Page 11 of Fanboy in the Falls (Devon Falls #3)

Everything stops. —Gabe Gomez

The last birthday party I had is also the last great memory I have of my mother.

Mom had been trying her best since she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer.

She hung up streamers and invited my friends over and bought cake and chips.

She smiled and wrapped presents—all from the dollar store, I’m sure, because we had basically no money at the time—and sang and pasted on a bright smile.

But even then, I knew that might be the last real party I’d ever be able to have with her. I remember spending every single second of it as close as I could to her, determined not to let her out of my sight. I wanted her in all the memories I had of that day.

Dave had already started to fall down his internet rabbit hole by then.

He’d been spending more and more time online after my mom was diagnosed; he was determined to find some kind of treatment that could save her, and then he fell into video game platforms, and then who knows exactly where he went after that.

I don’t remember even seeing him at my party that day.

Mom died before my next birthday.

So, yeah. Birthday parties? Not a thing for me. I bring out the cake and ice cream for Lou, but he’s the only reason I bother to remember my birthday at all.

All of which means that when I walk into the winery wearing my best unwrinkled chinos and my orange polo, the one you can’t see the stain on if you don’t look too hard, I’m not sure what to expect.

Lou, who’s in front of me and wearing his favorite Prince Charming costume (clearance at the Burlington Walmart, I’m proud to say), pushes open the door to the winery’s mid-sized dining room and gasps.

“Gabe!” he shouts. “Look at all the balloons!”

Because there are balloons everywhere. In every color of the rainbow, and they dance and bounce along the edges of the ceiling.

Round mylar balloons announcing Happy Birthday in every possible font line the walls, flanked by streamers, and giant balloon letters proclaim WE LOVE YOU, GABE on the back wall of the room.

And there’s cake, because of course there’s cake.

Three of them, actually, and I can tell just by looking that these came from Marion’s bakery, not from the grocery store.

They’re smaller, round, and all in different colors, and I’m betting they’re whatever she had available in the shop today.

And I already know I’m going to love them more than any other cake I’ve ever tasted.

Behind the cakes are platters filled with almost every kind of food Elmer sells at Thai for Two.

The platters are flanked with trays of empanadas, and I’d bet my life those are the ones Luis makes at the cafe.

I wonder who figured out I’d sell my soul for one of Luis’ famous empanadas.

“Not so surprise!” Tom comes charging through the side door of the room with a whole group of people behind him.

Sam and Malachai are there, and Benson and Jack, and Evelyn and Bethany, of course.

Some of the other seasonal winery workers are there too, and everyone’s clapping and cheering.

I let out a breath when I don’t see Amelia and Ellie in the small crowd.

Phew. I’ve been avoiding Amelia ever since that town meeting, and yesterday she left a note on our door reminding me to call her.

“Too much?” Tom appears in front of me, beaming. Colin’s standing off just to the side of him, studying me intently. “Eric’s bringing Elijah and the band over soon and then we’ll have music! Colin and I were a touch worried we went overboard; Colin says I always go overboard, but I said—”

It’s anything but too much. It’s everything I never thought I’d have again after my mother died. It’s everything I desperately wanted during those years I was just surviving alone, first in foster homes and group homes and then in dirty, cheap apartments with roommates who barely noticed I existed.

It’s everything I could have wanted and never would have thought to ask anyone for.

I cut Tom off by grabbing him up against me in a hug.

His body is warm and strong against mine, and I’m highly aware of the many inches and pounds he has on me.

I like being wrapped up in his weight. His strength.

When I finally pull away and hug Colin too, I feel both of their strengths merging together around me, like an addition problem that always adds up to the right number.

“Happy birthday, little one,” he whispers in my ear.

The cheering goes louder, and I blush as I pull away from Colin. “You didn’t have to do this,” I tell them. “I didn’t need a party.”

Tom scoffs. “Nonsense. Of course you did. No one deserves to be celebrated more.” He winks easily at me, and all I can think of now is that moment we had together in the lake. I fight back a shudder as I remember what I said to him. I’m not into guys.

Sometimes I feel like I tell lies for a living these days.

But that particular lie still feels like one of the deepest and darkest I’ve ever said to anyone.

Because the way Tom looked at me in that lake…

I don’t think anyone’s ever, ever looked at me that way before.

One of my very first crushes, a man I’ve admired for years, looked at me like he wanted to make me his entire world.

And I had to destroy the moment by telling him something I know in my soul isn’t true.

I swallow as I look away from him. “Thank you,” I whisper.

“Eat, everyone! Drink!” Evelyn calls out. “Bethany, grab us some wine?” Bethany nods and heads off to the cupboard on the other side of the dining room, and Lou squeals and runs over to Jack and Sam to show them his new costume. But me? Well.

I can’t keep my eyes off of Tom. I can’t stop wondering. Imagining.

I eat my weight in curry and rice and empanadas, and I let Lou eat so much cake that at some point he crashes out across Benson’s lap on one of the couches in the sitting area next to the dining room.

“It’s cool,” Benson tells me as he pulls out his phone.

“I’ve got some reading to do anyway. Enjoy your party, Gabe.

” He waves me back toward the door of the dining room.

“If you keep this up, you’re going to end up wearing the leaf festival costume and working the pie-in-the-face booth,” I tell him.

“Over my dead body am I wearing that costume,” he tells me, but it’s hard to sound fierce when you’re whispering so that you don’t wake up a sleeping elementary schooler.

“Benson and Jack are good with him,” I tell Malachai, who’s standing next to me. “I wonder if they’ll ever have kids of their own.”

Malachai smiles. “I bet it won’t be that long before they do. They still watch Elijah, Jack’s nephew, a lot when Elijah’s dad is out of town. Did you know they met when Elijah was living with Jack? They’ve basically been parents-in-training their entire relationship.”

From what I've heard, it was more than that. Benson offered to fake date Jack to make sure Elijah could stay with him, or something like that. Parents-in-training is probably pretty accurate. I take another glance at Lou, who’s snuggled up tightly against Benson’s stomach.

It’s moments like these when I really question if I’m doing Lou a disservice by not telling someone in Devon Falls what’s been going on with Dave.

Dave’s family is from here, after all. The town would do right by Lou, wouldn’t they?

If I told them the whole truth about Dave?

But it’s not the town of Devon Falls I’m worried about.

It’s how Dave might react if I did that, or what could happen if the state got involved.

And that’s the thought that is still twisting and knotting its way through my stomach as I follow Malachai back into the dining room, closing the door tightly behind me and pausing for a moment to watch the scenery that’s unfolded.

Elijah and his friend Pat are playing on a makeshift stage Bethany puts up when the winery hosts open mic nights.

They’re keeping the volume low and playing through a list of songs from so many different decades that I don’t even recognize half of them.

People are dancing and talking and laughing, and it hits me all at once: I’m having a birthday party.

Whatever happens with Dave in the coming weeks, whatever else he might try to take from me and Lou, he can never take this. Just like he can never take away the last birthday party I had with my mother.

Wetness hits the corners of my eyes, and I’m suddenly having to take deep breaths to keep down the ball inside of my throat.

Pat announces the band’s next song, but the words are muffled in my ears.

I feel almost dizzy on my feet, even though I’ve hardly had anything to drink.

I stumble toward the back door of the dining room and manage to get to the section of the large wraparound porch there without anyone noticing.

I sink back against one of the white porch beams, and I breathe.

I breathe in the cooling air of the Vermont fall, watch as the lights from the porch illuminate an orange leaf drifting down from a tree that rises above the roof of the building.

I look up at the sky, perfectly clear tonight, and blink back more wetness.

What happens when you try to build a life you can’t keep? A life that’s built on a foundation of milk and soggy purple marshmallows?

Or something like that.

I gulp back something like a sob just as the door opens.

Tom steps onto the porch and closes it behind him.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “You just disappeared there.” He sighs and wrinkles his nose.

“I knew it. Colin was right. Don’t tell him, okay?

He’s absolutely insufferable when he’s right.

The band is too much, isn’t it? I was worried, but Elijah and Pat offered, and Eric told me they like getting practice playing in front of crowds, and I just… ”

That’s when it all crumbles around me, that lie I told at the lake. All I want in the world is to find out what it would really be like to kiss this man, Tom Evers. And it’s my birthday, isn’t it? So I decide to give myself the most impossible present I could ever imagine having.

I step up against Tom’s body and press my lips to his.

He stops talking. Everything stops. I’d swear that the stars, the wind, the music from inside the dining room all stop at once.

The entire world pauses while I kiss the man who just gifted me the best birthday present ever: two hours of believing this life that Lou and I have here, just the two of us, is real.

His lips are soft and lightly chapped, but I only feel them for a few short seconds before he pulls away and holds up his hand. “Gabe,” he says hoarsely. “This shouldn’t happen. I need… I need to respect what you told me at the lake.”

I shake my head. “It was a lie,” I whisper. “I had to say that. I can’t tell you why, exactly, but I did. I didn’t want to say that. I mean, I thought what I was saying was a lie, anyway. And now I know for sure,” I add, and my voice sounds small in my ears.

Tom’s eyes widen. He stares at me for a long moment. Then he turns to look back at the inn behind us and frowns. “I shouldn’t,” he whispers. “We shouldn’t. I don’t know… I don’t know if he…”

He doesn’t finish his sentence, but somehow I’m sure he’s talking about Colin.

I wrap my arms around myself, feeling like an idiot.

Tom might have almost kissed me in that lake, and I know Colin’s straight, but of course Tom would think of Colin now.

Colin comes first for him in every way. Maybe Tom’s supposed to be doing something inside with Colin right now, and I’m getting in the way.

“Never mind!” I burst out. “Can we forget I ever did what I just did? Please?”

Tom turns back around, slowly, as he takes my face in his hands. He’s studying me intently now, and I fight the urge to blink and turn away. No one’s ever looked at me like this: like they’re memorizing every part of me, inside and out.

“Sometimes,” he murmurs. “Sometimes I can’t believe how much we’ll put off in our lives for someone we love.”

And then he leans over to kiss me again.

This time neither of us pulls away. My lips relax against his, and pretty soon it feels like we’re catching a rhythm, letting our lips and then tongues work together.

Lightly at first, and then deeper and deeper, and it isn’t long before he’s pulling my body more tightly against his, pressing our chests and pelvises together, and I realize at some point that I’m so fucking hard it hurts.

This is the most intense, perfect moment of my life, and I never want it to end.

But then there’s a noise off to our side. A strangled sound, almost like an animal that’s been caught in a trap. We both turn fast and look off to the east side of the porch.

Where I see Colin. And he's walking away from us.