Shaking the Sugar Tree by Nick Wilgus Page B

go!”
    “You don’t feel anyone supports you?”
    “Maybe they don’t support me because I don’t deserve support.”
    “What kind of bullshit is that?”
    “You wouldn’t understand.”
    “Doesn’t sound like I want to.”
    “Well, there you go.”
    “I didn’t mean that. You’re a touchy bastard, aren’t you?”
    “I’m just tired.”
    “Tired of what?”
    I looked around at the faces feeding themselves in the cafeteria, faces full of suspicious, judgmental eyes.
    “Tired of what?” he pressed. “What is it, Wiley? Why can’t you just spit it out? You don’t like me? You want me to get lost? What?”
    “It has nothing to do with you,” I said.
    “It must have something to do with me or we wouldn’t be talking like this.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to get hold of myself. “I shouldn’t be talking about any of this. I don’t know what I’m talking about. There’s a reason why they don’t let me talk to adults.”
    “Are you finished now? Can I get a word in? Maybe two?”
    “Sure.”
    He looked at me for a long time without speaking.
    “Well…?” I prompted.
    He laughed.
    “Why are you laughing?”
    “Because you’re so cute.”
    “Cute?”
    “And hot. Really, really hot.”
    “Hot?”
    “Oh yeah.”
    “That’s… interesting.”
    “And you’re complicated,” he added. “I like that. Most guys would have been into my pants by now and gone about their business and I’d never see them again. I can’t seem to get you into my pants at all.”
    “What would I do if I was in your pants?”
    “You’d think of something.”
    I nodded because yeah, I certainly would.
    “But I don’t just want you to get into my pants,” he said. “I want you to get into my life.”
    I frowned, not sure what to make of that.
    Noah, who had finished eating, looked up.
    Can we go to G-a-m-e S-t-o-p?
    We can look, but we don’t have any money today, I signed, wiping more tomato sauce off his chin .
    Just one game?
    We’ll see.
    Can I play in the arcade?
    There was a game arcade in the corner of the cafeteria next to where we sat. He always spent some time there after we ate.
    “For just a little bit,” I said. I fished out four quarters and handed them to him.
    He quickly found himself an arcade game, careful to position himself so that I could see him.
    “You must think I’m really shallow,” Jackson said. “I’m not looking for somebody to go to nice restaurants with, although there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not looking for anybody at all, as far as that goes. I wasn’t looking, but I found you. And I want to know you. I want to know all about you. I want to be part of your life. You make me laugh. You make me horny. You make me think maybe I could spend my life with someone like you. You make me think about things like getting married and settling down and maybe being a father myself, or at least a stepfather. I had never thought about what it would be like to be a father, to have a kid around the house. But that’s the kind of stuff I want. Traditional, boring stuff like getting married and being true to one person the rest of my life. It’s not just sex, although I have to admit that I want you in the worst way and I’m getting a little tired of you playing hard to get.”
    “I’m not playing hard to get,” I said. “I’m just being honest.”
    “Well, so am I,” he said. “I want you.”
    “So how does the marrying thing work?” I asked.
    “I suppose if we dated for a while and decided that the chemistry was right, we might want to move on to the next level and make a commitment.”
    “That’s a scary word.”
    “I don’t think so. Not with the right person.”
    “And who would the right person be?”
    “He’d have to be sexy,” Jackson said straight off. “He’d have to have smoldering eyes and a smoldering sensuality about him.”
    “You like that word. Smoldering .”
    “It’s a good word. It doesn’t get much better than