Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 437(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 437(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
“You were going to invite me over tonight? I thought we agreed on tomorrow.”
“You know I’m impatient. I wanted to see you,” he said. Two huge arms wrapped around me in a bear hug, squeezing me tight as hell. Mitch didn’t mess around when it came to hugs. I was surrounded by his scent, a mixture of fresh shampoo and something harder to place, something that smelled like my childhood wrapped up in one person. That scent held every single memory, perfectly and completely unchanged.
“You’re here,” I managed to say. “You’re actually here.”
“I am. God, do I have stories to tell you.”
Every time I was this close to him, I remembered when he had kissed me. Only one time, and so long ago. I fixated on his lips and remembered how soft they felt against mine, how desperately I had craved more.
He was still the same Mitch, with thick, chestnut brown hair, dark rims of eyelashes, and that quarterback’s body. But there were more lines around his eyes. His baby fat was gone, his jawline more pronounced.
He was intimidatingly handsome. Time had done some really fucking good things to Mitchell Price’s face. I’d visited him in Chicago a few times over the years, but seeing him back here was something else.
Right now he was launching into a story about how the airline had lost his luggage on the flight back, last week. He had his lucky football in one of the suitcases, and he was saying he would have cried like a baby if it had been gone. I could still picture him, age sixteen, sitting on his bed while I sat on his desk chair, tossing that same lucky football up in the air over and over again.
Now that he was back in Amberfield, we could do that again. Talk and talk, in the same room, not just on the phone. We’d only called each other once a month while he’d been gone.
But now I could be close to him again any time I wanted.
I started shivering as Mitch finished his story, and I didn’t know if it was from the cold or if I was just overwhelmed.
Mitch paused, fixing his eyes on me and reaching out to whack me on the shoulder.
“Hey,” I protested, trying to push him back on his shoulder. He barely moved, of course. His body was sturdy like a tank.
“I just got back and already you’re tuning out when I talk, huh?” he teased.
“I wasn’t tuning out. You were talking about losing your luggage,” I said.
“And what was I talking about after that?”
“Um… quantum physics?” I said. “The Pythagorean Theorem? Light-speed travel?”
His mouth quirked up in a smile, a dimple appearing on his left side. I fucking loved when I made Mitch smile.
“I knew you were doing the thing,” he said.
I furrowed my brow at him, nodding idly. I couldn’t understand what he was saying because I kept getting distracted by his eyes.
“Yep. You’re totally doing it.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “What am I doing?”
“Evan,” he said, looking at me with what I hoped was love. “You’re getting lost. You’re doing the thing where you tunnel into your own head.”
“I never do that anymore,” I said.
“Calling bullshit on that,” he told me, his voice kind. “I just saw you do it. Twice.”
“Well, maybe I only do it around you.”
“My stories are just that boring, huh?”
“Shut up, Mitch,” I said. “I love listening to you. You could read me the dictionary and I wouldn’t be bored.”
“Don’t test me, I’ll do it,” he said, lifting an eyebrow. “Tomorrow night. Mitch’s Dictionary Storytime.”
I rolled my eyes. “I give it two minutes before you’re turning on ESPN instead.”
He snorted. I watched the light from the lamp posts dance across his face, illuminating every single freckle that I’d had memorized back in school. “I’m just saying,” he continued, “quit doing that. Tuning out while I talk. You always used to seem like you were somewhere else completely. Daydreaming about math problems or something.”
I chuckled. “Definitely wasn’t thinking about math in those moments.”
“Fine,” he relented. “Thinking about cute guys, then.”
Yeah. One cute guy. The same one every time, Mitch. Thinking about how badly I wanted you; trying not to get hard every time your skin brushed against mine.
Kind of like right now.
This should have been easy. All I had to do was pretend things were normal, like I had pretended every time I’d visited him in Chicago over the past fifteen years. Nothing had to change just because he was back in town now. Nothing had to change because he was single. He was a straight guy, and I was respectful of that.
“I’m not anywhere else right now,” I said. “I just don’t know what to do with myself now that you’re actually back.”
“Weirdo,” he said, pulling me into another quick, tight hug.