My Desert Haven (BOYXBOY)

Chapter 12

A warm breeze, a watch-worthy sunset, the sound of potential friends chatting in the distance, and my hand sweating profusely against Aaron Keslin’s.

I was having all sorts of issues.

The last time I checked, I hadn’t decided what I wanted to do about Aaron. I liked him, sure, but maybe that fact wouldn’t have been so difficult to deal with if things weren’t so... complicated.

Here he was now, telling me that he didn’t want to be my friend, and it wasn’t in the schoolyard, we’re-not-friends-anymore-so-there!kind of way. I wasn’t really sure how to respond to it, so I didn’t. I just sat there, holding his hand and getting a little more nervous about it every second.

I didn’t know why I was getting so worked up over it. It wasn’t like Aaron didn’t have a habit of making me nervous. And this time he wasn’t even kissing me--or walking around in underwear I could see through. He was just holding my hand, for christsake! And I liked it.

Maybe that was the problem.

It was kind of nice, just sitting with him like that. Peaceful. Relaxing, too, as his thumb began to brush over my fingers. Of course, the lack of tension probably had to do with the fact that we weren’t arguing. Actually, it occurred to me that Aaron and I seemed to get along better when neither us us were talking at all. Maybe that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

"What are you doing here?" I finally asked, if anything because the silence was managing to kill me, and becoming more awkward by the second. Aaron’s thumb paused briefly over my knuckles, but continued its soft stroking as he replied.

"Seth said he was going to be here, but I haven’t seen him; saw you instead."

I didn’t like that answer. I didn’t like the mention of Seth. I didn’t like that Aaron was there to see Seth. I really didn’t like that Seth was with Angela, who seemed way too nice to be hanging around someone like him.

"He’s here," I responded coldly. "You never said that the girl he was with was Angela."

"Huh?"

I sighed, and shook my head. It was probably pointless to bring up Angela. Aaron wouldn’t have any idea what I was talking about, and even if I explained it to him, something told me that he wouldn’t be very sympathetic towards Dave, anyway.

"He’s here with her?" Aaron suddenly asked, and when I looked at him, it was to find that he seemed somewhat surprised by this information.

"Yeah, I saw Angela with Seth a while ago... Why?"

"No reason," Aaron said, shrugging. "He just didn’t mention he’d be with her."

"So, he was supposed to meet you here?" I asked curiously; but I think it came out more like an accusation than anything, and because of that, I found Aaron smirking at me.

"Isn’t it a little early to be jealous?" he remarked. "You haven’t even agreed to go out with me yet."

Feeling annoyed, I instinctively tried to pull my hand away, but this time he held it tighter, refusing to let me.

"I’m not jealous," I mumbled. "I just...I sort of can’t stand him."

And that was the truth. Actually, I think it was a little more fair to say that I despised him. First, he warned me off of Aaron and then he took off with Dave’s crush. There seemed to be a few contradictions here. I wasn’t amused when Aaron simply laughed about it.