Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 8

the office window. Hinata pulled her back, laughing gently.
    "Caroline, Thomas will be upset with me if he is required to halt his classes until we can replace his two-way mirror. And if any of the students are injured by the flying shards of glass when you fall through, he will never forgive me." Caroline huffed at him as she stepped back, twin spots of color blooming on her cheeks. He reached up slightly, patting her shoulder. "I can understand the draw though. He really is quite… something, isn't he?"
    Caroline nodded. They both turned back to the window, watching the tall blond boy moving cautiously among his much smaller classmates.
    "It's almost like—" Caroline's voice caught on something. Hinata supposed her throat to be stuffed full with as much wonder as his was.
    "Yes, it is. He looks like a talented professional dancer coming back after an injury which should have kept him from ever dancing again. He moves like the branches of a willow in a steady wind, just as though his muscles have only to remember . It—" Hinata ended on a long exhale, closing his eyes. A spasm shook his heart and lungs. He forced his eyes back open, tracing the outline of Peter's extended arm against the glass. For half a heartbeat the other boy inclined his body toward the mirror the two friends stood behind, and the startling blue of his eyes seemed to reach through the thin barrier of glass and silver glaze. Hinata's breath stopped entirely as the heated touch of those blue orbs grazed the edges of his beating heart. He shuddered where he stood, his vision narrowing to include only the other boy. Only when the pain in his chest became unbearable did he remember to breathe, but before he finished drawing his next breath to speak the words pushing upwards from someplace deep in his soul, Caroline finished his statement.
    "—it's beautiful." Caroline turned to him then, her eyes filling with unshed tears. "Oh, Hinata. I'm so sorry. You just can't. Your mother—"
    Hinata nodded grimly. "She means well."
    Caroline put her arm around his waist, hugging his slighter form close. "I know. She just loves you crookedly, that's all."
    Hinata shivered, a coldness descending to the marrow of his bones. Yes. That summed his mother up perfectly. She only loved along a bitterly crooked path.
    "Hai. We will not come again, Caroline. I... I want someone else to see. He is like a beautiful deer. Don't laugh. Not like the does. He's like one of the fierce males, with their huge antlers and unearthly grace." Caroline didn't speak, only hugging him tighter, and reaching up to wipe at his cheeks. They waited together, unspeaking, until the class was over. When Peter left the class, Hinata led Caroline from the office. He shook Thomas's hand, and assured his friend of the funding he would need for the charity performances in December. Hinata did not promise to dance for Thomas again. His heart hurt too much to dance in this place, and Hinata knew the space would always echo with lost possibilities for him. When he shut the door to the studio behind him, he did so with a conscious finality.
    CHAPTER 4
    ~ The Following Fall ~ Peter's First Day at College
    Peter Jenkins dropped one bag on the empty bed in his dorm room, grinning from ear to ear. He turned to the video recorder his pa held up, laughing at the face the old man made. "Tater, you an' Rufus oughta come out ta visit me when you can. Once I get through with my degree, I promise y'all can come live with me whilst you get you an education too. Cross my heart, cuz. Cross my heart." Peter stopped there, as his voice was starting to get froggy, and he didn't fancy the ribbing he'd get from either of the other two boys. They loved him, sure, but sure as Gram's nanny goat gave the best milk in the holler, they'd never let him live it down if he got choked and teary.
    He slung his other bag up on the bed, and then very carefully set his brand new laptop computer on the empty desk. His pa gestured to the other bunk. "I wonder where your room-mate done got to? Yer ma and I was hoping ta meet him."
    Peter shrugged. "I dunno, Pa. I reckon he's around somewhere—"
    Right then the door opened up, a tall black boy with long hair like Bob Marley tumbling through as he threw a laughing retort to someone in the hallway. "Ah, fuck you Peterson, we all know you want to suck my—" He stopped speaking abruptly, looking like he wished he could suck the words he'd already spoken right back down his throat.
    "Oh,