Page 25 of Summer Skin

IT’S MONDAY, ANDaccording to house rules, that means tonight is TV binge watching with his roommates. Veena started the tradition and it’s become a weekly occasion Aven looks forward to.

Until now.

He lingers in his bedroom. He’s done so well avoiding Chase these past two days, mostly keeping to his room and eating at odd hours of the night. But he won’t be able to ignore breathing the same air as his ex if they’re crowded around a shared television screen.

A text pings on his phone and Aven reads a message from Ben asking where he’s at.

In hell, he wants to text back. But Andi’s voice rings through his head telling him to save the dramatics, and with a tortured sigh, he tromps down the stairs.

The first thing Aven notices is the situation is actually more dire than hell. Tyler and Justin have dragged the papasan chair over to the couch and are cozied up in it like two newborn kittens. Ben and Ellie are squished to one corner of the couch with Chase in the middle. Which leaves Aven no other option than taking the empty corner beside him.

He eyes the room, searching for an excuse to bolt, but Tyler says, all cheerful, like some sort of rah-rah soccer mom, “We saved you a seat next to Chase!”

His gaze darts over to Chase, who’s watching him back, and like a goddamn tractor beam, Aven’s drawn in. His feet drag him towards the seat before his brain can catch up.

At the edge of the couch, he pauses, feeling the eyes of everyone in the room. Chase is staring up at him, waiting, and after a few seconds, he scoots even closer to Ben. Practically in his lap.

Aven sits down carefully. Doing his best to act like Chase has a flaming case of cooties by leaning alllll the way against the arm of the sofa, draping himself over to one side.

“Binging with Bunkmates!” Ben hollers, and hands the remote to his current hook-up, Ellie.

Aven has pointed out on more than one occasion that ‘bunkmates’ implies they all share a room, and maybe they should switch to calling it Monday Night Television, but Veena literally booed him, and that was that. The name stuck.

Ellie flicks through the streaming menu with a bored expression, like she can hardly be bothered. Aven’s not even sure why she gets a turn. She’s not a roommate, she’s not even Ben’s girlfriend. She’s a girl who will eventually tire of sleeping with Ben and leave his heart pulverized on the ground.

Ellie floats around their house like she owns it: a note in her lacy handwriting on the message board saying they need more chickpeas, complaints when anyone gets too loud in the mornings. She once told Aven he might find some emotional release by playing Gaian doom on the guitar. Gaian doom, like what the hell even is that?

But she’s also extraordinarily beautiful in the sort of way that means Ben is completely gone for her. Fully set on pleasing her, so their cupboard is now well-stocked with chickpeas, Cherry Coke, and that bagged popcorn she nibbles on all the time. Aven once upon a time wore the same look for Chase that Ben gets in his eyes when Ellie’s around, the one that’s loaded with more stars than a desert at midnight.

This isn’t going to end well for Ben.

“Oh, come on,” Aven mutters when Ellie lands on a teen rom-com.

“What?” Ellie says, blinking her blue eyes with all the innocence of a snake in the garden. “You’re not complaining about my choice, are you, Aves?”

First of all, the only one who gets to call him Aves is Andi. Second, while the rules of Binging with Bunkmates state no one is allowed to complain about which show is chosen, there must be a line drawn at some point. And teen girls drawing cat eyes in short skirts while attempting to date the high school quarterback is where his foot comes down.

“It’s not so much a television choice, as it is a torture for the rest of us, right?” he asks.

“Torture? Why’s that?” She taps her chin like she’s thinking. “Is it because you don’t think it’s important to support art surrounding the female experience?”

“What? No!”

The corner of her mouth twitches. She’s baiting him. Of course Ellie’s baiting him. She twists a lock of her chestnut hair between two fingers. “Representation matters,” she tells Aven slowly, as though that’s a new concept for him to grasp.

“I’m aware.” Aven grits his teeth. “The only problem is,” he points his finger around the room, “no one here is a teenage girl.”

“Ben’s Korean,” she offers.

“And?”

“He wants to learn about his Korean heritage.”

“By watching a teen drama?”

“One that takes place at a Korean boarding school.”

“It’s filmed in Seoul,” Ben adds earnestly.

And that’s it. Game, set, match.

Ellie winks at him.

He scowls back.

The amused look she gives him in response suggests she picked the show solely to watch him get worked up about it. Last time it was her turn, she chose a documentary on spiders, and Aven is almost certain he’d gone on a pretty long-winded tangent to her about creepy crawlies one night when they were shit-faced and he found himself sharing the couch with her and Petal into early morning.

Well, well. Speak of the devil and she shall appear. The house cat, Petal, slinks in from the hallway, all soft white fur and bright green eyes.

The kitty most definitely has claws, and Ben and Ellie are the only people she shows affection toward. Aven likes cats, but this one is a true terror. He fills her food and water dishes on occasion, but mostly sends Petal hardcore stay the fuck away from me vibes, which she—

“Ouchhh!”

Aven lunges away from the cat, pressing against Chase, who lets out an audible gasp as if they’re in some form of mortal danger.

Or maybe just touching each other.

“Ow,” Aven croaks again.

Someone laughs. It sounded like Justin. Dick.

“Petal,” Ben calls, and the cat retracts her claws from Aven’s thigh and hops across Chase’s lap to reach him. Once she’s curled in Ben’s arms, she’s a harmless lovebug. Like butter wouldn’t melt in her murderous, fanged mouth.

“Let’s try an episode,” Tyler suggests, quickly followed by, “I bought Reese”s Peanut Butter Cups.” An attempt at peacemaking; they’re Aven’s favorites.

“Traitor,” Aven notes. Then a noise of indignation comes a moment later when the show’s a minute in and Ben and Ellie aren’t even watching, they’re making out, and this is complete bullshit, and—

The back of Chase’s hand nudges against Aven’s thigh and the gulp he makes in response could well have been heard all the way to Mars.

What the hell was that?

Was that on purpose?

Chase’s vibe had always effortlessly tugged him in, and the thing was, he’d never had to try to get Aven’s attention, because Aven was hooked from the start like a dog with a bone. Or a boner. A dude with a boner. For a boy. Not a dog.

Never mind.

So that drop of the hand against his thigh clearly must have been an accident and not Chase’s attempt at making a move. Because he wouldn’t. Would he? Chase left Aven, cold as ice. He made his choice years back.

Besides, even if Chase was horny and trying to get with the only other single person in the house, Aven was not—N-O-T—interested. At all. Really. Hooking up with Chase would be like willingly tossing himself into a vat of acid.

No thanks.

He can’t exactly shift his leg away from Chase with this full couch situation, so he turns his head and clears his throat to make Chase aware that his appendage is invading Aven’s personal space.

Chase looks up, questioning, and something about the way his eyes lock on Aven makes him freeze. Gives him goddamn goosebumps.

All of those years apart, all of the people he’s had underneath him since then, and the way he’s sworn over and over again in his head that he hates Chase. He hates him, despises him for what he put Aven through, and yet.

And yet.

Here, when his body should pull away, he leans in. Here, when he can smell the warmth of Chase’s skin, butterflies take flight. Here, when he lets himself hold Chase’s gaze for seconds too long, neither of them breaks eye contact.

Here. Right now. There isn’t a single cell in Aven’s body that isn’t calling out for Chase’s touch.

And the way … the way Chase is looking at him—the slow, deliberate way his gaze goes from Aven’s eyes to his mouth and back, well. Aven’s always understood when someone wants him. Only with Chase, it could never be something as simple as a good fuck.

Then Chase’s eyebrow lifts, a question. An invitation.

“Shit,” Aven mutters under his breath, but he’s not going to give in to this, no matter how much he wants to. He won’t let himself get dragged back into Chase Matthew’s orbit, he’s never going to—

Chase traces his thumb in a slow line down the inseam of Aven’s jeans.

Fuck.

Chase.

They stare at each other, Aven’s heart pounding faster and faster like it might just beat right out of his chest. There’s a tightness growing in his throat. Someone in the room laughs.

And he can’t take any of this for a second longer.

He flees.

Spinning from the couch, he makes a quick dash for the stairs.

He’s only just spectacularly thrown himself down on his bed, almost exactly like one of the characters from the television show he just so vehemently proclaimed to be too old to watch, when the door creaks open behind him.

He whips around scuttling up to the head of his bed. Knees pulled up, with a pillow held in front of his chest as the only defense.

Because it’s Chase.

At the foot of his bed.

Chase bites his bottom lip, running a hand through his hair. He’s wearing a Bright Eyes t-shirt Aven’s pretty sure came from his own closet back in the day, and Aven can see a hundred images of how they used to be in his mind. The two of them flying through the hallways as school let out for the day. Chase sitting cross-legged, playing guitar on Aven’s childhood bed. At the edge of the shore. In the grass at the abandoned house. Touching, always finding a way to get skin-to-skin. The way Chase’s face lit up when Aven pulled into his driveway.

Pain shoots through his chest.

“Aven?”

This guy is seriously fucking with his head.

Aven narrows his eyes into darts. “You don’t knock? What if I were jerking off in here?”

“You literally just got up here,” Chase pointed out.

“I can be fast.”

A small smile. “I remember.”

“Wait, are you calling me quick to come? Because I—”

“No, Aven. I’m only saying I remember how quickly you used to get hard for me.”

Still can, he thinks. Chase spread out naked in the afternoon as sunlight hit the lines of his body. Chase’s blissed out expression when Aven pushed inside him. The warmth of his mouth, the talent of his tongue, the way he knew Aven’s body like no one else ever—

Stop.

Stop.

But he can’t. Aven will never manage to quiet the song of Chase in his head. All these years later and the guy has him messed up with a single caress of his hand.

So Aven does the one thing he swore he’d never do where Chase was concerned.

He blinks first.

“I can’t,” he admits out loud. “I can’t do this, okay?”

“Get hard?” Chase is still teasing. He doesn’t get it, how excruciating this is for Aven. How dizzy and confused this unexpected flirtation is making him.

“Chase,” he says, pleading.

“Aven.” A soft response.

“You can’t do this to me, okay? You can’t come into my bedroom with those fuck me eyes, live in my home, like we—like I … like after all this time you get to pretend you didn’t break my heart. You’re coming on to me? Like … like we could ever just be a hook-up?”

Chase nods a little, like maybe he saw this rejection coming from a mile away. “I’m sorry,” he says, a deep and sincere note in his tone. He makes like he’s going to take a seat next to Aven.

“Don’t sit on my bed!” Aven shrieks, clutching his duvet to his chest like a virtuous maiden.

“I’m so sorry,” Chase repeats. His eyes remind Aven of his first puppy dog. A Golden Retriever named Scout who excelled at begging for treats.

Aven runs a hand over his face. “Look, just give me some space, okay?”

“Of course, but—”

“Please.”

“I can do that.” He sounds so damn sorrowful.

“I just need some time to process that you’re back.”

“I understand.”

But the thing is, Aven doesn’t understand.

None of this makes sense.

What is Chase Matthews even doing here at all?