“Probably. We’re not hiding it or anything. Taking it one day at a time. There aren’t any homophobes on the crew, with Will having two boyfriends. Their heads would explode.”
“And you’re happy?”
“I love her.” Kris’s smile transformed her ordinary face. Rusty beat down a flash of jealousy. “She loves me. Everything else will work out.”
He envied her that certainty.
She eyed him up and down. “So what about you and Cross?”
“It’s hard right now. We’re two thousand miles apart, he had a bad injury, had a lot of pain, is in rehab with not much privacy.” The door of Cross’s suite might lock, but there were people all around him.
“And he’s demi?”
“I guess.” Rusty took off his hat, ran a hand over his sweaty hair, and jammed the Stetson back on. “Don’t laugh.”
“I would never.”
“I mean it.”
She held up her hands, eyebrows raised.
“Okay. So we’ve been going out for, like, two months.” If you counted from the first time Cross pretended to be Rusty’s boyfriend, which he did, because there’d beensomethingbetween them. “And we haven’t had sex.”
“Like, no fucking?”
“Like, no anything. No mouths, no hands except our own.”
“No kissing?”
“We’ve kissed. I like it a lot. I think he does too, but we didn’t get past that.”
“Hm.” Kris eyed him, expression distant like she was thinking. “Maybe you’re just not there yet. Took me more than two months with Nita, and she’s not demi anything. Just concerned about not taking advantage of me.”
“I guess. I hope so. How do I know if I’m pushing him too hard?”
“Guys, I swear. Youaskhim. There’s this thing called communication.”
“Like it’s so simple. Were youcommunicatingwhen you were trying to make Nita jealous?”
“Ha. No, I was being a desperate bitch, flirting with the waitress in this café we went to.” She drained the last of her water bottle. “Communicating isn’t easy, but that doesn’t mean it’s not your answer.”
“I can’t just say, ‘When are you going to like me enough to fuck me?’”
“Maybe you can be more subtle than a T-rex on a rampage. And maybe the question should be ‘trust me’ not just ‘like me,’ you think? Or both?”
“I think he trusts me. I hope.” Cross had told Rusty some family stuff he was pretty sure not many other people knew.
Kris bopped him with her empty bottle. “You’re pretty trustworthy for a sports-obsessed jock.” She got up. “Come on. Cows to check, fences to ride.”
Rusty stuffed the remains of his lunch wrappers into his saddlebags and stood. “You won’t tell anyone, right? About me or Cross?”
“Fuck, no.”
“Not even Nita?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
“It’s just, he’s not out. And the team had the whole big thing with Scott this year, so he doesn’t want to make waves.”
