Page 35 of Say It Again

It wasn’t a nothing. It was a something. It was a snow globe. A dancer dressed in a blue-and-gold soldier outfit stood inside, striking a beautiful arabesque.

“And it does this.” Aaron twisted a knob on the bottom. Music from The Nutcracker began to chime from its tiny speakers.

He gasped, but he didn’t even mean to. Kind of how his hand absently hovered near his mouth without his awareness.

“It took me forever to find a male dancer,” Aaron said. “You guys are underrepresented in the snow globe market.”

The ragged edges of Daniel’s headache fizzled in real-time into tolerable softness. “What is this for?”

“I wanted to get you something.” Aaron sniffed as he stuffed his hands in his pockets, shrugging at the snow globe. “For your studio. For when you own it.”

Daniel’s breath caught in his throat, somewhere between his overwhelming affection and the words Thank you. If the conversation with his dad had drained him, Aaron’s presence had filled him back up.

“Anyway, I hope—”

Daniel hauled Aaron into his chest, colliding with hard muscle and downy cashmere. Aaron’s eyes widened, and his shoulders tensed.

“I needed this,” Daniel whispered as he lifted to his toes and circled his arms around Aaron’s shoulders. “How did you know I needed exactly this?”

Aaron pulled pack to study his face. He was still tense, but his lips twitched into an almost-smirk. “You needed a snow globe?”

“I needed a snow globe.” He pecked Aaron’s cheek. Then the other. Aaron unknotted a little beneath his touch. “I was having a night, and you came. You brought a snow globe. You made it all better.”

Aaron swallowed, unspooling even more as he settled his gaze on Daniel’s lips.

“You make everything so much better. Kiss me.” He pulled Aaron in even closer. Close enough to feel the voltage crackle between them as he breathed Aaron’s air. “Kiss me. Like you did at the party.”

AARON’S HANDS were on Daniel’s skin, and his mouth was on his neck. He was kissing him all rough and unhinged like he’d done at the party, while the kid ground his tight little body against his, moving the way only he could. He was vaguely aware of how inappropriate it might be to kiss a dude so wildly in his yard with the neighbors so close and the occasional passerby out walking their dog, but heaven help him, this might be the last time he got to do it.

He had a plan. The plan was never to see Daniel again.

Never call him. Never answer one of his calls. The plan was to leave a stupid snow globe with a stupid note on his doorstep like the coward he was so he could retreat back to the outskirts of his life. So he could pretend Daniel didn’t exist.

What the plan was not? This. Kissing him. Kissing him with his whole body while the grass did its magical sparkly dewy thing, and Daniel whispered Thank you onto his lips over and over. Kissing him with the note explaining how he wasn’t an attorney shoved into his pocket like a grocery receipt, worthless. No one ever returned groceries.

Regardless of the grass and its dreamy glistening, and regardless of Daniel’s leg doing that kicked-back-behind-him thing as they kissed—just because this looked like a scene from a music video—he wasn’t Daniel’s knight in shining armor. He wasn’t saving him with snow globes, making everything so much better. Kiss me, mister. Like you did at the party. He was making things complicated. He was an imposter.

“Do you want to come inside?” Daniel rasped into his mouth, his hands urgent and clawing Aaron’s back.

“Yep,” Aaron said. Really? Fucking yep? So not only was he an imposter, but he was an imposter who wasn’t even trying to do the right thing? Come on. The least he could do was try. “Yep, I do.”

God, he was bad at this. He was bad at trying and even worse at honesty, which is why he let Daniel lead him toward the house by his hand. Maybe he’d do the right thing once inside? That was it. He just needed a roof over his head to be a good person.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Daniel said, risking a hesitant smile as he pulled Aaron into his living room. “A part of me didn’t think I’d hear from you after last night.”

If Aaron pretended for a moment that there was no better setup for coming clean than that sentence, it still didn’t address the potential that he’d vomit all over the floor if he had to say it aloud. He had a weak stomach. How was vomit fair to Daniel? It wasn’t, so he responded, “Ahh.”

Terrible. He was a terrible person.

“Is that why you brought me a snow globe?” Daniel slung his bag onto the sofa on his way to the kitchen, flashing back a tiny smile. “Because you felt like it ended weird too?”

“In a way, yeah.” Abysmal. He was an abysmal person.

“I know I can be a lot.” Daniel refilled the water for the calla lilies, which needed a proper vase. Perhaps he didn’t have a proper vase, because he set them on the counter, arranging them around their plastic cup. “A lot.”

Now that Aaron had a closer inspection, Daniel probably needed a lot of proper things. If he were Daniel’s boyfriend, he’d buy him a utility basket to store his mail so it wasn’t falling off the counters and a hook to hang his keys so they weren’t currently sinking between the couch cushions. He’d do something with all these empty yogurt containers with the spoons still sticking out—get him a trash can?

If he had the chance, he’d take care of Daniel.

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