Page 15 of Summer Catch

Assuming you had some questions and struggles, too, when you realized you weren’t straight.

Jon let out a hard breath. Feeling a little nauseous. He’d done it.

Yeah. Definitely. I’m honored you want to talk to me about it.

He’d already been honest, enough it wasn’t so hard to continue.

I wouldn’t want to ask anyone else, he texted back. And that was truer than he’d realized, because even if he’d had options, Jon had a feeling he’d have ended up asking Kieran anyway.

Kieran didn’t say anything to that, but he did reply ten minutes later. Rudy’s Diner, 11 PM?

Jon sent back a thumb’s-up emoji and they were set for the night.

He didn’t want to call it a date—but maybe a friends but maybe more meet-up?

Oh, don’t be stupid, you hope it’s a goddamned date.

He dressed like it was a date. Changing into a different shirt, ditching his khaki pants for a pair of jeans that an old girlfriend had said made his ass look fantastic.

Ignoring the voice inside that insisted, You can use all the help you can get.

He got to the diner fifteen minutes early and ordered coffee, even though he was going to be up all night if he drank it.

Or maybe that’s gonna be Kieran keeping you up all night.

Jon told himself sternly to stop thinking that way, stop wondering what might happen after this conversation, because if he sweated through his shirt, it wasn’t going to do him any favors.

Kieran walked into the diner at three minutes to eleven, his handsome face creasing into a bright, wide smile as he spotted Jon.

“Hey,” he said, sliding into the booth opposite him.

“Hey,” Jon said, trying not to sound nervous and failing.

“Coffee?” Kieran asked, glancing over at Jon’s half-drunk cup. “You got someplace you gotta be after this?”

Yes. In your pants.

“Uh.” Jon cleared his throat. How was it possible that Kieran looked even better somehow under these bright fluorescent lights? He’d imagined the impact of him might have been helped along by the friendly dim lighting at the bar.

“Hey, listen, it’s alright. I . . .I get it.” Kieran’s expression turned sympathetic and he reached out, brushing Jon’s hand so briefly that, for a second, he thought he must’ve imagined it.

But he hadn’t.

“When did you know?” Jon asked, deciding he was going straight to the question that had haunted him the longest. How had he gotten to thirty-three years of age and not realized he was into guys, too?

It made him feel painfully out of tune with his own brain. His own heart.

“Not til freshman year in college actually,” Kieran said wryly. “Though—no, that’s not quite true. I suspected. But then I made out with David Gardner after getting high at a frat party, and it was kind of hard to deny after that.”

“Ah.” Jon felt stupid. He’d gotten high at frat parties, too. Never made out with a guy at one. Maybe if he had, he’d have realized this particular truth sooner.

But then if the frat guy hadn’t been like Kieran, he didn’t think he’d have been particularly interested.

“Listen, though,” Kieran said, leaning in, his gray eyes so intent, “sexuality’s like a rainbow. Maybe you’re red-orange, maybe you’re turquoise. Then maybe you meet someone who makes you more of a cobalt blue.”

Jon had done some research on his own, and that fit with what he’d read.

“So it’s not . . .weird . . .if I thought I was turquoise, but I discovered that I was actually more of that . . .uh . . .cobalt blue? Or even purple?”

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