I was looking for wasn’t something anyone was ever going to be able to give me. Anyone else, I mean.”
Connor looked at me sharply and I looked away, letting the fingers of my right hand flutter over the sand. “What about you?”
Connor shifted, switching which leg he had bent. “A couple guys.”
“A couple?” I blinked. “In ten years?”
He snorted. “I do live in the woods, you know. Single gay guys aren’t just falling out of the trees up there. Gatlinburg doesn’t even have 5,000 people living in it.”
“But still…” I tried to wrap my brain around the idea. Maybe it was just because I was constantly two seconds away from throwing myself at Connor, but it was hard to imagine that everyone else didn’t feel the same way.
Connor gave me a wry smile. “You calling me a prude? First you slut-shame your cat, now I’m not sleeping with enough people? Make up your mind.”
“I guess I’m just surprised, is all.”
If Connor was telling the truth, I’d been with more guys in the past ten years than he had, which was equally hard to wrap my mind around. I couldn’t help thinking how much my dad would love knowing that little fact.
“Well, I hate to disappoint you, but until coming back to Summersea, I hadn’t been in a relationship in three years.” He darted a quick glance at me and must have seen my confusion, because he added, “Not that that’s what we have. I just mean. You know.”
“But what about—” Connor turned towards me and I ducked my head down. “Nevermind. It’s not important.”
“Hey.” He tossed another pebble at me. “Just ask. Whatever it is.”
“I just—” I inhaled deeply. “When I was up there. For that conference thing. It was two years ago.”
“Yeah?”
Ugh, why had I said anything? I’d tried to bury this memory as deeply as I could. But Connor was looking at me intently, and I couldn’t think of a single other thing to say but the truth.
“On the second-to-last night, a couple of the other teachers and I went out to dinner, and I got a little drunk and decided I wanted to walk back to the hotel. And I—God, this is embarrassing—I passed by this bar, and I saw you.”
Just saying the words was enough to feel a flicker of the gut-punch I’d felt that night. Seeing Connor had been like seeing a ghost. I’d frozen outside the bar’s window, transfixed.
Half of me had wanted to run in and say something, and half of me was convinced I’d just deluded myself into seeing Connor because I wanted to so badly. That if I went in there, he’d disappear.
“You saw me?”
I bit my lip. “You and another guy. You kissed him.”
“How did you—wait, when was this?”
“I know it sounds like I was stalking you, and I swear I wasn’t. It was just total chance.”
“Why didn’t you say something? Come inside?”
“I was paralyzed. I wanted to, but part of me thought it wasn’t even real, that I’d just imagined you, and the rest of me didn’t even know what to say if I did go inside. So I just stood there, hoping you’d look out the window and see me and make the decision for me. But you didn’t. And then this guy walked over and sat down next to you at the bar, and you kissed him. I didn’t know what to do after that. You looked… I don’t know, you looked right together, somehow. I figured he must have been your boyfriend, and then I felt creepy, and I just…left.”
I didn’t just leave. I ran around the corner of the building and dry heaved and had to hug my knees until I stopped shaking. I barely slept that night, and was a zombie for the rest of the trip. But Connor didn’t need to know that part.
The worst thing about it—okay, well, maybe not the worst thing, but an equally awful thing—was that I couldn’t even tell anyone about it when I got back. I just had to hold it inside of me, the weight of it pressing my lungs for so long that I’d forgotten what it felt like to breathe without that secret.
Connor’s brow furrowed. “Two years ago? Was it—”
“October. So I guess two and a half years, really.”
Understanding spread across Connor’s face. “Oh, Julian. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Yeah, but that guy wasn’t even a local. He was in town for two weeks. He