Page 33 of Lessons in Timing

At the last minute, I managed to clap a hand over my mouth, hoping it seemed like I was simply doing something normal rather than physically forcing myself to shut up. Then I sat my freakish little ass down and set my hands flat on the table so they’d stopembarrassingme.

Skyler appeared to accept the deeply confusing gesture and sat down, biting his lip in understandable awkwardness. “Thank you. Um.”

“Eheh.” I managed to spark the ignition in my brain. “Um, so how have you been? What do you do? What do you like? Where are you from?” I cut myself off with a pinch.

Skyler froze for a minute, then managed to smile. “Should I answer all of those at once or one at a time?”

“Sorry, how about the first one? How are you?”

“I’m okay. Better than I’ve been. How about you?”

How did he expect me to think while he kept smiling at me like that? “B’gah ... Oh, um fine. You know. Better. Than the other night. Heh.” Was it just me or was it a million degrees in here? “I’m glad you agreed to this. To meet up with me.”

His smile turned a little shy, and it was all I could do to keep from melting. “Yeah, I don’t exactly know how to make friends, never been good at it ...”

Friends?

Oh.

I swallowed hard, gripping the table to keep from keeling over dead on the spot. “Really? Y-you don’t have many friends?”

He seemed thoughtful for a moment. “I’ve only ever hadthree—two back home and one here, and”—I swore his cheeks went a little pink—“I guess you’d make four.”

I smiled as warmly as I could and nodded. “I’d very much like to make four.”

He laughed softly and started perusing the menu, while I had an internal all-out hissy fit.

Friends.

Yes. I was mad about that, but you know what made me even madder? The fact that the moment he’d said that, I’d been flooded withrelief.

How much of a coward could Ibe?

Still, it had become infinitely easier to think and speak.

Skyler got himself a cup of tea, and I got a raspberry cheese pastry, and we both munched and sipped for a while. I kept swinging between desperation and despair—one minute I was trying to find a way to re-ask Skyler out on this date, make it clear to him what my intentions were, and the next I was trying to keep myself from doing exactly that by stuffing larger and larger bits of pastry into my mouth.

“Hey, slow down.” Skyler chuckled and patted my hand, causing me to almost swallow my own tongue. “It won’t run away.”

I swallowed painfully and coughed. “S-so two back home?”

“Excuse me?”

“Two back home. Friends. You said you have them.”

He still seemed confused, but then his face cleared. “Oh, yes, um, Matt and ... Matt and Delia.”

Delia? His voice had hitched a bit when he said her name, did— Oh my god.

Oh mygod, was Ithatoff base? Dear sweet lordy loo, Robin Finch’s faulty gaydar strikes again—disaster ensues! “Delia, huh?” I choked.

Skyler nodded, quietly staring into his tea with the tragic Byronic brow I’d been dreading.

I swallowed even harder. “And she was just a friend?” I was a glutton for punishment.

Skyler’s cheeks colored, which was quickly replaced by a delicately masked hurt, some pain he’d already become adept at papering over. “I, uh ... it was complicated.”

I waited silently, trying as ever tonotstart screaming and tearing my hair out.