Fox would give him even more reasons to be so deliciously, wonderfully uncomfortable.
But Summer was struggling with the desk chair now, as he tried to squirm his way into a comfortable position on the thin padded seat and keep his concentration on digging up phone numbers, names. He’d already tried sending emails to the parents of several of the boys he wanted to speak to, and only gotten four responses when he’d contacted over a dozen.
This was going to be like herding cats, he could tell.
But he had to try.
Even if a backwoods like Omen was somewhere people sent their kids to forget about them, somewhere so hidden that they couldn’t embarrass their wealthy, prestigious parents in the public eye or be easily scoped by the paparazzi...
Summer had to believe at least some of those parents cared.
And wouldn’t want their boys to be as unhappy as they were.
He glanced up, though, as a little alarm on Fox’s laptop went off, chiming the signal for ten minutes to the day’s block of afternoon classes.
And Fox wasn’t back.
He’d gone off to dig up something for class at the town library, some obscure older book on Fechner, and he’d be late and Summer...
Summer still wasn’t sure he’d be ready to lead the class on his own, not after almost two weeks.
He’d try, if he had to.
But he was starting to think, more and more, that his place wasn’t at the front of the class.
He dug his phone out, though, and tapped out a quick text message. Ten minutes to class and the clock is ticking. Did you want to do something for dinner tonight? Maybe in town?
He waited three minutes, watching the clock, and hoped Fox just didn’t answer because he was driving. Though Summer knew the real reason, and he sighed fondly.
Fox had probably let his phone die yet again.
He wasn’t a technophobe, but God, he never remembered to charge the thing unless Summer stole it from him and put it on the charger himself.
Smiling to himself, he gathered up his class materials, stacked them in his arms, and headed out to find the man he only wished he was brave enough to call his boyfriend.
Chapter Thirteen
Fox had come seconds away from never coming back, today.
And he didn’t think the gorgeous, artlessly sprawled young man stretched out in the bed next to him had any idea.
He’d slipped by the library hoping to find a copy of Gustav Fechner’s Elemente der Psychophysik for a class presentation, because someone had stolen the school library copy Fox had donated, one of many from his personal collection that had gone on the shelves only to disappear into one student’s hands or another’s over the years.
He’d checked out both the German and English versions, as well as a few other books he’d thought might be useful for a more organic approach to teaching. Something that might be more Summer’s style than his own, but just from watching Summer work with the students Fox had started to think perhaps, just perhaps, he could relax his more rigid teaching methods to try something that might work better with young, malleable, and easily distracted brains.
Then he’d sat behind the wheel of his car, books stacked high in the passenger’s seat, and asked himself...
Why.
Why was he making plans to adapt his teaching methods, when he was leaving in a year?
Why was he thinking about a future here at Albin as if...
As if something could change somehow, could make everything new and different and bright?
Nothing had changed.
Nothing, he told himself.
And yet everything had changed, from the moment Summer had kissed him and Fox had kissed him back and some rusted-shut door inside him had opened, a tiny voice whispering please, come in, it’s dark and lonely here, please...please.
While the rest of him had screamed what’s the point?
What was the point of any of this?
Why was he doing this, letting Summer believe there could ever be anything between them when Fox just...just...
He’d wanted to lie down and just...quit, he realized.
In that nebulous grayness of his plans after he left Albin...it had just been this open-ended desire to do nothing. As if he could blank out and simply cease to be.
But now images were forming in that haunting grayness, that darkness, that shadow of an undefined future, and those images didn’t promise nothing. They promised something, everything, this idea of a life again, this idea that he could care about things again and actually wake up every day not terrified that caring would just mean he would lose them all over again.
He watched Summer sleep, following the way the moonlight fell in soft outlines over his bare shoulders, his neck, his jaw, his hair, as if he was an illustration of a beautiful man traced in lines of silver ink. He was so young, and yet somehow years had transformed him from a nervous boy into a quiet, sweet, still entirely nervous man who somehow had found some sort of serenity and strength nonetheless. It was as though he calmed himself by terrifying himself.
As if Summer was more afraid of not trying...
Than he was of trying, and failing.
Of trying, and losing.
He’d been willing to risk losing Fox completely, losing his job, just for the thin chance at having him for just a little while.
And Fox was letting himself get sucked into that idealism, when he knew better.
He knew better, when unlike Summer...
He knew how it felt to believe in forever, only to have it cut short.
And just thinking about the idea of forever with someone like Summer, thinking about letting himself get tangled that deep and giving in to this quiet feeling of longing that kept pulling him into the vibrant young man as if they were tethered by unbreakable strands of fragile, glittering spider’s silk...
It had terrified him.
It had terrified him, and he’d almost driven away from the library, out of Omen, and out of Massachusetts without ever looking back.
Summer would never know the struggle of will it had taken Fox
