“I could convert the garage over to a house for you and save you all of the labor costs,” he offered.
Honestly, I didn’t give a damn about labor costs or anything else. I was just happy to have my friends, and the people I considered to really be my family more than my sister and her kids, possibly staying close to me. The only reason I might have stayed in LA was for Dean, but he’d been the one to tell me how much I needed to get out of the city and its toxic history for me.
“I’ll talk it over with Nat. How soon do you want an answer?”
I shrugged. It didn’t really matter to me. “Few years? Before Sam graduates from high school, maybe?”
He laughed and shook his head. “You’re a good man, Caleb.”
I didn’t know if I necessarily agreed with him on that, but I was trying. I heard a car pull up to the house and looked up at the clock. Trent was five minutes early and I didn’t even have to go check to make sure it was him. I knew the sound of his car by now, even when I heard him just driving down the main road. It was grittier, and louder, than a lot of the other cars in town. Most people in Thornwood seemed to have trucks that rumbled down the road like my old SUV. Trent had a nice car that was older but still powerful.
The doorbell rang, and I got up from the table. “How do I look?” I asked Dean.
He frowned and crossed his arms over his chest as he gave me a look. “You seriously asking?”
“Well… yes.” I wouldn’t have asked him if I wasn’t actually wondering.
“You look fine. My wife would tell you that you worry too much. Damn, I hope you aren’t still this nervous about dating when Sam starts. I don’t want to have to reassure both of you.”
I laughed, because Sam dating was a scary thought, and headed toward the front door. “Thanks, Dean. See you later. Talk to Nat.”
He rolled his eyes at me. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll talk to her.” He shot me a grin as I opened the door to find Trent standing there with a six-pack of cinnamon rolls in his hands.
“Hi,” I said, unsure about the cinnamon rolls but definitely interested if they tasted as good as they smelled.
Trent smiled at me. “Hey. I know flowers or chocolate are generally traditional. But these are from the diner and they taste better than any chocolate you can get in town.”
I took them eagerly and went to the island to set them down.
“Hey, Dean,” Trent said as he came in.
“You boys be good now. Have him back by nine,” Dean joked.
I rolled my eyes before grabbing Trent’s hand and pulling him out of the house. “You look great,” I told Trent. He’d chosen jeans too, and the dark green sweater he had on looked really soft. After I grabbed his hand, and my fingers brushed against his cuff, I found out it was too.
“Thanks. So do you.”
I expected him to say something else, like how I looked good enough to fuck or something along those lines, but he didn’t. He just smiled at me as we got into his car, and once I’d buckled myself in, I took his hand again as he drove. “What’d you do today?” I asked.
“Cleaned, mostly. I couldn’t really sit still.” He shot me a grin, and I blushed, knowing that feeling really well. “You?”
“I invited Dean and his family to move in with me. Permanently.”
I expected him to say something, to have an opinion about them living there. But what he did say surprised me. “Are you keeping Magic too, then?” He sounded so excited by that possibility that I just stared at him for a second.
“Why?”
He shrugged and shot me a quick smile before going back to paying attention to driving us down the main street of town. “I like seeing horses in those pastures again. And, remember, I told you I grew up going over to your barn and helping out with the horses?”
“I do remember that, and you probably know those woods better than me.” I didn’t mind that; in fact, it was sweet being able to picture a much younger Trent in my barn taking care of some horses there. If I’d lived in Thornwood when I was a teenager I probably would have been all over him. “And yeah, Magic’s staying. Sam’s in love with him.”
Trent laughed and I smiled as I looked out the front window. He took me a little outside of Thornwood, to an Indian restaurant I’d been passing each time I went toward Denver but had never stopped in. “Is Indian okay?” he asked as he pulled into a parking space. “I probably should have asked you first.”
It was cute that he blushed when he was uncertain about himself. I nodded and brushed my thumb over his knuckles. “Yeah, Indian food is good.” I let go of his hand so we could get out of the car, but as soon as we were out, I grabbed him again. I was nervous, which wasn’t unusual for me on a first date, but going out on a first date with Trent did feel a little strange. We’d kissed, we’d had sex, but at the same time I was just starting to get to know him too. We’d done things a bit backward, but that didn’t really matter right then as we walked into the restaurant together.
“What made you change your mind about dating?” I asked after we’d ordered our drinks: hot chai for me and a mango lassi for him.
He gave me a little smile and reached across the table to take my hand again. We’d only separated to look over the drink menu. “I decided something.”
“Oh?”
Trent nodded, and I waited for him to explain. But we were interrupted by the waiter bringing our drinks. We ordered our food, which was easy enough since I knew exactly what I wanted: chicken tikka masala. He ordered lamb curry, and we’d split some naan. By the time the waiter left, I was getting anxious wondering what he was going to be telling me.
“You were saying something?” I prompted him when he didn’t start up again almost immediately after the waiter had walked away. The restaurant was fairly busy, but tucked away in a booth in the corner like we were, it felt almost like it was just the two of us. I liked it a lot.
Trent caught my gaze from across the table. “Yeah. I was thinking that I like you, I want to be with you, and I’d like to get to know you better. I’m not over Simon. I’m going to need some time to deal with his death. I thought I would be able to be okay faster. For years I thought of him as being gone already. But I guess that at the back of my mind he was always there, even if he wasn’t. And now that he’s officially gone, it’s hard for me to think of becoming that involved with someone again. I lost someone I loved, and I don’t want to go through that again.”
I understood where he was coming from and what he was saying. I’m sure it had been devastating for him to lose Simon. I couldn’t even imagine it. I gave his hand a light squeeze and waited for him to continue without me pushing him along this time as he took a deep breath.
“You’re the first person since Simon that I’ve wanted to spend time with. I’d love to have you naked all the time, but I don’t absolutely need to be having sex with you to want to be near you. I want you as my friend, but I want you as more too. I thought Dean was your boyfriend when I first met him, and I was pretty jealous. I want you for myself, and it’s not fair to ask you to wait around for me while I figure out how to have a relationship again.”
I shook my head, because it wasn’t and he was right. I also thought it was pretty funny that he thought I was with Dean. But I didn’t say that.
Trent leaned down and kissed my knuckles. When he lifted his head again, I knew I was blushing pretty hard by how hot my cheeks were as I grinned at him. “I’m not saying I’ll always get it right, or that we won’t argue, but I’m going to try.”
“I’m not asking you to be perfect,” I said as I leaned toward him. “All I want is to know that I’m the only one you’re with, that if we get to the point of saying ‘I love you’ to each other that I’m the only person you’re saying it to. Don’t cheat on me and don’t lie to me. That’s all I’m asking for.”
He frowned and shook his head, and my gut tightened as I wondered if he was going to drop a bomb on me. Had he been with someone else recently? Last night? This morning even?
“You should be expecting a lot more than the bare minimum from someone,” he said, surprising me out of my increasing worry and panic over the thought of him having sex with someone else on the day we were going to have our first date.
“I haven’t had the best luck with guys,” I told him honestly.
He laughed and shook his head. “I hate to tell you this, but your luck isn’t improving all that much with me.”
I shrugged. “I think I’d like to be the judge of that.”
When our food came, we had to stop holding hands to be able to make scoops with the naan, but I didn’t stop smiling at him, and when I offered him a bite of chicken off my fork, he took it instantly.
We skipped dessert and went back toward town for a movie. “Where’s the theater?” I asked as I took his hand again. I hadn’t seen a theater in town at all, but then again I hadn’t driven around much outside of Thornwood either. I’d been too worried about getting lost in the mountains and eaten by the bears I was sure lurked somewhere in the woods just waiting to grab wayward city people like me.
“It’s only a few miles up from the gas station where I saw you the first time,” he said. And sure enough we passed the gas station and then pulled into an old theater. While the outside hadn’t been maintained all that well, I noticed they were playing all the latest movies. Maybe it was the only theater around and all the little towns nearby used it. That’s the only reason I could think of that a tiny town would have new movies to see.
“This isn’t too far from town.” I’d have to let Dean and Nat know about the theater since they liked movies as much as I did. They could go here for dates or Sam could go with some friends, after he made some in Thornwood of course.
Trent took my hand as we found our way toward the front door. He’d paid for dinner, and I hadn’t minded, but now it was my turn to treat him. I pulled out some cash before he could even reach for his wallet and beat him to paying for the latest superhero movie. He grinned at me, I laughed, and soon enough we were sitting in a darkened theater with a box of candy between us and my hand resting loosely on his thigh.
“I want you,” he whispered to me. The theater was mostly empty, with just a few people ten rows ahead of us and no one else around us where we sat in the very back of the theater where it was darkest. That had been his suggestion, not mine, but now I was wondering what he’d been planning.
“That’s not a surprise,” I whispered back to him with a smile.
He dragged my fingers along his inner thigh to where I felt the heavy weight of his cock pressing against the front of his jeans. I didn’t pull my hand away, even though he was no longer hanging on to my wrist. But I didn’t squeeze him either. Instead I barely touched him as I let my fingertips trace over the hard ridges I could feel just waiting for me if I wanted to unzip his pants. I was touching him so lightly I figured he might have thought it wasn’t intentional. He put his arm around my shoulders and maybe he was trying to hold still, but he really wasn’t doing a very good job of it at all as he squirmed under my hand.
“You’re being a tease,” he hissed at me.
“How? I’m not doing anything.”
He groaned softly and leaned over to bite me on my neck. I nearly yelped, but luckily I was able to stop myself before I made the kind of noise that would definitely draw attention to us. “You know exactly what you’re doing.”
“Want me to stop, then?” I asked, already pulling my hand away. But he pushed it right back into place before I could go too far.
“No, I want you to do more.”
I shook my head. “I don’t put out on the first date.” He laid his head on my shoulder and began gently sucking on my neck. “I don’t,” I repeated, though his mouth on my skin was absolutely making me rethink my position on not having sex with him again right away. “Nope. Not happening.”
He lifted his mouth off my neck, and I turned my head to kiss him. He shoved his tongue into my mouth and I moaned as softly as I could. “I want you under me,” he breathed against my lips.
“I know. But right now we’re in public and supposed to be watching a movie on our first date,” I reminded him, though my resolve might as well have been a piece of paper that I’d torn up and thrown in the trash for all it mattered now. I wanted him too, first date or not. I wanted his hands on me, his mouth on my neck, his cock deep in me.
I gave him an involuntary squeeze just thinking about him being on top of me. And this time he couldn’t hide his noises of pleasure so easily. “We should go,” I said, already getting to my feet.
“But the movie. Our first date….”
I rolled my eyes, knowing he understood exactly what I was getting at. “We’ll do a movie another time. Maybe when we’re dragging ourselves out of bed after spending a weekend fucking each other senseless. Right now, though, a movie isn’t happening.”
“Damn straight.” He looked pretty proud of himself as we hurried back to his car and he drove us to his townhouse. I was really glad he’d thought to go there instead of trying to get back to the house. Guests, especially with a kid around, and sex didn’t really go together for me.
Not long after he closed the door behind me, I had my shirt off and tossed over the arm of his couch. His mouth was on mine a moment later, and we had collapsed onto the couch with him on top of me and pressing me into the soft cushions.
“Your ‘no sex on the first date’ rule didn’t last long. Also, I don’t like it,” he said as he pulled off his shirt and lay back over me.
“It was more of a guideline than anything.” I felt him sink his hips against mine, and I bit my lip as I clung to his shoulders. “You better have condoms.”
He sucked on my neck and ran his hands down my sides in a frenzied pattern, like he couldn’t get enough of touching me, like he needed to feel every inch of me. I hoped that was what he was feeling since that was exactly how I felt as I dug my fingers into the thick muscles of his shoulders.
“I do, and lube too. Fuck, Caleb, I need you,” he groaned against my neck.
“Me too.” Pretending otherwise would have never worked. The best thing for both of us was just to accept how this was going to be between us. “I still want to go out on dates,” I told him as I reached for the button of his jeans. “We won’t always have sex.” I didn’t want him to have that idea in his head.