Leah on the Offbeat (Creekwood #2)(81)

And . . . shit.

The words tumble out. “I don’t mean package. Just. Your box. Is big.” I hold my hands apart to demonstrate. Because apparently that’s the way to prove it’s not an innuendo. By spreading my hands out dick-measuringly.

Box Boy furrows his brow.

“Sorry. I don’t . . . I swear I don’t usually comment on the size of other guys’ boxes.”

He meets my eyes and smiles, just a little. “Nice tie,” he says.

I look down at it, blushing. Of course I couldn’t have worn a normal tie today. Of course I’m wearing one from the Dad collection. Navy blue, printed with hundreds of tiny hot dogs.

“At least it’s not a romper?” I say.

“Good point.” He smiles again—so of course I notice his lips. Which are shaped exactly like Emma Watson’s lips. Emma Watson’s lips. Right there on his face.

“So you’re not from here,” Box Boy says.

I look up at him, startled. “How did you know?”

“Well, you keep talking to me.” Then he blushes. “That came out wrong. I just mean it’s usually only tourists who strike up conversations.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t mind, though,” he says.

“I’m not a tourist.”

“You’re not?”

“Okay, I’m not technically from here, but I live here now. For the summer. I’m from Milton, Georgia.”

“Milton, Georgia.” He smiles.

I feel inexplicably frantic. Like, my limbs are weird and loose, and my head’s full of cotton. I’m probably electric bright red now. I don’t even want to know. I just need to keep talking. “I know, right? Milton. It sounds like a Jewish great-uncle.”

“I wasn’t—”

“I actually do have a Jewish great-uncle Milton. That’s whose apartment we’re staying in.”

“Who’s we?”

“You mean who do I live with in my great-uncle Milton’s apartment?”

He nods, and I just look at him. Like, who does he think I live with? My boyfriend? My twenty-eight-year-old smoldering-hot boyfriend who has big gaping holes in his earlobes and maybe a tongue piercing and a tattoo of my name on his pec? On both pecs?

“With my parents,” I say quickly. “My mom’s a lawyer, and her firm has an office here, so she came up at the end of April for this case she’s working on, and I totally would have come up then, but my mom was like, Nice try, Arthur, you have a month of school left. But it ended up being for the best, because I guess I thought New York was going to be one thing, and it’s really another thing, and now I’m kind of stuck here, and I miss my friends, and I miss my car, and I miss Waffle House.”

“In that order?”

“Well, mostly the car.” I grin. “We left it at my bubbe’s house in New Haven. She lives right by Yale, which is hopefully, hopefully my future school. Fingers crossed.” It’s like I can’t stop talking. “I guess you probably don’t need my life story.”

“I don’t mind.” Box Boy pauses, balancing the box on his hip. “Want to get on line?”

I nod, falling into step behind him. He shifts sideways to face me, but the box looms between us. He hasn’t stuck the shipping label on yet. It’s sitting on top of the package. I try to sneak a peek at the address, but his handwriting sucks, and I can’t read upside down.

He catches me looking. “Are you really nosy or something?” He’s watching me through narrowed eyes.

“Oh.” I swallow. “Kind of. Yeah.”

That makes him smile. “It’s not that interesting. It’s leftovers from a breakup.”

“Leftovers?”

“Books, gifts, Harry Potter wand. Everything I don’t want to look at anymore.”

“You don’t want to look at a Harry Potter wand?”

“Not when it’s from my ex-boyfriend.”

Ex-boyfriend.

Which means Box Boy dates guys.

And okay. Wow. This doesn’t happen to me. It just doesn’t. But maybe the universe works differently in New York.

Box Boy dates guys.

I’M A GUY.

“That’s really cool,” I say. Perfectly casual. But then he looks at me funny, and my hand flies to my mouth. “Not cool. God. No. Breakups aren’t cool. I’m just—I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“He’s not dead.”

“Oh, right. Yeah. I’m gonna . . .” I exhale, hand resting for a moment on the retractable line barrier.

Box Boy smiles tightly. “Right. So you’re one of those guys who gets weird around gay dudes.”

“What?” I yelp. “No. Not at all.”

“Yeah.” He rolls his eyes, glancing over my shoulder.

“I’m not,” I say quickly. “Listen. I’m gay.”

And the whole world stops. My tongue feels thick and heavy.

I guess I don’t say those words out loud all that often. I’m gay. My parents know, Ethan and Jessie know, and I kind of randomly told the summer associates at Mom’s firm. But I’m not a person who goes around announcing it at the post office.

Except apparently, I kind of am.