20. Davis

Agood way to see some ecosystems . God damn, Davis had said a lot of dumb shit in his life, whether it was to hide his drinking, his crushes, or the way he struggled to read, but this had to take the cake.

“Do you want to try out the disc golf course next weekend?” Alex asked, interrupting Davis’s mental spiral. “We can take the dogs. Caveman couldn’t catch a disc if his life depended on it, so he won’t mess up your score.”

“I’ve never been frisbee golfing,” Davis admitted, watching the dogs wrestle in the soft patch of grass outside.

“It’s disc golf,” Alex emphasized. “You can borrow a few of my old discs.”

“Mary Anne might eat it.” Davis grimaced. He had already lost his extra game controller to Mary Anne’s tendency to chew when she was bored.

“Eh, it’s worth it. Sharing is caring, right?” Alex whistled, and Caveman galloped over to him. Mary Anne, having lost her play partner, looked at Davis as if it was his fault.

“Hush, girl,” he said to the dog, laughing. “You’re going on a playdate with Caveman, anyway.” He turned back to Alex, who was engaged in a deep conversation of his own with Caveman, the subject apparently how stupid and cute the dog was. “Thank you for taking her today. This is a new friend, and I don’t know whether he likes dogs.”

“No sweat,” Alex said, because for him, it was easy. No worries about if a male friend would get the wrong idea or misinterpret a friendly hug. No worries about if he had pressed his luck by acting on his crush— a totally unattainable, pie-in-the-sky, ridiculous idea of a crush. But he liked Jeremy. As a friend. Because he had to.

He liked sharing things that he loved with his friends, and he guessed that Jeremy had decidedly moved from the “coworker” category to “friend” category.

As he reminded himself, he did things with friends all the time.

Well, at least he had back in West Virginia.

So it wasn’t weird to invite Jeremy out to go mountain biking, he rationalized. It wasn’t weird to make sure that Davis had a few different types of teas on hand because he had suggested that they start in the morning, right as the dew was burning off. Davis told himself it was because he knew that traffic was bad coming from the foothill cities, but deep in his heart, he knew it was because early morning was his favorite time to go mountain biking. The way the mist hovered right about the floor, the way the rising sun from the east caught the tips of the mountains and made the aspens shine in a manner that took his breath away. It was unlike anything he had ever seen in West Virginia, which was gorgeous in its own way. He wasn’t cut from the same type of cloth as Muir or Carson or Kimmerer. Words weren’t the way he was able to communicate nature. He could only show someone the beauty in person, not write about it.

And he wanted to show Jeremy.

Jeremy knew about words and colors and theories of design. Jeremy’s brain was fascinating to Davis, and he relished the times he got to pick it.

His ass wasn’t terrible, either.

After Alex, Mary Anne, and Caveman headed to Alex’s cabin, Davis put a kettle of water on in his kitchen and turned on the electric burner that reminded him of home. It’d take a few minutes to warm up, even more for the water to heat. Which gave him time to brew coffee because, even though he liked the sassafras tea, every other flavor he had tried at Jeremy’s house was disgusting. With the beverages prepped, Davis went outside to check on their bikes and was happy— and, frankly, shocked— to see that Jeremy had shown up early.

“Hi,” Davis said, trying not to stare. Jeremy had swapped his typical dress clothes for athletic gear— compression leggings under shorts that had to be at least two inches above his knee. A technical T-shirt that had a pattern laser cut along the shoulders. For ventilation, Davis assumed, though it let just enough skin show through. He was reminded how the girls at his high school used to wear shirts that showed just hints of skin, how he had always liked those hints of skin more than the full reveal.

“Traffic was great,” Jeremy said, answering a question that Davis hadn’t even asked.

“Awesome,” Davis responded. “I, uh, started coffee inside.” Davis nodded his head toward his cabin. As Jeremy opened his mouth to reply, probably something like I don’t drink coffee because it’s how I keep my skin glowing, Davis quickly added, “I boiled water for tea, too.”

The side of Jeremy’s mouth quirked up. “Do you mean microwave?”

Davis rolled his eyes. “I may be a hick from West Virginnie, but I had a roommate in college who studied abroad in London and came back telling us that microwaving water was a sin.”

Jeremy’s face split into a full grin. “Well, I guess I could go for a cuppa,” he said, adopting an over-the-top cockney accent.

“If you keep talking like that, I’m sending you the wrong GPS coordinates,” Davis replied, opening the screen door. He felt Jeremy follow him into the cabin and then realized it was the first time that Jeremy had been in his personal space. Davis had been in Jeremy’s house, had drunk his ginger beer and used his bathroom and gotten frustrated with the way he had decided to organize his kitchen as he fixed the doors. But now Jeremy was in Davis’s house, and it felt so much more precious. Fragile.

Fucking terrifying.

The man had fancy chairs that looked amazing but were wildly uncomfortable to sit on and a leather couch (he couldn’t imagine how terrible it would feel in the summer). Davis had a quilt from his aunt tossed over the back of his couch. The couch that Davis now realized had just been here when he moved in. He wished he had listened when his gram had taught him how to clean a couch, probably at some point in high school after he was learning to do laundry on his own.

“So, this is my mansion,” Davis said, the screen door slamming shut loudly behind him. It was a small place, but something about moving out of his home state and moving up in his career made this his tiny little kingdom. He had begun to personalize it more, with vintage national park posters, in addition to a concert flier from his friends’ band from back in West Virginia, made before they had gotten that small fifteen minutes of fame, and a few photos of Mary Anne. A portrait of Gram and all her grandchildren that had been taken at Sears in 1994. His slippers were by the door, his favorite seltzers in the fridge. His favorite video games that he could replay as many times as he wanted without roommates judging him. He liked that it was a place that he had to himself, a place where he didn’t have to worry about anyone looking over his shoulder.

Until now.

“It’s gorgeous,” Jeremy breathed out. “I mean, I know it’s just a little rustic cabin—”

“Hey,” Davis said, half-jokingly, half-defensively.

“No, no, shit— ah. That wasn’t the right phrase. It’s perfect because it’s a rustic cabin, but you can tell that whoever built it, care was taken in the construction.” Jeremy pointed to a small detail on the window frame, something that Davis had never noticed. A tiny little lip in the frame, between the top and bottom pane. “That’s called a lamb’s tongue, and it means that these are original windows. I’d guess they keep the heat in nicely?”

“Yeah, they do.” So well that on this crisp spring morning, Davis felt like the room was on fire.

“Amazing the way craftsmanship used to be,” Jeremy said, reaching one delicate finger out and running it along the windowsill. Davis had an absurd desire to pull that finger away from the window and pull it into his mouth, to suck and allow his cheeks to hollow out, to hint at other things he could do with his mouth.

Instead, he said yeah like a fucking idiot.

Jeremy blushed a bit. “Sorry, I loved the one architectural history class I took in undergrad, but I was dead set on my majors. Plus, well, architecture had too much math for me.” He flashed a dazzling smile at Davis and pointed to his own chest. “Art kid.”

“I’m happy with the place,” Davis said, moving away to look anywhere but at Jeremy. “I’ve lived in some odd places in my day.”

“My friend’s brother runs a summer camp not too far away from here, and he has some stories.” A shiver ran down Jeremy’s spine, and Davis remembered his house, everything so ornate and perfectly arranged. Of course Jeremy could never be comfortable in a cabin like Davis loved.

Of course.

“Before we head out, you should see the back porch,” Davis said. He nodded away from where Jeremy was looking at his couch before he could ask questions about the quilt. He opened the back door, the squeak of the hinge a small thing that reminded him of the quiet nights in the summer back home, when the lightning bugs would dance just above the grass. He felt Jeremy come out onto the porch behind him and heard the door close, but Jeremy remained silent. Davis filled that space. “I know it’s silly, but I remember how you talked about the view from your kitchen, and I thought you would like this view. You can see that peak over there. It’s one of the first ones to get snow in the winter, and there’s a fire watch tower up on top of it that’s now owned by the Forest Service, and the view from it is really cool and— sorry, that’s silly, you don’t care.”

He was nervous, and his accent got worse when he was nervous, his stupid twangy accent that made people think he was dumber than he already was—

“Not silly,” Jeremy said, his voice catching slightly. “Incredibly thoughtful.” He made a pleasant little noise, the type of sound that Davis would make when he found an especially rare wildflower. “Like you.”

Davis could have floated into the air with how he felt.

And instead of spilling out what he wanted to say, which was hey I’m queer, and I like you more than as a friend, he resorted back to his old habit of distracting himself with physical activity.

“Ready to ride?”