He cocked his head to one side. “You’re not a dick,” he said. “I was clearly the dick, and you were just… you were just sticking up for yourself. You’ve always been good at that.”
I smiled slightly, sitting up a little straighter, acting proud. “I like it when you tell me I’m good at things. Thank you, Fox.” I was playing it up, hoping that my lighter mood would improve whatever weird shit he had going on under the surface.
He gave me another long glance. That was the real way I could tell he was drunk—usually he never let his eyes linger on me for long, but today, it seemed to be the norm.
It was almost uncomfortable. His eyes were so beautiful, in a way that I’d never noticed before, because he never had looked at me long enough in the past.
His eyes looked soulful, actually, which was a word I’d never thought would be possible to describe anything about Fox. There was a world of longing in his gaze. Maybe even loneliness. I hated that it activated some affectionate part of my heart.
I really was a softie. I got all caring and affectionate even for people I hated.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “For what it’s worth, I also wouldn’t pay you a million dollars to feed me grapes, in reality.”
I nodded once. “Apology accepted.”
“Ahh,” Mom said from the other side of the pool, holding her hands to her heart. “Look at you guys. I haven’t seen you two together like this since high school. Except back then, it was you two glaring at each other over your morning cereal.”
“Or rolling your eyes at each other in the back of the car,” Greg said.
Mom and Greg chuckled.
Laura and Jim were at the edge of the pool, cradling their drinks. “Your mom used to call me up and say she was worried you two were going to get in a fist fight,” Laura said.
“I would never have fought Sam,” Fox said, shaking his head.
“Bullshit,” I said. “If you’d have gotten the chance, you would have beat me to a pulp.”
“Never,” Fox said.
“Why not?” I protested.
He cracked a small smile. “Because you would have fought dirty, and you know it.”
Mom, Greg, and I all laughed at the same time. “Okay, true,” I said.
“It really is good to have you two coming along for this trip,” Mom said. “I think you’ll both get a whole lot more out of it than you think.”
“Oh my Lordy, I think I’m pooped,” Laura said, covering a yawn.
“Me too, honestly,” Mom said, going over and pressing a kiss to the side of Greg’s head.
“Since when do you go to sleep at ten-thirty, Mom?” I asked.
“Told you I’m old,” she said. “It’s a big day tomorrow, I need my beauty rest.”
One by one, people started heading off into the house to go to bed. Soon it was just me and Fox left in the pool, sitting on the steps in the shallow end, nursing our drinks. I kept waiting for him to stand up and get out—I certainly didn’t think he’d want to spend time with me one-on-one—but he didn’t budge.
The night air was still warm, and the moon was just a sliver in the sky above the trees. For a while we sat there, the only sounds around us being the steady, low click of the pool pump and the occasional cricket nearby.
“You remember when you fell out of that tree?” Fox finally said, breaking the silence and pointing to the nearest oak.
I snorted, looking over. “I do,” I said. “It was the last day of school.”
“Your mom told us to invite all of our friends over and you invited ten times as many as I did,” Fox said.
“Please. You were just picky with your friends. I only had, like, eight people over.”
“And I had Ricky,” Fox said. “Christ, I wonder where he is nowadays.”
“Ricky’s a manager at a restaurant in Chicago, I believe,” I said.
“Right,” Fox said. “I forgot you stalk everyone on social media.”
“I do not stalk,” I protested. “I just see what’s out there.”
“You want to know some juicy gossip from that same day, over ten years ago?” Fox asked, shifting a little, bringing his knuckle up and briefly biting it.
“Dirty secrets from over a decade ago? Count me in,” I said.
“Ricky gave me a blow job that same afternoon,” Fox said. “While you and all your friends were out here in the pool.”
I froze in place, staring at Fox. I saw that his eyelids were a little droopy, and I was well aware that he was drunk at this point, but he didn’t seem drunk enough to be making up entirely different realities. “Very funny,” I said.
He shrugged. “Totally not kidding.”
“Wait—what? You—and Ricky—but you’re not—”
“I know, I know I’m not gay,” Fox said. “It was the first time I’d done anything with a guy. I knew Ricky was gay, and we had both secretly gotten into the liquor cabinet that afternoon, and while we were upstairs… one thing led to another.”