100 Days (31 page)

By the song’s end, Hugh drumming him out with the same rhythm that brought him in, Jake is flying again. He grins and takes his bow, smiles in re­sponse to the wink April throws his way and accepts another passing kiss from Aid­en as he takes his place in backup once more.

“Just you wait. He’s closing the first set with it,” April whispers, leaning close enough to bump her shoulder against his as the next song begins. “He’s really special, Jakey. He’s good for you.”

“Yeah, he is,” Jake whispers back, and hooks his pinky finger around hers.

The rest of the first set passes in a blur. The stage is a bubble—past the bright lights trained on the band, Jake can hear the crowd, can even see silhouettes beneath the marquee, but he’s in a world where nothing exists apart from Aiden and the music. Before he knows it, April is ushering every­one off the stage save for Aiden, Hugh and Liam.

Please, Aiden,
Jake thinks as April squeezes his arm. Aiden loops an electro­acoustic guitar across his body and take a seat on a wooden stool before the microphone.
Please tell me you feel the same.

Aiden begins to strum, picking out a seemingly random tune to bridge the break in music, and leans forward to speak into the mic. “All right, folks, we’re gonna take a quick break so you can all recover from how awesome we are… just kidding! But before we go, we’re going to play one last song for you. Are there any Barenaked Ladies fans in the house?”

There are some scattered but loud cheers, plus a couple of outright screams from the back. Jake cranes his neck to see a handsome older man with glasses and a bowtie and a woman with dark hair and perfectly applied red lip­stick hold their half-empty cocktails up in the direction of the stage, clearly not caring that most of the twenty-something crowd has turned to look at them.

Aiden laughs, and as he begins to strum the opening bars of a song that Jake doesn’t recognize, eliciting more screams from the back, he leans forward again and says, “Looks like I’m singing for you guys, then! This one’s called ‘Easy.’”

When he starts singing, his vocals are bright, upbeat, at odds with lyrics that seem to be telling off the subject of the song, the singer in love with someone who doesn’t seem to feel the same way. Jake’s blood runs cold. He grabs April’s hand and holds on as tightly as he dares.

“What the fuck?” he hisses at her, but she simply holds up a finger, her hazel eyes still trained on the stage, her smile stretching wide.

He follows her gaze. Aiden is still singing, his voice strong and assured and undercut with a tenderness that takes the edge off Jake’s anxiety.

What are you telling me?
he wonders desperately, and then Aiden begins to sing of someone forgetting what they were hiding for, someone being easy to adore even though they want to run away, and it becomes clear as crystal. It’s a response to Jake’s call; it’s all or nothing; it’s a
plea.
Isn’t it?

“See?” April says into his ear. “See what I mean?”

Rendered mute, he nods at her, and his heart leaps into his throat when he turns his attention back to the stage. Aiden watches him, smiling and singing with an astounding conviction. The rich, smooth timbre of his voice only grows stronger as he dives into the final chorus, and Jake’s resolve increases tenfold. No more fear, no more excuses, no more being afraid of a future he can’t possibly know. He’s going to tell Aiden that he’s in love with him, and Aiden will tell him that he hasn’t fallen in love alone, and Jake will finally find out exactly what “I love you” tastes like as he breathes it into Aiden’s mouth.

“Thank you, Cheer Up Charlie’s!” Aiden cries, wrapping up the song to rapturous applause. Jake glances out over the crowd and can see almost every single person in the courtyard gazing up at Aiden adoringly; he wonders again why this isn’t what Aiden does every single night. “We’ll be back in fifteen, so don’t go anywhere!”

And then Jake is moving, pushing his way back up onto the stage where Aiden is clapping Liam and Hugh on the back in turn, and he takes a deep breath to ask Aiden to go somewhere they can talk in private—

“So what do you think about doing this for a living?” Hugh asks, eyes trained on Aiden, and the floor falls out from beneath Jake’s feet.

Aiden openly gapes at Hugh and Jake just stands there, fists opening and closing by his sides, his smile fading

“What do you mean?” Aiden asks.

“The band’s breaking up after this tour,” Hugh says, “and a few of us are moving to New York to start a new thing, see if we can make it. April doesn’t wanna sing lead, Will’s staying back home for good now, and we were going to try to find someone there, but dude… we already know you, you fit well with us, you know?”

Jake’s ears are roaring, and he can barely hear Aiden’s sputtered response. Never has he hated someone as much as he hates Hugh right now. He hates all five feet, six inches of him, hates his stupid red hair and squinty brown eyes and offensively green shoes. He can’t even muster the wherewithal to wonder why April didn’t warn him and he feels like an idiot, working himself up all night to tell Aiden that he saw the look in his eyes, because now he’s witnessing an entirely different look—as if Aiden has seen his entire future flash in front of him, a future brighter than anything Jake can possibly offer. He’ll go to New York to start making the music that still lingers in patches on the skin of Jake’s back; he’ll become the nomad Jake was afraid of when he agreed to come along for the road trip. He’s back standing in the shadow of a mountain.

“Just think about it, okay? You don’t have to give me an answer now,” Hugh is saying with a tone of finality, and as he passes them to join the rest of the band at the bar, Aiden turns to Jake and opens his mouth.

“You should do it,” Jake blurts, cutting off whatever Aiden was about to say.

“Oh sure, just waste my entire college education,” Aiden replies, but it’s too late. Jake already knows that Aiden wants to go more than anything; he’s been shifting for weeks already. They’ll get back to Brunswick at the end of this trip and it will be over. It isn’t as if Jake can just pull up stakes and move to New York—he has a career of his own to think about starting, and the last time he checked, being a groupie wasn’t a viable profession.

“Well, like Hugh said… think about it,” he manages, pasting on a smile that he hopes doesn’t look as fake as it feels. “You’re… different when you perform. Something about it just seems right.”

Aiden scoffs and shakes his head, and guides Jake offstage with a hand at the small of his back.

As they stand at the bar waiting to be served, Aiden nudges his shoulder and asks, “So what did you think?”

“You were really good,” Jake replies, mouth dry.

“Hey, what were you gonna tell me earlier?”

“When?”

“I asked you why you were in such a good mood, and you said you’d tell me later,” Aiden says.

“Oh,
that.
Nothing, really,” Jake says, affecting an air of nonchalance and turning his gaze on the crowd.
Nothing, except I’m crazy about you. Nothing, except I would do pretty much anything to hear you say that you love me back. Nothing, except I’ve been daydreaming about what my life will look like in five, twenty, fifty years, and in every single future, there you are by my side, holding not just my hand, but all of me.

Jake doesn’t say any of this. How could he? Aiden deserves to have nothing stand in his way, whatever his decision about New York. He deserves to be free, to have his name up in lights, to not be tied to Maine while Jake tries to figure out where he’s going and how he’s going to get there.

April catches Jake’s eye as she winds through the crowd with Marcie in tow and gives him a questioning thumbs up. He simply shakes his head and scuffs his shoe against the bar’s poured concrete base.

“Where do you go?” Aiden asks with a chuckle. Jake cuts off his train of thought and glances at him with a raised eyebrow. Aiden continues, “When you get that faraway look in your eyes?”

“Are you saying that I’m vacant?” Jake replies, dredging humor from reserves he thought pretty depleted.

“No, no. No, it’s… you look like you’re in this whole other world, some­place I can’t find you,” Aiden says. He reaches down to link their fingers, and Jake tries not to tense.

He looks down at their joined hands, rubs Aiden’s thumb, and says, “I don’t go anywhere.”

“Not even sometimes?” Aiden presses him.

“Maybe, I…” Jake trails off, finally letting the question bear the weight Aiden obviously intends it to. And he sees that it’s true; for weeks he’s been skirting the edges of a brave new world, dancing within reach of possi­bility and metamorphosis, but now comes the reality check. Now comes the break of day, chasing away the artifice and bathing everything in fact. He shakes his head, and finally answers, “No. No, I’m always here. With you.”

Aiden smiles, noses along his jaw and whispers into his ear, “Good.”

Yeah,
Jake thinks sadly.
Good.

8,072 miles

Day Sixty-five: Oklahoma

When they walk into the lobby of the Route 66 in Clinton, it is as if they have passed into a bygone era. Aiden taps his foot to the Rolling Stones’ classic rock’n’roll cover of “Route 66” playing over the PA system, and as Jake catches sight of the classic red Chevy parked in front of the curved windows, Aiden watches him light up.

“Oh my god,” Jake breathes, slowly approaching the car with his hands twitch­ing at his sides. “This is a 1957 Chevy Bel Air. What I wouldn’t give to own one of these.”

“Is grand theft auto a felony in Oklahoma?” Aiden stage-whispers, and Jake casts him a wistful look.

“You’ll just have to buy one for me when you wrap your first big budget shoot,” he says his gaze full of reverence as he returns it to the vintage car.

Aiden hums noncommittally. For once, he doesn’t want to talk about his intended career path—as of late, it has begun to feel like the wrong fit for him. He still loves the prospect of directing, but now that he’s no longer surrounded by film day in and day out, he finds that his passion for it is somehow muted, as if someone turned it down with a dimmer switch. But the second Hugh ap­proached him with the idea of fronting the new band and helping to create and perform original music—in New York, no less—something seemed to click.

“Ready?” Jake asks, pulling him from his thoughts. Aiden nods, and after they sign the guest register and pay their admission fee to the chatty proprietor, they set off on their self-guided tour.

Aiden thought the glass-tiled front of the museum looked cool, but it’s noth­ing compared to the content of the museum itself. Each room’s theme is a different decade in the highway’s history and features exhibits of vintage cars from as far back as the thirties. It’s more like an art gallery than a museum. The history in the place is overwhelming and Aiden drinks it all in, his eyes roaming over the old-style gas pumps and a wall full of postcards from all of the states Route 66 winds its way through. The rooms are connected by tunnel-like hallways, the walls plastered with newspapers whose headlines proclaim
MARILYN DEAD; PRESIDENT KENNEDY IS SLAIN
and
THE WAR IS OVER!

“I’m glad we have Leona,” Jake says after they’ve taken turns posing with the VW camper covered in crazy sixties hippie designs. “I don’t think we’d have made it far in one of these.”

“Yeah, being on top of each other like that all the time…” Aiden trails off, shooting him a wink.

“Please, like you’d complain about me being on top of you.”

“Never said I would.”

“In fact, I think it’s your favorite thing,” Jake continues loftily, bending to examine a model car inside a glass case—a yellow 1967 Ford Mustang, Aiden reads from his position opposite. He glances through the glass at Jake, at the fascinated look in his eyes and the way his deep green irises reflect the yellow of the model car and suddenly take on a unique shade, one that Aiden hasn’t seen in nearly fifteen years.

“And what makes you think that?” Aiden asks in a low voice, though there’s no one else around.

“After all the times we’ve had sex, what
wouldn’t
make me think that?” Jake asks, though it’s more a statement than a question. Slowly, he circles around the case to back Aiden up against it, his brow furrowed as his eyes drift down Aiden’s body. He cocks his head to the right, tenses his shoulders and lets out a low “
Mmm.
”

“What are you—” Aiden begins, but Jake silences him with a finger pressed against his lips. Eyes closed, clearly trusting Aiden to keep watch, Jake loops his arms around Aiden’s neck and pulls their bodies closer together.

“Fuck,” Jake whispers, the fingers of one hand carding through Aiden’s hair. “Right—right there… fuck, Jake, harder…”

“Do I really sound like that?” Aiden asks, because there’s no way he does, so raw and sexual and… hot.

Jake nods slowly, and his breathing grows shallow and harsh, hitching in his chest. His arms shiver and he crowds Aiden closer to the case. Its corner presses between his shoulder blades.

“Just a little more,” Jake pleads, his voice high and desperate, and it’s as if all the blood in Aiden’s body just
stops
and rushes south. He clenches his fists, thinking of cold showers and dead bodies and breasts and
anything
to keep from having to wait out a boner in the middle of a fucking museum. “Come on, fuck me, make me yours.”

“Jake, you have to st—”

When Jake opens his eyes his pupils are blown wide, and Aiden falls silent. Jake leans so close that their lips are a hair’s breadth apart, and though his face blurs, Aiden knows that their eyes are locked. “Please,
please…”

“Someone’s coming,” Aiden blurts, and Jake abruptly steps back, hands falling to his sides.

As if nothing has happened, he goes back to looking at the exhibits, casting one salacious look over his shoulder and stating, “No one’s coming, Dan.”

Aiden feels as if he’s been knocked over sideways. How could this Jake—his favorite Jake, all sultry tease and subtle love—have eluded him for so long?