Chapter Text
Adam fell in love as slowly as he fell in love fast. Fast, because for Ronan it was fast. As fast as he drove on the highways at night, accelerator pressed to floor, windows down, streaming air buffeting against his face, whoops of glee caught in the wind. As fast as the stroke of a paintbrush, gashing a canvas from clean to marred. The first stroke promising every other stroke -- a story beginning to unfold.
It was an intensity Adam felt even without the words spoken. Like the too hot sun on his face. Ronan wasn’t a man of many words, and every third of them was fuck, so Adam picked up the suggestions through what else he did. Long looks under dark eyebrows. A bump of the shoulder or brush-by of the arms when there was plenty of space to avoid either.
It was exhilarating. It was terrifying. To be wanted. To be wanted too much.
“I should paint you sometime,” Ronan said. They were laid out on his bed in his goddamn private apartment -- a rich kid privilege Adam would begrudge more if it wasn’t currently privileging him. A private place to hook up where the communal bathroom wasn’t down the dormitory hall.
This was their third time hooking up. None had been as adventurous as the paint-covered first time in the living room on top of an oversized canvas Adam really hoped Ronan had disposed of. Today, they had done it in bed. Today, the afternoon light still tinted the windows, but they were both too lazy to get up and too awake to sleep.
“Haven’t we already done that?” Adam asked.
“Not paint on you. Paint you like a portrait, or some shit.”
“I’d rather not.” It was a quick conclusion. Brittle and snappish. Adam Parrish didn’t even like looking at himself in photos.
Somehow he had made it out of his trailer park, out of his hometown, was states away at a fancy university, but still hated what photos revealed. Almost everything he had brought from home had been replaced -- still cheap, still thrifted, still hand-me-downs, and the stuff old roommates didn’t feel like lugging all the way back home at the end of the school year. But a new button-down and a half-decent haircut didn’t hide something tired in his eyes, something out of place in his grin, something ‘imposter’ in the way he stood -- a little bit like he wanted to disappear.
Imagining himself rendered in artistic hand? Being examined and interpreted? No fucking way.
Ronan shifted beside him. Under the sheets, his bare leg brushed by Adam’s. Side-by-side, they were still naked and stewing in the leftovers of their encounter. Gross, when you stopped to think about it. Likely why Adam hadn’t rolled out of bed yet. If he even sat up, he wouldn’t be able to settle back down into the sheets. It ended the encounter. Ended his moment of relaxation, brain cleared for these brief hours as he did something purely, nonproductively, and selfishly for himself.
“What’re you doing for the rest of the day?” Ronan asked.
If sitting up would spoil the end of the encounter, this question demolished it. It inspired up the ever-growing, ever-rolling checklist to coalesce in his brain. Homework, studying, part-time jobs, networking opportunities, pre-graduation coaching, practice interviews, actual interviews.
It was the second semester, senior year of college, and Adam Parrish was trying to build a bridge from here to the rest of his life. He couldn’t allow for distractions.
Ronan made a small noise as he stretched beside him, an edge of a groan. It made Adam’s pulse quicken for a moment, reminiscent of a certain sound Ronan made during a certain more vigorous activity they were currently reclining from.
Adam reconsidered. He could allow for one distraction.
“I could order pizza…” Ronan added. It was the other end of his question. The counterbalance on the scale. The if-then in the equation.
If Adam was doing nothing, he could stay. If he could stay, Ronan could feed him. If Ronan feeds him… It’s started getting awfully close to a date. And they weren’t dating. Adam had said it plain and clear to Ronan before hoo- up number two.
With his own groan, Adam sat up. “Can’t. I got work.”
Homework? Paid work? Didn’t matter. There was always something.
#
“Someone has some pep in their step.”
Dina fell into pace beside Adam on the sidewalk as he crossed campus. She could keep speed with him, which was one of the reasons they had made friends and stayed friends. Despite that their majors -- he in engineering and she in business -- not sharing a single class.
Adam hadn’t anything as dramatic as ‘falling outs’ throughout his college years, but he had a lot of ‘drifting apart.’ People he couldn’t make time for. People who couldn’t understand he didn’t have much time to share. But Dina slotted right into those places. Quick catchups, rushed meals shared in the dining hall, crossing for a few minutes on campus and making it count. And absolutely never an offense when a text spent too long without a reply.
“Do I want to even ask what you mean by that?” Adam countered.
Dina laughed, loudly, without a care towards the aside glances she received. Dina lived her entire life that way. Out loud, opinionated, and neverminding what anyone else thought about it. She laughed loudly, spoke loudly, was an out and proud lesbian, was an active part of half a dozen social clubs and organizations across campus. Adam had a feeling her life path would lead her to either being President or in prison… and he was incredibly envious of her in a way he couldn’t quite articulate even in his own head.
“Let me be more blunt.” She nudged his arm with her elbow. “You’re getting laid.”
Adam’s mouth pressed into a line.
“I’m right!” she crowed. “I could tell some of your death grip on life had loosened. Good for you, Parrish. Now spill. Who is he?”
“How do you know ‘he’?”
“I’m not doubting your bi-ness. But you smell like a cologne you don’t wear.”
Not a cologne, exactly. Ronan’s shower gel that Adam used to clean up before leaving. It was some brand he’d never heard of before, and just flicking open the lid made the whole bathroom smell like a forest in all the best ways -- pine, cedarwood, amber musk. The smell went away as soon as you closed the bottle, though apparently not away enough.
“Smells are gender essentialist now?” Adam said.
“Good one,” Dina said. And in another time, another place, with a couple drinks down, and the right opponent she would have argued herself hoarse that very point. But it wasn’t that time. “But you’re not getting away without giving me the details.”
They stopped in unison at a crosswalk. It had one of those yellow “stop for pedestrians” placards stuck up out of the middle of the road, but everyone knew in this city that you didn’t trust the cars to stop until you saw the brake lights.
“Are you really going in the same direction as me?” Adam asked her.
She glowed with a grin. “For this conversation, I am. I still got an hour until I need to get ready for the pilates class I co-teach.”
Adam held in a sigh. Maybe for his one long-lasting confidant with a torrid hook-up history of her own, he could crack open this sliver of his personal life.
One car raced through the crosswalk, but then the roads were clear for a stretch. Dina looped her arm in Adam’s, and they started across.
“He’s a guy.”
“A guy,” Dina repeated. “Just like I said.”
“Another student.”
“A student,” she repeated. “Got it.”
“I met him the other week when you dragged me to the bar, where I went just for you because I don’t drink, and then you abandoned me.”
“Apparently, the night worked out well for you. You’re welcome.” They reached the other side of the street. “Is he hot?”
“Very,” Adam said, a little too quickly. A little too emphatically. A little too much to Dina’s utter enjoyment. He felt his cheeks heat in response. An embarrassment no one asked him to be embarrassed for.
But Dina kept the conversation going, as always, so he didn’t end up dwelling in this blistered emotion. “When am I going to meet him?”
“Never,” Adam said, just as quick as ‘very’ and just as seriously. Then, he followed up quickly in reaction to her offended expression: “It’s not serious. He’s just a hook up.”
“But a repeated hook up.”
“Sure,” Adam said. “But he’s an art major.”
“What a sin,” she said, dragging the words with a lyrical sarcasm.
“I’ll tell you what I told him,” Adam said. “This is second semester, senior year… It would be the absolutely worst time to get involved in anything serious.”
#
Adam woke to Ronan’s side of the bed empty. Maybe more imperative, he woke up in Ronan’s bed. He wasn’t sure where his phone had been abandoned, and there wasn’t a clock in squinting sight, so time was nebulous, impossible to pin down. But it was late. He could sense it. Not midnight late. Like 3 am late. A late that was verging on early. Another nebulous place in space and time.
But to interrogate the first point, Ronan’s side of the bed was empty. One good ear listening, Adam couldn’t detect any movement in the room. Sliding an arm over on the sheets found them cool. The bed had been vacated for a while.
To interrogate the second point, Adam hadn’t meant to stay the night. He hadn’t stayed the night since the first night, the first hook-up. That had been extraordinary circumstances. And he hadn’t known then this would become a recurring habit. When it was a recurring habit, staying the night implied something more.
But he guessed he had been exhausted. He guessed Ronan’s mattress was better than his flat, pre-used twin long in the dorm. He guessed Ronan hadn’t tried to wake him up. He guessed he had come over kind of late to begin with and he hadn’t had a project pending or a night shift or a test to study for. He guessed he could forgive himself for this slip-up this time.
He guessed he could just go back to sleep. He climbed out of bed instead.
He found some sort of clothes on the floor. Boxers. A shirt. His? Ronan’s? He didn’t know for sure. He expected one of each.
The slivers of light around the jamb of the door guided him out.
He didn’t have to go far to find Ronan. As luxurious as a one-bed apartment in a prime downtown neighborhood was, it was still one-bedroom. And immediately outside of the bedroom, just a single footstep, was the living area. While college kids rich with their parents’ money would usually decorate with widescreen TVs and video game consoles, Ronan’s living space was filled with artistic chaos. Drop cloth floor covering. A table that held pillars of sketchbooks and crumpled paint-stained rags and empty beer cans. Empty canvases and half-painted canvases and completed canvases were stacked leaning against the walls and the arm of the couch in sloppy intervals.
In the corner by the window that revealed the nightlife of the neighborhood outside was an easel and a man. Ronan was painting.
Adam watched him from behind for a mesmerizing few moments? Minutes? Remember what we said about time being nebulous in this hybrid morning-night?
His back was stunning. Adam knew that already. Sure shoulders and a lean shape that looked cultivated rather than starved. And the tattoo, of course. He had to admit to the fine details rendered in every single feather of the black wings even as it made him burn with the unfairness.
Adam had never wanted a tattoo; had never even considered wanting one. But how much of that not wanting was caused by the one of those double-standards he had absorbed long ago. For the rich, for the upper middle class, for the people who were “comfortable” … tattoos were self-expression, artwork, conversation-starters at cocktail parties. But for the poor, they were another brand of class. A “why couldn’t you spend your money on better things” sneer. They were another tickmark of proof that you were trash.
But more fascinating than Ronan’s back were his hands at work. Long-fingered and sturdy. As he watched, Adam realized he had never seen someone paint before. He’d seen paintings in museums, in text books, and in the art history class the two of them had coincidentally shared in freshman year. He’d seen doodling in the corners of notebooks in the lull of taking notes -- this was different.
As soon as he thought he understood the shape and shades of what was being made, Ronan would add an unexpected color or stroke of paint that redefined it. He blinked, and it changed. He blinked, and it changed. He blinked, and it --
“You can watch from closer,” Ronan said.
Adam jolted. Ronan peaked over his shoulder. All together, it felt like a challenge, and Adam Parrish wouldn’t be cowed and embarrassed now. He stepped closer, stopping just a little bit back from his elbow.
“What is it?” He asked. “Or what is it going to be?”
“You can’t tell?”
Adam stared at the swirl colors for a moment, but the answer felt further from him than ever. He wasn’t sure what was worse. A wrong answer. Or whatever rorschach reveal that wrong answer could give.
“I can’t,” Adam said. “Just tell me.”
Ronan cleaned one of his brushes while not answering. Then he said: “Do you dream?”
Adam said, “Sure.”
“Vivdly?”
“I don’t really remember too long after I wake up.”
“I do,” Ronan said. “Dream. Real fucking vividly. If I don’t get some of those things out of my head…” He left an unfinished ‘or else.’
Adam didn’t dream like that. But he did have dreams of the ambitious kind. Visualizations the more fru-fru would call them. A torn out magazine photo of a sleek young guy in a sleek suit leaning against a sleek car while wearing a less than sleek but expensive watch that he used to keep in his old bedroom in the trailer park. And if no one else understood why he was clawing himself there -- If they didn’t understand the sleepless nights, the relentless perfectionism, the one thousand percent drive despite everything else -- Adam did.
“I feel like you’ve avoided answering,” Adam said.
Ronan said, “So have you.”
For that, he wasn’t wrong.
#
“Are you back on campus?”
Adam stared at the text that interrupted his evening of scouring apartment listings. Not for now, but for in a few months, after graduation, when the university would eject him from student housing into real life.
He had a spreadsheet of neighborhoods, rents, projected utility costs, available public transit, and how long his meager savings would last while he got a career in order. Some folks graduated from college with job offers -- his golden dream -- but those folks tended to have important fathers.
The text came on the end of a chain that looked like this -- “Can you come over?” “Can I come over?” “When can I come over?” “Are you home?” “Are you awake?” “Yes.” “Now.” “After ten.” “I”m here.” -- a breadcrumb trail of lust with very little conversation otherwise. So it was no deep leap of logic to understand the implications underpinning it.
Eyes feeling the strain of the computer screen, Adam texted back: “Never left.”
Twenty minutes later, Adam was at his door. Twenty-five minutes later, Adam was in his bed. They hadn’t needed to say more. They rarely said more. They had built a web of understandings between them through spare sentences.
Adam didn’t fall asleep after. It was only three in the afternoon, and classes didn’t resume until tomorrow.
“You have a shitty break?” Adam asked, staring at the ceiling. Spring break marked the halfway point of the second semester, his future rushing at him fast. For other students, it was a time for hedonistic travel to whatever beach towns were the cool ones to invade this year. That’s where Dina had gone. She invited him along more than once, more than thrice, even with subtle suggestions that she was paying, but he couldn’t waste his money or pride on that.
“Fuck yes,” Ronan said. “You?”
“Yeah.”
“Your family sucks too?”
Adam’s hair tickled against Ronan’s shoulder as he shifted on the mattress. They weren’t cuddling, but they were lying half on top and under and beside each other, sprawled and lethargic in the aftermath, bare flesh on flesh on flesh all the way down.
“I stayed here,” Adam said. “I don’t have a family to go back to.”
“Shit. They’re dead?”
“No. I just can’t go back.”
“Because… you’re gay?”
“Bi,” Adam corrected, a strictly automatic correction over all these years. “I’m sure that wouldn’t help, but they don’t even know. They decided to hate me for something much simpler."
“What?”
“Existing.”
“Existing?”
“My dad hit me and mom didn’t care.” He said it on one breath. It was as much as their memories deserved. “My whole life.”
Adam wasn’t sure why he was cracking himself open now. Sure, staying on campus over break always gave a harsh reveal to what he was missing. A home, no matter how hated, to go back to. But Spring Break was hardly Christmas or Thanksgiving -- the all hallowed family events with the decked out traditions.
Maybe you could only get naked with someone so many times before you couldn’t hold back vulnerability in scarier ways.
“Shit, Parish, you make my problems seem stupid.”
“I didn’t mean to,” he said, quickly. “Tell me about your shitty break.” So he shouldn’t run his stupid mouth about things he didn’t like telling people… even if it had felt a little good to let it vent.
Ronan rolled out of bed.
Adam sat up, surprised by his sudden exit.
But almost as soon as he was gone -- a brief detour outside the bedroom -- he was back, with a sketchbook, ruffling inside.
He dropped the opened sketchbook into Adam’s lap. On the page was a rough pencil sketch, landscape-style, that looked like a farm -- a foregrounded ranch-style house set against wide open fields, spotted with barns and squiggles that somehow evoked cows in the distance.
“Home?” Adam asked. Like something out of a movie -- there was a porch swing for god’s sake. The happy kind where families hosted big holiday dinners and had pet golden retrievers who saved the day.
Ronan crossed his arms. “Flip the page.”
Adam flipped to reveal the next. It was the same imagery of the farm, but with its guts torn out. Blackened windows. Doors hanging off hinges. Storm-clouded sky. The angles somehow slanted and the shading somehow more vicious. Adam wasn’t an artist; he didn’t know what to look at or the vocabulary for it. But he understood it. Felt it somehow.
Ronan’s shoulders were curled when he started to talk. It was the first time Adam had seen him hold any posture that made him look small.
“I had the perfect childhood. It sounds like bullshit, but it really was. My brothers and I would just run around all day climbing trees, wrestling in the fields, feeding the cows. We’d come back for dinner covered in dirt and bruises. Mom didn’t mind. And Dad…” He didn’t finish, and it was that gap in the story that said more than anything. “Want to guess the exact moment I ruined it?”
“When he found out you were queer?” An educated guess from Adam, considering Ronan had just asked him something of the similar.
“Ding, ding, ding,” Ronan deadpanned sourly. “You’re the winner.” He flopped down on the bed, longwise atop Adam’s legs tangled under the sheets.
“What’s my prize?”
Ronan grunted. “A fuck buddy with a screw loose in the head.”
Adam snorted. At least they were in good company.
#
The cards feathered through his fingers. Adam wasn’t sure when he learned how to shuffle cards, the perfect riffle and bridge. Certainly not from his parents. And he could hardly imagine it being a school skill like fractions and penmanship. Beyond that, friendships in his life had been sparse and short-lived -- too weird, too poor, too stoic. He was easily made the outsider, easily dropped for someone with new sneakers and better jokes, easily guided away from by parents who wanted better friends for their kids. But some way or the other, like riding a bike and tying his shoes, he learned how.
He fanned out the cards in a smooth arch atop Dina’s mandala-patterned duvet. She was an R.A. in a freshman dorm, which means she got the privilege of a single room and the dis-privilege of busting underage drinking, hearing out both sides of break-up drama, and having at least three people come out to her per semester. She was currently out of the room doing one or multiple of those three things -- leaving Adam abandoned halfway through their pizza and Seinfeld reruns night.
So he had turned to the cards. Plucked up from her tchotchke-covered dresser.
Hovering his hand over the fanned out cards, he waited until something itched at the back of his brain. He pulled a card. Then another. Then another. Three in total.
Past. Present. Future.
Beginning. Middle. End.
Mind. Body. Spirit.
Things were stronger in threes.
He flipped the first. The Magician.
It caused a small grin to curl at his mouth. Ever since he started playing with Dina’s cards when he was hanging out with her on her R.A. shifts, the Magician seemed to show up more than probability would dictate. Perhaps it was coincidence. Perhaps it was observation bias. Perhaps it was…
Adam shook his head. No time for ridiculousness. This was just a bit of fun. A distraction whilst he waited.
He flipped the second card. The Knight of Swords.
Swords was the suit of conflict. Of charging straight ahead -- decisive, logical, unbarred. Dina was a sword, he thought. Adam Parrish would be a better match for the Knight of Pentacles -- long term planning, working towards goals, always thinking about money.
Adam flipped the third card. Two of Cups.
He paused. The meaning didn’t immediately pop into his head; he didn’t have them all memorized. Why would he? And the little booklet that came with the cards had been lost some time ago, and he was still surviving with what his classmates called a dumb phone, so there was no quick and defined answer for him to find. He just had the illustration, his guess at deciphering the symbolism, and his own intuition.
Two people standing mirrored, facing one another, each with a cup. Perhaps in the precipice of a moment before exchanging them. Between them in the blue sky was the symbol of two snakes intertwining a staff Adam recognized from the sides of ambulances that had something to do about balance and negotiation and healing.
The Magician. The Knight of Swords. Two people in camaraderie on the precipice of something more --
Dina banged through the door. “Sorry, I took so long. That was the craziest rounds of my life. Tell me the pizza didn’t get cold.”
She crossed the room and collapsed into her fancy desk chair he had helped her carry up three flights of steps on move-in day because the elevator was out. Only then did her eyes cut across to spy what he was doing.
Adam hands started to clean up the cards.
“You can have those if you want,” she said. “You use them more than I do.”
“No, I don’t --”
“Seriously. I don’t know what I was thinking when I got them. Like 80 different cards to memorize? Not gonna happen… Pretty pictures though.”
Adam tidied the deck together and slid them back into their box. “I was just filling time.” He climbed off the bed to return them to atop the dresser.
“You missed some,” Dina said, and nodded back to the bed.
Adam looked. The Magician. The Knight of Swords. The Two of Cups. The three cards still laid face up on the duvet.
He made no commentary when he plucked them up and returned them to the deck. The television played a laugh track in the background.
The next day, he’d find the deck of tarot cards in his backpack, and he wouldn’t be sure which of the two of them were responsible.
#
Adam wasn’t sure how the last solution became the only solution.
His roommate -- a fellow engineering major who Adam was on neutral territory with, mostly because they were both afflicted with the curse of having to be seniors in a dorm rather than affording a fancier off-campus accommodations -- had decided to have a party. Or, in his words, “Not a party, Parrish. A hang out. It’s called having friends..”
Some new video game had come out. Once upon a time, when he was growing up, Adam had a Game Boy with a cracked screen from a thrift store with the cartridge game that was in it at the time of purchase, but otherwise the boyhood hobby had passed him by. But it had caused his roommate’s group of three to five dudes to invade their shared living space. Crowded, loud, smelling like beer and doritos, Adam Parrish was as good as exiled.
The natural next solution was the library, the supposedly hallowed and quiet halls of knowledge. But the handful of study rooms were all already booked, and ever since the renovation during his sophomore year where they added a cafe corner, the grind of the beans, the hiss of the espresso machine, and the chime of the cash register perforated what little quiet could be found.
Dina? On a date. And they were never good study partners. He liked to buckle down, and she liked to stop and chit chat every dozen minutes or so.
A twenty page lab report due tomorrow, Adam just needed somewhere quiet enough to sit and concentrate. Sure, he had some natural smarts, but the truth was that he was a good student with good grades because he worked fucking hard.
And that’s how the last choice became the only choice.
He called rather than texted. On the last ring before voicemail took over, Ronan Lynch answered.
“Parrish? Everything alright?” Ronan’s voice held a real pitch of concern. Partly because Adam never called. Partly more -- he had gone a little awol since their post-spring break hook-up where he had confessed more than he had ever intended to.
“I need a favor.”
And that’s how Adam Parrish ended up sitting on the couch at Ronan Lynch’s apartment with his ancient laptop that had a fan that sounded like a jet engine and only held battery power long enough to get between electric sockets.
Ronan painted. Adam typed.
“I just need a place to work. This isn’t innuendo,” Adam had said over the phone. He was glad to find he was taken at his word.
Ronan got up, and stretched his arms over his head. He was only in a tank top. Adam pretended not to watch, and looked right back down when Ronan glanced his way.
Ronan asked if he wanted something to drink. Adam declined everything, but when Ronan came back from the kitchen, he put a glass of water on the coffee table with no commentary. Only after Ronan went back to painting did Adam dare take a sip.
Why was it so hard asking for favors? Because it felt too much like pity. Poor, pathetic Adam Parrish needing saving. Even though it was a perfectly normal scenario in college to be run out of your dorm room by your roommate’s counter-desires. Less normal to use your recurring hook-ups home as a study hall, though.
Adam typed. Ronan painted.
Some impenetrable time later, the door bell rang. Ronan got up from the easel. “Food’s here.”
“Food?”
“I tried to ask you earlier, but you just grunted.”
Adam vaguely remembered that. If had heard it he would have said no.
Ronan disappeared to the door and came back with two plastic bags printed with “thank yous” down the side bulging with cartons. He started unpacking them on the coffee table.
“How much did it cost?” Adam asked, “I’ll pay for half.”
“It’s called hospitality, Parrish. Eat.”
If he had flights of fancy about remaining stubborn, his growling stomach countered it. So when Ronan plopped down on the couch one cushion away and grabbed for carton, Adam was only half a hesitation behind, after setting his cranky laptop safely aside.
He could always find a way to leave some cash behind, unobtrusive and sneaky.
That put to bed, he picked up a carton of what ended up being beef and broccoli and ended up scarfing it down with a ravenousness that had been flowing under the surface.
But wasn’t that a true way to talk about Adam Parrish. Always hungry, always desperate, always wanting more, more, more.
He swallowed. “What kind of finals do art majors have to worry about?”
“Portfolios of work.”
“How’s that graded? Isn’t art supposed to be subjective, or whatever.”
“We have papers, too, Parrish. And they, like, look at your mastery of technique and shit. But we all know it’s not the grade that really matters.”
Adam’s eyebrows raised to a skeptical and judgemental level. “It’s not?”
“There’s a senior art gallery coming up. Some real art people show up. Like, not college stuff. If they see something they think has potential…”
“Then what?”
“You wanted to know what finals are like for art majors. That’s it. We could graduate with straight A’s, but what happens that night is what really matters.”
Adam hated to say that he understood, so he leaned forward for a carton of fried rice. Grades were one thing. The thing he fought for for years. For a good high school. For a good college. For the scholarships. But he wouldn’t be living off grades for much longer. He had to step into the real world and figure out a whole new game where things like handshakes mattered.
The looming future was, in fact, terrifying.
#
Adam shut his laptop. The fan slowly whined to a stop.
Ronan lifted one clunky headphone from his ear. “Done?” he asked.
He had quit on painting a while ago, moving instead to the kitchen table that always held art supplies rather than food anytime Adam had visited. He had sat hunched over a sketchbook, with over-the-ear headphones mended with duct tape blasting music so loud Adam could make out the tinny beat of the base from his spot on the other side of the apartment.
“Done,” Adam agreed. His eyes ached from screen strain and his left leg was a little numb, but he was done.
“Great,” Ronan said. He wrangled his headphones off completely as he stood to his full height. “Let’s go for a ride.”
For a ride, he meant in Ronan’s hand-me-down BMW, black as obsidian with a gnarly dent in the side panel.
“I got in a crash while drag racing in high school. My dad got a new car and made me keep this one.”
“What a punishment,” Adam said dryly, but didn’t resist sliding into the passenger seat when the door unlocked. Where they were going, he didn’t ask.
If there had been something mesmerizing in watching Ronan paint, watching him drive was of the same ilk. A creature in its natural habitat. The car on the road was an extension of him just as much as paint and a brush.
It’s not that Adam didn’t know a thing or two about cars. One of his best-paying jobs back in his rinky-dink hometown was working as an assistant tech in the local mechanic shop. But there was a difference between knowing how to replace a spark plug and being able to weave around the sparse nighttime traffic like it was a well-practiced dance. And if, at first, he had clung to the door handle in a nervous death-grip, he soon eased up, relaxing into Ronan’s confidence behind the steering wheel, a small grin curling on his lips.
“Tell me which way to turn,” Ronan said, suddenly, a skip in the rhythm.
“What?” Adam said.
Ronan lifted his hands from the steering wheel. “Tell me which way to turn.”
Ahead, an intersection was quickly approaching. Ronan’s hands might have been off the wheel -- a knee wedged up from underneath to keep the course steady -- but his foot was definitely not off the gas pedal.
“If you don’t --”
“Tell me --”
“Right!”
The tires screeched. His stomach twisted. Ronan had fire in his eyes. Adam felt like he could burn along with him.
“Next turn,” Ronan said, with a quick nod to the end of the block.
“Left,” Adam said. And “left” again. Then “straight.” Getting into the unspoken cadence of it. Easing into the chaotic game, and then, eventually even waiting until the last second to give his directions.
It was the absolutely reckless bullshit that he had been avoiding for his four collegiate years. No frat parties. No pranks. No rowdiness at a homecoming game. Nothing that could threaten his enrollment, threaten his scholarship, or end up on social media and threaten his future prospects.
No fun Adam Parrish. Mr. Stick in the mud.
His blood felt on fire. His heart was racing, half terrified, half elevated. Whooping at a turn. Swearing in crazy joy at a close call. Laughing at an angry horn honk left in their wake.
Eventually, they reached the on ramp of the highway. He pointed. “There.” The last of his directions.
Only there, with long open spaces from Ronan to speed, the irrational moment settled enough for him to say, “You better not get me expelled one month before graduation.”
“We wouldn’t get expelled. We’d get arrested. And you wouldn’t get arrested. I’d get arrested… You could claim kidnapping.”
Adam shook his head, but there was no admonishment on his lips. His face hurt, he realized, in that rare way it got when you have been laughing too hard.
Adam Parrish. Laughing too hard. What a night.
And night it was, well past midnight, and the rest of the world didn’t feel asleep as it did frozen, and they -- the sacred two -- slipping out of time entirely into some place new.
“Where are we going?” Adam asked -- the question he hadn’t asked before.
Ronan Lynch answered: “You’ll see.”
The highway took them out of the city to where the trees got thicker. And then they were off the highway entirely. Ronan made few confident turns. The roads got rougher. Then he was parking in a dirt lot somewhere so remote it was nowhere.
“Where are we?” Adam asked, even as he followed Ronan in unclicking his seatbelt. He was at least pretty sure he wasn’t about to get axe-murdered and forgotten.
“State park. Back route. They never chain it up.” Ronan cracked open the doors.
“Parks are closed after dusk.”
“That’s bullshit. It’s nature. You can’t close nature.” He climbed out, and slammed the door behind himself.
Adam followed in a slower suit. He had a crick in his back from being hunched over his laptop for hours. By the time Adam was standing in the fresh night air, Ronan had already planted himself sitting on the hood of the car, neck craned up to look at the stars.
“Sometimes I come out here to just breathe,” he said. “You can’t see the sky like this with the city lights.”
Adam glanced at the sky briefly. “That’s real country boy of you.”
Ronan glanced aside at him. “I grew up on a farm. Do you think I fucking care if I’m too hick for people? I know how to milk a cow.”
It felt like a slap. Like an insult. Even though Adam had been the one insulting and Ronan in the defense position. To be proud of where he came from? To be fond of it? Despite the shadows and everything?
Not for Adam Parrish, a plant pulled from its home soil; he had cut off his roots long ago.
Ronan rolled his eyes and went back to his star gazing. “Don’t pretend I can’t hear your accent slip. You’re as southern as I am.”
Adam felt frigid. “Virginia’s not that southern.”
“Virginia? Fuck. Me too.”
If there was any hurt Adam was feeling, it was clear from Ronan’s tone that he was unafflicted.
“Are you just gonna stand there? Come on, take a seat. Relax.”
If there was any word in the human language when uttered would cause people to do it’s exact opposite, it was ‘relax.’
Adam squinted. “I’m relaxed.”
“No, you’re not.”
Adam sat stubbornly on the edge of the car’s hood. “See. Relaxed.”
Ronan barked out a laugh. “What you were in the car earlier was relaxed. Or after we fuck. Rest of the time? It’s like you’re ready to fight the fucking world. With citations.”
Adam winged around to glare.
“I didn’t come out here to be insulted.”
But Ronan wasn’t glaring back. Staring, sure, but not glaring. His gaze heavy in a way that Adam hadn’t been prepared for. Somehow a fire lit in the cold blue.
“What did you come out here for then?” he said, like a challenge.
“I don’t know. It’s stupid I am.” He pinched the bridge of noise. Was the oncoming headache from stress, or lack of sleep, or both? “I should be proofing my report right now. Or sleeping. I’ve got an early day tomorrow --” He always had an early day tomorrow. “FInals are almost here. Then graduation. Then…
“You know what’s fucked up?”
“Tell me,” Ronan said.
“I’ve spent the last eight years getting great grades so I can get great scholarships, and I'm an expert at that. But I’m about to be kicked out on my ass into the real world where it’s all about networking and connections and good firm handshakes and knowing how to play golf and all these other secret codes I don’t know because I grew up trailer park trash… and I’m -- I’m fucking terrified.”
The confession, tender and raw, hunger in the night air as dense as a fog. But the inhaling breath Adam took in after it was like the first fresh breath of air he’d had in months. And it tasted like the musty forest air, of starlight, and a little bit of the cedar-y shower wash Ronan used.
“Is that too much psychological baggage from a fuck buddy?” Adam asked, after a few more of those glorifying breaths. Not that he dared look at Ronan yet. He’d rather Schronger's cat his reaction -- how mild or horrible or pitying it might be. Look at the woods. Look at the stars. There were tons of excuses to avoid eye contact.
“I’m just surprised it took you so long.” Ronan’s shoulder, deliberately, bumped his.
Adam dared a darting glance. “Well, don’t leave me hanging. What did you bring me out here for?”
Ronan answered very simply. “I was trying to impress a guy.”
Adam snorted.
“He’s kind of hard to impress. He thinks I’m an idiot because I’m an art major. He also thinks I’m an idiot because I have rich parents. But I’ve never met someone as intense as him, and I’ve had a crush on him since Freshman year, so here we are… in the park where he also thinks I’m an idiot for bringing him to.”
Adam looked at him for real this time not shying away because…
Ronan held steady, unflinching eye contact. “For all that studying, you’re really stupid.”
They had kissed plenty of times before. That’s the irony of it. They had kissed plenty of times before, had known each other as physically intimately as there was to know someone. All that to say, kissing Ronan under the canopy of the stars that night shouldn’t have been monumental, except of course kissing Ronan under the stars was monumental. Earth-shattering. Foundation-cracking.
Terrifying.
Adam seemed to sizzle from the inside out. He ached. He wanted to cry. He wanted to holler into the night air. He wanted to slide back into the passenger seat of the car and let Ronan drive him around, too fast and with wild turns. He never wanted this night to end.
But as soon as their mouths parted, as soon as there was enough space between them for thoughts to get back in his head and worries to wriggle out in his gut, as soon as he saw Ronan looking at him like that… Adam Parrish knew he couldn’t let this go on.