Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68293 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 341(@200wpm)___ 273(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
But the joy on Gus’ face as she watched the house become illuminated almost made Wes reconsider. He started to wonder if maybe, this Christmas, things might be different...
“I wanna go make inventions,” Gus announced after they’d hung the final strand of lights and stood admiring their work.
She had told him in the barn that she planned to use her findings to “invent things.” He had been impressed. It was how he had started himself, monkeying with bits and pieces of broken things, seeing how they might fit together. Seeing what they might create.
She reminded Wes of himself in a lot of ways: her intense interest in science and invention, her love of misunderstood creatures, her single-minded curiosity about the world.
In other ways, though, she was everything he’d never gotten the chance to be as a child: naive, trusting, friendly, carefree.
He admired more than he could say the fact that Gus could have her intense curiosities and never lose touch with people she cared about. That was Adam’s doing, he imagined. Adam who seemed to care about everything.
“Do you know how to make pie?” Adam asked him as they went inside.
“I assume you don’t mean of the 3.14159 variety?”
Adam bumped him with his shoulder and smiled.
“No, I don’t.”
Adam began to wash the tall-sided plate he’d bought.
“My grandma used to have a whole set of these, and she’d make pies in them. See?”
He held it up to reveal a painted slice of pumpkin pie and a recipe painted on the plate. “I’ve never made a pie but it kinda seems like I’m supposed to since I found this, right?”
Wes wasn’t a fatalist, so he didn’t believe the two were related, but he knew what Adam meant: finding the plate was an encouragement to do something he wanted to do anyway.
“I can help, if you want?” he found himself offering.
Adam’s whole face lit up, just as Gus’ had when she looked at the illuminated house.
Wes placed this picture of Adam—sweet and excited and open—next to another picture in his head: one of Adam from the night before. Desperate and needy and so turned-on he could hardly breathe.
Both were gorgeous. Both were appealing. And together they made Wes’ heart pound.
“What?”
“I said do you want to cut up this butter?”
Adam was peering at his phone and holding out two sticks of butter.
“This says it should stay very cold.”
Wes stood next to Adam and looked at the recipe. He could feel the heat of Adam’s body. He knew how perfectly they fit together and the temptation to pull Adam flush to his side was overwhelming.
“Do you have a food processor?” he asked, scanning the recipe.
“Huh? Oh. No.” He squinted at the phone. “My grandma always did it with two forks.”
“What if I make the filling and you make the crust,” Wes offered, not wanting to tread on memories of Adam’s grandmother.
“Great.” Adam grinned at him.
“What kind of pie are we making?”
“Oh, right.” Adam opened the refrigerator and the cabinets. “Apple, looks like. I don’t have anything else. Do you know what to do?”
Wes didn’t, but he had eaten apple pies before. How hard could it be?
“Sure.”
He set about chunking the apples, mind drifting back to the night before. He’d floated home in a haze of pleasure, wonder, and—frankly—confusion. All these feelings for Adam were coming faster and more intensely than he’d ever experienced.
He’d wanted to know what Adam was doing, what he was thinking—make sure he was okay.
“I was watching you this morning,” Wes blurted. “Through the upstairs window.” And that had come out creepier than he’d intended.
Adam’s blue eyes were curious, though.
“I was surprised you were awake,” he said. “I thought you usually slept until afternoon.”
“Usually. I couldn’t sleep.”
Their eyes were locked, and he saw Adam’s pupils dilate.
“I can’t sleep sometimes,” Adam said.
“I know. I see the light come on downstairs. I see the flicker of the TV.”
“I had insomnia in high school,” Adam said. “It went away when I left town. I thought it was gone forever but it came back when Mason and I split up. Being alone, I guess?”
“What happened?”
Adam began smushing butter and flour together on the counter with two forks. It looked extremely unappetizing.
“I met Mason our last year of high school. He’d just moved here. He was cute and moody and smart, and I couldn’t believe he was into me. I wasn’t exactly popular in high school.”
Wes bet high school Adam was a sweetheart.
“My parents...well, my father especially, was not good. We didn’t get along. He’s cruel and—” Adam broke off, shaking his head.
“Just, the opposite of what a dad should be. After high school, Mason was going to college in Boulder, so I went with him. It was great at first. He loved school and I loved not being anywhere near my parents. Or here.”
Wes put the apple chunks in a bowl and poured sugar and cinnamon on them. That seemed to be what apple pie tasted like.