100 Days (34 page)

Aiden’s expression grows serious, and he places two fingers under Jake’s chin and tilts his face up. “I’m thankful for
you.”

His laughter fading, everything feeling the bittersweet side of too right, Jake kisses the corner of Aiden’s mouth. “Happy Thanksgiving, Dan.”

“Happy Thanksgiving, sweetheart.”

8,766 miles

Day Sixty-nine: Nebraska

The neon lights buzz, flickering almost in time with the strobe lights over the dance floor, and Aiden leans his forearms on the railing of The Max’s upper level, sipping his beer slowly as he surveys the crowd. He can see Jake below, swaying in the center of the packed dance floor with a stranger wrapped around him. Every so often, Jake glances up at Aiden and smirks; it’s all for show. Aiden knows Jake is his, and though a twinge of jealousy stings his gut, he pays it no mind. Hearing Jake say those words—
Yes, Charlotte Anne, I love Aiden, too—
has caused an abrupt about-face in Aiden’s mood. The pedestal suddenly doesn’t seem so tall.

Aiden takes another sip of his beer, and his eyes rove the interior of the dark club. He can’t imagine anyplace in Omaha better for the LGBT crowd to blow off steam on a Saturday night—or anyone, really, when he takes the ratio of obviously straight couples on the dance floor into account. The place is expan­sive, with different rooms playing different genres of music; the cover is low and the drinks are cheap. The DJ in this room is playing a mix of dance and pop, and—with the exception of an occasional foray into nineties classics—he seems to know exactly what the people of Omaha want: music to lose themselves in.

The next time Aiden glances down, Jake is nowhere to be seen. Aiden drains the contents of his bottle, leaves his spot and makes his way downstairs to the bar to wait for Jake to come back to him—which, sooner or later, he always does. Aiden can count on at least that much.

Just as he’s accepting another beer from the bartender, a familiar hand settles over his own. Jake tips the bottle to his own mouth and drinks deeply, eyes on Aiden as he swallows.

“Having fun out there?” Aiden asks, raising his voice over the music. Jake smiles and leans closer.

“I swear to god, that guy must have a dick about the size of that building we saw yesterday,” he replies, and Aiden chuckles. The “Penis of the Plains,” as native Nebraskans refer to it, is already a running joke between them.

“Did he warn you, at least?” Aiden asks. “Because that’s the kind of thing you have to warn a guy about.”

Jake tucks a finger beneath Aiden’s chin and answers him with a kiss, then turns his back to the bar and leans on his elbows. Aiden’s eyes sweep downward, taking in Jake’s clingy olive green shirt, his long legs wrapped in dark waxed jeans and the heel of one foot tapping to the beat.

“Come on,” Jake says after a moment, wrapping his fingers around Aiden’s wrist. “This song always makes me want to move.”

They push their way through the crowd, the press of bodies pushing them close as they walk with the beat. Once Jake has found a spot, he loops one arm around Aiden’s waist, while the fingers of his free hand play with Aiden’s skinny, loosened tie as he dips himself back.

“You’re in a good mood,” Aiden observes with a grin.

Jake says directly into Aiden’s ear, “I’m dancing with you. Of course I’m in a good mood.”

“What, that other guy wasn’t keeping you happy?” Aiden jokes.

“You’ve got
moves,
remember?” Jake answers. He scrunches his face and shoots him a look. “Too soon?”

Aiden shakes his head; Delaware is back far enough in the rearview now for them to laugh about it. “Speaking of moves, mister,” he says, “I haven’t seen you dip like that since senior prom.”

“The classics never go out of style,” Jake quips, and circles his hips into Aiden’s.

Aiden’s hands slide around Jake’s ass, giving back as good as he’s getting.

“Have you ever thought about being tied up?” Jake says into his ear quite unexpectedly; Aiden groans and drops his head to Jake’s shoulder. “Should I take that as a yes?”

“Okay, first, where did that even come from; and second, do we have anything in the RV?”

“It was just something I was thinking about last night. I might have a pair of handcuffs somewhere.”

“You don’t need to tell me why,” Aiden manages, grazing the line of Jake’s neck with his teeth.

When he raises his head again, it’s to see the lights come up and drop straight back down; he catches the briefest arresting glimpse of dark, wide pupils.

“What about some classic Aiden moves?” Jake asks with a nudge, pulling Aiden back in to himself. “Because I remember a certain sixteen-year-old version of you bringing the jazz band into Mrs. Beck’s history class, singing Sara Vermosa to that poor kid—”

“There’s no jazz band here,” Aiden interrupts smoothly, placing a finger against Jake’s lips.

Jake puts his mouth to Aiden’s ear and rolls his earlobe between his teeth. In a voice so low Aiden struggles to hear him, he sings, “Baby, sing me a lullaby and I’ll be yours…”

“Shut up,” Aiden groans, turning to catch Jake’s lips in a filthy, open-mouthed kiss.

As the flowing, electric intensity of Goldfrapp’s “Strict Machine” coils its way through the crowd, strong hands grasp Aiden’s hips and turn him around to face the rest of the clubbers.

Shivering despite his skyrocketing body heat, Aiden again drops his head to rest on Jake’s shoulder. He catches the scent of Jean Paul Gaultier intermingled with a tang of sweat, and barely holds back a groan as Jake’s arms creep around his middle to pull him closer. “This definitely is not how we did it at prom,” he says, reaching back to cup the nape of Jake’s neck.

“What do you want tonight?” Jake purrs in a deep, thrilling undertone. Aiden presses his forehead to the heat of Jake’s neck, becoming more relaxed as he finds the pattern of the beat and gives himself over to it. Jake’s fingers slide between the buttons of Aiden’s white shirt and press the skin of his chest; with his other hand, he hooks a belt loop to pull Aiden even closer, almost as if he’s trying to fuse them into a single entity made of a symbiotic, rhythmic give and take. They move together as the song continues, so synced to each other that Aiden is suspended in the feeling of body on body. “Tell me what you want.”

Aiden winds his fingers up into Jake’s hair, scratches lightly at his scalp and tugs so that Jake meets his gaze. He circles his hips back in time with the two sweeps of bass that precede the second bridge; the music sets his every nerve aflame, and Jake’s full lips inches closer, closer, closer, until his eyes blur and close.
This
is what Aiden wants.

He wants the feeling of this firm, assured body moving in time with his own. He wants the surprising and welcome gentility of the first kiss, and for it to turn to pure filth soon after. He wants these worshipping hands running the lines and planes of him as his hair stands on end and he surrenders and moans and pours heat into a kiss that sears him with its obscenity. He wants this contact, this touch, this sensation of his axis tilting.

“I want you,” he groans into Jake’s ear after one last sweep of his tongue along Jake’s lower lip.

Jake steps back.
Come with me,
he mouths
.
Aiden happily takes Jake’s hand, follows him from the room and out through the main hallway to the doors of the nightclub complex; as soon as they’re outside, they’re running. Jake pulls him into a narrow, dark alley, and Aiden hesitates with Jake’s hand still tangled up in his own. It’s starting to rain, and he takes in deep lungfuls of freezing air to soothe his racing heart.

“Hey,” Jake says softly; his thumb rubs back and forth over Aiden’s knuckles as he takes a step forward and closes the space between them. Jake tilts Aiden’s face with a gentle hand, and with the wind whipping around them, Aiden feels the ghost of a breath across his lips just before Jake catches his mouth in a slow, deep kiss,.

Rain falls in fat drops onto Aiden’s skin, and he falls with them, giving himself over entirely. He presses his palms into the small of Jake’s back to pull him in closer, and god, he could cry with the rightness of it all: Jake’s lips reaffirming a daily claim, Jake’s body pressing tightly against him, Jake’s love coursing into his own bloodstream.

“Okay?” Jake breathes, and Aiden nods quickly.

Grinning, Jake curves his palm around the back of Aiden’s head and pushes him back against the rough brick wall, swallowing Aiden’s gasp. Aiden has been growing harder since the dance floor, but it only registers now as Jake’s hands, wet with the rain that runs down his skin in rivulets, come to rest on the buckle of his belt and Aiden’s hips automatically push forward.

Jake makes quick work of Aiden’s belt and the button fly of his jeans. He yanks the jeans to mid-thigh and drops to his knees. Aiden hisses at the sudden cold of the raindrops hitting his newly exposed flesh; his skin is so hot, he’s surprised they don’t sizzle away into nothingness. Jake wraps hot, damp fingers around him and glances up from beneath thick, wet eyelashes.

Aiden bites his lip when Jake’s mouth sinks over the head of his dick, and his back arches forward. The front of his shirt is freezing against his overheated skin. As Jake pulls off slowly, teeth lightly grazing Aiden’s length, Aiden’s hips cant forward to search out more of the blissful heat of Jake’s mouth. Aiden watches as Jake smiles and licks his lips, glancing up at him with a positively wolfish gleam in his eyes. A second after Aiden’s eye­lids flutter closed, he feels himself being enveloped by that heat; the quick, rhyth­mic push and drag of Jake’s tongue along his shaft sparks simmer­ing flames beneath the surface of his skin, and he curls his fingers into a fist and fucks Jake’s mouth in short, shallow bursts of movement.

Aiden drops his chin to his chest and his eyes lock on Jake’s; a dark thrill courses through his veins. Jake grabs him by the hips again, pulling Aiden forward to fuck his mouth harder and deeper, and Aiden lets out a guttural groan at the sight of his cock pumping between Jake’s flushed lips. He knows he won’t last long; he can feel the pressure begin to mount, a trembling in his thighs that only gets stronger with every gentle rake of Jake’s teeth, every obscene moan that resonates throughout his body, every time he catches Jake’s gaze, still zeroed in on him.

He feels the rush building fast, an almost tangible thing, and he gives Jake’s hair two quick tugs.

Jake surges forward, pinning Aiden back against the wall, and the sharp flare of impact in his lower back sends him tumbling over the edge, releasing his hold on Jake’s hair and scrabbling for purchase on the brick. As his orgasm tears through him, he cries out in an abandoned litany of obscenities that are consumed by the open sky.

When it all becomes too much, Aiden raises one heavy arm and drags his fingertips along the side of Jake’s neck, and Jake pulls off with one final, wet pop. Hands almost numb from the cold and the aftershocks running through him, Aiden drags Jake up by the shoulders and kisses him languidly, open-mouthed and whimpering at the taste of himself on Jake’s tongue.

Jake chuckles as they break apart and Aiden pitches forward, dropping his forehead to rest on Jake’s shoulder as he tucks himself back inside his jeans with still-shaking fingers.

“Your fucking
mouth,”
he mumbles, feeling a rush of warmth as Jake rubs his upper arms. “Where did you learn to give head like that?”

“Practice,” Jake answers, grinning when Aiden straightens.

“Can we…? I’m soaking.”

“Plenty of dry clothes back in the RV. And a bed, a couch, a floor, a shower…” Jake says, taking a step back and holding out his hand with an expectant look.

Without hesitation, Aiden slides his slick fingers between Jake’s. As they head out onto Jackson Street, he sees a group of girls practically falling out of the club onto the street, all singing at the top of their lungs. Oddly, they’re singing “Lullaby,” the song Jake teased him about in the club: “Baby, sing me a lullaby and I’ll be yours, I’ve been hurt too much and I can’t take no more…”

But this doesn’t hurt anymore,
Aiden realizes. Blinking rain out of his eyes, he wonders,
Is it almost time?

He’s distracted by the lights of an approaching cab. Just as he raises his arm to flag it down, Jake pulls him close to kiss him again, slow and indescribably sweet, and Aiden feels it all the way down to his toes. He only breaks the kiss to fling out his arm and shout, “Taxi!”

Jake holds the door open for him to climb inside and, once they’re settled, directs the driver to the Happy-Mart on South Seventy-second with barely a grimace. The cab pulls away, and he whispers in Aiden’s ear, “So what do you have planned for me?”

“Well… I hear there’s a bed…” Aiden begins, fingers trailing the length of Jake’s thigh.

“There is,” Jake confirms, his voice a thick rasp.

“And a couch, a chair, a floor, a shower… possibly even handcuffs.”

“God, just tell me.”

“Sweetheart,” Aiden says, cupping Jake’s jaw and taking his bottom lip be­tween his teeth, “You have no idea.”

9,073 miles

Chapter Eight

Day Seventy-one: South Dakota

Jake is
flying.

Not literally, of course—he isn’t even driving fast enough to get a speed­ing ticket—but his mood is so light, he feels as if he is barely touching the ground. He grins like a buffoon as he passes a sign that reads,
Mt. Rushmore, EXIT 2 MILES.
Although it is cold, it’s a beautiful clear day with only a few scattered clouds darkening the horizon to his left, and he’s surrounded by trees and hilly peaks that undulate as far as he can see on either side of the curving highway.

And everything is capped with a blanket of pure white snow.

Jake pulls into the left lane as he passes the half-mile exit sign and follows the road beneath an arched wood bridge. His smile stretches from ear to ear; Mount Rushmore is one of the great American monuments he’s always wanted to see, and he can’t believe that he’s finally getting to do it. Still exhausted from an almost solid eight hours of driving yesterday, Aiden naps in the bedroom; if he isn’t up by the time they arrive, Jake plans to kiss him awake.

Passing by a small strip mall in Keystone, its storefronts decorated to look like saloons, Jake can tell that he’s getting close. Around thirty minutes ago he set up his phone in the cup holder with the video camera ready to record, and now he brings his phone out of sleep and hits the red button.

“It’s the Monday after Thanksgiving, day seventy-one, and I’m in South Dakota, where it’s cold, clear and beautiful,” he says brightly, pushing his sun­glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “The best part? There’s snow
everywhere.

“I’m usually stationary, I know, but today I thought it might be fun to make a complete tool of myself by recording what I’m sure will be a ridicu­lous, over-the-top reaction when I first see Mount Rushmore,” Jake contin­ues. He pauses as he drives through a tunnel carved out of rock.

“I’ve wanted to see it ever since I was, oh… seven, maybe? So this is really big for me. I’m just…” he trails off, shaking his head and smiling. “You know, I think there are times in every friendship, every relationship, when you have to just sit back and let everything go but what you have. And right now, that’s what I’m trying to do. Because if what happens on the road trip stays on the road trip, then doesn’t it kind of follow that whatever happens should be amazing? I think—”

A clutch of breath-held moments and he pulls the RV to a stop in the visitors’ parking lot, as close as he can get. For a full minute, he does nothing but slump back against his seat and smile. The cinematographer in him wants to examine every tiny detail, search out every flaw in the time-weathered rock, and celebrate them all.

“Are you freaking out?”

Aiden’s voice, a sleepy sort of wry, startles Jake out of his reverie. Aiden stands by his side, dressed only in pajama pants. His knuckles brush Jake’s arm as he takes in the spectacle for himself. Jake reaches up to pull Aiden in for a sound kiss.

“You’re freaking out,” Aiden sing-songs, and stretches up onto his toes. A red blinking light in Jake’s peripheral vision distracts him, and he hastily reaches over to stop the recording.

“Come on,” Jake says, getting to his feet and tugging on Aiden’s arm. “Get dressed. I want a closer look.”

It isn’t long before they’re both bundled up in their winter gear, walking arm in arm through the eerily silent parking lot and beneath the square stone archway onto Grand View Terrace.

Their boots crunch through the snow, and Jake feels a giddy delight build­ing inside him; winter is
his
season, and snow is his favorite aspect of it. Something about snow carries with it a sense of magic. There is no peaceful quiet like that when the snow is falling, and it leaves in its wake a ground reflecting so much light that, as a young child, Jake sometimes wondered if he was walking on the sky.

“Well… I guess it
is
a Monday at the end of November,” Aiden comments, gesturing back at the parking lot as they pass between pillars adorned with the state flags. “Although, I did think we wouldn’t be the
only
ones here.”

“I guess most people are working, or going home to get away from obnox­ious family members,” Jake says blithely.

“Like Great Aunt Mildred?”

“She made me eat sprouts, Dan. They taste like farts.”

“Oh, I’m well aware. Don’t you remember Sproutgate 2005? I didn’t talk to Matt for almost a month,” Aiden says, shuddering in a way that Jake knows has nothing to do with the cold.

They come to a stop before the low wall overlooking the amphitheater, and as Jake stands gazing up at the four faces towering above them, he catches sight of Aiden brushing snow from one end of a stone bench. He takes the seat Aiden offers him with an exaggerated, gentlemanly bow. Before he can clear a space next to him, he finds himself with a lapful of Aiden: a warm, grounding weight and an arm curled around his shoulders as if it’s nothing.

Maybe it
is
nothing.

“Are you still freaking out?” Aiden asks, glancing up at the mountain and then down at Jake. It always strikes Jake how oddly nice it is to have to tip his head back in order to meet Aiden’s gaze.

“I was never freaking out.”

“You were freaking out a little bit.”

“Fine, I was freaking out,” Jake concedes. After a moment, he adds, “Thank you.”

“For what?” Aiden asks.

“For bringing me along,” Jake says. “I mean, who knows when I would’ve gotten to see this otherwise?”

“I told you, I wouldn’t have left without you,” Aiden says quietly, his thumb burrowing beneath Jake’s scarf and rubbing the skin at the nape of his neck. The moment hangs between them, and Jake can tell that they’re both wondering the same thing:
What if we never left Brunswick? What would we be right now?

Jake returns his gaze to the mountain and says, “I’d love to shoot here. Wouldn’t you?”

“Set the scene for me,” Aiden says. “What would we film here?”

Two best friends on a road trip,
Jake thinks.
Sitting in this very spot and feeling like right now, right at this moment, they’re exactly where they’re meant to be.

“Post-apocalypse,” he finally replies, and Aiden’s eyes widen a little. As surrep­titiously as he can, Jake conceals his hand and starts collecting snow. “I wanna see it filthy and neglected, the entire place in ruins, with the terrace back there all overgrown, and the whole place covered in snow, like it is now. I’d want to really juxtapose innocence with horror, you know?”

“Go on,” Aiden says, nodding.

“And there are two guys—”

“Naturally.”

“All bruised up, guns slung across their backs, looking like they’ve never seen snow before.” Jake looks out over the wall and sees powdery puffs of it falling from the boughs of trees on the hill.

“What happens next?” Aiden prompts.

“They’re standing at the wall, shoulders slumped because it’s cold and they’re exhausted and haven’t found shelter,” Jake continues, nudging Aiden off so that he can stand. They cross to the wall, Jake’s snowball packed tight in his gloved hand. He puts a few paces between them, knowing that he’s about to begin World War Three. “It’s quiet—all they can hear is the wind howling through the trees. And that’s when a song begins to play. Barely there to begin with, but getting louder… and then one of the guys grins at the other…”

“And then what?”

“Duck and cover!” Jake yells at the top of his voice, turning and hurling the snowball toward Aiden. It explodes against the front of his dark pea coat, leaving a splatter of white on his chest and a comically shocked expression on his face. “What, like you really weren’t expecting that?”

Aiden brushes himself off and draws his shoulders back. “Battle stations, Valentine. You’re going down.”

“May the best man win!” Jake calls over his shoulder as he takes off across the terrace, running for what little cover the Avenue of Flags can provide him. Snowball fights are no laughing matter between him and Aiden—the last one they had, back in their second year of college, went on for nearly an hour before Aiden grudgingly conceded victory.

Jake ducks behind the third pillar along the avenue and crouches, packing handfuls of snow as tightly as he can. He has a title to defend and he isn’t going to give it up quietly.

“Incoming!” Aiden calls, and Jake glances past the pillar just in time to see him leap through the air and toss a snowball mid-jump.

It misses Jake by a few inches and he hides behind the pillar with his back to the stone, grinning. “You know, if you want to keep the element of surprise then you probably shouldn’t announce that you’re going to attack!” he calls.

No response comes, and aside from the brief sound of Aiden’s heavy boots crunching through the snow, it is silent. Jake gathers a snowball in each hand and cautiously peeks out from behind the pillar, but Aiden is nowhere to be seen. Silently congratulating himself on having the forethought not to wear his other jacket, which is dry clean only, he steps all the way out from between the pillars and waits.

“Come on, Calloway!” he shouts. “I’m not gonna wait around all day while you get up the courage to face me!”

A snowball hits the side of his thigh as Aiden, quick as a flash, darts between two pillars to Jake’s right. Jake swears under his breath and follows, but Aiden has already run out into the open space of the avenue. With a quick smirk at the pile of snowballs Aiden has left behind, Jake lobs the ones he’s holding at Aiden—both hit him square on the shoulder—and gathers up three more.

“You sounded exactly like your sister just then, you know!” Aiden calls as he scurries off toward Jake’s original hiding spot.

“Yeah, and look how her fight with your brother ended up! Epic Valentine Smackdown!” Jake shouts, dogging Aiden’s footsteps and following him back out onto the terrace. As soon as they stop zigzagging, Jake takes two of his three shots, landing one on Aiden’s back and the other on his calf.

Aiden turns to throw one back, and it hits Jake smack on the jaw. He hisses and staggers backward—the snowball was packed tight, and stings like a bitch. Aiden is by his side almost immediately.

“Are you okay?” he asks, gloved hands cupping Jake’s neck and tilting his face up so he can see.

“You never learn,” Jake reprimands him, taking his remaining snowball and crushing it into Aiden’s hair. He laughs at Aiden’s grim expression, kisses him firmly and takes off again.

He doesn’t get far, however, before Aiden grabs him around the waist and tackles him to the ground, landing on top of him in the snow and saying with a smirk, “Yield, Valentine.”

“Never,” he says, softening his voice and his gaze. He has lost enough fights to Aiden’s employment of dirty tactics that, if this is about to end, he’s determined to get the final shot. Slowly, he slides his wrists from Aiden’s loose grip to twine their fingers together. The cold seeps into his hair and through his clothes, and as he looks past Aiden hovering above him, he sees that the sky has turned an ominous shade of gray.

Aiden twists around to see what he’s looking at, and Jake takes the oppor­tunity to hook his leg around Aiden’s hips and roll them over, hands still clasped together. Aiden’s lips are cold, but warm Jake nonetheless when he leans down for a slow kiss. “Yield, Calloway,” he whispers, breath coming out in a bloom of white.

“Fine, keep your stupid title,” Aiden grumbles, shivering, but a quirk at the corner of his mouth betrays him. “Can we get up now? I’m freezing. And it’s starting to snow.”

By the time they’ve brushed themselves off, it’s already coming down in fat flakes, and Jake is looking forward to getting inside and feelings his hands burn as they warm up. He looks at Aiden in his pea coat, with the snow settling into his thick brown hair, and remembers him in a short-sleeved T-shirt, standing on a wall in Florida and kissing him as if the world was ending.

“I’m freezing,” Aiden repeats, his shoulders up by his ears, his hands buried in his pockets.

“Let’s stay here for a second,” Jake says, and quickly unbuttons his coat to wrap it around both of them.

“Okay,” Aiden says, pushing his arms beneath the thick wool and squeezing Jake’s waist.

Jake glances around, watching the snow settle around them. Their tracks are already beginning to disappear. “Listen.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Exactly. Isn’t this perfect?”

Aiden ducks his head, kisses Jake’s jaw where it still stings and hums in agreement.

After a while, Jake unwraps Aiden and takes his hand. “Let’s go.”

As they make their way across the terrace toward the Avenue of Flags, he glances at the pillar he hid behind; his snowballs are gone. The snow falls in thick sheets, catching in his eyelashes. The footprints they left by the wall are almost filled in, and the bench is covered again.

“Almost looks like we were never here,” Aiden says.

9,619 miles

Day Seventy-two: North Dakota

“So… just what is it about this place you’re taking us?” Aiden asks, reclining in the passenger seat as they cruise along US-85 at a comfortable speed. They’re on their way to Williston, North Dakota, a small town Jake is adamant they visit even though it means parking overnight at a Happy-Mart.

“South Dakota,” Jake says, pointing to the license plate on the SUV in the passing lane, before he answers. “It’s where I got the paperweights.”

“What paperweights?”

“The ones I have on my desk. You kept fiddling with them when we first started planning this trip.”

“How do—oh, look,
another
South Dakota—how do you always remem­ber things like that?” Aiden asks, as he always does when Jake presents clear recollections of the tiniest details.

“Cinematographers have to be good with details,” Jake sing-songs his stock response. “But, um… do you remember when Charlie and I flew out to Bismarck for Grandma Doris’s funeral?”

“Yeah, the week before graduation?”

Jake nods, scratching his shoulder and licking his lips. Aiden turns side­ways in his seat and leans his cheek against the warm leather of the headrest. Jake has never told him what happened during that trip.