Page 16 of The One Decent Thing

It was a social platitude that I hoped would cover up how much, to my own surprise, I really needed to know. Were Sebastian and this dude fucking? If so, Sebastian wasn’t thrilled about it, and that was the opposite of cool. I could buy that he’d be embarrassed to be seen with someone like me, which would explain the look on his face when Brody appeared. But then why the reluctance to hug the guy? I had to know.

“Mutual friends,” Sebastian said, at the same time that Brody said, “We know each other pretty well,” with a smarmy smile that implied a lot more.

Clearly he was waiting for me to ask, or to get offended. Fuck no, I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. I risked a quick glance at Sebastian’s face, even though I wanted to keep staring Brody down. He’d gone bright red and didn’t look any happier. Was it me or this dude who was making Sebastian upset? If Sebastian wanted me to fuck off for a bit, I would, and go look at shoes or something. But if Brody’s insinuations were what was making him miserable, there was no way I was leaving them alone.

I went with my gut. Brody was justoff. My instincts had been honed over the past few years. “That’s nice. I’m Sebastian’s new roommate, so I guess we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other, since you’re so close. I’ll be around a lot.” And I held his eyes, hopefully making my meaning incredibly fucking clear: I would be keeping an eye out for Sebastian, and I wasn’t going anywhere.

Which was such bullshit, since I might be moving on anytime, as soon as Sebastian got over his guilt and got sick of me. But maybe it would make Brody keep his distance. I wasn’t sure why I was so convinced that he was bad news, especially when I was the one who was the worst possible news, on paper. But I didn’t really have to have a logical reason. Sebastian had gone from bubbly and enthusiastic to quiet and panicky when Brody showed up. That was enough.

I shifted a tiny bit closer to Sebastian, enough that his shoulder brushed my upper arm. Brody’s eyes flicked to Sebastian, and his lip curled just a little. “You’ll have to throw a party, Bastian. Let all your friends get to know your ‘new roommate.’” He didn’t actually make air quotes; he didn’t need to.

“Maybe,” Sebastian said. He sounded a little breathless. “You’ll, um, be the first to know?”

“We won’t keep you,” I put in. It was totally presumptuous to dismiss someone Sebastian knew like that, but this conversation was torture. Between wanting to punch douche-dude and wondering what the fuck was going on, not to mention the ceiling speakers spitting out some old crooning R&B song with the chorusI’ll make loooove to yoooou, I’d hit peak awkward. “We have a lot of ground to cover beforeSebastian,” I put a subtle emphasis on his full name, “needs to get to class.”

“Yeah, we’ll catch up soon,” Sebastian said quickly, relief evident in his tone and the slight shift in his posture I felt against my side. “For sure. Like, drinks with Chris maybe.”

Brody’s eyes narrowed. “You’re going to call me, right?”

Pushy asshole. “We’ve seriously got to run,” I said, before Sebastian could be pressured into giving that question a firm answer. “Later, man.” I turned to Sebastian, pointedly. “Can you pick one of the plaid ones? I think you’d better choose it.” Stepping to the side to let Sebastian past me to the clothes rack also, not so coincidentally, put me between Sebastian and Brody, with my back to the latter. The space between my shoulder blades felt all creepy crawly. It was only in my head, I knew. Brody wasn’t going to shiv me, at least not right here in the middle of Target’s men’s department. As Sebastian let himself be herded around the shirt display, there was an annoyed huff from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder to see Brody disappearing into the electronics section.

Sebastian had a hand on the same shirt we’d been looking at earlier, but he was staring into space and frowning, and he had lines between his eyebrows and at the corners of his mouth that I’d seen there the day before when he was starting to lose it. We needed to get the fuck out of there and go somewhere he felt a little more secure.

“Hey, dude, we can take off and do this later,” I whispered. “Let’s just grab a pack of the cheapest t-shirts, a pack of boxers, and a pair of jeans, so you don’t need to look at what I’m wearing anymore.” In the middle of going on and on about jeans washes a little while before, Sebastian had spilled his real opinion of my current clothes. Since he turned really pink and bit his lip right after, I’d guessed he’d meant to keep it to himself. It was kind of cute how worried he seemed to be about offending me. Right. Like I didn’t already know how gross the clothes were. “We can split right now and go get you some coffee.”

Sebastian grabbed the shirt and yanked it off the rack again. “No. We came here to get you what you need. So we’re getting it.”

After that, there was no more fooling around and no more long chatty digressions about patterns and fits and colors. Sebastian was a man on a mission. He tersely double-checked my sizes and then grabbed stuff and shoved it into my arms until I looked like a walking laundry pile.

Honestly? I was too scared of him in this mood to argue, even though we ended up staggering to the cash registers carrying three times as much as I’d intended to let him buy for me. Even the cashier skipped the small talk after a look at his tight-lipped glower.

Luckily we got out of there without seeing Brody again, but Sebastian screeched out of the parking spot before I could even get my seatbelt on.

“Dude?” I tried tentatively, when we were stopped at a red light a couple of minutes later. “You want to tell me what the fuck was going on back there?”

“Not really.” He sounded unsure, though, like he wanted to talk but didn’t know what to say. Or maybe like he was afraid of my reaction.

“I’m not gonna judge you, Sebastian. He’s kind of an asshole,” except that he was a total asshole, but I was trying to be tactful for once, go me, “but everyone has a shitty ex or two. It’s not like I’m going to be shocked if you slept with —”

“I didn’t sleep with him!” Sebastian jammed his foot on the gas and we shot through the intersection, with me grabbing onto the oh-shit handle above the window. I waited him out. After a couple of minutes, we pulled up to another red light. “We made out once, okay? But we were both drunk, and I kind of didn’t want to. Except that I did? Like, right then, I guess? But every time I see him, he acts like we’re really close and also like I led him on, which doesn’t even make any sense. I mean, it’s like, one or the other, right?”

The thought of Brody putting his hands and his mouth all over a drunk Sebastian had me grinding my teeth and clenching my fists. How fucking dare he? Sebastian didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d be into that type of hookup, and it didn’t sound like Sebastian was either close with Brodyorhad led him on. A drunken make-out session? Followed by trying to make Sebastian feel guilty about not wanting to fuck? That was Brody taking advantage of Sebastian being too nice and polite for his own good — and Brody wanting to keep doing it. Brody was obviously a total creep, but that wasn’t news to me. Five minutes with him leering at Sebastian and sneering at me had been enough to make that beyond clear.

Putting all of that into complicated words was more than I could handle, though, so I went for a summary. “Dude. He’s a bag of dicks.”

“Are you too hot? I’m too hot,” Sebastian said abruptly, and pressed the buttons to roll both of our windows down. It was an obvious deflection, since the temperature outside was just short of roasting. Car exhaust and the smell of sun-baked asphalt poured in, along with Katy Perry blaring from the car stopped next to us. Someone honked a few cars back, even though the light was still red.

Sebastian wanted to change the subject, but I wasn’t done. “Do you want me to beat the shit out of him?” I was really, really hoping he would say yes, even though that was probably a one-way ticket back to prison for me. I’d never seen a face that needed flattening more than Brody’s. He’d look so much better without a couple of those freaky plastic-looking teeth. “Because that’s not okay, you know that, right? Maybe you were both drunk when you hooked up, so whatever, but following you around and trying to get with you when you don’t want anything to do with him is fucked up, Sebastian. And gaslighting you into thinking it’s your fault somehow.”

“Could you be any more patronizing? Jesus!” Sebastian stomped the pedal again as the light turned green, and we rocketed through a left turn and got on the freeway to head back to his place.

I bit my tongue, hard. Sebastian was upset, and embarrassed, and taking it out on me. Maybe I had sounded patronizing, even though I hadn’t meant to. Either way, my bad for trying to push him to talk when it was none of my business.

Even though the voice in the back of my head was screaming at me that it was completely my business, becauseSebastianwas my business. I told the voice to shut up. We drove the rest of the way home in silence.

Chapter Nine

Sebastian

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