“Fast service,” he said wryly. “Do you want me to accuse you of dazzling the waitress?”

Adam choked on his soda. “Is that a Twilight reference? How is it possible your brothers don’t know you’re g*y?”

Every time he said that, Nick wanted to flinch as hard as Adam had on the street. “I said a girlfriend was making me read it.”

Adam lost the smile. “Quinn said you’ve had a lot of girlfriends.”

Nick shrugged and wondered what the safe answer to that was. “‘A lot’ is relative, I guess.” He paused, wondering what else Quinn had said about him. “And you?”

“Girlfriends? None.”

Nick smiled but wondered if they were going to play this game all night. The entire rhythm of the evening felt off, like they’d hit the wrong note right from the start, and they’d never really found the melody.

Adam unstrapped his bag and pulled out a chemistry textbook, followed by a spiral notebook. “Didn’t you say you wanted to study?”

So they weren’t going to talk about anything of substance at all. Nick pulled out his calculus textbook, glad he’d brought it along. He worked through the three homework questions he’d missed, hoping he could convince the teacher to give him half credit. Then he moved on to tonight’s assignment.

Adam made for quiet company. Nick had worried it would be uncomfortable, but the restaurant was warm, the French dip sandwiches were exceptional, and an hour had passed before he realized it. He shoved his calculus textbook back into his bag and reached for physics.

The air whispered frustration, so Nick glanced across at his companion’s notebook. Adam hadn’t lied about hating chemistry. It looked like it hated him back, from the amount of cross outs and eraser marks on the paper.

“Balancing equations?” Nick said.

Adam glanced up. “No. Murdering equations.”

“No offense, but why are you taking chemistry if you hate it?

I thought you were all gung ho about dance.”

“I am, but I’d like something to fall back on. I need a science credit.” He shrugged. “It was this or biology, and I didn’t want to cut up dead animals.”

Something to fall back on. Another thing Nick admired about him. “You want me to take a look?”

“Sure.”

Nick expected him to turn the book around, like Gabriel would, but Adam didn’t move. So Nick took his pencil and moved to the other side of the table.

The table wasn’t tiny, but it was small enough that his thigh brushed Adam’s when he sat, and he could feel the warmth of his body in the space between him and the wall.

Chemistry. Focus.

“Here,” he said, writing the first formula on a new line. “I think you’re trying to make it too complicated. I always find it easiest to start with the element that only shows up in one reac-tant and product. Like here, it’s oxygen, so double the H-two-O

on the right side of the arrow.”

“Then I have too many hydrogens.”

“So double it on the left.” Adam did, and Nick said, “Now look at the carbon.”

They worked through the rest of that problem and then started a new one. Nick walked him through that, too. By the third, he shut up and let Adam work through it alone.

“It seems so simple now.” Adam glanced up. “You’re a good teacher.”

Nick flushed at the praise, but he shrugged it off. “Do you want to do another one?”

“Sure.” Adam started writing. When he got to the end of the line, he hesitated, his pencil stopping on the paper. He kept his eyes down. “Do you remember how I told you that my parents wanted me to pretend to be straight, after I got out of the hospital?”

“Yeah.”

“It sucked. I was determined to show them just how g*y I was. I started dating someone right away. It wouldn’t have mattered who it was; I needed a guy so I could show my parents that I was in a relationship. At the studio where I danced then, they rented the space once a week to a martial arts school. One of the instructors was a guy named Matthew. Cute as hell, built like he was born on steroids—you know the type.”

Adam set the pencil down and stopped there. His eyes were still on the chemistry paper. “I flirted with him,” he said. “I flirt with everyone—gay, straight, whatever, I’m not shy.”

Nick remembered. Adam had flirted with him the first night they met, before he even had a clue that Nick might be interested in boys.

“Was he straight?” Nick said.

“I thought he was. But he wasn’t. He’d ignore me when I flirted in public, but once he caught me in the back room and asked me out. I didn’t know anything about him, really, but he was hot, I was shallow, and that was that.”

That wasn’t that. Adam’s voice had gained tension, and Nick waited, listening, glad for the privacy and the dim lighting.

“He wasn’t out,” Adam said, “but he was a few years older.

He had his own place, so we only went there. The first time he kissed me, he was all hesitant and tentative. I thought it was charming. When he invited me back the next night, of course I went.” He shook his head. “He kissed me again, but this time it went further—a lot further.”

Adam stopped again, his jaw clenched now.

Nick wanted to touch him, to offer some comfort. He wasn’t sure Adam would accept it. His brothers sure wouldn’t, and he wasn’t exactly rolling in experience with comforting other guys.