Page 113 of String Boys

Seth shook his head. “I’m really bad with sarcasm, Kelly. It took me a while to figure out how much Matty despised me because I wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or not.”

Kelly captured his hand and brought his palm to his mouth. “My mom is sarcastic as fuck,” he said after a moment. “The girls are stunning at it. I, like, learn at their feet.”

Seth’s chuckle went a few degrees further to bringing his body back to normal. “I noticed. But see? That’s what I miss. Not… you know… what you do for me in bed.”

“I just want to be everything for you.” That was simple enough, but it left Kelly feeling naked.

“You are.” And talk about simple. Seth slid off the chair, his knees on the ground, and rested his head in Kelly’s lap. “You see?” he asked hoarsely. “You see what I mean? Italy—maybe next year. Maybe I could ask them if I can do it next year. For my senior year in college and not my junior year. Maybe I could ask them if I can do the graduate program. And for another year or two, I’m at the San Francisco Conservatory of the Arts—”

“It’s not the best music program,” Kelly said, because he’d looked it up on his phone. “What, USC too fucking lazy to bang down your door?”

“I told them no,” Seth said mildly. “And CSU Northridge too.”

Kelly wasn’t sure whether to laugh or howl. “Anybody else we should know about?”

“No.”

“Which means, of course, that yes, you’ve gotten offers from all over the country, but the only one that really twisted your nipple was the one in Italy.”Holy Jesus.While Kelly had been slogging through work/school/birth/death, the world had been prostrating itself at his lover’s feet, and Seth had been too involved in Kelly to so much as smile and wave.

“New York was fourth chair,” Seth said without conceit. “I’m… well, I’ve been learning first chair since, you know, my junior year in high school. Italy would be first chair. So, you know, New York—”

“Can kiss your skinny brown ass. I get the picture.” Kelly took a stress gulp of hot chocolate, grateful it had cooled slightly. He tilted his head back then and tried not to take out his frustration on Seth, who had been nothing but patient.

“I just like challenges.” The serenity in Seth’s voice actually got through, and Kelly managed a smile.

“Like your neurotic boyfriend.”

Seth muttered something and buried his face against Kelly’s thigh, and Kelly pulled out of his guilt spiral long enough to push gently on his forehead so he could see Seth’s expression.

His green eyes were shiny, and his cheeks were flushed, and it hit Kelly that the last hour—that had been rough on him too.

“Mijo—”

“It’s scary,” Seth whispered. “Remembering being alone, where nobody can help you. Don’t ever be ashamed of remembering that. I’m ashamed I made you.”

Kelly scraped at the dampness on his cheek with the pad of his thumb. “No shame. Please. I just went too fast, you know? I thought, ‘Hey, Seth seems to like it! I’ll just bend over. It’ll begreat.’” He let out a sigh and realized he was a shitty boyfriend on a lot of levels. “Thanks for… you know. Backing off when I started to freak.”

Seth shook his head. “Don’t thank me for that. Not acting like a scumbag is, like, the least you can expect from your boyfriend, right? People don’t get a thanks from the universe for not being rapists. It’s, like, the lowest bar for being a decent person is stopping when someone says no.”

Kelly chuckled, cupping his cheek again. “God. I love you so much.” He leaned down and Seth pushed up, and they shared a chaste kiss. “I just… if I’m gonna send you out to Italy, I… I want to be whole inside. Someone to come back to.”

Seth squinted at him. “So you’re not whole inside because you won’tbottom? Jesus, you’re stupid. I mean, I still love you, but that’s really dumb.”

Kelly shook his head. “Come here. Come here and set my chocolate down and kiss me some more. I wanna make out, okay?”

Seth grinned. “That’swhat I’m talking about. Then Carmel? The art galleries—”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it. You want me to see art. Whatever. Kiss me now, here, because we can.”

Seth’s mouth was heavenly. They stopped just before stripping down and making love again, but they did manage to pack a lunch and make it to the art galleries.

Seth got Kelly to pick a sculpture he really loved, an abstract pottery piece with a metallic shimmery glaze that reminded Kelly of infinity.

“You’re buying this for me, why?” Kelly asked, aware he was being spoiled, and that every grand gesture Seth made was another night of him working in a honky-tonk dive bar where he could possibly get his face beat in again.

“Because it made you think of forever,” Seth told him. “That’s what I want you to think of when you think of me.”

God, for someone who was only on planet Earth maybe 10 percent of the time, he sure did know what to say when he was down there.