He'd probably been making fuller contact with just about everyone else, but this was about a hundred times more terrifying and still felt a whole lot more intimate.
Gwen chose that moment to wolf-whistle at them, and if she hadn't, it might've been easy for Kyle to get carried away. He drew back thinking about the roughness of Jamie's cheek against his own, the way he smelled completely different from any of the girls he'd kissed today, the tiny sigh he'd tried to hide as they'd made contact. Heat rose on his cheeks and the back of his neck itched, but he did his best to stay still and look calm.
Jamie smiled at him like he'd passed a test. "I was expecting this to go very differently."
"You thought we'd all refuse?"
Jamie nodded. "It wasn't a ridiculous assumption."
"Yeah, well, you know what they say about assumptions." Kyle smiled wryly. His heart was still pounding in his chest, and he had the vague feeling that Jamie—and more or less the entire school—knew that and was laughing at him.
"I think you artfully sidestepped making an ass out of either of us, actually." Jamie gave him another tiny, approving smile. "Thank you."
"You're welcome." Kyle beamed. Maybe it was stupid, but he was kinda proud of himself for apparently making Jamie happy. He watched him walk away while the next people in line took their pick.
It may or may not have been a coincidence that after that, Kyle shot way into the lead for tickets collected—which meant a lot less hours of detention this week, since he was here in exchange. Gwen approached him when they were packing up, smiling like the wolf-lady she was.
"I hope you got his number."
"Whose?" Kyle pretended to be busy counting his tickets, but he knew exactly how many he'd taken. Thirty-seven, and he was the only person to get one from a dude. It'd be an achievement if he hadn't already started getting side-glances and whispered remarks over it.
"Your memory isn't that bad, Miller. So are you a little bi?"
"What?" Kyle looked up at her. Gwen knew. Gwen
always
knew, as though she had some kinda sixth sense about things. She always said her grandma was a witch, so maybe she did. Or maybe it was a weird British thing, or something.