Wrangled

A floor lamp tips over.

No one notices.

Seriously, no one in our class is ever going to be invited back to the Evans’s.

There’s a moment by the game room window that overlooks the outdoor pool that Nadia finds me and, in a slurred, dreamy voice, asks, “It isn’t wrong of me to have recurring dreams of putting my tongue down Fabian Evans’s throat, is it?” She trips over her heel, clutches me, then adds, “I mean, he is eighteen now. Like, he’s eighteen. Oh, God.” Her eyes go wide and she stares off, mortified. “I want to make out with a high school senior. No, I … I’d never do that. So wrong. Vanessa’s little brother? I … I should never do it. I won’t do it. Should I do it? No. No, I won’t do it.”

Another noise-filled hour later, Chad and I are watching Cody Davis-Arnold seated at the piano in the corner of the game room with his husband Trey in his lap, and the pair of them are playing a very clumsy version of Heart And Soul, with a crowd of their friends watching them, dreamy-eyed and swaying.

I think I feel Chad’s hand near mine, standing too close to my side to be casual.

I look his way.

Chad’s staring right down at me.

“Can you play any …” My head spins. Phew, I do not handle my alcohol well. “… play any, uh … instruments?” I ask him, then take another sip of my whatever-this-is.

Chad, a mile more sober than I am, considers the question. “I can belch my ABCs. But I doubt that’s much impressive.”

“There’s so much I don’t know about you, Chad.” I let out a strange, loopy laugh, then shake my head. “So much. And yet …”

“I’m an open book now, Lance. At least … well, I am to you.” He meets my eyes again.

He looks so damned scrumptious when he stares down at me like that, all blue-eyed and sweet and devilish all at once. “How are you not drunk as fuck right now?”

“You kiddin’? I don’t get drunk, and you’ve drank about three times the quantity I have.”

“I ain’t not!” I clear my throat and try that again. “I am not. Did not. I did not. Phew, this party really brings back memories …”

“Of what?”

“Of … of …” Suddenly it hits me, the reason this party feels so different than anything I’ve ever been at. “This is gonna sound strange. Like, really strange. But … it reminds me of … something that never happened.” I smile wistfully, glancing back at Trey and Cody at the piano. “It reminds me of the prom night I didn’t have.”

He doesn’t reply. When I glance up at Chad, I find him staring off, the light expression from before gone from his face.

“Hey, shut up,” I say to him for some reason. I also randomly take visual note of how his tie is now nowhere to be found and his dress shirt has opened up halfway, revealing a more-than-inviting peek of his pecs. To be fair, my vest is off and hanging on the back of … somewhere, maybe a chair, I don’t know. So is my bowtie. I’ve lost track of everything. “Shush. Don’t get all droopy eyed now. I just meant this is kinda …” I throw my hand toward the room full of talking and casual dancing and blundering piano notes. “This is how I … how I might’ve pictured my prom night after-party. It’s nice. It’s fun. It’s …” I laugh at my own words before they come out. “It’s very Spruce, Texas. Hey, cheer up, damn it.”

I shove Chad’s side.

Naturally, he’s made of pure brick and steel, because the man doesn’t budge an inch.

But when he looks at me, an amused smirk has curled up the corner of his full lips. “Y’know what, Lance?” he says to me. “I think I just figured out what I gotta do.”

“Oh yeah?” I tilt my head. The whole room somehow tilts with it. “And what’s that, big guy?”

He reaches around my back. My eyes go wide as he pulls me in for what I think is supposed to be a hug, but I’m not sure. I feel a firm tugging near my shoulder blades from his digging fingers.

Of course I notice very little of it because now I have my face buried in his bare chest, right where his dress shirt is opened.

I’m in sweaty, muscle heaven.

Then he pulls away, shoots me a wink, and heads off.

I stare after him, confused. “Hey, where you goin’? Chad?” He vanishes around the corner, gone.

Hopefully he didn’t mean he’s going to find Robby somewhere in this mansion and put a ten-years-coming fist through his face. I pray Chad is just going back into the main house to get some air, or stuff his face at one of the hundred snack tables that might or might not be still set out at this hour. No matter his plan for “making this right” or whatever, I figure he’ll come back to me when he’s carried it out.