“Five,” Jared corrected, grumbling.
“Fine. Five if you count two days of travelling. But it’ll be fine. I’ll be there, and your sisters.”
Jared sighed heavily and gave up on the sneaker, tossing it into a corner. It only took a moment to pull on a sweatshirt and shoulder the duffle bag he’d already packed for the few days they’d be spending with his parents.
“You wanna talk about it?” she offered.
“Is it that obvious?”
Hadley nudged him back down on the bed and took the desk chair, echoing the talking-to he’d been given by Chris, not that she could know that.
“Hadley,” Jared sighed. “I’m not great at girl talk.”
“Excellent. Neither am I.”
She pushed her long, hair over her shoulder, then twisted it into a knot, securing it with a Bic pen from the desk. Jared was always bemused at the hundred or so ways girls tied their hair back.
“I don’t want to go home.”
“I want you to tell me what’s going on, so I can protect you from what’s there,” Hadley said, her face fixed and serious.
Jared huffed and rubbed his hands over his face. “I did something incredibly stupid.”
“Tell me,” she demanded.
“I’m in love with him,” Jared said with a humorless laugh. “I’m in love with him, and I can’t have him, and that sucks.”
The last word was delivered with such hyperbole even Jared heard it and the teenage angst that had inspired his outburst. Most of the time he kept that under wraps, the teenager and the outbursts, so he was almost surprised at himself.
“Being in love isn’t always candy and roses, Jared,” Hadley said with a soft smile. “Especially when you’re still….”
“If you call me a kid, I’ll punch you in the mouth,” he said with a grin.
“You’re so young,” she sighed. “I wish I was. You have so much still to come in your life; this is just the beginning for you. Don’t let one person steal your attention from the great things that are out there waiting for you.”
“Very inspiring,” Jared said drily. Hadley reached over and smacked his arm, but she was laughing. “You didn’t even ask who I was talking about.”
“I didn’t need to,” she said.
“Is it that obvious?”
“What, that you spend more nights at his house than you do here? That half of the conversations we have are about Adam Hemlock? That when you’re with him, there’s this glow between you?”
“Bullshit,” he muttered.
“I don’t know what happened. And I don’t know why you think that you can’t have him. So as someone who’s completely outside this whole situation, I can tell you with a fair degree of certainty that whatever you feel for him, he feels it right back.”
Jared rubbed at his eyes again and pretended very hard they weren’t stinging.
“And now that I’ve almost certainly made sure we’ve missed our flight, can we please leave for the airport?”
Hadley was joking, and they had plenty of time to get to the airport if the driver floored it.
“It’s going to be constant gay digs,” Jared said as they walked out of the house to the waiting town car. It looked like Hadley had already loaded up her suitcase, gifts and all, in the back. “My mother won’t look at me in the eye, and my sisters are too self-obsessed to do anything for anyone other than themselves.”
“That’s a stunningly accurate description of the family, yes,” Hadley said, pulling the door closed behind them. “Three days, Jared. We can do this.”
They did. Of course.
It was awful, naturally. Jared would have been disappointed with anything less. By the time they got back to rainy, murky Washington from snow-clad New York, he was grateful for the peace and quiet. The pace and activity of the city had always been its own kind of thrill, but Jared hadn’t had the energy to deal with it.
After only a few days away, flopping onto the bed in the house that had become his home was such a relief. Things with his parents and sisters had been as tense as expected, Christmas dinner laughable, really, all of them drinking to be able to stand the sight of each other.
There was no love lost between Hadley and his mom, and his father seemed to think that Jared’s aunt was a negative influence. Jared had never quite understood how his father thought, so anticipating which vitriolic rant he’d go on next was something of a minefield. Still. It could have been worse. Probably.
School didn’t start again until New Year, but Jared had plenty of work to keep him occupied in the week following Christmas. He snuggled down with mugs of hot chocolate that would almost certainly make him fat, sugar cookies that wouldn’t help, and foot-high sandwiches which Hadley delivered to the study on a regular basis. He thought she was trying to make amends for forcing him to go to New York for the holidays, because there seemed to be a constant stream of food coming his way.
Then there were the inevitable parties Hadley was going to throw despite her guilt. If she wasn’t hosting, she was at a friend’s place, leaving Jared to deal with an achingly cold, empty house or one so filled with noise and people, he was left with no option but to retreat. It was a strange back and forth, each end of the spectrum too hard for him to deal with.
And then, of course, it was New Year’s Eve.
Clare was hosting this time, which was apparently as traditional as Adam’s back-to-school and Chris’s Thanksgiving bashes. There was no way Jared could get away with not going, even an “I’m sick” excuse would surely be met with a “Boo, you whore.” Plus, he had a sneaking feeling Mia, or Ryder, or both, would come out to the Saunders house and drag him there by his feet if he didn’t make an appearance.
Jared had far too much dignity to subject himself to that.
There had been an offhand “oh, the usual” when he’d inquired
