FenceStriking Distance - Sarah Rees Brennan Page 0,28

said. “What was your problem?”

“I walked Cindy to her doorstep,” said Harvard slowly.

“For future reference,” Aiden suggested, “you can leave them at the gate. Or drop them off by the side of the road and say ‘See ya!’ That’s a real time-saver.”

Harvard gave Aiden a doubtful look. “Your success with men is a mystery to me.”

Aiden was aware. He forced himself to smile. “I’m sexually magnetic, so jot that down. Mystery solved.” Aiden clapped his hands together. “Proceed with your story!”

Harvard did so, his face now clouded with distress. Aiden had spent the whole night praying for clouds, but not these.

“We were standing together on her porch. She told me she’d had a great time. Then she sort of—swayed in toward me, and I could tell that. Uh. That she wanted to kiss me.”

Aiden had known this girl was bad news.

“You… kiss people all the time.” Harvard cleared his throat, slightly awkward. “Like, you’ve probably kissed someone within the last five minutes.”

Aiden tipped his hand back and forth. “Maybe an hour ago. Laurence.”

He wasn’t used to talking about kissing with Harvard. He refused to let it show this affected him.

“Wow, no, that was Byron,” Harvard informed him. “You were calling him Laurence? That’s worse than usual.”

“Really? Byron? You’d think I would remember a guy called Byron,” Aiden mused. “Anyway, enough of Byron. I won’t be seeing him again. We couldn’t even agree about the weather.”

Harvard looked out the window. “What’s to agree about? It’s a nice night.”

Aiden beamed approval at him. Harvard was so wise. “It is a nice night. And still early. Sorry your date was a lousy kisser, but what do you say we watch a movie and you can revisit dating another time?”

Such as college. Or grad school! You can’t hurry love. Sometimes, Aiden had heard, you just had to wait.

Harvard stated in a distant voice, “She wasn’t a lousy kisser.”

“Oh,” said Aiden. “She was a really great kisser?”

He regretted Cindy had already blocked Harvard. Aiden had more things to say to her.

“I don’t know. I didn’t kiss her,” Harvard told their floorboards. “She sort of swayed in toward me, and I panicked and I, uh, kissed her on the forehead and ruffled her hair and ran off.”

“Good call!” Aiden said. “There’s no need to rush this stuff. When you’re ready! Or never! Never is fine, too.”

He wondered idly how Harvard had got the Best Night Ever hashtag with a forehead kiss. No, he could picture how it had been. She must have thought Harvard was the last of the true gentlemen. She wasn’t wrong. Harvard had probably reached out and enfolded her in his arms, and she’d felt taken care of and cherished.

“I didn’t want to kiss her,” Harvard confessed very quietly.

“Why would you?” asked Aiden. “She has terrible taste in music and uses too many exclamation points!”

“I never…,” said Harvard. “I never thought about it before. I always thought I’d… want to one day? That it would feel right. But I don’t think I want to kiss girls at all.”

“Oh,” said Aiden. “Oh.”

They’d had this conversation before, from the opposite side. Harvard had assured Aiden of Harvard’s eternal friendship and how all kinds of love were beautiful, which hadn’t exactly been what Aiden was looking for.

Aiden couldn’t believe this was happening. He was too surprised to be supportive.

“So… you might want to kiss guys?”

“I—maybe?” said Harvard. “I think… yes?”

As statements of ringing certainty went, this one left something to be desired. Still, it was more than Aiden had at the start of the night. Aiden remained in a place of dazed disbelief.

“Welcome to the club?” Aiden hazarded. “It’s a sexy club.”

Aiden shot Harvard Paw an incredulous look, to see if someone else was getting this. His stuffed bear had fallen over on his side. Aiden was fully in sympathy with the bear.

When his gaze returned to Harvard, he was smiling weakly. Harvard’s wider smiles embraced everyone, but these small grins were exclusively for Aiden. “Thanks, buddy.”

If Harvard felt better, Aiden felt better.

Maybe…, Aiden thought through the shock, testing the thoughts out in his mind as if he were rehearsing lines for a play to see if a role felt right. Maybe this is great.

Harvard wasn’t going to marry Stacey with the bad taste in music and settle down in a house featuring a white picket fence and two point five golden retrievers. Aiden was saved.

“I think you know who you should talk to about this,” Aiden purred encouragingly. “Lucky for you, there’s an expert on