Page 6 of Doors & Windows
“Oh? You go first.”
“I don’t think so,” Jonah said. “I’m makingyouwait this time.”
“Seems a fair punishment.” If a smile could be heard over the phone, Liam’s would be radiant. Then he drew in a breath. “Okay. Well. Here goes.”
When that was followed by a long pause, Jonah pinched the bridge of his nose. “Liam,” he groaned.
“Sorry! Okay, listen. I know it would probably be more… romantic, I guess, to ask in person. And I wanted to ask you last night before you left, but we were both exhausted and, frankly, I may have chickened out a little bit. But the point is—” His voice softened around a swallow. “Would you like to go on a date? With me?”
Jonah didn’t mean to go quiet. In hindsight, he understood how that might have been misconstrued into something panic-inducing for Liam, but for a moment he was rendered breathless. At the simplicity of the question. At the purity of it. At the fact that this was his reality, well within reach.
“Like, a real proper date.” Liam rushed to fill the silence. “I know we’ve already, like… I don’t mean to imply that I don’t consider all of our previous times togetherreal—because I do! I just—”
“Yes.”
There was a quick, stunned pause before Liam said, “Really?”
A surprised laugh tumbled out of Jonah. “Yes,really. Did you actually think I would say no?”
“I don’t know! I at least wanted to be open to the possibility of it.”
“There was never any possibility of me turning you down.” Jonah didn’t necessarily mean for the words to surface so easily, so casually, but they were the truth. Liam must have felt that over the phone, because he went momentarily quiet again.
Softwas the only word he could assign to the beat of silence that passed between them.
“Okay. Good.” Liam recovered, clearing his throat. Then, “Wait. Sorry, what did you want to ask me?”
A smile curled at Jonah’s lips. “I guess you’ll have to wait until our date to find out.”
CHAPTER 3
Liam
There was very little practicality in commuting from Manhattan to Queens to pick Jonah up for a date in Brooklyn. Even more so because Liam didn’t have a car anymore, so“picking up”really just meant“riding beside him on the same train he would have taken anyway.”
But Liam wasn’t going forpractical.
Jonah Prince was worth far more than a consideration for logistics. This night, this endeavor of pursuing him as something real, was about making Jonah see just how much better he deserved from the people who claimed to love him. He deserved the whole experience: the flowers, the chivalry, and the determination of a man who would do anything to prove himself worthy.
And, if Liam was being generous with himself—which he tried to do with more frequency these days—maybehedeserved something like that too.
His short-sleeve shirt was too thin to betechnicallyconsidered sweater material, but it was just thick enough to make him rethink his choices. Sweat trickled down his spine by the time he made it to the front porch of the house in Forest Hills, making the shirt cling damply to his lower back. He pinched thecollar and tugged at it a few times, hoping to generate some airflow as he walked up the brick sidewalk.
The house, along with the rest of the neighborhood, was even nicer than Jonah had described, all dark red brick and Tudor-style gables and vintage charm. Part of Liam was loath to admit how much he liked it, because it meant paying a compliment to the man who owned it. But Liam was good about keeping those particular opinions to himself.
The bouquet of flowers crinkled under his palm as he switched hands to knock on the door. He switched hands a few more times as he waited, suddenly self-conscious of the impressions his nervous fingers would crush into the wrapping. The longer he waited, the more reasons he conjured to be nervous (as if he were lacking for options). Did Jonah even like flowers? Did he happen to be allergic to the exact type that Liam picked out? Was this too much? WasLiamtoo much?
The door opened, and Liam straightened his back. Jonah stood in the entryway, looking like a dream in all black: a short-sleeved button-up cuffed at the arms paired with ripped denim. Liam thrust the flowers toward him before he could do something stupid like surge forward and kiss him right there on the doorstep.
Jonah’s gaze moved from the bouquet to his face, then back again. “You got me flowers?” he said in lieu of a greeting.
It was harder to feel self-conscious about the gesture when he sounded so awed.
“There was a shop just off the train. I couldn’t resist.”
Jonah took the bouquet, handling it like something fragile, and brought it just under his nose. He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked up at Liam through the petals.“Thank you,” he said.
“No problem”felt like too casual a response, and“I would literally die for you”fell somewhere on the other extreme end of the spectrum, so Liam let a smile do the talking instead.
