“Of course you did,” Jake says. His face is shadowed, backlit by the hall light, but David can see the crooked white of his grin. “I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

“Okay,” David says, fast, before he falters, asks Jake to come in, to stay. David is aware Jake’s family knows they’re…whatever they are — of course his family knows — but it’s one thing to know, another to be confronted with it, have your nose rubbed in it. It would be inconsiderate. Disrespectful, as he told Jake.

“You want me to stay?” Jake asks.

For a moment, sharp, David hates him for always knowing.

“I—” David says. It’s hard to say no when he doesn’t want to say it, and David hates him a little for that too, for making him say no when he doesn’t want to.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” Jake repeats, like he understands, or maybe like he thinks David wanted to say no, but couldn’t manage it. David isn’t sure.

“Good night,” David says, but Jake’s already closed the door behind him.

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY

David doesn’t sleep very well that night. He’d tell himself it was the unfamiliar room, unfamiliar bed, but he sleeps in those so often they’re familiar in their own way. Maybe it’s that it isn’t a hotel room, generic and interchangeable, but Jake’s room, the place he grew up. David’s had more trouble sleeping since he met Jake than he ever had before, so he supposes it isn’t surprising, but it never grows any less frustrating.

David’s surrounded by his old trophies, medals, too many to count, the cheap plastic ones they give you when you’re young, growing steadily more substantial, a framed picture of Jake in his early teens, C on his jersey, hoisting a giant trophy from a tournament David vaguely remembers playing in. One David must have lost. The Gold medal is here, followed Jake back home from Florida at some point. David can’t look at it, sitting beside the silver, like they’re even close to the same.

David wakes early, but after he uses the bathroom he returns to Jake’s room, scrolling blindly through news on his phone for hours, the same stories over and over, just from different sources, waiting for Jake to wake up, come get him so David isn’t forced to make conversation with any of the Lourdes without him as a buffer. That’s probably pathetic. Well. It’s definitely pathetic. He knows it’s pathetic, but he still can’t make himself leave the relative safety of Jake’s room.