In the Distance (17 page)

With a low curse, Tyler jiggled the key in his front door in a frustrated effort to escape inside. When I reached out to touch his sleeve, he yanked his arm away and shot me a look. “Just leave, okay?”

“Not until you listen to what I have to say.”

“Is stalking on your list of activities for today?”

“No, but it would be nice if you’d actually look at me so I can get this off my chest before I leave.”

Tyler took a deep breath and finally turned to face me, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Just answer one question for me, and then I’ll leave. Why are you so upset? You’ve obviously made up your mind to believe all the crap Ethan says about me, which would only prove you right instead of pissing you off. So I’m left wondering, if I’m as shitty as you’ve been led to believe, why does the thought of me going home with some random guy bother you so much?”

His chin jutted forward. “That’s two questions, and it doesn’t matter.”

His words said one thing, but his eyes held another answer altogether. I growled in frustration, refusing to let tonight end like this.

Now or never.

Without overthinking it, I reached out to tug him closer to me. His eyes widened for a fraction of a second, then I felt him relax against me. With my heartbeat pounding in my ears, I wrapped my arms tighter around him as I tried to pour all of my own doubts and insecurities into this last kiss. This wasn’t some random fuck and chuck. This was Tyler I was kissing and I needed him to feel it. The heat and need and lust and want that seemed to always exist when we touched flared again, giving me a sliver of hope this wasn’t the end. When I pulled back, we were both short of breath.

Unable to let him go, I pulled back just enough to look him in the eye and said, “It does fucking matter.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Tyler

Trevor leaned his forehead against mine and sighed. “I know you’re still pissed at me, but please, don’t make me leave.”

When I didn’t respond, he quickly added, “I’m not asking because I’m trying to get in your pants. I’m asking because I only have a few more hours left in Seattle, and the thought of spending them without you is unbearable.”

“Trevor. I don’t know.”

“I admit I’m an ass. I’ll admit I should have thought through the whole tip thing before leaving it on the table like that. I’ll even admit I hated every fucking minute yesterday knowing you were within arm’s reach and yet I had to act like we were just casual acquaintances so you wouldn’t get any shit from that asshole Kitterick, or Ethan and Jamie. After everything that’s happened, I’ll understand if you want me to leave. But I’ve never lied to you. Not once. Seeing you was the one thing I looked forward to out of this entire weekend. Not Jamie. Not Natalie. And certainly not anyone at the gala last night. Just you.”

I’d been alone for so long I’d begun to doubt anyone would ever say anything like that to me. And there was every possibility Trevor was simply telling me what I wanted to hear. It was a catch-22, and I felt damned if I did and damned if I didn’t.

“I’m so fucking confused, Trevor. I don’t want you to leave, but I can’t lie and say I don’t need time to wrap my brain around all this.”

My heart lurched when Trevor’s face fell. It was the truth, I didn’t want him to leave. But more than wanting a warm body in my bed, I needed time to figure out if I could handle a warm body in my bed without putting any kind of label on it. I’d learned the hard way that trust was a fragile thing. I wanted to trust Trevor, to trust everything he’d said tonight, but I wasn’t sure I could trust him enough to let him in and not give him a piece of my heart in the process. Maybe he hadn’t left with anyone last night, but what about the next time he went to a party and was surrounded by people in his own league? People who understood him far better than I ever could. People who’d been to college, or hell, who’d most likely traveled the world? The simple answer was, I couldn’t compete with any of it. Not now. Not ever.

“As shitty as this sounds, I just need some time to figure out if this is what I want.”

He pressed his lips to mine one last time before releasing me, then turned to leave. Each step he took made my stomach turn. Unable to take it anymore, I closed the door and leaned against it.

When had everything gotten so fucked-up? What had started out as us having fun with no strings attached had suddenly become a clusterfuck of mammoth proportions. I’d wanted so badly to able to take whatever time I had with Trevor and enjoy the physical ride without letting my emotions and doubts screw it up. But I wasn’t sure I could separate the two. What it all boiled down to was trust. Could I trust Trevor to tell me the truth, even when the truth hurt? And, more importantly, could I trust myself to allow Trevor back in, even though I feared it would end up biting me on the ass?

* * *

Trevor’s name flashed on my phone’s screen and for a split second, I contemplated letting it go to voice mail. It had been twenty-four hours since I’d last seen him. Twenty-four hours of doing nothing but turning over everything that had happened, from the moment he walked into Bistro 30 last fall to closing the door on him last night. The cynical part of me that had serious trust issues wanted to ignore what happened last night and pretend everything was normal. If I let everything we’d done fade away until we’d both forgotten about it, there would be no risk of falling for Trevor.

Trevor had sent a text when he was back at his hotel for the night, and another one when he boarded his plane back to New York in the morning. Instead of rehashing the weekend, he just wanted to let me know he was thinking of me. No promises were made. No sexual innuendos thrown out to lighten the mood. Just a few texts that gave me hope we might be able to survive the potholes we’d had to navigate this weekend.

I still wasn’t sure where any of this was heading, but I was tired of trying to deny how much I wanted this to be more than a casual hookup. Looking down at his name on my phone, I realized letting his call go to voice mail was pretty fucking juvenile considering how much had happened, not just this weekend, but over the past four months. I took a deep breath and swiped my finger over the phone icon.

“Hey.”

“Hey. I know you’re probably wiped out, but I wanted to see how school and work went today? Please don’t shut me out.”

I closed my eyes, his plaintive tone tugging at my heart. Despite me turning him out last night, he was still trying to make this work. Some of the tension I’d been holding on to all weekend receded.

“I’m exhausted but I’m not complaining. What about you? Isn’t it past your bedtime?”

Thankfully, Trevor’s tone turned playfully indignant. “Is this another jab at my age? I’ll have you know I took a nice, long nap this afternoon.”

I couldn’t help it, I had to laugh. Trevor tried to sound affronted but ended up laughing with me. I could almost hear the smile in his voice when he added, “God, that made me sound ancient.”

I settled back on the futon, cradling the phone against my ear and shoulder. “Nah. But it does give me extra leverage on you. I might have to drop that little comment near Ethan if you don’t behave.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.”

Trevor paused just long enough that I thought I’d pissed him off, when he said, “I realize now it was the right decision, but I want you to know I didn’t want to leave. You have no idea how badly I wished we’d had one more day, just to sort all this shit out. It’s all I’ve been thinking about all day. Actually, you’re all I’ve been thinking about all day.”

Part of me was ecstatic to hear him say that, but another part was scared shitless. I wasn’t used to being this vulnerable. I’d done that once, and soon after found myself sleeping on a cold, hard bench in Woodland Park. The same questions I’d been asking myself since I’d first gone out with Trevor raced through my mind: What are we doing? If he saw the real me, not the Tyler I tried to be for him and everyone else, but the still-scared and lonely kid with no family and no money, would he even still want me?

The razor’s edge I’d felt myself straddling since Trevor had driven me home months ago had become too thin to balance on anymore. Each side had its dangers: loneliness, a broken heart, shame, vulnerability. If I’d been religious, I would have closed my eyes and prayed to some higher being for help. Instead, I simply closed my eyes and jumped.

“Me, too.”

A soft sigh came through the earpiece, and I instantly wished Trevor was sitting right beside me rather than in his apartment in New York. “It’s late and you’re tired and I should let you get to bed, but I honestly don’t want to hang up.”

My heart, which had been pounding in my chest, fluttered.

“I’m not that tired. Unless you need to go.”
Please
,
don’t say you have to go.

“I’m good for at least another hour.”

I couldn’t hold back my laughter when I said the first thing that popped into my head, “That’s what he said.”

“Killing me, Smalls. Killing me.”

For the next hour, we talked about anything and everything. He asked me to tell him about Ollie and Megan, and for the first time in two years, it felt good to talk about the good times we’d had before things fell apart. In turn, he told me stories about his parents, making me grateful he’d had parents who genuinely seemed to love and accept him. When we’d talked enough about our families, I asked about how things were going with Natalie and was treated to a few funny stories about on-camera goof-ups, as well as his upcoming itinerary. She was flying out to New York to do a segment on some show called
Taste of the Big Apple
, then Trevor was back in Seattle in mid-March for a few book signings with Jamie in Vancouver. He never mentioned how long he’d be in Seattle, but I tapped in the date into my phone’s calendar, just in case, so I could ask for a night off from Bistro 30.

The conversation shifted to culinary school. Trevor asked about my new semester of classes, asking questions about the curriculum even I didn’t know the answers to. “What do you think you would have studied if you hadn’t gone to culinary school?”

The question came out of nowhere. It wasn’t as if I’d never thought about it. In the beginning, I’d thought about it nonstop.

“I’m not sure. At one point, I’d thought about becoming a teacher. I wasn’t the most outgoing kid at my school, and I certainly wasn’t the highest academic achiever. I liked working with my hands and loved taking industrial arts classes. My senior year, I had this tech teacher, Mr. Frazier, who was quiet but awesome. We could all tell he loved his job, but it was more than that. He made me feel like I could do anything, that I just needed the right tools to get it done. When I graduated, I wanted to be like him. Somehow help kids learn skills that can help them get a job in the real world. Not everyone is cut out to go to college, but everyone needs a plumber, or a mechanic, or an electrician.”

Saying it all out loud hurt worse than I thought it would. I could still remember how much I’d loved working with my hands in tech class, but now, it was as if that happened to someone else.

“It never would have happened anyway. My parents had my entire future mapped out for me, from SPU to my degree plan in accounting. At least in culinary school I get to use my hands and be creative.”

When Trevor didn’t say anything, I immediately wanted to take it all back. It didn’t matter what I’d wanted once upon a time. The reality was I was lucky to be in school, any kind of school. With no financial support from my parents, even the prospect of attending the local community college had seemed unattainable. Until, that is, Ethan had given me a job and helped me secure not only the financial aid I needed to attend Seattle’s Culinary Institute, but the scholarship that helped me cover all the extras that went along with the course work. Turning up my nose at that kind of opportunity would be a slap in the face to Ethan, besides cutting off any chance of being able to live comfortably one day. To look at it any other way was foolhardy.

Uncomfortable with the lingering silence, I craned my neck to check out the time on the microwave. I’d started my day at the butt crack of dawn, and here it was well after midnight. I knew if I was tired, Trevor had to be close to passing out. Just as I started to say we should go, Trevor asked, “Have you thought about being a culinary teacher?”

I had two choices. I could lie and say no, then make an excuse to get off the phone so I wouldn’t have to feel like shit for lying to Trevor when we’d both agreed to be honest with each other. The other choice I had was to tell him about the meeting I had scheduled with my academic advisor in a few weeks.

“Yeah. But, I’m not sure it would work out.”

“Why not? It sounds perfect for you.”

Why not? For one thing, I still hadn’t mentioned it to Ethan and Jamie. Even thinking about it made me feel like I was taking all the time and hard work they’d invested in me and throwing it in their faces. Ethan talked nonstop about how crappy it was going to be to train a new sous-chef when I finally moved on from Bistro 30. And even though they thought they were being sneaky about it, I knew the increase in my scholarship amount had come from two not-so-very-anonymous benefactors. The meeting with the advisor next week was supposed to determine if I’d even be able to keep the scholarship Ethan had established for me if I changed my degree plan, in addition to how many hours the extra classes would be taking away from my time at Bistro 30. The idea of going into culinary education was enticing, but when I thought about it, I didn’t see how I was going to be able to pull it off.

“I’m checking into it.”

“I hope so, it sounds like something you really want to do.”

I cleared my throat. “Maybe. It’s really just an idea. Nothing’s set in stone. So do me a favor, and don’t tell anyone about this, okay?”

“Who would I tell? Wait. Is this about Jamie and Ethan?”

“No. Maybe. It’s just, they’ve been so good to me. I know it’s not a big deal, it just seems like I’d be throwing all their help in their faces if I dump the culinary arts program. I’m the one they put all this time and money into. My own family hasn’t even done half as much as Jamie and Ethan. Abandoning the idea of being a chef would just be a waste. For all of us.”

Trevor’s sigh made me regret answering his question. “Tyler, you know they don’t care about the money, right? They care about you. If you feel this strongly about it you should talk to them. I know Jamie. He’d understand. They both will.”

“Maybe. Let’s just drop it, okay? Seriously, it was just an idea, nothing more. Still, don’t say anything to them, okay? It would be silly to worry them over something that’s probably never going to happen. I mean, I like helping out people like Sam in class, and yeah, it’s been fun working with the elementary kids, but I just don’t see anything like that being a career option for me.”

Why had I even mentioned it? It wasn’t like I’d ever talked to Trevor about my life before Sharpe’s on Fifth until tonight. He had no clue what it was like to have his dreams ripped away from him in the blink of the eye because he was gay. From everything he’d said, his parents were awesome, and even he admitted he’d never had to work for anything in his life until he came back from Paris. Sure, I might be just some trainee sous-chef, but Ethan and Jamie trusted me. They trusted me to show up on top, learn the trade and do my job.

“Sure, no worries. Just think about what I said. All they want is for you to be happy. Speaking of being happy, I know it’s none of my business and you can tell me to shut up anytime you want—”

“Just spit it out, Trevor.”

“I think you should consider going to see your brother and sister.”

Out of everything he could have said, that was the last thing I expected to hear. I opened my mouth several times, but I didn’t know what to say.