Page 17 of Attractive Forces
“Yeah, it’s definitely an exponential increase,” Jake says.
I take a deep breath and manage to relax my shoulders, throwing him a grin. “An exponential increase? You’re such a nerd.”
He grins back. “Hey, you get the advantages of my nerdiness.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
“In fact, I should make you do some extra credit work now. You need to tell me the formula of ethanol or something before you’re allowed any more beer.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I’m planning on drinking much more of this. I want my liver to talk to me in the morning.”
“It’s a good idea to stay on friendly terms with your liver,” Jake agrees. He’s still smiling at me, and my skin heats in response. Hopefully, Jake dismisses it due to the warmth in this room, with all the bodies pressing in close to us. Not the truth, that being on the end of his lopsided smile causes my body to react like I’m inside a furnace.
“You want to head outside, find somewhere quieter?” I ask.
I worry for a second that he’ll say he wants to stay inside to flirt with more girls, but Jake just responds with a casual, “Okay.”
The party is getting wild. I glance back at him as we duck and weave our way through the crowd. His eyes are even wider now. “You all right?” I ask.
“Just taking it all in. This is not the usual habitat of a chemistry nerd.” Jake’s still clutching his half-filled cup of beer, looking like he’s trying not to spill a drop. It’s cute, given I’m fairly sure Brewer’s carpet would already fail a breathalyzer test.
“What? Nerd parties are not like this?” I ask as we dodge around where Adam, one of our props, is chugging beer from a bong, a surrounding knot of people cheering him on.
“Uh…not exactly.”
One of the things I like most about Jake is how comfortable he seems with who he is. He’s not pretending he goes to parties like this all the time. He’s the opposite of me, who spends my whole life pretending to be something I’m not.
I open the door to the back deck, and the freezing air hits us like a wall. Fuck, it feels like the wind is coming straight from Antarctica.
But the cold means no one else is on the deck, which is the whole point. Jake follows me outside. I close the door behind us, and the noise of the party instantly dims, like I’ve pressed mute on a remote.
I lead Jake around the corner, where I know the deck extends out the front of Brewer’s parent’s bedroom. Here, at least we’re tucked away from the wind, and no one looking out from the living room will see us.
I sit, leaning against the side of the house, and Jake follows suit, sliding down the wall so he’s propped up against it. I take another sip of my beer as I stare out at the big slash of blackness in front of us, with twinkling lights of houses way in the distance.
This is my neighborhood. My house is only a street over. All the houses here are perched on the edge of the hill, and the ravine below is full of trees and rocky outcrops that I spent my childhood exploring. Heath Valley is one of those towns where it doesn’t feel like the wild is too far away, surrounded by a mixture of rugged bush and farmland.
For some reason, I find myself telling Jake about it now. How Brewer and I and the other kids from the neighborhood used to play in the ravine as kids. Making forts, playing hide and seek, that kind of stuff.
I get a pang in my gut as I talk about it. Everything was so much simpler when I was a kid. I didn’t realize I was different. That in a few years’ time, I would be playing a much less fun hiding game.
“We used to have this park near where I grew up,” Jake offers. “Aaron and I would spend hours gathering all the autumn leaves into enormous piles and then jumping into them from the trees. It’s a miracle we didn’t break something.”
“You’re lucky, having a brother. I wish I had siblings.”
Jake leans his head back and snorts. “I spent most of my childhood wishing I was an only child.”
I wrap my hands around my knees. “Nah, trust me, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
Jake turns his head to look at me. “Too much pressure?”
“Yeah, it’s like everything boils down to me. All my parents’ expectations. And my dad’s pretty intense.”
“That sounds hard.”
“It’s made worse by his job. Sometimes I feel like he uses me as a walking advertisement for the church. Like, come to church and pray, and your kids might turn out like mine.” The words are out of my head before I have a chance to filter them. Shit. I stammer a follow-up. “Fuck, that sounded way less egotistical in my head.”
Jake huffs out a laugh. “Nah, I get it. Most parents in this town would love to have their kids turn out like Logan Madison.”
