I Hate Summer (4 page)

His eyes widened and a blush spread across his pale cheeks. “But I’m… you’re not.”

“I know. And I don’t know why I look like I do any more than ye know why ye look how ye look. And I dun really mind but, yer should be careful.” I hitched a thumb in the direction of his brothers. “Some people are prissy about shit like yer touching another guy, eh?”

Josh looked round at his elder brothers, and they considered him with weary looks. Trystan gave a shake of his head, as if it was something he was used to dealing with.

“You can’t just touch whoever you like and ask whatever pops into your head, Josh,” Trystan said.

“I was just curious,” Josh replied innocently, and I noticed that his hand was still pressed against my side. I stepped out of his reach.

“Well, Ide might still be bothered, and what he was trying to say—though he was implying wrongly in mine and Vince’s case—is that if you go around touching up gay guys, people might get the wrong idea. Not that it’s wrong to be gay, just don’t hit on guys in front of your brothers. It’s weird, yeah?”

“What do you mean, ‘mine and Vince’s case’? I can think for myself you know.” Vince shot Trystan a hateful look, then turned his attention to me and his brother. “And if you’re a fag, that’s disgusting.”

“Gee, nice t’ see homophobia’s an adolescent trait in the Jackson family,” I muttered, but a smile quirked the edge of my lips as Trystan cuffed Vince round the side of the head.

I ducked back under the water, ran my hands quickly over my firm skin to loosen the worst of the sweat and dirt, and then I emerged spluttering and gave a brief shiver.

“Right, that’s about enough for me,” I said, mostly to Jorja, who was shivering with her arms wrapped over her chest as she watched Trystan and Vince argue with just a bit too much enthusiasm. “Come on, ye little perv.” I wrapped my hand around my sister’s upper arm and tugged her out of the lake.

“So this is why ye always seemed so keen to come on these holidays,” I commented dryly as I held a towel up for her to hide behind while she stripped out of her wet underwear and pulled on full thermals, a fleece, and jacket.

She giggled as she hurried into her clothes.

“Remind me why I did that again?” my sister slurred through chattering teeth as I got dressed.

“T’ perv on Trystan, as far as I’m aware,” I whispered back.

A dreamy look passed across her face as she stared over my shoulder. “Mmm…. I hope we can swim every day.”

I gave her a light clip round the ear as I shrugged my jacket on. “He’s too old for ye anyway. If yer gonna perv, at least do it on Vince; he’s not too bad for a kid.”

“Meh,” my sister grumbled as she tucked herself under my arm. We turned to watch the Jackson brothers continue messing about in the water. Vince Jackson was a good-looking boy and the family resemblance didn’t end there, but Jorja didn’t look impressed. “I canna stand homophobes, bro, I just wanna hit him now after what he said in the lake. Josh is cute though, right?” Her gaze turned mischievous and I knew exactly what she was getting at.

“Not going there, Jorja,” I said beneath my breath.

“Since when did ye have morals?” she chimed right back. I glanced over my shoulder to see the three Jacksons hurrying out of the lake to change back into their clothes. Josh was turned our way and he grinned at me as I looked over.

“Since I started being eyed up by a fifteen-year-old.” I couldn’t help but wonder if Trystan was going to be the least of my troubles.

I
WASN
’
T
prepared for sharing a tent at all. I mean physically, and no, I don’t mean I wouldn’t be able to control myself because I hadn’t jacked off. My tent was designed to keep two people warm in the depths of winter somewhere north of the Arctic Circle. So why did I have it in Scotland? Because two-man tents don’t work the same way if there is only one body inside. By myself, with my nice three-season sleeping bag I would have been the perfect temperature—maybe I would have had to stick a leg out if I couldn’t get a pitch where I’d be in the shade when the sun rose, but that would hardly have been a problem by myself. If I’d known I was sharing, I would have brought my old shitty tent, and not just because I’m super protective. But because it was going to be way,
way
too hot.

I sighed and slipped into my sleeping bag in just my boxers. We’d eaten and both families had sat around chatting for the few hours before night finally fell. I tucked my hands behind my head and stared at the roof of my tent. This was it; these were the last uncontaminated moments. Although in truth, my snail home had been destroyed the moment I’d laid Trystan’s roll mat down next to mine. Outside I heard the soft sound of footfalls on the mossy grass outside the tent.

“Knock, knock,” Trystan’s low voice sounded and he crawled in without waiting for an answer. “Wow, I thought I was joking when I warned you to stay away, but you’re actually not wearing any clothes.”

“Yeah, well.” I didn’t bother looking round at him. “If I’d known I was sharing I would’ve brought ma shitty tent. We’re going to boil, so unless yer sleeping bag is a piece o’ shit I wouldn’t leave those sexy jim-jams o’ yers on.”

“This your way of perving on me?”

“I got ma fill at the lake, ta.”

“So you’re admitting that you were looking?”

“No, I’m saying that if I’d wanted to, I could’ve.” He quirked an eyebrow and held my gaze in his as he hunched over and tugged his T-shirt off over his head. I determinedly kept my eyes on his face and away from the rippling muscles of his torso as he made an exhibition of himself.

“Are ye for real?” I asked with a scowl, as with a fixed grin he slipped into his sleeping bag beside mine.

“How’d you mean?” he asked.

“I mean, ye, Trystan Jackson, the boy wi’ the worst case o’ self-centered homophobia I’ve ever met—and I’ve met a lotta homophobes—agreeing to sleep in ma tent, spouting that shit to yer brother up at the lake, and now yer
flirting
wi’ me? So I’m asking: are ye for real?”

A faint frown lowered his brow. “It’s been a while, Ide.”

“Ye made us all have our own plates and cups and cutlery so ye didn’t have t’ accidentally use something I’d used and get contaminated by ma ‘condition.’”

“What’re you talking about? We’ve always done that—to save on washing up.”

I shook my head slowly. An electric lamp hung above the door, it filled the tent with muted light, and for a moment it was just the two of us contained in a world of nylon. His obliviousness was pretty damn convincing, but surely no one could be that ignorant? “No, Trys, we started it when ye found out I was gay. The washing-up reason doesn’t even make sense.”

“Huh?” He cocked his head to one side and for a moment looked genuinely puzzled, before he dismissed the whole thing with a hitch of one shoulder. “I guess so. But still, it’s been a while. Like I said, I lived with a fag for twelve months. And anyway, I wasn’t flirting, I was teasing. Your frustrated face amuses me.”

“Ye know there ain’t a lotta difference, between flirting and teasing?” I pressed with a condescending grimace.

“Yeah, there is. One I’m amused by pissing you off, and the other I want to get into your pants. I
don’t
want to get into your pants.”

I rolled my eyes at him. I could already smell the faint salty sweetness of his sweat mixed in with the freshness of the lake and his deodorant. It was filling the small space; it was pressing into the nylon walls; it was contaminating my tent second by second.

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t let ye anyway. I have some standards, ye know.” I was pretty certain that was the truth. It wasn’t as if I was some ugly closet case. I didn’t do boyfriends, but if I was inclined toward some company getting, it wasn’t exactly a challenge. I didn’t have to resort to seducing straight guys.

“So you don’t fancy me?”

I turned my head and fixed him with my most derisive stare. “Trystan, yer a smug egotistical bastard, ye have a pretty face, and ye have a fine body. And I think these things in exactly the same way ye think about a page-three girl: nice t’ look at, not t’ take home.”

“I’m not sure anyone’s ever called me pretty before.”

I opened my mouth, shut it again, and turned my gaze back up to the roof of the tent.

“Are ye going t’ be like this all week?” I said eventually.

“I’m just curious.”

“I thought ye said ye lived next door to a gay guy; didn’t ye get these questions out o’ yer system wi’ him?”

“Not really, I wasn’t interested in him. He looked like a regular fag.”

I rolled my eyes, wondering if he was even listening to what he was saying.

“But yer ‘interested’ in me?” I asked archly.

“Sure, apart from sometimes when you look like a girl—usually when you’re pissed—you seem like a regular guy, but you’re also pretty flagrant about it, like what you said to Josh.”

“Well I’m not embarrassed o’ the fact I like guys, and besides, ye all know, so what would be the point in dancing around the subject?”

“Huh, I guess,” he said absently as if the thought genuinely hadn’t occurred to him. The sound of his muffled yawn cut through the rustling silence that engulfed the tent. He gave a muted good night, and with nothing more he turned over and went to sleep.

I turned off the small lamp that had been valiantly holding back the falling dusk. The summer sun had finally lost its sway and returned the countryside to darkness. I’m not sure how long I lay there staring up at the black that obscured the space above me. It wasn’t the lucid gray-and-yellow-tinged darkness I’d grown accustomed to in the city. This was the utter darkness that was removed from civilization. Only the rustling of the wind against my tent, the steady breaths of the sleeping man next to me, and the creak and cricketing of the wildlife beyond our cocoon could be heard; the silence was deafening.

When I woke up, I was too hot. I’d managed to work myself half free of my sleeping bag and my legs were sticking out the side of it, but I was still too hot because Trystan had decided to join me on my half of the tent.

“Yer fricking kidding me…,” I grumbled, my voice still low and gruff with sleep.

You read about people getting enjoyment from waking up entangled with an attractive person. Well, that’s a load of rubbish. Attractive or ugly did not change the fact that Trystan’s breath was hot and his skin was sweaty.

Trystan had discarded his sleeping bag completely. He was curled on his side with that fine ass of his pointed away from me. His face was tucked in against my neck, and he was breathing hot, musty morning breath into my ear. And his legs—those toned and tanned legs—were wrapped through mine, clammy and slightly hot where our skin was touching.

I detached myself and he garbled some half-asleep complaint into my ear as he pressed his face in closer.

I really could not get my head around this man, this version of Trystan Jackson that was so okay with gay men he didn’t even stir in his sleep. It seemed implausible to me that this could be reality. I’d spent four years avoiding a holiday I should have loved because I’d been fed up of dealing with a frankly extreme level of homophobia from the same man who was now trying to snuggle back in closer to me. I hadn’t been making that stuff up about the bowls. He really had insisted. I remembered because even though Trystan had always been a bit of a bastard, the extreme level he’d achieved when he found out I was gay had been a real shock to the system. Yet here he was breathing into my ear, a funny little smile quirking the edge of his lips as some dream kept him amused.

With a roll of my eyes, I got up quietly and escaped into the blissful cool of the early morning.

I had always been an early riser, and I stretched and enjoyed the dew-covered dawn. I pulled deep breaths of cold, crisp air into my lungs as I tugged some clothes on—ones Jerry Jackson would find acceptable, I hoped.

It was going to be a scorching hot day if the cloudless blue sky had anything to say about it, so I made the most of the blissful cool as I made a flask of tea. Jorja was the first to join me. She shot me a mute nod as she wordlessly took the cup I offered. She didn’t speak until it was mostly empty.

“So, how was it?” she asked in a low voice, since our camp was beginning to stir.

“Hot,” I answered bluntly, and the look she gave me let me know that she expected more details. “Ye would o’
loved
it, sis: he’s a snuggler.”

Her pale eyebrows skyrocketed up her forehead and disappeared into the blonde sweeping fringe that was tucked behind her ear.

“Yer fricking kidding me?” she exclaimed in a stage whisper. I responded with an exaggerated shake of my head. “Did ye snuggle him back?”

“What d’ye think?” I asked, knowing full well that she knew the answer to that question, but it didn’t make her look any happier.

“Yer a crazy, crazy man, Ide.”

“Having a little bit of self-respect and restraint do not make me crazy.”

Jorja spluttered, “Right now I’m honestly doubting whether ye are actually gay? Have ye been lying to me this whole time?” She dropped her face into a look of mock outrage. “Ye just said it so ye could see ma friends’ boobs, didn’t ye?”

I stuck my tongue out at her, but the rest of our conversation was cut short as we were joined round the little stove. I handed out more tea and conversation turned toward planning our first walk of the week.

B
Y
THE
third morning of waking up with Trystan’s face pressed into my neck and his legs entwined with mine, I was resigned to my fate. The hand that slipped passively across my torso was new, but really, sleeping Trystan was kind of sexy. And I didn’t particularly mind the opportunity to wake up to a bit of gratuitous perving each morning. I was an early riser, and it seemed like he was a heavy sleeper and he never did more than grumble when I rolled out from underneath him.

It may have only been the start of day three, and I didn’t want to jinx anything, but so far I was enjoying the family holiday. It shouldn’t have been that surprising; the kind of stuff we were doing—hiking and mountain biking—was what I did in my spare time anyway. Which was part of the reason I’d always resented the Jackson brothers; they had made me dread and hate a holiday that I should have loved. It wasn’t that Trystan was suddenly being nice to me or anything. He still had a sharp tongue, but his comments were in jest and lacked the downright nastiness that I had learned to expect from him when we’d been younger.