Page 35 of Summer Skin

THE REALITY DATINGshow Aven chose for Binging with Bunkmates is delivering some seriously delicious drama. But, regrettably, Aven is the only riot grrrl with their eyes on the screen because everyone else appears to be lost in some sort of universe where they’re not required to watch television with their roommates every Monday night. Even thoughthey’ve made Aven sit through bullshit like Help, My Neighbor Is a Peeping Tom! for a god-awful number of hours.

But, no, for Aven’s choice, Tyler and Justin are too occupied with thrusting their tongues down each other’s throats—that’s young love for you—Chase keeps dozing off even though Aven’s nudged his side approximately a dozen times, Ellie’s scrolling through her phone, and Ben … well, Ben is providing some primo cat beauty salon services to Petal. Combing through her glossy white fur with a brush that Aven recognizes as one he grabbed off the coffee table to use on his own hair a few nights back.

Gross.

“Where do you think Petal came from?” Ben asks, as though anyone else at all might care. “She’s been in the house longer than any of us. I wonder what her story is.”

“Well,” Aven starts, “shockingly, I’ve not given a whole hell of a lot of thought to Petal’s villain origin story.”

Ben squints over at him like he can’t imagine. “How old do you think she might be?”

Ellie sets her phone aside and presses down on Petal’s lower jaw to open her mouth, peering at the row of sharp teeth she finds inside. If Aven tried that on Petal, sure as shit he’d come back with one less finger attached to his hand.

“She’s still young,” Ellie announces over the sound of sweet kindergarten teacher Kristine getting her heart broken by a tax attorney from Wisconsin. Kristine dodged a bullet on that one.

Ben makes a hmm’ing sound, scratching beneath Petal’s chin. “You think our landlord would let me build Petal a catio?”

Welp, that’s it. This binge is a bust, and Aven has something else on his mind anyway. Chase had wandered up to his bedroom earlier, hoping to collaborate on a new song, but they’d put a pin in it when Veena unexpectedly dropped by.

Inclining his head towards Chase, he says, “Wanna go upstairs and work on the song?”

“Yeah, let’s do it,” Chase says, perking up a bit from his dead man’s slump on the couch.

“Hey, we’re heading upstairs to make some music,” Aven announces over his roommates’ heated discussion on whether or not to plant catnip in the non-existent catio.

“Ohhh,” Justin says, a big cheesy grin spreading all over his face, “make music, is that what the kids are calling it nowadays?”

Aven sends a groan up towards the ceiling.

“Are you boyfriends now?” Tyler asks, his head tilted to one side as though he’s working through Aven and Chase’s relationship like a math equation.

And that’s a good question, really. In the past couple of days, he and Chase have agreed on trying the whole long-distance thing, but they still haven’t ironed the details out. Mostly, he thinks, because they’re both still pretending it’ll be years before Chase goes away, instead of mere weeks.

“Aven doesn’t do boyfriends,” Ben says helpfully.

Except for one.

“Is that because he can’t be bothered to buy the milk when he gets the dick for free?” asks Ellie.

“Who on earth is after cow dick?” Ben questions with an unsettled expression.

“Well,” Tyler begins, “there was a farmhand back home who—”

“Don’t finish that,” Ben pleads. “Please don’t finish that.”

“My room?” Aven suggests to Chase, happy to escape any further conversation over his choice to date cattle or not.

“Need to grab my guitar real quick,” Chase tells him. Then, leaning closer, “We are going up to write, not to fuck?”

“Who says we can’t do both?” Aven asks with a slightly crooked smile.

***

Chase sits cross-legged on the hardwood floor of Aven’s bedroom, songwriting notebook spread open across his lap as he scans the lined pages. He sets the book down on the tasseled rug underneath him and clears his throat. “Ready when you are,” he says, and Aven nods.

Guitar in hand, Chase starts to pluck a simple array of notes, then light tenor tones unfurl themselves from inside of him, vibrating in his diaphragm, up his chest, and out his mouth. The room fills with Chase’s song, melodic and introspective, and Aven’s heart quickens as he lifts his guitar into his lap and a rhythmic dance between the two of them begins as they circle each other in harmony. The piece sways high and low, tempo building into the bridge as they lock eyes with each other. Chase smiles through the rest of the lyrics, as the two slow down into the soft outro of the track.

“Damn,” Aven tells him, his body electric with the high of what they’ve just done. “I mean, damn.” It always seems to come so easily with them, like they’re meant to create together this way.

“Yeah?” Chase is a little flushed, a full-fledged rock star who still gets nervous to show his high school boyfriend a new song.

“One sec,” Aven says when his phone goes off.

He thumbs open the text, reading the message, semi-amused it was delivered while he’s sitting here making music with Chase. Because it turns out he’s not going to get the band gig. And receiving this news in a moment where songwriting felt so natural, so right, all he can feel is relief at the rejection.

The way his gut twisted during try-outs, the awkwardness in trying to match a style that just wasn’t his own to play. It was nothing at all compared to the way his soul catches fire making music with Chase.

“They’re going with someone else,” he says, tossing the phone aside and picking his guitar back up.

“Who is?” Chase answers mindlessly, then his head snaps up as he realizes. “Really? Well, that’s a shitty choice on their end.”

“Nah, it’s the right one. We didn’t click. It’s not a big deal.”

Chase takes him in with a thoughtful gaze. “You should start your own band instead of joining someone else’s.”

It’s something Aven’s considered practically forever. But it never felt right after Chase, like he lost a certain magic he could never get back. The gravity to forge something of his own evaporated into just a pretty thought.

“Maybe,” he says after a moment. “I’d bend over backwards on the edge of a cliffside to get Ellie to sing for me.”

Chase sets down his notebook. “She’s really good—that night at karaoke? Burned the place down. I’ve never asked what she does when she’s not hanging around. She still at university?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even think Ben does.”

An expression of understanding crosses Chase’s face. “He’s so infatuated with her that he’s afraid of prying in case it makes her go poof into thin air.”

Aven nods. “Justin told me she’s never even let Ben over to her place.”

“Sketchy. Think she’s with someone else?”

“Maybe. But honestly? I get the sense it’s something weirder than that.”

“Total enigma.” Chase lifts a brow. “Sometimes she reminds me of a fairytale.”

“Because of that whole storybook is she good or is she evil thing?”

“No, I don’t think that’s it.” His head tilts to one side. “It’s more she’s stuck behind a wall of glass. Can’t get her to open up.”

“Sounds like a song lyric to me.”

“The Girl Behind the Two-Way Mirror.”

“God, you’re quick. Paranormal Romance should’ve let you write for them.”

Chase lifts a shoulder, fiddling with the black-ink pen in his hand. “All of us were there as hired help to play Trent’s music. We knew that going in.”

“I guess,” Aven says. But anything Trent can do, Chase can do infinity times better. “Still, it must have been nice playing out your fantasies to large, screaming crowds.”

Chase’s forehead wrinkles. “That wasn”t my… Aven! A fantasy? It was miserable.”

There’s a long silence as Aven takes this in. He’s spent the last few years imagining Chase in some sort of rock star wonderland of sex, drugs, and, well, rock and roll, while Aven piddled his time away getting a degree he never really wanted and playing for piss-drunk college kids at dive bars.

“You didn’t like being on the road?”

“Parts of it.” Chase shrugs. “We moved around a lot when I was a kid and it would’ve been nice to settle down for a few years, have the stability of a real home.”

“But you got to play for the entire world.”

Chase stiffens. “Being on a stadium tour, it’s not always as good as it seems. What you’ve got here, Aven, it’s a lot. Our roommates, Andi. Gen and the bar. People who love you. And you’re playing the music you want. That’s … that’s a lot to feel lucky about.”

“Didn’t you have people like that on the road?”

“Some,” he says, squinting a bit like he’s seeing their faces in his mind. “In the crew mostly. But nothing like what you’ve got here.”

The world tilts as he considers the past few years from Chase’s perspective. Playing music that he never seemed to care for, inheriting a mass of fans and what must have been an overwhelming amount of attention. Long, exhausting hours on the road, far from home—from Brooklyn—and doing all of it at such a young age, though not exactly all on his own …

“But what about you and Trent?”

Chase’s brow wrinkles. “Me and Trent?”

It’s such a touchy subject and Aven nearly pulls back entirely from poking at it. But it’s something he’d hyper-fixated on when he learned that Chase had joined the band. The idea that Chase had left him for Trent nearly ate him alive, and there’s a part of himself that still needs to know the truth.

“You two were … together, right?”

It takes Chase another second to get what Aven’s asking and then his expression puckers like he’s just sucked on raw lemon. “Jesus, no! We were never like that with each other in any way. He’s a narcissistic dickbag.”

Aven releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“You thought that?” Chase asks, his eyes wide with disbelief.

It’s not as outlandish as he’s making it seem. Besides, “What about that picture that went all around the internet of you two kissing behind some bar?”

“Aven, I was holding him up because he’d had too much to drink. Total tabloid bullshit. God.” He scrubs a hand across his mouth. “You thought I left you for Trent Williams? This whole time? Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you ask me?”

Aven’s cheeks heat and he suddenly feels all of twelve again. “We were reconnecting,” he says, “and I didn’t want the sordid details about you and your ex-boyfriend to get in the way of that.”

Chase makes a gagging noise from the back of his throat. “Dude, don’t even joke. I can’t believe you would ever think I’d chose Trent over you. He’s the dullest of grays, and you … Aven, you’re pure sunshine.”

A smile breaks across his face, a tender soreness that’s lived for half a decade in Aven’s chest fading. “Did you ever have anyone special?” he wonders.

“Only one,” Chase tells him, with a look so fond Aven feels it all the way to his toes. “You.”

A streak of happiness races through him. “Me too,” he says.

Chase climbs onto the bed, and cups Aven’s face with one hand, pressing a warm kiss against his mouth. “Remember the stars on your old bedroom ceiling?”

Aven nods. “I wonder if my parents left them up.”

“I used to wish on those.”

“Yeah? What’d you wish for?”

“I wished for you. It’s always been you.”

Aven’s breath catches in his throat. When he looks at Chase it”s painful and beautiful at the same time, the way he loves him.

The way they’ll soon be forced apart.