by Daryl Banner
I’d decided not to lie before we arrived there. I also swore to keep the conversation as light as I could by omitting all the dark, dramatic details. “I’m from Northpoint.”
“Oh, that’s really far. Quite a commute out here, isn’t it?”
James then spoke up and revealed something I didn’t think was in our plans. “That’s why he’s staying with me at my house.”
Everyone’s faces turned to James at once. Utter silence. Even forks and knives stopped moving.
“It’s an arrangement,” I threw in quickly. “Because of his—”
“Yard,” James finished, smooth as an actor who knew all his lines. “Turns out, Lucky here actually has a green thumb. In more ways than one. Green when he’s sketching a masterpiece in green colored pencil. You should really see his artwork.”
Quinton heard it. “Lucky?”
After another moment of awkward silence, his mother Grace burst out with a bubbly laughter. “Oh, how cute! The two of them have nicknames for each other already!”
James’s face flushed at once. Quinton let out a chuckle at my side while his brother and Jules smiled, as if finding it to be the most adorable thing ever.
“So you’re an artist, huh?” asked Lloyd before scooping a fork of mashed potatoes into his mouth.
“Never mind that,” cut in Grace at the other end of the table. “I want to hear about you having a green thumb. Are you meaning to tell me James’s yard is being saved as we speak?”
“Yep,” said James, then he leaned forward to his father to add, “He even made friends with Hale and Maggie. They gave him some selections from their own garden.”
Lloyd moaned warmly and gave a slow, thoughtful nod. “Your grandfather will love very much to hear that.”
Those words seemed to warm James up considerably. He gave me a look, then said, “Well, it’s all thanks to Lucas here.”
I shrugged it off, not wanting to make a big deal of it. But when my eyes surveyed the expressions on everyone else’s faces, it seemed my so-called noteworthy actions were appreciated on a level I apparently couldn’t grasp right then.
“You better be going to school for that art of yours,” chimed in Connor, the first thing he said directly to me.
“Connor,” growled Quinton warningly.
“My brother here refused to get off his ass and go to school for his passions, and now he’s running a coffee shop instead of doing what he really wants to do.”
“Own a brothel,” mumbled Jules unexpectedly, to which the whole table burst into laughter.
She turned out to be far from the “righteous Christian” image I had been previously given of her. Despite seeming reserved at first, she certainly opened up fast.
“So take it as a life lesson in physical form,” Connor finished with a nod my way. “Go to school for that art if you aren’t already. Pursue it to the end. Anyone can make a living doing what they love if they put in the hours.”
Then Jules had something to say about her college in general, which took the spotlight off of me at long last. Everyone was chatting and laughing again, and I took the chance to finish up my second plate of savory heaven.
Moments later, James laid his hand on my thigh and gave me a gentle squeeze. I looked his way and met his eyes, then chased an instinct and gave him a little kiss on the lips.
Despite the conversation rolling nonstop around us, I know every person at that table noticed us. I wasn’t just James’s friend. I wasn’t just a chance meet. I wasn’t just there for now; I was there for good, as long as James would truly have me.
That was what I wanted. And there’s no turning back now.
Chapter 23
JAMES
Without a doubt, I was happier than I’d been in a long time.
Lucas and I drove home from that Saturday dinner with full bellies (since we were also treated to a selection of two different pies and a platter of brownies), a ton of leftovers, and smiles on our faces. The night sky was spread over us by the time we made it back to my house, its stars glittering out there in the country with no city lights to blot out all the glory.
“It’s possible, you know,” I murmured as we sat cuddled up together in the giant bathtub I never use, the hot soapy water up to our chests.
Lucas’s head was resting on my shoulder. “What’s possible?”
“School. The whole pursuit of your passions.” I scooped some bubbles our way like a blanket, then kissed the top of his wet hair.
“I know.” He ran a hand up my chest, his fingers toying with one of my nipples. I closed my eyes, enjoying it for a second. Then he confessed something. “I’ve been messing around with your big computer. In the game room. I found a way to scan my sketches.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. I dicked around with the special effects. Added color. Some shading. It was pretty fun.” He let out a soft chuckle, then gave my nipple one final pinch—which admittedly gave me a semi under the water—before letting go.
My arm was around him, so I gave him a squeeze, pulling him tighter against me. His body felt so perfect against mine in that warm, bubbly water. “Maybe graphic design is your thing.”
“Maybe.”
“You just have to … put in the hours,” I said, mocking Connor’s businesslike tone of voice.
Lucas chuckled against my chest. “You’re right. He was pretty hot in a politician way. I had my doubts.”
“Told you.”
“Thought you were full of shit,” Lucas teased. “You weren’t.”
“I never am.”
“I think I’m falling in love with you.”
His words robbed me of every trace of humor I had. A million different potential and equally understandable responses flooded my brain, yet I couldn’t pick a single one to express. My breathing stilled to nearly nothing. My heart beat so powerfully, I could have sworn it caused ripples in the bath water.
“Lucas …”
“I think I’m falling in love with you,” he repeated.
“You know I care about you. A lot. You know how …” I had to be sensitive. “… how deeply I feel for you. Lucas, you’re everything to me. So please, please don’t take this the wrong way. But …” I closed my eyes. “Lucas, you’re young.”
“Maybe in some ways, I am. But not in all ways.”
“I don’t want you to mistake gratitude for love. If you go off to college, you’ll meet people your age. You can’t …” What the fuck am I saying? “You can’t cut yourself short, Lucas. Don’t settle for me.”
“Settle?” Lucas pulled away from me at once and bore his eyes into mine. He was so impassioned, he was practically furious. “You think I’m settling for you?”
“I don’t think you can know if you’re settling for me or not. At least not yet,” I reasoned calmly. “Not until you’ve seen—”
“What else is out there? Who else is out there? Let me tell you what’s out there for me.” Lucas sat right in front of me in the tub, his face hovering before mine, water dripping from the tiny hairs on his chin. “Greedy motherfuckers. Selfish motherfuckers. People who don’t see me the way you do. People who wouldn’t break their life in half for me. I saw you with your family tonight,” he said, his face drawing closer. “I saw the torment in your eyes. It was hard for you to do that, to bring me, to let out all the worms. But you did it. You think that sort of sacrifice is a virtue afforded to everyone? You think your level of compassion and honor and humility is something everyone just has in their back pocket?” He gripped my head with both of his hands. I stopped breathing. I was not prepared for this level of an intense response from him. “You are not like everyone else, James McKinney. You are not a man who people settle for,” he stated. “You’re a man worth fighting for.”
We stared into each other’s eyes. The tiny bubbles made their tiny popping sounds all around our bodies, which were glued together, his face over mine, glorious in its passion, his eyes wet with inspiration.
“Yo
u,” he said, “are a man people would be lucky to have.” He dove into my face, kissing me so potently, it made my jaw ache. I melted against his mouth and his scorching, plush lips. He pulled away to look into my eyes again. “I am not settling.”
My heart was dancing in my chest. What could I possibly say?
“And I’m falling in love with you,” he choked.
There was nothing to say. It was my turn. I wrapped my arms around him, tackled him into the water with a splash, and locked my mouth to his, giving in to every and any emotion I kept locked away these few weeks the two of us knew each other.
Fuck it. Maybe at heart, I was a foolish, love-struck teenager, like him. Maybe we are all horny teenagers inside—reckless and impulsive and messy. Maybe the older we get, the less we listen to that heedless monster in our chests that urges us to approach that hot guy in the bar, or go on that date with someone way out of our league, or ignore the consequences of diving headfirst into a love without knowing at all if it’s the right or responsible thing to do.
Love-struck teenagers give no shits about responsibility.
Lucas and I owed no one a single fucking explanation for our careless, rash, madcap mischiefs we enjoyed with each other.
Maybe I’m falling in love with him, too.
* * *
It was Friday, which meant it was time again to hit the casinos with Duncan, Lewis, and Quinton. But this time, I didn’t cancel.
I didn’t cancel because Lucas wanted to come along, too.
“Are you sure?” I’d asked him while we packed our bags. “I told you already, I’d really rather just stay here, watch TV, cuddle on the couch with you …”
“Fuck a hundred times in your bed,” Lucas continued, taking up my same wistful tone of voice, “while you’re tied down, spank you when you talk back to me—which you’ll do deliberately to earn the spankings, of course—and eat a bunch of pizza. I know.” He glanced my way, then held up two sexy pairs of boxer briefs. “Blue or black? Which pair do I pack?”
“Neither,” I suggested with a mischievous smile.
The truth was, he didn’t mind getting a little taste of the beach town again with me and my friends. For one, he thought it sounded like a fun idea. Secondly, he wasn’t scared of the prospect of returning to the casinos and potentially running into any of the assholes he used to contend with one bit. Of course, considering the extra bit of bulk he’d gained by doing such manual labor at my house, eating regularly, as well as working out in my home gym those past three weeks, I doubt anyone would want to fuck with him unless they enjoyed the idea of tasting their own blood.
Duncan’s minivan felt like a really tight squeeze on the ride into town, but seeing as Lucas and I couldn’t keep our hands off of one another, it didn’t matter at all. Duncan was also pretty stoked to get his own room that time around, since we had to add a third one for me and Lucas.
The beach town felt exactly the same as it did when we left it so many weeks ago, its bright lights and noise welcoming us as we crossed the lobby to check in. Admittedly, it was a little surreal to return there with Lucas at my side this time. So much had happened between us since the last time we stood in that lobby, I started to feel the same jitters as I did when my only quest in the world was seeking out Lucas in this crazy mess of a place.
After dropping our stuff off in our respective rooms, the five of us poured into the Ebon Oasis like we owned the place. Lucas and I sat together at a slot machine tapping the button over and over while Quinton sat near us at his own machine, which he confessed to picking only because of the topless mermaid sitting atop it. Lewis and Duncan went to the craps table nearby, where we heard their continued shouting each time the dice was thrown.
An hour later, Lewis was howling in front of a machine after it landed on three cherries in a row with two gold-bar multipliers (whatever that meant; it was Lewis’s favorite game that I never understood). “Finally!” he cried out, bursting from his usual stoic shell of emotionlessness with his eyes lit up. “After three months of failing me! Fucking finally!”
That wasn’t where our luck ended by far. Quinton scored six winning hands in a row at the blackjack table, which nearly made him leap over the table to kiss the dealer’s face with gratitude. He grabbed hold of the nearest person—me—and yelled obscenities of excitement in my face. Since he had gone in with half of Duncan’s chips, the pair of them shared the winnings.
It was nearing midnight when the five of us sat at a table at the Crystal Dragon for some wonton soup and dumplings. Lewis, lively as he’d ever been, went on and on about how he was certain it was something he did to earn his lucky lever-pull at the slot machine, insisting that he had a strategy and didn’t just leave it up to chance. Quinton shrugged, kicked back, and said he was ready to crash a strip joint down the street, now that he actually had the dollars to tip the dancers with. Duncan involuntarily licked his lips at the thought, staring ahead at nothing as he lifted a spoonful of steaming wonton soup to his lips to blow on.
“Not sure about a strip joint,” mumbled Lewis as he poked at his napkin idly with a chopstick, “seeing as that was one of the big can’t-dos on my wife’s list.”
“If I hear one more time about your wife’s can’t-do list …” groaned Quinton.
“It’s enough she lets me come here with you guys to begin with!” Lewis fired back, annoyed at him. “You do realize we can’t do this forever, right? I mean, my daughter is getting bigger. It already grates on my wife’s nerves that I still do this with you guys at all. Soon, I’m gonna have to be the one canceling out, and then you four will be the ones going.” He eyed Quinton. “Which means you and Dunc gotta grow the hell up, ‘cause I’m sure not going to be looking after your asses forever, and James is gonna be too busy babysitting Lukey-Luke here.”
Quinton’s nickname for Lucas—as if he needed yet another one—had already caught on with the others.
And while Lewis was not quite sold yet on the idea of me being with someone so young, I could tell through the evening that he was softening up considerably. It was only a matter of time before Lucas truly became one of the guys in Lewis’s eyes.
At least, that was what I told myself. “His name’s Lucas,” I spat back, sneering.
“Alright, alright,” sighed Quinton. “Fine. No strip joint.”
“But that doesn’t mean we can’t still get smashed,” Duncan reasoned, then pointed off to the right. “There happens to be a bar that way calling our names. Even Lucas’s. I doubt they card.”
“I’m not drinking,” Lucas muttered with a smirk. “At least one of us has to stay sober to babysit your whiny asses.”
Quinton and Duncan let out a guffaw that shook the table, Duncan nearly spilling his soup on himself. Lewis narrowed his eyes, tasting the bitter medicine of his own words being served back to him. Then, with a nonchalant shrug, he grunted, “Alright, then. Let’s hit the bar, then, and Lukey-Luke here can babysit us while we get trashed.”
“Let’s do it!” cried out Quinton, pumping his fist in the air.
That was how the five of us ended up in the central bar right in the middle of the Talisman, surrounding a table with too many emptied glasses to count. The college crowd beat us to the bar, but somehow, we seemed to dominate them in volume and intensity.
Lucas wasn’t even drunk and yet he was yelling along with all of us at the top of his lungs every single time we downed another shot. He drummed the table with us as Quinton chugged down another glass. Even the people near us were getting involved in our high, laughing and watching and yelling along.
That wasn’t Lucas. He wasn’t some drunken college frat boy cheering on his pledges. Yet there he was with the guys, his fist in the air and his voice at full volume.
I couldn’t explain it if I tried. We were all loose, alcohol or not. We were having a good time. Lucas was insane with happiness, and so was I. It was a party without a reason, a party that needed no reason, a celebration of nothing but life and frie
ndship and everything between.
I felt drunk and dumb. I turned to Lucas and decided to be a little crazy. “Let’s dance.”
He blinked. “You serious? In this crowded-ass bar?”
“Yep, yep, yep.” I reached for his hand. “C’mon, prom date.”
Quinton and the others started cheering for us, but Lucas was shaking his head. It was going to take a bit of convincing. “Dude, the last time we tried this, we fell into a fountain.”
I smiled. “I won’t let anything happen to you this time.”
I wasn’t sure how much I actually expected him to trust my slightly slurred promise.
But he took my hand. “Let’s dance.”
What I did next was something I doubt he could’ve expected. I, mister by-the-rules and too-nervous-to-give-Lucas-road-head-without-ample-encouragement, climbed up onto my chair and then stepped onto the table.
“No fucking way,” called Lucas.
“Up!” I ordered excitedly, still clasping his hand. “Come on up here, prom date!”
He really had no choice. The others started cheering us on, including the drunken frat boys around us who didn’t know us at all. Lucas wouldn’t hear the end of it if he denied me.
So he climbed up onto that chair, then up onto the table next to me. His foot almost slipped, but I caught hold of him right away and held on, keeping his balance. There wasn’t much room on that table, but there we stood, holding each other to keep upright.
The world looked huge, even just standing up there. So many faces looked our way, happy, grinning, drunk, laughing, or just curiously watching and wondering what we were up to.
He was looking around him, bewildered. “Lucas.”
He turned to me right away. Even while I was considerably wasted as fuck, he had to know he was safe in my clutch. There wasn’t a damned thing in the world that could touch us up there.
Then the music thumped hard. The lights flashed. And my body began to move. Lucas, still as a statue, watched as I danced in place and jerked my hips to the rhythm. Of course I kept my wet eyes on his, focusing on nothing else but him. He bit his lip, as if considering whether my odd gyrating was me trying to twerk or do the hula-hoop, but damn it, I still felt sexy.