He looked at O’Hara. “What’s your idea?”
O’Hara sprang out of his chair and grabbed Jonathan’s laptop. “Turn it on.”
Jonathan took it, watching O’Hara closely. What was he up to? “Is this some marginally cunning plan to get to my novel?”
“No.” He paused. “Although, a bonus, maybe?”
Jonathan shook his head and turned his laptop on. “I’ll be in charge of the keyboard.”
Laughter. “Then I’ll have to tell you my passwords.”
“Yes.”
O’Hara shrugged. “Okay.”
The sincerity in his casual reply and the calm in his eyes eased Jonathan’s suspicion, and he passed over the laptop for O’Hara to access whatever he needed to access.
O’Hara clicked and tapped and clicked some more and then some more. “Got it.”
Jonathan leaned over to look and O’Hara angled the screen. “First, give me my phone back. Stop looking at me like that. I’m dressed, aren’t I?”
Jonathan scrolled his gaze down O’Hara’s threadbare T-shirt and tight jeans, holey at the knee and his inner thigh. “Barely.”
But he handed the phone over, and O’Hara clasped it like he had to give thanks for a miracle.
Jonathan rolled his eyes.
“Scooch closer,” O’Hara said, plucking at Jonathan’s shirt sleeve.
Chair legs screeched as O’Hara started dragging his chair. Jonathan stopped him with a hand to his thigh and stood, moving his chair next to O’Hara’s and resuming his seat, tolerating the twinkly chuckle at his ear.
With a lurch, O’Hara smooshed their cheeks together and selfied a dozen pictures. In all of them Jonathan’s eyes were wide, and in all of them O’Hara was flushed and dimpling.
“This will be the final one,” O’Hara said, brandishing the shot.
“Final?”
“In the slideshow.” O’Hara turned the laptop to him. A half-dozen photos crowded the screen. Them. Younger, teenage them. His parents’ ballroom studio, studying myths at the library, their picnic on the island . . . they were all here.
Jonathan jerked his head to O’Hara, who was watching him quietly.
He’d kept these photos?
How often did he take them out and . . . look?
Nostalgia flickered like a dying flame between them and O’Hara was the first to break away, slowly turning his eyes back to the screen. He shifted the mouse, his leather band catching on the edge of the table, and another few pictures appeared.
Jonathan clasped O’Hara’s wrist, braided leather burning against his palm. O’Hara stilled under him, but this time kept his gaze rooted to their pictures. Jonathan’s pulse ticked in his throat and echoed in his watch, so close to O’Hara’s band.
Among the pictures was one of him and O’Hara at the market. The camera had caught Jonathan staring at O’Hara’s wrist.
There had been workshops near the amphitheatre; O’Hara had tugged Jonathan with him to braid leather bracelets.
O’Hara tried following the instructor’s directions, but his fingers had been shaky as he fiddled with the thin strands of leather. He’d laughed at his feeble attempts, and given up to watch Jonathan.
His own bits of leather had warmed in his fingers, and his knots were inconsistent, but he maintained focus until he found a rhythm.
He’d requested help to attach a sturdy clasp, paid for the materials they both used, and returned to O’Hara, chin in his hands at the table. When he stopped abruptly in front of him and held out the braid, O’Hara straightened. “For me?”
“Yes.”
Carefully, O’Hara took it, thumb gliding over the leather, dark brown and light. “Put it on?”
“. . .”
O’Hara sighed, smiling, and clasped it around his wrist himself. The dark band looked . . . right, around his toned arm. O’Hara had such charisma. This display of flair suited him.
O’Hara looked at his wrist like it was a feeling to get used to and it tickled.
“What is it, O’Hara?” Jonathan asked after O’Hara’s umpteenth sideways glance.
O’Hara shook his head, then paused. Quietly, “Call me David?” . . .
David.
Now, seven years later, the name sat between them at Jonathan’s dining table, right where his hand had frozen over O’Hara’s. In the small gap between O’Hara’s band and his watch, his name whispered over his skin, like the air penned it there. David.
Each time Jonathan had spoken it, it had burned through him, electric, almost severing his self-control . . .
He’d wanted to say it again, and again, and again.
But by the time he’d come to that realization, O’Hara had left.
Jonathan rolled his thumb over the knotted leather band. He had been wanting to touch it . . . since the first moment in the elevator, at the con. He fingered the exposed length of it around O’Hara’s wrist.
“The one you made broke.”
He imagined the band snapping, falling unnoticed into a gutter as O’Hara laughed with new friends. “Of course.”
Time to let go.
Slowly, he dragged his fingers off—
“It’s a replica. Down to the number of knots. Just . . . sturdier leather.” O’Hara flipped his wrist and presented the underside of the band.
Fingertips danced over the cold clasp. Something was engraved on it. D + J.