AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Harry laughed and took another sip of his sidecar, and just like that, they were okay again.
By the time they left the restaurant, Jack was confident that they’d successfully navigated past the speed bump of his aunt, and he was looking forward to the ride home, purely so he could kiss Harry at the bus stop at the end of it.
They sat next to each other on the bus, thighs pressed against each other, ignoring the empty seats around them. Jack felt something in his belly unfurl, loose and warm, when Harry rested his head on Jack’s shoulder. “Comfy?” he teased.
“Mmmm. The sidecar was strong,” Harry said, “but it was tasty.”
Tasty—and expensive. Jack winced internally when he thought of his bank balance after paying for dinner, but he also didn’t begrudge a single cent of it. Not when it was for Harry. He slung an arm around Harry’s shoulder. “I could find a recipe,” he said. “We could make them at home.”
Harry scrunched up his nose. “We could, but if we did, Tristan would want to join in. You know what he’s like.”
Jack nodded. Tristan had never met a cocktail he didn’t like.
Harry hesitated, then said, “I want them to be just for us. Something that reminds me of tonight.”
Warmth flooded Jack at that. Harry’s memory of their date wasn’t going to be, as Jack had feared, the spectre of his shitty behaviour, but the moment they’d bonded over a cocktail. “Okay,” he said. “Sidecars can be our special thing.”
Harry lifted his head from Jack’s shoulder long enough to beam at him, his slightly lopsided glasses making him look even cuter than normal. Jack wondered once again how he’d gotten so lucky.
“I think I’m super drunk,” Harry said. “I have bubbles in my bloodstream, and they’re popping. Is that normal?” He wrinkled his nose. “And my nose is numb.”
Jack touched the end of Harry’s nose. “You’re not much of a cocktail drinker, are you?”
“No.” Harry’s beam grew impossibly wide. “I should be, though! It’s really fun, and I’m good at it!”
They got off the bus on King Street in Newtown and held hands as they walked down to Dickson Lane. Harry hummed a tune as they walked. Then, when they’d reached the corner, he stopped and said, “Dance with me?”
“What?”
“Dance with me,” Harry said. “I haven’t had a boyfriend before, so I want to do all the romcom stuff. So dance with me?”
Jack laughed, but put his hand on Harry’s hip, gripped his hand and spun them into something that might have looked like a waltz from a distance. It was as lame as hell, and Jack would have felt like an idiot for doing it except for the way Harry laughed in delight. There probably wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to make Harry laugh like that.
They swayed on the spot for a little while longer before Harry led Jack by the hand to their house and up the pathway to the front door, then darted forward and stole a kiss. When he pulled away, his smile was wide and happy-drunk. “Gotta have a kiss at the end of our first date, right?”
“Yeah,” Jack said, and reeled him back in by the front of his shirt and kissed the hell out of him. When they parted, both slightly breathless, Jack was pleased to see that Harry’s eyes were bright and his cheeks were flushed.
They might have hit a rough spot with Aunt Cassie, but in the end, their date hadn’t been a disaster after all.
This was a fucking disaster.
Jack ran a hand down the side of his face as his mother’s voice echoed down the phone line. “Cassie said you were kissing some boy at the restaurant, in full view of the public. But when she went inside, hoping to be introduced, you shuffled her out the door without letting her meet your…friend. Is this how it is now, Jack? Keeping secrets from your family?” She obviously still hadn’t forgiven him for moving without telling her, even though it had been months ago.
Jack wasn’t sure if the clear disapproval in her voice was aimed at the kissing a guy part, the kissing a guy in public part, or the not introducing his date to Aunt Cassie part. He suspected it was a combination of all three. His parents accepted that he was gay in theory, but they’d never been confronted with the reality of it up close.
“Mum,” Jack interrupted, just to stop her talking as he scrambled out of bed, careful not to wake Harry, and slipped out of the bedroom and downstairs. It was too early for this. They’d fallen into Jack’s bed and made out for what felt like hours last night before moving onto messy, tipsy hand jobs, and it had been late when they’d finally fallen asleep.
But Aunt Cassie obviously hadn’t been able to wait to call his mum to tell her that she’d seen Jack with a mystery date, and she, in turn, hadn’t been able to wait to call Jack and see what the hell was going on. So now, at quarter past six on a Monday morning, Mum was asking questions Jack wasn’t nearly awake enough to answer. “Mum,” he repeated.
“Don’t you ‘Mum’ me. Do you or do you not have a boyfriend? And if you do, why haven’t you told us about him? Why not introduce him to Cassie? Or were you planning on bringing him to the wedding as a surprise?”
And shit, what was Jack meant to say to that? Yes, I’m dating Mia’s fake ex? Yes, but you can’t meet him? That wasn’t going to fly—he knew his mother better than that. If he admitted to there being someone, no power on earth would stop his parents from wanting to meet Harry.
And that couldn’t happen.
“I don’t have a boyfriend.” The denial was out of his mouth before he could stop it.
His mother made a disbelieving noise. “So you're saying your aunt hallucinated you kissing a boy?”
