Fever Pitch (16 page)

He didn't kiss Aaron. There were too many people passing by, for one, and also, he wanted to savor that, if it happened.

When.

It wouldn't be their first kiss. But everything about it felt as if it would be their first
real
kiss.

After retrieving his phone, Giles drifted to his dorm on a cloud, unable to stop the grin on his face. He stuffed it down long enough to greet Brian—he didn't want to share, not yet. Once in his bed, though, he drew the covers over his head, shut his eyes and played the moment over and over in his mind, spinning out possible futures.

I'm going to call you, Aaron. Definitely.

C
hapter Sixteen

G
iles didn't have a final the day after the riff-off, which meant he slept until Brian returned from his early morning one and got ready to leave for the holiday.

“Have a good Christmas.” Brian shifted his laundry onto his shoulder and grinned. “Text me if you want to escape the 'rents.”

“Sure.” Except of course Giles hoped to be busy escaping with Aaron. The memory of the night before bloomed in his mind, waking him better than an alarm.

Aaron wanted this—maybe not as much as Giles, but he wanted it. All Giles had to do was play it cool, get the courage to act, and he was in.

The potential literalness of
getting in
made his shower a lot more erotic than it had a right to be.

As Giles dressed and headed to the music building, he tried to map out a plan. How should he ask? Should he set up a date for once they got home? Maybe Aaron needed a ride home. Of course that was Sunday. Three days away.

Could Giles ask him out on a date Sunday but kiss him
now
?

Did Giles really think he could stop at kissing?

These musings, in the end, proved fruitless. No sooner did he arrive at the music building than he got swept up in performance preparations. The first dinners were at six, but the choirs and orchestra had to be on-site at four thirty for warm-ups, and getting Salvo's instruments and props took all afternoon. Tonight they didn't leave campus, but Giles never stopped moving. If he wasn't performing, he was rushing to a performance.

Through it all, Aaron was right beside him.

They set up Salvo together, working with the girls but mostly each other. They returned to their dorms to get dressed, but they fussed with each other's ties backstage before Aaron's trio and Giles's quartet were set to perform at the dinner. They congratulated each other after their performances, hands brushing, fingers teasing as they whispered
good job
and dazzled each other with smiles.

I'm going to kiss him tonight,
Giles promised himself as he went onto the stage with the orchestra. From where he sat he couldn't see Aaron, but he imagined him in his mind's eye throughout the performance, until it was Salvo's turn and they took their part of the stage together, Giles playing his borrowed double bass, Aaron on keyboard. Their gazes met and held across the stage, so many promises rising up with their songs.

Tonight.
Seriously, it had to be tonight that they kissed.

Except by the time things wound down, it was eleven, and hauling everything back, getting things ready to pack onto the buses and shuttle vans, dragged things later. The magic bubble which had emboldened Giles popped as he overheard Aaron complaining to Jilly how tired he'd be in the morning when he went for his seven o'clock final.

Tomorrow. Giles promised himself he'd kiss Aaron tomorrow.

Friday's setup was both the same and entirely different. They still had the preshow dinner theater, but Aaron's and Giles's groups were at a community center in Burnsville, the full performance after at the megachurch ten miles away. This time packing up began at noon, and though he tried to find Aaron, somehow Giles got shuttled onto a different bus. They didn't meet up at all until the dress rehearsal, which started late and meant when they finally broke to eat and get dressed, everyone was frantic.

Giles sat with Aaron at dinner, but they hardly spoke, too busy shoveling in lasagna and salad. They'd dumped their duffels on opposite sides of the men's changing room because of the buses they'd ridden in on, which was just as well because Giles wasn't sure he was ready to strip to his skivvies and fight a bow tie as an opening erotic act. He did, though, hustle through his prep so he could cross the room to the choir side and watch Aaron finish getting dressed. Which worked out well, because as Giles approached, Aaron was struggling angrily with his cummerbund.

When it looked as if Aaron was about to ask Baz to help him fix it, Giles tripled his pace to close the distance.

“Here, let me help.” He claimed the fabric boldly, not waiting for permission to wrangle it around Aaron's waist.

Aaron wilted in relief and stood obediently still as Giles worked. “They don't give us enough time for this. Our bus to the community center leaves in ten minutes, someone just said.”

“You'll be fine.” Giles fussed longer with the cummerbund than necessary, finishing with an equally useless but delightful brush of imaginary lint from Aaron's shoulders. “God, you look good enough to eat.”

He let that out deliberately, a gentle lob over the wall to gauge Aaron's reaction—in public, where a rejection would have to be cooler and easier to digest. No rejection came, though. Aaron stilled, cheeks coloring, blue eyes softening. “Th-thanks. You…you too. Though—here.” He fussed with Giles's tie, straightening it and puffing it out.

Giles held still under Aaron's ministrations, loving every second of them. “You sitting with anybody on the bus?”

It took Giles's breath away, how bright and blue Aaron's eyes were when he smiled. “No—I mean—nobody…” His smile fell as he got embarrassed.

So fucking adorable.
“Let me get my coat and my instrument, and we'll head out.”

They walked close together on the way to the shuttle. Giles would have done some subtle elbow touches, but he had to clutch Henrietta to his chest all the way to keep her warm because the air temperature was now two degrees, negative ten with the wind chill. The bus wasn't warm yet either, so when he sat, he put her between his legs instead of in the overhead compartment. He considered giving her his coat but settled on wrapping his scarf around the outside of the case instead.

Aaron watched him. “Do you wrap her up because the cold affects the wood?”

“Yeah. It's fussier than I need to be, but I wasn't kidding when I said Henrietta was expensive. Twenty grand.”

“Wow. Is she a Stradivarius?”

“Greiner. I'd love a Strad for sentimental reasons, but blind studies have shown there's no real sound difference between a good modern one and the antiques. I'd been bugging Mom and Dad to get a higher quality violin for a while, but to get a Greiner we had to order it, and they balked.”

“Eventually they caved, let you order one? Wow, so cool.”

Giles brushed his hand over the top of the cloth case, swallowing as he remembered. “I'd had a…tough year. I think they were trying to make up for things they couldn't change.”

He dared a glance at Aaron, whose face was hard to read in the early evening shadow. “Cool. I mean, not cool something bad happened, but that your parents tried to make you feel better.”

Something about Aaron's comment bothered Giles. Of course parents would attempt to make their child feel better
anytime
he was sad, not just when he'd been beaten into hamburger. Something told Giles, though, this wasn't the case for Aaron. “How are things with your dad?”

It was the closest either of them had ever come to acknowledging the night at the lake. Aaron fixed his gaze on his lap. “He's been out of town since October. Won't be back until after Christmas.”

“Oh—I'm sorry.”

Aaron's sad laugh broke Giles's heart. “Don't be. As soon as he shows up, I have to confess I dropped all the pre-law courses he signed me up for. He's going to have a fit.”

Giles frowned. “I'm sorry, but I can't see you as a lawyer.”

“Tell me about it.” Aaron looked so miserable. “I want to do music.
Performance.
But he'd kill me.”

“Not literally, I hope.”

“Yeah, well—he'd come close. My dad…doesn't do shades of gray. Only his way or the highway.” His gaze, no longer bright, shifted to the window. “My mom didn't like how often he traveled. Said she wasn't sure she wanted to be married to someone gone so often. It took a lot for her to go there, because she doesn't speak up much. The confession was her way of saying it hurt her, how often he was gone.”

“What did he do?”

“Served her divorce papers before he went to bed.”

Giles drew back. “Are you kidding me? You're not, are you. Jesus, what an asshole.”

“Yeah.” Aaron leaned his forehead against the window. It had to be cold, but he didn't so much as wince. “I keep thinking maybe I should declare music therapy because there's a slim chance he might say it's okay. But it's not what I want. Everybody says to ignore him, but—he pays for school. My mom lives on alimony.” He grimaced and pushed off the window, shaking his head. “It's a stupid idea. What job will I get with music performance?”

“All kinds of them.”

“
You're
the one who said ‘I'd like a job, thanks' when I asked if you were majoring in music.”

Second acknowledgment of the lake.

Giles shifted Henrietta, pressing his knee against Aaron's so he could look him full in the face. “That was me.
You
, Aaron—God, you
have
to do music. I can't imagine you doing anything else. I don't think anybody who hears you can. Hell, if I could get a job doing nothing but listening to you sing and play,
that's
what I'd major in. You making music is the most perfect, beautiful part of the world. Don't let your dad get in the way.”

Aaron stared at him, surprised, moved…naked.

He wants me to kiss him.

I want to kiss him.

I'm going to kiss him. Right here on this bus. Right now.

Giles leaned forward, heart pumping so hard it hurt, soul caught in the tractor beam of Aaron's gaze.

The bus slowed, lurched, then stopped abruptly. “Ten minutes to warm up,” someone called, and the overhead lights came on.

Giles and Aaron broke apart.

The near-kiss hung over Giles as they set up their dinner performances, making everything appear surreal. When they performed with Salvo, every note felt charged. So did the ride to the church, Henrietta pressed between Giles's legs, Aaron's knee boldly along his own.

Kiss him, kiss him, kiss him
—the mantra burned in Giles's brain, but people were too loud this time, too close.

After,
he promised himself.
After.

Except when he tried to cross to the choir bus for the ride back to Timothy, Mina caught his arm. He was about to shake her off when he caught sight of her face.

She was upset. Really upset. He stopped cold. “Min?”

She shut her eyes and hung her head. “Please—don't. I just…I can't talk, I…I need—”

When she broke off to swallow a sob, Giles pulled her to him. “Come on. Let's go grab our seat.”

He cast a sad glance of longing across the parking lot and put Aaron out of his mind.

Mina never told him what was wrong. She curled against him the whole way, and when he invited her to stay the night in his room, she ignored the futon and got right into bed with him. Giles held her close, heart breaking as she sobbed quietly into his T-shirt.

“Mina,” he began, when he couldn't take it anymore.

“Don't.” She pressed her hands to his chest. “Please—I can't. Not yet.”

While he appreciated that in the abstract, in the specific his mind was concocting all kinds of insane scenarios. “Did…somebody hurt you?”

Her sad laugh broke him more than the sobs. “Not like that.”

Oh, Min.
“Someone broke your heart.”

She shut her eyes tight, nodded. This time the sobs weren't silent.

He held her all night, and in the morning he took her to IHOP for breakfast because he knew it was her favorite. She still looked a little hollow, but by the time they went back to Timothy, he had her laughing occasionally.

She, however, had him nervous.

He tried to distract himself by guessing which guy had made Mina cry, but his rabbit brain kept yanking him back to the terrible possibility of
him
being the one sobbing his heart out over rejection. As sure a thing as Aaron had seemed the night before, Mina's tears made him pause…and kept him once again from riding into the Cities on the choir bus. He told himself it was to keep an eye on Mina, but the truth was, he'd chickened out.

Saturday's setup was a little less stressful—they still arrived in downtown Minneapolis by noon, but rehearsal was more relaxed, as the State Theater was an actual theater and did this sort of thing every day. They had time for a late lunch/early dinner—Aaron and Giles and the rest of Salvo went in a great herd through the skywalks to Buca di Beppo. They walked together, sat beside each other at the restaurant, close because they'd crammed twelve people at a table for ten.

Because everything was so loud, they kept leaning close when talking to one another. Aaron told Giles choir stories, surprising him with tales of the chorale's weird game of passing things around while they sang.

Giles had no idea. “I've never seen anything.”

Aaron's eyes danced. “That's the point. People hand you oddball items, and you pass them on without breaking eye contact with Nussy. Whoever has it last has to carry it off without being seen. And of course someone has to bring it to start with.” He paused to chew a breadstick. “Thursday night I got a banana—whole, and later it had come back peeled, which had a lot of people pissed because it was so messy. I got a condom, a huge purple double-ended dildo, a Barbie doll, a can of Fresca and a coat hanger. Things were tamer Friday for the church, but it still happened.”

“That's crazy.” Giles watched Aaron's profile in the warm light of the restaurant. Their chairs were so close their fingers touched. “What if they got caught?”

“Remember, Nussy was in the choir too, back in the day. Someone tells stories about a couch cushion in the nineties, but I can't believe it could happen. Even under a girl's skirt it would be noticeable. Though this has been going on since 1965 or something.”