Page 73 of Home in Nevada

"I had a raging hard-on for you, over the way you were looking at me before I even tickled you—"

"Jeff!" Jamie cuts me off, laughing, though his cheeks flush a little.

"What?"

"...I know. Both things."

"Good," I say with a smirk, leaning back into the bed and pulling him closer.

"You’re not going to apologize?" Jamie asks, raising an eyebrow.

"For what?!" I snap, more defensive than I mean to be. What did I do now?

"For giving me blue balls for, like, most of our relationship..."

"I did not."

"You totally did. You kept chickening out."

"No, it just never went anywhere—"

"Yeah, becauseyoukept chickening out," Jamie says, his tone teasing but firm. "I would’ve let you do it, you know. If you wanted to... You always stopped short. God, you stopped every time I thought you were actually going to do more..."

I glance over and see the page from my journal lying on the other side of the bed. Looking back down at Jamie, I raise an eyebrow.

"It’s really cute that you think I knew what I was doing," I say, deadpan.

Jamie reaches up, his hand warm as he caresses the side of my face.

"You didn’t have to know what you were doing, Jeff. I didn’t care."

His voice is soft, and the honesty in it makes my chest ache in the best way. I lean down, kissing him softly on the lips before breaking away to press another kiss to his temple.

"I almost took the pages where you wrote about that one time you almost did it," Jamie says, his tone lighter now. He pauses, looking up at me. "Before you left."

For a second, I’m blank. I don’t even remember writing about that. It was probably one of the last things I scribbled in there before I stopped keeping the journal.

"Which time was that?" I ask, genuinely curious.

Jamie pretends to be insulted. "Wow... you don’t even remember?"

I shake my head.

"In your car… Before you told me you were moving," he says, his voice softening.

The memory hits me, slow at first, then all at once. Jamie’s still watching me as he continues.

"You said you had to tell me something. Instead, we just drove out to the desert. You made out with me for... a long time. You unzipped your pants."

Oh, I remember now.

The details after that blur a little, though. Probably because of what happened next—Jamie breaking down after I told him I was leaving Nevada.

"You wrote three pages about what you were going to do with me before you left," Jamie says, his voice dipping. "I just couldn’t bring myself to rip that many out. I felt too bad."

I laugh, shaking my head. "Shit, I remember that now."

"Well, I’m kind of glad you didn’t do it, because making out with me before leaving was mean enough," Jamie says, glaring playfully. "So… don’t tell me you didn’t know what you were doing, Jeffrey."

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