Meet Me in the Blue (Hemlock Harbor, #1)

by A.M. Johnson

Nora stared at me, the conversation we’d had again and again all those years ago crossed between us in an unspoken rush of words inside my head. He’s straight, Nora. He’s just a friend. He’s not into me like that. I can’t keep hoping. He loves you. He’s waiting. He’s confused. He’s here. He’s yours.

“You and that boy are soulmates. Whatever’s broken, fix it. You only get so many chances in life.” She stared out toward the living room, her throat bobbing. “I’ve known you both since you were little boys with Kool-Aid-stained lips and grass stains on your knees. He loves you.”

“And I don’t care about whatever sexuality is what. Sometimes love is just love.” Mom nodded like she’d said the most profound thing ever. Nora covered her smile with her hand. “Did you get that from the queer section at the Hallmark store?”

Rook. With his nervous laugh as the silence in the kitchen deepened, and his amber eyes that reminded me, no matter what, I’d always belong to him.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to count them all tonight.” He enclosed my entire hand with his and turned his face toward the sky. “Even if it takes our whole lives, we’ll count them, Rook. I know we will.”

“I’m so fucking sorry,” he whispered. “I hate that goddamn word, but I mean it, Rook. I fucking mean it more than anything I’ve ever said in my stupid life.”

I would have done anything for a moment of privacy, for dusk, for the fort in the trees, for a room filled with silence. A place where I could tell him I wanted to go back. I wanted to know. I wanted the love he’d been too afraid to give.

“You can’t kiss me like that…” His voice was raw, scraped thin and vulnerable. “You can’t kiss me like you mean it if you don’t.” “I mean it.”

Loving Rook was effortless for me. Effortless because I’d always known. It wasn’t a maybe kind of thing, or a let’s try, it was years of hopeful smiles and subtle touches, disseminating each one and wondering if this time… just maybe… It was hours of talking in the dark shade of trees and knowing that this person, this one man, owned all of my secrets. All but one. And it was a million days of wanting to give him that secret, wanting to give him everything.

“We still have this summer.” His hand found mine, his skin warm and soft against my calloused palms. “I promise. Every summer will belong to you.”

“I want you.” More tears spilled over his lashes, and he was all salt and breath as I kissed his top lip. “I didn’t know… but I always have.”

Luka and I were like two rivers, raging toward the same open sea, and there wasn’t a thing in this world, not death or distance or time, or even my own naivety that would keep us apart.

Holding my face in his hands, he kissed me with reverent lips, long and deep, igniting the dormant flame inside me, and I was alive with it. Awake, that gray ocean dissipating into the thick air as Luka’s teeth sank into my bottom lip.

“It’s hard preparing for death. I don’t think anyone is ever really ready, but at least we had some sort of warning. I sometimes wish he would have died suddenly, like a heart attack or something, instead of suffering as long as he did. He’s not in pain anymore, and I have to remember that, even if my pain hasn’t yet passed.”

I don’t know a lot of things about relationships, but I know you, and I know I’m in love with my best friend. And I’m ready, Luka… if you are.”

I kissed our secret message inked into the skin of his shoulder, traced the line of his tattoo with the tip of my tongue. I craved every goose bump I tasted, every etched muscle under his pale skin.

I could taste the words he’d spoken. I love you. It was painted against his tongue, against mine.

Luka poured everything into this kiss. Every year we’d spent together, every word we’d never said, every blue hour and every sunrise.

my world had been narrowed down to this room and how it was steeped in the smell of sex and Luka and that citrus bath soap,

I wanted to show him, like those stars we’d spent so many nights counting, my love for him was infinite.