Wes’ blue eyes were warm and soft and he stepped toward Adam.
Adam’s heart was beating fast now for an entirely un-spider-related reason. Wes’ mouth looked lush and soft and his shaved hair looked like velvet.
Wes pressed one broad shoulder into Adam’s and said solemnly, “Thank you.”
Chapter Eight
Wes
“You did what?!” His friend’s voice was at least an octave higher than usual. Wes had just told Zachary about Gus’ show-and-tell. “But you mean an actual, human child?”
“Yes, a Homo sapiens child.”
Zachary snorted. His friend was one of the only people who could tell when he was joking.
Zachary only lived four miles away, but they mostly spoke on the phone or via chat. Once in a while, Zachary would FaceTime him to show him something, but he didn’t seem to mind that Wes preferred they never meet in person.
“How did the Halloween decorating go?” Wes asked, realizing Halloween had come and gone without his notice.
“Excellent. I won. Obviously.”
Zachary lived on Casper Road, and every year the residents competed in a neighborhood Halloween decorating contest. Kids from all around the county went there and trick-or-treated. Zachary took it extremely seriously, not caring about the children or the neighborhood—only about the trophy that was bestowed on the house with the best decorations.
He’d won every year he had lived on Casper Road and approached the Halloween season with all the planning and dedication with which he approached his architectural blueprints—if a bit more of a competitive spirit.
“Congratulations. I’m sure you terrified the human children.”
“Oh, to be sure.” Wes could hear the smile in his voice. “And I’m already planning for next year. It’s going to be truly epic.”
“I can do lighting,” Wes offered absently.
In the past he’d created some eerily glowing effects for Zachary’s windows.
“Definitely.”
Zachary began to outline his plans for the next year’s decorations, and Wes tuned out as he checked the biogas generator. It was an accepted tenet of their friendship that both of them had free rein to wax enthusiastic about their niche pursuits, and either of them were welcome to stop listening when they lost interest. It worked for them.
When he finished with the biogas generator and went into the basement to feed the lizards, Zachary was describing something made of wire and silicone that sounded like it might be a skeleton.
His phone beeped with an incoming call.
“Hang on a sec, Zachary.”
Wes looked at his phone. The incoming call was from Adam Mills. Wes’ heart sped up at the sight of his name. They’d exchanged phone numbers after Gus’ show-and-tell, Adam adorably flustered and making up reasons why it was good for neighbors to have one another’s contact information, but Wes hadn’t thought anything would come of it.
“Hello?”
“Wes, thank god. I’m so glad you answered. I mean, hi, hello, it’s Adam. Mills. From across the street. How are you?”
Though it was the first time he’d heard Adam’s voice on the phone, somehow Wes felt as though they did this all the time—Adam calling, enthusiastic or in a hurry; Wes answering, waiting for the infusion of sparkle that Adam’s next words might bring.
“What’s up?”
“Okay, I’m so damn sorry to ask you for another favor, but I’m at work and my damn car won’t start. River’s with Gus, but they have to leave in half an hour to meet the vet at the cat shelter so they can’t stay with her. Is there any way you would be able to pop over to my house and stay with Gus until I can get home? It shouldn’t be more than an hour or so.”
“Go over to your house,” Wes echoed.
“And hang out with Gus, yeah. Wes, are you there?”
He’d thought he was speaking, but apparently not.
“I don’t know what to do?”
“With Gus? No worries, just watch a movie, or you can read a book and tell her to play in her room. Really, it’s just so she’s not alone.”
If he were to stop and think about it, Wes would realize that Adam and Gus were the first people outside his family to ask him for anything in years.
Once, he had been someone people asked things of. Asked far too much of. But when he pulled into himself, he shed those connections like a snakeskin.
He waited to see if the request would feel suffocating, as requests once had, but all he felt was a warm tingle in his stomach. Excitement at the prospect of seeing Adam again.
“Okay.”
“Really?! Oh, god, thank you so much, Wes. You’re saving my life, seriously.”
“Should I go now?”
“If you don’t mind, that would be wonderful.”
“Okay.”
He hung up and switched over to the other call.
“Zachary, I have to go.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“I have to go watch a human child.”
“The kid from across the street again? You never told me if her dad is attractive. Wes. Westley. Is he hot? Wes, hey!”
“Bye, Zachary.”
River answered the door with their coat already on.
“Thanks, Wes,” they said. “I’d stay, but the vet is coming by to look at one of the kittens and I have to be there to let her in.”
“That’s understandable. I hope the kitten is okay.”
River smiled. “Me too.”
Gus ran at Wes the second he got inside.
“Wes!”
“Hi, Gus. What are you up to?”
Gus shrugged. “Me and River were building a fort, but I’m bored of that. Can we do science?”
“Building a fort is science. It’s physics.”
Gus cocked her head like she was considering that.
“Oh. Well can we do other science?”
Wes didn’t know much about kids, but as Adam had pointed out the other day, he had been one. He could certainly give Gus what he wished someone had given him when he was her age.
“Want to do some chemistry?”
Gus grinned and nodded enthusiastically.
* * *
Two and a half hours later, Adam walked into the kitchen looking exhausted. There were circles under his blue eyes, and his clothes were rumpled. Wes had the strongest urge to fold him in his arms. To press his thumbs to those dark circles as if he could erase them simply by noticing.