Page 7 of Lance
It was a different sort of moment between them. Jamie, doubtless, had seen Lance’s hesitation about teaching him, and if Lance didn’t know better, he could almost swear that he saw hurt on his face.
How long that look might have gone on, Lance didn’t know. All he really knew was that someone had come up to him and was hugging him from behind, before slipping around him to press a kiss on his cheek. Ken. It was Ken, who was smirking at him and who shot him a wink.
“C’mon, babe,” Ken said, his voice overemphasizing the last word. “You have better things to do than hang out with this guy. Like me.”
Lance rolled his eyes. Ken was really getting into the act, and he wanted to tell his best friend that he didn’t need to be quite as enthusiastic, but he supposed he should be grateful that Ken was doing it at all. Besides, there was probably no sense in holding back, since they were trying to let everyone in the world know that it was going on.
“Hold on, handsome,” Lance said, smirking back at Ken. He wanted to turn up the heat? Well, Lance could go along with that. If he was going to do this stupid thing, he might as well do it right.
Turning back to Jamie, he saw that the smirk on his face had gone wider than ever, and his eyes were almost scornful. What was that all about? It wasn’t like someone in a band like the Lost Boys, who were all supposed to be openly queer, was likely going to be homophobic.
Lance shrugged it off with an effort. Who cared what Jamie thought about him? If Ken had his way, Jamie wouldn’t be around for very long, anyway.
“Give me your phone,” he told Jamie, and he handed his own over. “And put your number into this. I’ll text you, and we can set up a time to meet, maybe tomorrow.”
Ken was by his side, practically vibrating with impatience, but that was fairly normal for Ken, so Lance ignored it. The guy was probably just eager to get Lance alone so that he could complain about Jamie in a more private place. Even Ken was tactful enough not to go into it right where everyone could hear.
Jamie tapped his number into Lance’s phone and then handed it back.
“I didn’t bring mine. Just text me, and then you’ll have my number,” Jamie directed, which struck Lance as a little weird. Who didn’t bring their phone everywhere in this day and age? And hadn’t he seen Jamie shove something, Lance would have assumed a phone, into his pocket as they’d collided for the first time?
Whatever. Why would the guy lie about that? Lance accepted his phone back and waved a casual—he hoped—goodbye to Jamie before he slung his arm around Ken’s strong shoulders.
“Later,” he forced his voice to be offhand like it was no big deal to him. That he didn’t care that he and this man, who Lance was far too drawn to, were going to be forced together.
He would just have to hope, to cross his fingers, that Jamie didn’t feel even a fraction of what Lance did. He had always been able to guard his heart, or, at least, for the last five years since he’d lost Amy, he had. This was no different, or so he desperately tried to assure himself.
But those crystalline eyes haunted him. They weren’t just etched into his brain. It felt like they were in his heart, in his very soul. That connection, it had been nothing. It had been in his imagination only.
So then why did he feel like it had been the one true thing that had happened to him in his life? Why did it feel like that moment had been the only pure thing that he’d ever experienced?
He wasn’t even sure he liked Jamie. The guy came off as incredibly cocky, full of himself, and honestly, that had never been the sort of person that Lance had been attracted to. It seemed that Jamie was an exception.
Not that it mattered. All Lance had to do was keep in mind all of the many, many reasons that he and Jamie could never work, and he would be able to keep his distance.
“Man, can you even believe that guy?” Ken asked, shaking his head as they left the theater together, arms wrapped around each other. How long until that felt normal? How long until he stopped feeling so damn weird about touching Ken?
He had always liked Ken, and they were affectionate enough, but they had never been the sort of friends who were all over each other all the time or anything. Did this feel as strange to Ken as it did to Lance?
“No,” Lance told him, completely sincerely. “I can’t believe him at all.”
Only he knew very well that he didn’t mean it in the same way that Ken did. Ken hated the guy, would have, in fact, hated anyone that tried to come into the band, no matter how nice they were. And whatever Lance could say about Jamie, the wordnicewouldn’t have occurred to him.
Whereas Lance. Lance thought about the fullness of his ripe lips, the shine in his shimmering eyes, the cocky tilt of his head and the way his whole body had inclined toward Lance during that endless moment when they’d been staring at each other.
Probably happened to Jamie all the time. It was probably just the other man’s inherent flirtatious nature. But Lance couldn’t get it out of his head, no matter how he tried.
Well, he was just going to have to try harder. Try until he made it. Try until he couldn’t mentally trace the shapes and colors of Jamie’s face in his mind’s eye, and he stopped thinking about what color he’d use to paint those beautiful, large, deep blue eyes.
He hadn’t painted in years, but something about Jamie made him want to. Just one more sign of how dangerous the man was.
