Part of me couldn’t believe I’d just turned down sex with the most gorgeous guy I’d ever been with. Especially when I was quite aware of how good it could be between us. But, as with Rhys’s offer, I felt a deep need to slow things down. To do the opposite of what I would have done before. Not forever. There was no timeline in my head. I just needed to make sure I was acting rather than reacting. That I was making a choice instead of allowing the tides of other people’s feelings to pull me under.
All or nothing was a cliché, but it felt dangerously accurate to describe the way I tended to operate, barreling full speed into anything I took even one step toward.
When Theo asked for a blanket and settled on the couch after we’d talked for a bit, I draped one over him and retreated to my room. It felt like there was some kind of force magnetizing my attention to the living room. I could hear Theo tossing and turning for a while. Then I heard low humming and the sound of the porch door opening. I followed, to find him standing on the porch, looking out at the stars as I’d done so often in the past year.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I asked softly so I wouldn’t startle him. He was wearing only black boxer briefs, and I couldn’t peel my eyes away from the straight line of his spine, the wings of his shoulder blades. In the dim light, his tattoos looked like they were being projected over the canvas of his pale skin. I wanted to reach out a hand to make sure they were real.
“Your couch is uncomfortable as shit,” he said, low, with no resentment at all. “And my clock is still all fucked up from being on tour.”
I grabbed a pack of cigarettes from the ledge and held it up. “Bother you?”
He shook his head and gestured for one before I put the box down.
“Bad for your voice,” I said. He shot me a quelling look and smirked.
We smoked in silence for a while, Theo with an arm wrapped around his waist. The position looked natural, like he had been made to hold himself together in the absence of anyone else.
When we went back inside, we didn’t need to speak. He followed me to my room and got into bed beside me. He pressed a fierce kiss to the back of my neck, then rolled over and threw an arm under his pillow, curling into a comma with his back to me. I lay awake beside him for a long time, watching the moonlight dance across the messily plastered ceiling, half hard, and feeling comforted by the fact that I could choose to do nothing about it. Sometimes, he would shift in his sleep, and I’d catch a whiff of his scent. He made small sounds, light snores, and a few muttered words I couldn’t make out. Everything about him worked its way under my skin, like a bullet slowly making its way to my heart.
Chapter 7
Theo
Caleb got shitty cell reception in Stormville, but we still texted often. And when I got a text from him at two in the morning and it became clear he had a lot of trouble sleeping, I started calling him late, and we’d talk, me wandering around my apartment because I couldn’t sit still, him chasing better reception. Once, when I heard him swear, I asked where he was, and he said he was standing in the pumpkin patch and he’d stepped on the rake.
“You have a pumpkin patch? That’s so…well, either so Cinderella or so haunted hayride.”
“They won’t be ready until the fall. And I’m definitely more haunted hayride than Cinderella.”
“I love Halloween. Or, I used to. When I was little, I’d dress up every year. Started planning my costume forever in advance. Well, it was probably just like a week in advance, but you know, time and kids and all. And it was always cold, so whatever I dressed up as it was kinda pointless because I had to wear a coat over it, but I always forgot about that until it was the time to go. Or I told myself that maybe this year it wouldn’t be so cold.”
“Halloween hope springs eternal, eh?”
“Yeah. And Ohio weather winters early.”
“You grew up in Ohio?”
“Yup. Little nothing town about an hour south of Cleveland. Eastville.”
“That’s where the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is, right—Cleveland?”
“Mm-hmm. It’s the only interesting thing in Ohio. Well, I thought so as a kid, anyway. Haven’t really been back since. I don’t even like when we play shows there.”
I had lived for the day I could get out of Eastville. Put as much distance as I could between me and the town that had felt like a straitjacket my whole life. The kids at school who had thought I was strange even when I was still trying to fit in. Who called me “Theodork” because I was awkward and “Theodora” because they thought I looked so feminine.