Page 40 of Cool for the Summer

“What?” he asks, more gently.

“I just want to go home. With you.” If I sound tired, it’s because suddenly I’m exhausted. I can’t believe it, but the truth is I’d rather spend a sexless night hanging with Beck, munching on cookies and watching a movie, Cleo curled up between us on the couch, instead of anonymous sex with a pea-protein-obsessed gym rat.

“Oh.” Beck looks a little lost, and I feel like the selfish shit I am.

“But you were having fun. You should dance more. I’ll get another drink?—”

“No.” Beck touches my shoulder and I lean into him involuntarily. “It’s okay. Let’s go.”

I settle the tab and we get back in the car without saying much.

“Sorry. I ruined the night, I guess,” I say, feeling uncharacteristically self-pitying.

“My night wasn’t ruined,” he says, but he still sounds quiet, like I’ve taken the energy out of him. The last thing I want to do.

“That’s a pretty cool place. Sparkle,” I say, in a weak attempt at salvaging a conversation.

“Good burgers,” he says.

“Good beer.”

“Nice people.”

“I guess,” I say.

“What—not up to your New York standards?” He sounds like he’s teasing, but I can hear an undercurrent of insecurity.

“It’s not that.” I haven’t missed New York at all the last couple of days. “I’d just rather be with you.” Shit. That’s both exactly what I mean and not at all what I meant to say.

Beck flips on his blinker, checks his mirrors, then pulls his car into a turnout on the side of the road.

“What—?”

He throws the emergency brake on and puts the gear shift in neutral. “Donovan, you have to stop staying stuff like that.”

I swallow hard. Shit.

“Because if you keep on being so supportive and nice and sweet and acting like my goddamn boyfriend, I’m going to get the idea that you want to actually be my boyfriend. And that’s not good for my mental health, okay?”

“I don’t want to be your boyfriend,” I say quickly. It might make me an asshole, but it’s the truth.

“I know.” In the dark cabin of the car, his face is faintly illuminated by the dials on the dash. He sounds calm, but he looks…sad. “We’re friends. Which is awesome. I’m really enjoying being your friend.”

“Me too.” That’s the truth, too. And while I’m on this truth-telling kick, I might as well confess something else. “I sort of want to kiss you, though.”

I can hear his sharp inhale. “Sort of?” I should know he’s not going to make it easy on me.

“I do want to kiss you.” I owe him that much.

“Just kiss?” he asks, looking not at me, but at the gear shift. Now I can hear the flirtation in his voice and I let go of the anxious breath I’ve been holding onto.

“No. I want to get you off.” I’m dying to know what he looks like when he’s turned-on and coming—is it the same face he makes when he bites into the first still-warm cookie from the oven?

“Anything else?”

“I want you to get me off.” Fuck, I need to feel another body next to mine—it doesn’t have to be anything fancy. I’d happily rub off on Beck in the back seat. For starters, anyway.

“And just to be clear, you want all of these things, and you don’t want to be my boyfriend?”

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