Harvard had been dumped.
Aiden knew as soon as he walked in. For a tall, broad-shouldered guy, Harvard usually walked very softly, as though he didn’t wish to disturb the universe. It was only when he was weighted down with misery that his tread was heavy.
He came into their room and stood in the center of the floor, hands open and helpless. Harvard normally possessed great steadiness of purpose, but right now he looked as if he had no idea what to do.
Aiden stared at him, wracked with guilt. He’d always promised himself he would never hurt Harvard. Not Harvard. He truly did not want to hear what had happened.
“What… happened?” he asked.
Harvard stared at the floor. “Uh—I walked Neil home. Well, I more or less chased Neil home. He wouldn’t really look at or talk to me until we reached his porch. Once we were there, he told me… he wasn’t sure we were going to work out as a couple, and he was pretty sure I knew why.”
Aiden wasn’t any good at apologies, which was unfortunate, because he needed to come up with an abject one fast. Aiden didn’t have many rules he lived by, but this was one. He didn’t ever hurt Harvard. He wouldn’t do that.
Except he had.
Neil had been really into Harvard until he met Aiden. It was clear Aiden hadn’t done a good enough job hiding his seething hatred, or his attachment to Harvard. Aiden’s date had figured out how Aiden felt, and Neil must have done so as well. This was all Aiden’s fault.
Into Aiden’s fraught silence, Harvard said, “I don’t know why, though. I told Neil I didn’t. He said that if I figured it out and wanted to see him again, then I could give him a call in a week. That seems like there’s hope, right? I got something badly wrong, but if I knew what it was, I could fix it.”
“Wait,” said Aiden. “What?”
Harvard looked up at the sound of Aiden’s voice, and frowned. “Do you think it was when I snapped at the server about spoons? I read that if you behave badly with the waitstaff when on a date, you’re showing your date who you really are. I should go back to the diner and apologize. I should bring her flowers.”
Aiden was off the hook. He didn’t know why some weird masochistic impulse was telling him to wriggle back onto it.
“You don’t think Neil might have made this dumbass decision because of me?”
“Because you can’t remember your dates’ names?” asked Harvard, a trace of warm amusement creeping into his voice. “You’re a menace, but no. I don’t see any reason why Neil would break up with me because of you. Neil was clear he was breaking up with me because of something to do with me.”
Bruce had been right about everything, except for one factor: Harvard was good, really good, in a way few people could understand. He would never blame Aiden for something if he could blame himself instead.
“God, I just don’t know how to date.” Harvard sighed. “If I’d dated some people before now, maybe I’d understand what to do. Is that why you date around a lot? So if you find someone you like, you won’t mess up?”
Aiden shook his head wordlessly. He hadn’t realized Harvard liked Neil so much.
“Is it all just practice? Like fencing? I don’t know why this is so difficult for me when it comes so easily to you,” said Harvard. “I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m getting everything wrong.”
Aiden was lounging on the bed, fiddling with Harvard Paw as he sometimes did when he had the urge to go to Harvard or touch him. He patted Harvard Paw on the head. Seeing Harvard this upset made him miserable, too.
“It’s all right,” he told Harvard soothingly. “It is like fencing. Remember when we were little, how you used to have to go over everything the coach taught us with me all over again? You’d move slowly so I could copy you, and tell me what to do every step of the way, and I learned how to mimic every move until I could do it on my own. Dating will start coming naturally to you.”
“Well, it’s not like you can carefully guide me through all the motions of dating,” Harvard said ruefully. Then his tone changed, becoming the captain’s voice, the one he used when he started to see a plan forming. “I mean… could you?”
Their familiar room seemed to tilt right into an alternate dimension. Aiden thought for a dazed moment that perhaps he hadn’t heard Harvard right. Or possibly Aiden was having a hallucination. It had been a difficult day.
“What?”
“Could you teach me to date?”
Harvard was looking at him expectantly, as if he’d really asked Aiden that question. As if Aiden really had to answer.
Aiden said, “No!”
“Do you think I’m hopeless?” asked Harvard.
His shoulders slumped again, the light that had woken in him at the thought of a strategy extinguished. Aiden wanted to bring it back.
Aiden cleared his throat and said, “I don’t think you’re hopeless.”
A light flickered in Harvard’s face. “Then—couldn’t you help me?”
“I…,” said Aiden.
His heart was beating too hard, the continuous flutter of a trapped thing that couldn’t resign itself to captivity. It wouldn’t work, he told himself. But what if it could? No matter what Aiden sometimes imagined, he wouldn’t ever really try to date Harvard. Deep down, Aiden had always known that was a dream. He knew where romance always led: the sound of a slammed door and a sports car in a driveway. Trying to have everything meant losing it all.
They had to stay friends. If they were friends, they could be friends forever. Only… this might buy Aiden a little time, to get used to the idea of Harvard with someone else. To have something for himself. He couldn’t keep Harvard, but he could keep a memory.
This wouldn’t hurt Harvard. Aiden would be helping him. Harvard had asked him to. Anytime the practice dating started to feel too real, Aiden could remind himself that this was all for someone else. Harvard was only doing this to get Neil back. If that was what Harvard wanted, Aiden would get it for him.
Hardly letting himself think about what he was doing, Aiden nodded.
Harvard’s whisper was almost wondering. “Would you really?”
Aiden’s throat was dry, but he got the words out anyway. “I told you already: Whatever you ask me for, the answer is yes.”
17: HARVARD
Aiden was sitting on Harvard’s bed, fiddling with his teddy bear, a lock of hair escaped from his gracefully messy bun and curving into his face. His eyes were fixed on the wall behind Harvard’s head.
Harvard kept reliving the moment on Neil’s porch, when Neil had looked at Harvard with what seemed almost like pity, though there was anger there, too. As if Harvard had got things so wrong it was frustrating, when Harvard had thought with Neil there was a chance of getting things right. He wanted that chance back.
“Thanks so much,” Harvard told Aiden. “This is going to be great.”
“Yes,” Aiden said at last in a slow, thoughtful tone. “This is a good idea. You know how dating works in theory. You read your mom’s magazines, no matter how much I implore you not to. But theoretical experience is no substitute for practical experience.”