Page 7 of Summer Skin
IN AN ACTof self-preservation, Chase slipped into first period a few minutes late the next day in order to avoid Aven.
The confidence Chase felt when calling him out on keeping his secret had evaporated after a long night of tossing and turning, the miserable thought repeating through his head that he wasn’t only risking his own reputation on Aven’s silence, but Brooklyn’s, too.
All morning, his mind raced over their confrontation at the lockers in an attempt to puzzle out why he’d been so sure sharing that his mom was in prison was the right move. But there was no tactical reasoning behind it. Nothing more than a feeling deep in his gut telling him to spit it out.
The minute the bell rang, Chase gathered his belongings and bolted for the door, but the jam of other bodies exiting at the same time prevented his escape, and he wound up beside Aven. He fought to ignore his presence entirely, but his eyes were drawn over, and Aven’s gaze flicked to his own, holding for a few beats before he gave a brief nod and looked away, hanging back to let Chase go ahead.
Which was … unexpected to say the least. There had been no fiery daggers in Aven’s eyes. No condescending sneer. Nothing that spoke of the way he’d treated Chase since the first day they’d met.
Chase carried that interaction with him through the day into lunch, settling into his and Brooklyn’s usual table. Next period was drama, and there’d be no avoiding Aven in that class. The guessing game Chase had played all morning over whether or not a truce was the new normal would soon be over.
Brooklyn was at home, sick with what Chase diagnosed as a serious case of wanting to finish the book she’d stayed up until early dawn reading, so with a protein bar in one hand, and his songwriting pen in the other, Chase took to his writing notebook.
His solitude was quickly interrupted by a bag of chips tossed on the table, and the screech of a chair pulling back, and then Hank plopped himself down. “What the fuck are you doing here, Matthews?” was his greeting. “Scribbling out some poetry to cry over later?”
It’s like whack-an-asshole, Chase thought. Knock one down and another pops up. He hadn’t crossed paths with Hank since that day at Andi’s, but he supposed his luck had to run out sometime.
“Don’t start anything,” Chase warned him. “We’re cool here.”
“Cool?” Hank asked, looking him over. Letting his expression say exactly how uncool he’d determined Chase to be. “Like, lukewarm, maybe.”
Chase understood the smart thing to do in this situation would be to ignore Hank outright, not to give him any fuel to burn. So, with one last bored look in his direction, Chase picked up his pen and kept writing.
“Making a note about me in your diary, Matthews?” Hank chuckled, like it was that damn funny to suppose a dude might have emotions and write about them.
“Knock it the fuck off, asshole.”
Whoa. Chase’s head snapped up. It was Aven, glaring down at Hank, his tone taking a dangerous edge. “Quit harassing the new kid just because Elena broke up with you again.”
“Suck me,” Hank suggested, “with those pretty boy lips of yours.”
“Yeah? You like my mouth, Hank?”
“Sure, when it”s slurpin” on my dick. Oh, Hank,” he moaned, all breathy and over-the-top, “give it to me with your giganto schlong, stud.”
Aven cocked his head to one side. “So, you’re, like, asking me for a blowjob? Because for you?” He smiled, slick, all teeth. “I’d charge double.”
“Okay,” Chase said, cutting in. Aven’s rapid role reversal from bully to protector was bizarre enough, but this was getting ridiculous. What was it with straight dudes doing that whole weirdly homophobic thing where they threatened to suck each other off? “Can we be done with this now?”
A few seconds went by. Some sort of silent conversation was happening between the two boys who’d grown up together. Then Aven’s shoulders dropped, relaxing. He jerked his head to one side, telling Hank to take a hike.
“Whatever,” Hank said, pushing back from his chair. “Way less crappy company elsewhere.”
With that over, Chase went back to his notebook, expecting Aven to move on, but he stood there, toe scuffing across the cafeteria floor. Chase blinked up at him in question, his stomach tensing, wondering what exactly was happening as a tray with a burrito and tortilla chips was plunked down.
A strained silence hovered over the table as Aven settled into the seat directly across from him, not making eye contact. Chase took a glance to his left and right, not exactly trusting whatever was going on. Did Aven think he needed to stay here and, what, protect Chase from Hank coming back around?
“I don’t need a hero,” Chase said, a bitter note in his tone.
Aven raised his gaze, cocking a brow. “What?”
“You didn’t need to do that,” he explained. “I can handle my own.”
Aven huffed out a laugh at that. “Believe me, I’m well aware. And never mind Hank,” Aven went on. “His older brother was prom king, got into Caltech, and Hank will be lucky if he graduates on time. He picks on people to make himself feel important. Classic island bullshit. The supremely fun result of parents who think you’re a robot to program.”
It was way more than Aven had ever willingly said to him at one time.
“Tell Hank to fuck off and he’ll back off. All bark and no bite, know what I mean?”
“I do,” Chase told him. It was something he’d experienced nearly his entire life. “Very well.”
Aven bit his lip and looked away.
Curious, Chase set his pen aside and got straight to the point. “What do you want, Aven?”
“I wanted to talk about yesterday?” He spoke like there might be a question, as though Chase could have completely forgotten their memorable exchange overnight. “I thought about it after you took off. The way I’ve treated you. And I’m sorry, for all of it.”
Chase froze, gawking at this alternate universe version of Aven sitting across from him. There was no way telling Aven the truth could have changed his entire attitude, right? It couldn”t be that easy.
“Matthews.” Aven exhaled a long sigh. “You were right, I am a dick. It’s just …”
His mouth twisted, like whatever he had to say, it was stuck somewhere inside.
The more he studied Aven’s face, taking note of the sincerity in his eyes, of the way his Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed, the more Chase wondered if there might be a chance this wasn’t just some new way to mess with his head.
“I was wrong,” Aven finished, scrubbing a hand over his mouth.
This was an act of forgiveness he was asking for, and Chase let all of the nervous chatter in his mind fade for a moment. It’s what you wanted, right? he thought to himself. To make peace. There was only one way to see if Aven meant what he’d said.
“Okay,” Chase agreed, a little hesitantly, but committed to finding out. “Clean slate.”
Aven’s face brightened. If he had a tail, it would be wagging. “Really?” he asked. “I didn’t think you’d give me a second chance. If you want to lay into me for any of it, I can—” he paused to do actual air quotes, “listen and validate your feelings.”
The look Chase gave him must have read as epically disbelieving because Aven shrugged and said, “Andi. I asked for her advice.”
“She should have told you to bring me a burrito,” Chase said, skirting the way-too-open vulnerability of having a serious conversation, and nodding toward Aven’s plate.
“Oh.” Aven’s brows drew together. “You want it, man? It’s all yours.”
“No, I’m shitting you, come on. But thanks.”
“Real truce?” Aven said. He held out a curled pinkie, asking for a promise-swear.
Chase tried not to smile as he linked his own finger in Aven’s, giving it a shake, something he’d done with Brooklyn since they were young.
“According to Andi,” Aven said once they’d let go, “pinkie swears are the highest form of a promise, so now we’re unrivaled for life.” He paused, taking a long sip from a can of La Croix. “I know that’s not what unrivaled really means,” he said, like Chase was about to call him out on his vocabulary rather than sit in a flustered state of astonishment, because this person across from him was not a version of Aven he’d ever seen before. “I may be pretty but I’m not dumb.”
Aven chuckled, like he’d made a good joke, and Chase watched with a sort of rapt attention as he unwrapped his burrito and took a massive bite, sour cream and guac seeping out one end, making a mess of his fingers.
“So, guitar,” Aven said around a mouthful of food, looking up to meet Chase’s eyes. “You been playing a while?”
“Basically my whole life. You?”
“Mm.” Aven nodded his head, swallowing. “My sister and I stayed with my uncle in San Fransisco for a few weeks one summer while my parents were in Italy.” Chase didn’t even know Aven had a sister. He wondered if they were close. “We’d only met my uncle a total of two times before that and haven’t seen him since, but he was cool. He taught me a bunch that summer. To play guitar, how to sing, all the best bands. The Cure,” Aven told him with a friendly little smirk, calling back to their band tryouts.
“You killed it up there,” Chase said, honest.
“I had some motivation.”
“The school band’s important to you,” Chase said, nodding his head. “I get it.”
“Nah, I was gunning to show the new kid what’s up.” He winked at Chase, the corner of his mouth lifting, and Chase shouldn’t find anyone who was giving him shit that attractive.
But he did.
The Aven sitting here was funny. And charming. And suddenly Chase had a front row seat to exactly why he often had a group of girls swarming around him like he was sweet as honey.
Aven was still looking at him. But not in that curiously predatory way Chase had grown used to. Instead, his eyes radiated a sense of warmth—a shared joke between the two of them, and Chase’s heart fluttered. Fluttered like a kaleidoscope of butterflies were taking flight inside of him, and oh, shit. Oh, no. A crush on Aven Sinclair was precisely what he didn’t need.
It wasn’t that he’d never been attracted to a guy before; he had. A couple of times. Not that he had ever done anything about it, but there was an older guy who’d trailed after him all night at an art show once—who Chase had nearly gone home with until his mom bothered to notice and stepped in—and then there was Cal, from his last high school. Who was openly gay, and something had almost happened between them at a house party one Friday night, except that Chase chickened out.
But he hadn’t really spent much time dwelling on carrying a torch for another man. Because what he’d told Andi was true—he wasn’t looking to date. At all. That sort of trust in another person was something he couldn’t draw from himself, no matter how he tried. The probability of getting hurt was too high. And there was no way Chase was going to ruin his senior year by trailing after a popular, straight boy who up until five minutes ago was more likely to beat his ass than kiss it. And—
“You know what I mean?” Aven asked, breaking into Chase’s inappropriate crush crisis.
Shit. Maybe he would know what Aven meant if he’d been listening at all.
“Totally,” Chase guessed after a beat, and Aven gave him a boyish grin.
Chase’s gentle butterflies turned into hopping bunnies.
Wiping his fingers clean on a napkin, Aven said, “If you could go back in time and see any concert in history, any one at all, which would it be?”
It was such a surprising question, such a random thing to ask, that no immediate answer sprang to mind. There were a few prime choices—from classic bands that no longer existed, to famous festivals, to a few of his favorite indie bands—but after wracking his brain for a minute, there was a choice that felt more right than any other.
“Lollapalooza 1993.”
“The music festival?” Aven asked.
“It was where my parents met. I just always wondered …” Chase trailed off, not sure of how personal he wanted to get with a guy who only yesterday had him pinned against a locker wall.
“What?” Aven said, reading his hesitation and giving him a small smile of encouragement.
“I want to know what my mom saw in my dad that day, that’s all.”
Aven drummed his fingertips across the table. “I like your answer,” he told Chase “It’s different.”
“What about you?”
“I dunno.” Aven gave a lazy shrug of the shoulders. “I think about it every night as I fall asleep. I’ve never settled on one.”
Aven Sinclair, staring up at his ceiling, asking himself the same question night after night with no answer. The idea of it charmed Chase, and he couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face.
Returning the smile, Aven leaned in towards him, and said, “Maybe I’ll tag along with you to Lollapalooza, make a day of it.”
It was at that moment that Chase understood the very deep shit he was wading in. That if he didn’t fight it, every second, he would spiral further and further into the mass of Aven Sinclair groupies roaming the halls.
Aven continued grinning his hypnotic grin, and Chase squirmed in his seat, trying like hell to make these feelings of attraction vanish like a rabbit in a magician’s hat.
“Matthews.” Aven was staring. Like he was taking in everything he could. Like Chase was someone interesting. Important. Worth his time. “I should have tried to get to know you instead of clowning, getting jealous, doing everything I could to make you feel left out, because I didn’t understand that I …”
Aven blew out a slow breath before going on.
“Last night, instead of thinking about concerts? I thought about every shitty thing I’ve said or done to you. And why, and how fucked up it must have felt being new here and having that laid on you. And I totally get it if you don’t want to, but I hope you’ll still let me get to know you.”
Chase felt that flutter start up again in his chest.
“Okay.”
Aven’s face dimpled into a charmingly hopeful smile.
The flutter bloomed into warmth. An ember of unwanted heat for a straight boy who could never want him back.
“Yeah,” Chase said, eyes never leaving Aven’s. “I’d like that.”