Page 128 of Should the Sky Fall

Ash’s silence is a resounding yes.

“I take it things have been going well, then.”

Dawson looks at Ash to stop his mind from wandering, because when it wanders, it keeps going back to Cal and that kiss, making Dawson’s body tingle.

“We kissed. Twice,” he adds after a short pause.

Maybe that first kiss should have been more ground-breaking because it was…well, first, but it’s the other way around. When he kissed Cal in the kitchen, it was impulsive. He’d just woken up and Cal took him by surprise, making pancakes for him, and it felt so natural to rise on his tiptoes and press his lips to Cal’s.

But the kiss at the mall, that was all him. Not just an impulse, not something he hadn’t thought through. All him.

Ash’s expression is unreadable when he asks, “Who initiated it?”

Dawson has a feeling Ash already knows—because why else would Dawson act so cagey about it?—but he answers anyway. “Me.”

“Both times?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you want to?”

Dawson gives him an annoyed look. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Not at all. People don’t always do things because they want to. In fact, they rarely do.”

That’s…depressingly accurate. Dawson can attest to that.

“I wanted to,” he murmurs, a wave of shame rising inside him. “He… He made me pancakes.” He chuckles wryly. It sounds so pathetic when he says it out loud, yet the memory feels like a warm blanket settling over him. “Well, he tried. Ended up setting off the smoke alarm, but I love that he tried.”

“Has he done that before?”

“Made pancakes?”

“Cooked for you.”

Dawson laughs. “God, no. Our kitchen used to consist of a bottle of tomato sauce and a carton of milk.” And whiskey, but he doesn’t say that. They’ve been over this.

Ash’s expression is so empathetic it nearly brings tears to Dawson’s eyes. How pathetic is it that he gets emotional about stupid stuff like pancakes?

“Must have been nice, having him try like that.”

“Yeah.” He swallows. “Nice.”

“That was the first time? That you kissed him.” When Dawson nods, he asks, “And the second? What did he do?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Yeah, he won him a plushie, but even Dawson has enough self-awareness to understand that that didn’t really have anything to do with him wanting to kiss Cal. “He was just being…”

“He was being?”

“Sweet. Thoughtful.” The memory of Cal pressing the two plushies together in an imitation of a kiss springs to mind, making him smile like a love-struck teen. “We went shopping and there was a claw machine with these.” He picks up the plushie. “I won him one and he won one for me and…I don’t know. We just…had a moment.”

Ash hums again, watching him calmly. “What are you afraid I’m going to say about that?”

“That I’m fooling myself. That I’m being reckless. That I’m playing happy family and ignoring the big fucking elephant in the room.”

“That’s very specific,” Ash says. “Doesn’t really sound like something I’d say. In fact, it doesn’t sound like something you’d say.” He lets that hang in the air for a while. “Where’s this coming from?”

Damn. Dawson really is transparent. “Kieran, my best friend, had some things to say about the whole arrangement. And so did Cal’s brother. And my sister.”