by M. A. Innes
That might work.
Taking a breath, I finished organizing the food I’d brought. It wasn’t anything like the steaks that were in the freezer or the fancy pasta in the pantry, but it was filling and cheap. The two main things I looked for when I went shopping.
When the food was put away, I picked up my duffel bags and headed toward the upstairs bedroom. It was a large open room with two queen beds. It looked more like it was supposed to be a playroom instead of a bedroom and it was never as warm as it was downstairs, but it would work. When I’d been little, the room had held two sets of bunk beds and I’d been able to invite friends up when we’d come to stay.
The first time I’d come back to the cabin after everything had happened, seeing those bunk beds gone had been gut-wrenching. Something about that simple change felt like my childhood had been ripped from me.
Yeah, I knew I fell toward the overly dramatic end of the spectrum. Sometimes keeping it in check was like a full-time job. But grown-up men who were living on their own and paying off mountains of legal debt didn’t get to pout about beds being replaced.
Tossing my bags on the floor, I went over and stretched out, utterly exhausted.
I hated driving in the snow.
I was pretty sure that had been the reason my father had finally agreed to let me have December and January as my time at the cabin. The damned roads could be nearly impassable. Every time I drove up it was a white-knuckled affair with my heart beating a thousand times a second.
But I’d made it.
Every weekend during my time, I parked my ass up at the cabin. It might only be mine a small portion of the year, but it was mine. Letting my eyes close, I forced my muscles to relax and started focusing on my breathing, making sure it was steady and deep. It was a trick I’d learned as a kid. If all I thought about was taking air in and out, everything else would fade away.
Now I let the same trick relax me into sleep. It was all just too much and I wanted to forget about everything for a while. I just needed a few minutes to escape from the manipulation of my father, from the fantasy man downstairs who had no idea how much he’d meant to me as a kid, and from the constant money problems and stress.
As the darkness pulled me under, I surrendered completely.
****
I woke up surprisingly warm.
Had I remembered to grab a blanket before I’d fallen asleep? I didn’t think so, but I didn’t even have to open my eyes to feel the soft weight of a blanket stretched over me. I should have woken up freezing my ass off, but instead, it was perfect.
Forest.
I wasn’t even going to speculate why he’d come upstairs. My brain could turn anything boring into something dirty and I wasn’t going to jerk off to a fantasy of Forest when he was downstairs. That would be weird, right?
But I gave in and savored the feeling for a few more minutes. He’d never get it, but that small act of kindness he probably saw as something inconsequential was more meaningful than I wanted to admit.
Refusing to give in to the fantasy, I forced my eyes open and squirmed under the heavy blanket, trying to find my phone.
Nothing.
Had I left it downstairs?
Was it still in the car?
Sighing, I sat up and stretched, pushing the blanket down to the end of the bed. This room had never been the warmest, but with Forest downstairs, I needed the space from him. The only other bedroom was right beside the master and I didn’t need to hear every time he got in the shower or started to get ready for bed.
My fantasy life couldn’t take that temptation.
I was well aware of my weaknesses and did my best not to make things harder on myself.
Psyching myself up, I pushed out my worries and the fantasies that were always in the back of my head and took a deep breath. I could do this. As long as I could keep things professional and maintain some distance, I’d be fine.
A few days would go faster than I thought and then he’d leave. Nothing in his behavior said he was lying about finding a new place. He’d always been trustworthy before, so I wasn’t going to assume he’d lie now.
I wasn’t going to turn into some paranoid monster who always saw the worst in people.
Taking another long breath, I let it out slowly and closed my eyes for several seconds before I refused to give in any longer. I was a self-sufficient adult who made their own decisions. I didn’t have to explain anything to anyone.
There was no reason we couldn’t just ignore each other like a lot of roommates did. Hell, one of the women I worked with hadn’t seen her roommate in days and the only way she knew the woman was alive was because more dishes kept piling up in the sink.
It wasn’t going to be that easy here, but I had books and things to keep me occupied. As long as he tried to stay out of my way, it would be fine. Distance would be the key.
But that was going to be harder than I thought.
Evidently we weren’t on the same page because as I went downstairs and through the living room to look for my phone, he was on the couch. It wouldn’t have been a big deal, but the minute I walked into the room he set his book down and looked up expectantly.
Shit.
If he was a client at the insurance company where I worked, I’d know what to do. But he was standing in no-man's-land. He’d never been my friend, but he wasn’t an enemy. He’d gotten screwed over too in all this.
Deciding that doing nothing was better than starting a conversation, I just nodded and headed into the kitchen. I clearly wasn’t brisk enough since he got up to follow me. Was he blind to my lack of response or did I need better signals?
Ignore and evade were still the best options, so I kept quiet as I looked for my phone. Finding it didn’t help any. He’d plugged it in for me.
“It fell out of your pocket earlier. When I picked it up, I realized it was dying.” Forest’s voice was impossible to ignore.
Turning, I forced my face to stay neutral. I’d had years of practice, so the mask fell into place like a second skin. “Thanks.”
For some reason, he pushed for more conversation.
“I hope I didn’t invade your privacy when I covered you up. I called up about the phone, but you didn’t hear me. When I saw you sleeping, I realized how chilly it was upstairs.” He shrugged. “Too many years taking care of people, I guess. I couldn’t walk away.”
Was he bored or just admitting he had no boundaries?
Either would be bad because I didn’t need to be constantly tripping over him. “I appreciate it. Must have been colder than I thought.”
Brushing off the possibly creepy behavior, depending on how someone looked at it, I headed over to check the phone. Fifty percent, and I’d slept a hell of a lot longer than I’d expected. Since it was now a lot closer to dinner than the lunch I’d never gotten around to eating, I walked over to the pantry and grabbed some pasta.
Spaghetti wasn’t the most creative meal, but it was cheap and didn’t look cheap. Unlike mac and cheese. For some reason dressing up pasta with cheese sauce made you look poor, but putting a bit of tomatoes on spaghetti made you look functional.
They were both meals I could eat for days, but I’d learned the hard way that there were only so many days in a row I could bring in mac and cheese before someone would question how my life was going.
“I was going to make spaghetti carbonara for dinner. There’s plenty if you want some?” There was no judgment in his voice, and I wasn’t even sure he cared what I was eating. Was he being polite or silently judging?
Knowing he was my father’s friend, I wanted to immediately say judging, but this was Forest…
“I’m good, but thanks.” Neither of us needed to give the impression we were friends.
If I relented and let him stay, or if he could even tell the asshole that I’d been nice, it would be a sign of weakness. Besides, I paid my portion of the insurance and property taxes and I shouldn’t have to share.
Right?
&nb
sp; The kid I’d used to be who was always lurking in the back of my head pointed out I was an asshole and I should share, but he was the one who’d gotten us kicked out, so I just shoved him back in the corner. Eventually, me and a therapist were going to have fun unpacking my head, but that had to wait until I could afford to do more than just the basics.
Hell, just saving up to take my two weeks at the cabin had taken months. I wasn’t going to give that up just so someone could tell me what I already knew.
Forest nodded and seemed to take my refusal well because he smiled and headed over to the coffee maker while I started making dinner. I’d have preferred if he’d gone back to his spot on the couch, but evidently, that was too much to ask because after he poured his cup, he sat down at the table.
We were going to chat.
Lovely.
“I’m sorry to hear that things went badly with your family.” Forest paused. I had a feeling I was supposed to say something, but filling up the pot with water gave me an excuse not to look at him.
Unfortunately, that just made him keep going.
“Your father always seemed…rigid with some ideas, but I would never have thought he’d kick you out.” For the moment, Forest seemed content to dance around the subject of my sexuality. I appreciated it but that didn’t make it any easier to talk to him.
“Like you said, he has rigid ideas about some things.” Having a pervert for a son was one of those things.
“Are you doing okay?” There was another slight pause before he decided to just keep going. “I wish I’d have been there to help when everything happened, but are you doing okay now? Is there anything—”
I had to jump in before his questions got any more personal. “I’m fine. I’ve got a good job and a good apartment. Things are going fine.”
That was technically true.
I wasn’t living out of my car anymore and I had a steady job that would one day lead to more instead of the three part-time jobs I’d initially had. I’d started paying off debt and had even upped my grocery budget recently. Things weren’t perfect, but they weren’t as bad as they had been.
Moving the pot over to the stove, I fought the urge to look over at him and see what he was doing. The old Forest would have taken that as an opening to talk, and I was pretty sure the new Forest wasn’t that different.
Which was frustrating in a way.
The old Forest saw me as a kid who was so painfully shy he couldn’t function in groups. I didn’t want Forest thinking about me at all, but if he did, I didn’t want him to see the past every time he looked at me. Not that I wanted him thinking about me to begin with. That wasn’t the goal. But if…
Fuck.
I was pathetic.
Watching the water, I fervently hoped that the old adage about a watched pot not boiling wasn’t true because I didn’t have anywhere else to look. It felt like the polite interrogation couldn’t get more awkward.
I was wrong.
“You know, if there’s ever anything you need to talk about, I’m here for you. I know how hard it can be to grow up gay.” He was so fucking polite it was frustrating.
But the understanding tone in his voice made it really clear that in his eyes, I was still the same weird kid who he’d needed to protect and coax out of his shell. In all the daydreams and fantasies I’d had about what life would be like when I met him again as an adult, this wasn’t it.
Fate seemed to have a fucked-up sense of humor when it came to my life.
Chapter 3
Forest
The past couple of days hadn’t gone as well as I’d hoped—but he hadn’t thrown anything at me or lost his mind again, so it hadn’t gone that bad. He’d just become a master at avoiding me. Even eating had become a rushed affair. Whenever possible, he just took his food upstairs.
It was…disheartening.
I wanted him to know I was there for him and that he didn’t have to go through things alone. My parents hadn’t cared one way or the other when I’d come out, so I didn’t have any firsthand experience with his situation, but I’d heard the horror stories about what could happen from friends.
Was he really doing okay?
His words said yes, but everything else said he was going through a rough time. When I’d gone upstairs the other day to tell him about his phone, he’d looked utterly exhausted. The bone-weary kind where it ate at your soul. I’d seen that look on faces around the world for many different reasons, but it never got easier to ignore.
But there was part of me that kept pointing out I didn’t have to ignore it this time. Joe wasn’t some stranger in a foreign land who just needed a doctor. I’d watched him grow up. That had to give me some kind of foot in the door to meddle and make sure he was all right.
Didn’t it?
I wasn’t going to pretend to be his father because that was a rabbit hole I wasn’t going to attempt to navigate, but I could be a friend if he’d let me. Unfortunately, I had a feeling that wasn’t going to be an easy task.
But as I watched the snow continue to lightly fall out the living room window, I realized since neither of us were going anywhere for at least a few more days, I might as well try. Worst-case scenario, he’d yell at me again. But since he’d calmed down significantly from the first outburst, I had a feeling that wasn’t likely. He seemed to be the kind of man who’d rather avoid confrontation than fight.
I could use that to my advantage.
I wasn’t going to worry about how that sounded. Anyone who got kicked out of the house for perversions—whatever the hell that meant—needed someone to talk to.
Whether they liked it or not.
As I attempted to read an article on my phone, I tried to picture the times I’d interacted with Joe’s father on a personal level. There weren’t many. Even the evenings I’d gone over to their house to have dinner had always been work related or his way of brownnosing when I’d gotten the promotion he’d wanted.
There might have also been a bit of bragging thrown in. He’d liked pointing out his nice house and perfect family a bit too often for it to be genuine.
It was cute considering that had never been my image of how my family would look. But I’d just hidden my amusement and enjoyed dinner. Joe’s mother was an accomplished cook and Joe was always so much fun to drag out of his shell that it made the evenings pass a lot faster.
Nothing in my memories stood out as homophobic or even like he’d cared. Yes, sometimes people reacted differently when it was their kid, and I could easily see him reacting poorly to anything he thought would make their family look bad.
He was just that egotistical.
I wondered what it said about me that he was one of the people I’d thought to get in touch with when I’d come back stateside. I clearly needed to expand my pool of acquaintances in the medical community…outside of that wouldn’t hurt, either. But that was another can of worms I wasn’t ready to poke at yet.
Future first, then everything else.
Friends and dating and kink would happen in their own time, even if I had to use a matchmaking service like Valentine’s Inc, but I had to decide where I was going with my life first. Too many options were better than none at all, but it didn’t make it any easier. Which was why I’d decided that hiding out in the mountains for a few weeks sounded like the perfect idea.
The next time perfection landed in my lap, I was going to do my best to remember to second-guess it. I was going to check out every tooth in that gift horse’s mouth.
But first I had to get through the next few days and figure out what to do when I left the cabin.
I wasn’t ready to sign a lease anywhere, even something that was only for a few months. But I’d already looked at short-term rentals and those were either ridiculously expensive for what they were offering or were just renting out a room in someone’s house.
I had no desire to live with Edna and her ten cats or George and his tuba, so that was out.
If there were normal people re
nting rooms, I hadn’t met them yet.
There were all kinds of stories online about how renters had ended up in various sexy situations, but I was ready to chalk those up to urban legends. In all my years of traveling, I’d never ended up with an attractive neighbor or in a crazy situation.
Until now.
Being stranded with a sexy young guy who clearly had secrets? That was the makings of a hot porn or steamy romance novel.
Not that I was thinking of Joe that way.
He might not be a kid anymore, but as a family friend, that still put him in the off-limits category.
Right?
The sound of him pacing upstairs had me searching for how to handle the situation. Every time we passed by each other, his face was blank. It was like there was a wall between us. But the way his pulse would race and the way he paced upstairs said he wasn’t as calm as he projected.
What was making him so worked up?
My being at the cabin had thrown him and I could understand that. But as soon as he’d realized I didn’t know anything and that I wouldn’t hold his sexuality against him, that should’ve changed. The anger had faded, but it was like we were strangers.
Why?
My mind kept going back to what he’d said…perversions.
The only reason he’d said anything about it was because he’d been convinced I’d already known and would berate him for it too…but what was it?
The more I thought about it, the more confident I became that while his father would have been frustrated, being gay wouldn’t have been enough to kick him out over. At the very least, it would have made him look bad if it’d ever come out.
If he was going to take that step it needed to be over something he could claim the moral high ground on, even if he was wrong. The circle he ran in wasn’t especially religious, but it was pretentious. He couldn’t claim he thought Joe was going to hell, but something else that was dirty or weird…yeah, that could keep him from going under if it came out.
But what had he found out?
Joe had never been the type to open up. I remembered one time where his mother made an offhand comment that he liked his privacy so much she had a hard time pinning down his favorite foods. That kind of kid wouldn’t have shared a kink or weird fantasy with his parents.
