Page 44 of Painted

“I—” Again, Early stopped themself. They wanted to say the fundraiser was a nice thing, but they recognized now was not the time.

Rhys lowered his head for a moment before saying, “I need to say I’m sorry for having sex with you without talking about it beforehand.” Color splashed across his face, which only had Early’s heart pounding harder. “That’s not the sort of thing you do for the first time without discussing it first.”

Early suddenly couldn’t catch their breath. “How did you know?”

Rhys blinked. “How did I know what?”

“That it was my first time?”

Rhys’s mouth dropped open, but no sound came out. His eyes went round as well.

“Oh, God, you didn’t know,” they gasped, pulling away from Rhys’s touch. “I’m so embarrassed.”

“No, don’t be.”

Rhys reached for them again, pulling them all the way into his embrace. Early couldn’t figure out if he felt better or infinitely worse enfolded in Rhys’s arms.

No, that wasn’t true. They felt infinitely better.

“We really did mess this whole thing up,” Rhys said, an actual hint of laughter in his voice.

“Yes,” Early spoke, muffled, into his chest.

Rhys stroked their back and kissed the top of their head before nudging them back.

“We need to start this whole thing over,” he said.

“We do?” Early blinked up at him. Rhys was smiling, which gave them hope.

“We definitely do,” Rhys said. He studied Early for a moment before saying, “I’d like to take you out to a nice dinner at a fancy place, a real date.”

Early nearly choked on their shock. They broke into a smile. “Really? Me? You want to take me out on a date to a fancy restaurant?”

“That’s what I just said,” Rhys laughed gently. “Would you be interested?”

“Yes!” Early answered at once.

“Good. Because we have a lot of things we desperately need to talk about, and I want to get things right.”

Early flattened. Rhys wanted to take them out so they could let them down easy.

“No,” Rhys said, as if they’d spoken that thought aloud. “Don’t give me that worried look. I want to take you out on a date because I like you, I’m tired of telling myself I can’t have you, my therapist said yesterday that I need to stop burying everything I feel, and if we’re going to try to move forward, we have to do it the right way.”

They were back to not being able to breathe, so they nodded until they could form words. “Okay.”

“It’s a date, then,” Rhys said.

“It’s a date,” Early repeated.

Maybe they sounded silly, or looked silly or physically felt silly as Rhys hugged them, but they weren’t sure they cared. They had a chance with Rhys, and that was more than they’d thought they’d ever have.

THIRTEEN

The date hadto wait until the end of the week. Early didn’t mind. The Hawthorne Community Arts Center was as busy as it had ever been between all the admin work that needed to be done for the new and upcoming classes and the big fundraiser. For an event as massive as the one Martin Flint wanted to benefit CADD, they certainly hadn’t given everyone much time to organize it and pull it off. The entire thing was set to take place a week from Friday, which meant Hawthorne House was buzzing.

“It’s probably a good thing,” Early told Rebecca as the two of them worked on collating and binding the brochures of the arts center’s class offerings that would be on display during the event. “This way, I don’t have three spare seconds to worry aboutthe date.”

They said “The Date” as if it were more important than the fundraising event itself, because in their mind, it absolutely was.

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