100 Days (48 page)

A soft guitar intro fills the bar, and Jake shifts uncomfortably, his body lan­guage matching Aiden’s inner turmoil. As Aiden approaches Jake’s table, April’s haunting voice floats through the speakers and makes him catch his breath.

Bending down to speak into Jake’s ear, his heart louder than his words, Aiden asks, “Is she on her own tonight?”

Jake starts and looks up at Aiden through wide, panicked eyes. He visibly swallows, flicks his gaze toward the stage and answers in a thin, rasping voice, “Mostly.”

Aiden gestures to the empty chair next to him and Jake nods. “How’s she doing?”

“Some upbeat stuff, but mostly ballads. Seems like that kind of crowd,” he comments, glancing around as if to ensure he looks anywhere but at Aiden. “I requested ‘My Love’ by Sia about an hour ago. She was flawless, as usual.”

“The
Twilight
soundtrack, really?” Aiden asks, attempting to overcome the awkwardness with their usual good-natured ribbing.

Jake looks at him sharply and then gives in to a wry smile. “Just because they’re bad movies, doesn’t mean the song is any less beautiful.”

“It
is
beautiful,” Aiden concedes, “and at least
Eclipse
was the best one of the series.”

“Probably had something to do with David Slade.”

“Probably.”

They fall silent. Jake picks at the label on his almost empty beer bottle and Aiden fiddles with his suitcase handle, trying not to watch him. He doesn’t want to be the first one to break, not this time. Not when, after getting over the initial shock, Jake looks utterly unsurprised to see him.

When Aiden looks up at the stage, he sees April watching him with kind eyes. She seems to be singing for them, and all that is broken between them.

At length, the better part of the label shredded, Jake stills his hands and turns toward Aiden. Without meeting his eyes, he asks, “Why are you here?”

Aiden’s anger flares back to life, and he crosses his arms over his chest to keep from reaching out and shaking him. “You know exactly why I’m here, Jake. I’m here because this isn’t finished, not by a long shot.”

Jake shakes his head, blinking rapidly. “I wanted to…”

“Wanted to what, Jake? Wanted to see me free so that I could go off and ‘live my dreams’ without you?” Aiden hisses, voice low so as not to cause a scene. He still has
some
manners. “Newsflash: I don’t need you to rescue me, and I’m not your fucking holiday pet. I’m not someone you can keep around while I’m fun and then kick to the curb whenever it’s fucking convenient.”

“That is
not
what this is,” Jake says. The anger in his tone gives Aiden a per­verse sense of satisfaction.

“That’s
exactly
what this is,” he counters, leaning forward over the table. “This is you suddenly having to stay the course with another person, and that
terrifies
you. But why wouldn’t it? Especially after
all
you went through with Max, and
all
those boys that turned out not to measure up after you sort of fell for them, and let’s not forget how my leaving for a year was
all
about you.”

“Don’t—”

“You owe me a fucking explanation, Jake Valentine.”

“I know. I…” Jake trails off, shaking his head. His eyes are trained on the bottle in front of him and he pulls his Saint Christopher from beneath his shirt, running his fingers along the chain and capturing the silver disc between his thumb and forefinger. “All of this, it’s… it’s too much all at once. You, and this trip, and L.A.—something has to give sooner or later, right? Because I can’t possibly have all of it.”

“Why not?”

“Because no one gets
everything
they want,” Jake says, and finally looks up. His eyes are close to brimming over, and the sight of it stings. “Who the hell am I that I get to be with you
and
take you with me to do something that’s my dream?”

“Jake—”

“But that’s exactly it, Aiden—
my
dream. Your dream is up on that stage,” he barrels on, gesturing to the band. “And I can’t take that away from you. I won’t.”

“So why didn’t you even
think
about New York again?” Aiden asks. “Better yet, why didn’t you even give me a chance and
talk
to me about it before making me chase you all the way to fucking
Alaska
?”

“I’m sorry—”

“And how
dare
you ever say that you’re afraid
I’d
leave
you.
You remember that, on Santa Monica Pier? How you said that
you
didn’t trust
me?”

“Of course I do—”

“I mean, you do get that, by trying to make this about me, you’ve actually made it all about you, right?”

“Aiden, I’m
sorry!”
Jake exclaims, earning them a few dirty looks from nearby patrons. In a lower, yet somehow even less controlled voice, he says, “I’m sorry, I
am.
I told you not to follow me; I never wanted this.”

“Of course I followed you, you fucking idiot. You took what we were finally starting to build together, and you threw it away just to prove yourself right. And I need you to know exactly how much you fucked up. ‘Sorry’ isn’t going to cut it this time, Jake, because you know something?” Aiden’s hands shake and his voice becomes less and less steady. “You read the lyrics. You saw what they said. I wanted to be the score to your movie. That’s kind of how I started to think of us lately—me the music, and you the pictures. But maybe I should just be a deleted scene. Maybe that’s all I was ever going to be. And if you want to leave me on the cutting room floor, then
leave
me there. I don’t want to chase you anymore.”

Jake’s hand shoots out to grab Aiden’s wrist. “I wanted to come back to you as soon as the plane took off,” he says in a rapid near-whisper, looking at Aiden with wild, desperate eyes and tears slowly rolling down his face. “Please, Dan.
Please
tell me how to fix this, how to fix us.”

Gently, Aiden pulls out of Jake’s grip. He isn’t angry anymore—he’s sad, resigned and exhausted by the last three and a half months. He sighs and gets to his feet as April’s song finishes; the crowd loudly applauds her, and after thanking them, she looks at Aiden with a tentative smile.

And then she starts to play a completely stripped-down, acoustic version of “Anything Could Happen.” Aiden barely stops to wonder how she knows about the song, though he could make an educated guess, given that Jake has been with her for nearly eighteen hours and she pulls no punches when she’s after information. She probably thinks she’s helping rather than playing out the tearing asunder of something that could have defined the rest of their lives.

Jake gazes up at him with the look of a heartbroken man—Aiden knows it from this afternoon, when he caught sight of himself in the bathroom mirror. But even with their song playing, a hushed affirmation to which they should be listening with soft smiles and even softer words, Aiden hasn’t the wherewithal to tell Jake that all of this can be mended, not with jagged edges pressing between his ribs and a desolate future wrapped tightly around his chest.

Standing up straight, he blinks back tears and takes a deep, shuddering breath. “It shouldn’t be this difficult, Jake. Maybe we’re too broken to fix. I might be here, I might have come after you, but I—I… I’m worth more than this.”

“Aiden, please,” Jake begs, hiccoughing over a sob, “please stay with me.”

He bends down, cups Jake’s face with both hands, and kisses his cheek. He lingers there a moment, presses his forehead to Jake’s temple and wills himself not to cry even as a tear slips free and disappears into Jake’s skin. “I can’t.”

Screwing his eyes tightly shut, he lets Jake go. He turns his back on the interior of the Tap Root and starts walking, pulling his suitcase along behind him as he winds through tables of patrons who pay him no mind; and even when he hears Jake calling his name in a strangled voice, he keeps moving.

It’s freezing outside, the empty streets silent as snow begins to fall, and his ragged breaths come out in thick plumes of white that he walks through as if beginning to traverse the foggy future he sees before him. He had everything, and now he’s leaving behind only footprints that will soon disappear.

The more Aiden tries to blink back his sorrow, the stronger it hits him. He makes it as far as the gas station across the parking lot and stops, hanging onto one of the roof pillars as he doubles over and swallows convul­sively. It
hurts,
cold and deep in his gut, radiating outward until he’s freez­ing with it, his hands shaking against the concrete. His head is swimming with flashbulb memories of sun-chapped smiles and snow-bitten touches, and he’s shattering.

How can it end like this? How can it end at all?

His instincts tell him to go back, grab Jake’s hand and never let go, but where would he be taken if he did that? What would—

“You’re not a deleted scene.”

Aiden jumps so quickly that he hits his head on the pillar. Pain explodes behind his eyes and he sways on his feet, and strong hands grip his arms to keep him upright. He raises a hand to cradle his head and squints at Jake, who, impossibly, looks even more wrecked than Aiden feels.

“Are you okay?” Jake asks in a small voice full of contrition, his deep green eyes looking at Aiden with concern.

“Peachy,” Aiden manages, his heart pounding double time. “Today really can’t get any worse, can it?”

“Never say never,” Jake murmurs, then slowly pulls Aiden’s hand away and exam­ines his head in the dim light of the streetlamps. His fingers gently comb through Aiden’s hair and it takes everything Aiden has not to close his eyes and give himself over to it.

“You came after me,” he says.

“And I’m glad I did,” Jake replies, “seeing as you’re going around giving your­self concussions now.”

“Well, if you hadn’t come out of nowhere to tell me—” Aiden pauses. “What did you say before?”

Jake’s hands fall away. “I said that you’re not a deleted scene, Aiden.”

Aiden shakes his head and winces at the dull throb. “I can’t trust that. How am I supposed to trust that?”

Jake looks up, blinking and inhaling deeply. “You don’t have to,” he says. “I’m not asking you to, and I don’t deserve your trust. I don’t deserve
you.
But I had to come after you, I had to try.”

“Jake…”

“I don’t want it to end this way, Aiden. I don’t want it to end at all.”

“You haven’t exactly…” Aiden trails off, gesturing around them.

“I know,” Jake says. “That’s why… here—”

Aiden watches as he produces a Band-Aid from his chest pocket. Quickly pulling off the backing, Jake sticks it onto the front of Aiden’s shirt, right over his heart. He leaves his hand there and, with his eyes fixed on it, says, “I’m not crossing my heart. That’s pretty worthless at this point, and if you swear, you have to swear on something you believe in.” He looks up, eyes shining in the dim light. “You’re the only thing I believe in anymore.”

“What are you promising?” Aiden asks slowly.

“Back in Vegas, you said that I just have to be with you. That we’d figure out the rest later,” Jake says. “But I’m not promising that, because promises have to be specific. So I’m promising to be with you, to follow you wherever you want to go, to never judge you when you eat an entire loaf of sourdough in one sitting and to love you with everything I have.”

Aiden wants to smile, wants to breathe out the relief that floods his system; the sensation of being wanted, feeling special, and knowing that he needs no more than this is dizzying. Stalling, he asks, “Where the hell did you get a Band-Aid?”

“There was a first aid kit at the bar,” Jake says. “I had to give them my last twenty dollars for it, so if you don’t take me back I’m pretty screwed, because I don’t have cash for an airport cab.”

“You paid twenty dollars for a Band-Aid.”

“I guess I sort of… volunteered the money? But I was desperate! It was either that or cut myself, and you know how I feel about blood. Plus, then I would have
needed
the Band-Aid…”

“Some cabs take credit cards these days.”

“My card’s not working, and I can’t believe you’re bringing in
logic
to ruin my perfect scene!” Jake exclaims, throwing up his hands with an almost hysterical laugh. Humor gradually fading from his expression, he swallows and says quietly, “This is our movie moment.”

Aiden shakes his head. “Movies end.”

“I don’t want ours to,” Jake says quickly, his fingertips curling into Aiden’s shirt.

“Couldn’t you have realized that, I don’t know, yesterday?” Aiden asks, trying not to let his lingering frustration creep into his tone, not when Jake is finally,
finally
being honest.

Jake gives him a lopsided, slightly pained smile. “April kinda… beat it out of me. Literally.”

It’s not funny, not really, but Aiden can’t help a dry chuckle. “You know,” he says, momentarily breaking their glance and looking down at Jake’s hands, where his skin is paler than usual and his knuckles paler still. “You call me the nomad, but you’re the one who runs.”

Nodding slowly, Jake takes half a step back, as if out of shame. “Maybe I just had some running to get out of my system.”

“But you’re done now?” Aiden asks, looking at him and silently imploring him to say yes.

“No,” Jake says, and Aiden’s heart falls until he adds, “it’s who I am. Remem­­ber what I said back in Providence about not settling? The difference now is that… that I found someone I’d like to run
with.
And he makes me not care about where I’m running to.”

“Why not?” Aiden asks.

“Because,” Jake says, stepping closer and reaching up to Aiden’s cheek; Aiden leans into the touch and meets Jake’s eyes. “Because he makes every­thing else go away. I’ve loved him for nearly seventeen years, and one day I’d like to be able to say that I’ve loved him my whole life.”

Aiden studies him for a moment—the dark circles underneath his eyes, the wrinkled front of his shirt, the slump in his shoulders under the weight of his penance—and out of the corner of his eye, he sees snowflakes falling. Falling with them—slowly, gradually, steadily—is easy, because it’s right. He steps forward and crushes his lips against Jake’s, swallowing Jake’s surprised squeak and humming against his tongue. Jake tenses, but then seems to melt back into his former self, standing straight and winding his arms around Aiden’s neck as a gust of icy wind sweeps past.