Page 31 of Sass in the Grass

Jovian thought it over and knew life would be so much easier if he went back to his old life. Still, that life had been terribly lonely. Ci and his mother being his only friends, and Ci only when she wasn’t with all her other friends or with a steady guy. When she had a steady guy, Jovian didn’t hear from her for weeks.

Maybe Alan, Mike and Kathy wouldn’t fit in with Ci’s choices for friends, and Jovian’s, but he weighed them to have more friends like Ci and knew there was little comparison. “Okay. Yeah, I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything.”

“No promises, just…trying.”

“Okay. Fine. But you’re not taking my makeup! I still want to look good while I’m…doing the growth thing or whatever you call it.”

After Alan went to Dixon, Dixon came over to Jovian and apologized, though his apology wasn’t given without a lot of growling and side-eyeing. “I know I got it wrong and misjudged, but you can’t blame me. That is something you’d do.”

“I don’t need to steal,” he said in his defense, even so, Dixon scowled at him.

“Maybe not usually, but get hungry for once in your privileged life, and you’d steal fast enough,” he said, then snapped his mouth shut and shook his head. “Listen, I’m sorry. That…was uncalled for.”

The tears could have thawed him from the chills. It was amazing, but even as Dixon was being mean to him, he still got chills just looking at the guy. “Not really. I guess I have that and more coming. I’m…sorry too.”

Dixon squatted down to better talk to him. “You are?”

“Yeah. I am. I know I’m not the nicest person, and I don’t take things seriously that I should, maybe. But…in my defense, I never had it hard like other people.”

“I think maybe you have, but you just choose to ignore it. You make an excuse for why people don’t like you and it makes you carry on like nothing happened, but deep in your guts, you are a wounded little boy.”

Dixon got up and left the area completely, but most of all, he left Jovian reeling about what was just said.

Did everyone know more about him than he knew about himself? It was getting old, and he was about to decide they were right in the first place, and he could just leave the second he got back to the main camp.

Still…as his body warmed from the chill Dixon always seemed to give him, he found that he wanted more than he’d had. Men ignoring him, never giving him more than a fuck, no one liking him except his mother and Ci.

That entire night, while he grew hungry, thirsty, and lonely, he stayed awake, fighting with himself. To stay, to go, to stay, to go. Get in his car with the clothes the camp hadn’t ruined, and drive himself back to his beautifully decorated apartment, and go back to the life he knew.

The life that was comfortable, and…lonely.

Even if they didn’t like him much, the men at Chaps were there, and they knew his name and they pretended to like him, even though Jovian knew it was a pretense. But if he left the camp early, he wouldn’t be welcome at Chaps. He wouldn’t be welcome anywhere, but then again, had he ever been?

Alan woke up early and Jovian turned over to see him stoking the fire. “You kept it going all night?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Well, great.” Alan looked over and then laughed. “Not that you couldn’t sleep, that the fire was going all night.”

“Oh. Yeah, um, I don’t know what to do, but I already know what you’re gonna tell me. I’m…I don’t want to go and yet I do. I’m not good with changes, and hard things, like this camp?”

“Hard? Hard because you don’t know how to start a campfire?”

“That’s one thing. I don’t know how to…be like you. To be like Mike and Kathy, or anyone, and to join in things that aren’t makeovers or shopping trips. I’m a shallow, disinterested asshole, okay? Even if I stayed, it doesn’t mean anyone will end up liking me, including you.”

“This is all true, Jovian, but if you were so sure, why would you be up all night, debating it with yourself?”

After opening his mouth to argue, he found he couldn’t. “I really hate that you know what’s in my head!”

“I know,” he said with a laugh. “Want to split my cookie?”

As much as his stomach argued with him at the thought that he’d better work on making amends, like some alcoholic in AA. He was officially going to join his own chapter of Brats Anonymous.

“How about save me half if I can’t forage us up some grub, or whatever these hillbillies call it.”

“Whatever, these…what?”

After a hard roll of his eyes, he got to his feet. “I can’t do it all at once! Give me a break!”

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