Page 2 of The One Decent Thing

Fuck, I’d really been a douchebag. But at least right now I knew how to handle him.

“A friend,” he said at last, sounding like the words were dragged out of him.

Score. He was talking. “A friend?” And then I waited again.

A few long seconds dragged by. Another couple of cars turned at the light and drove on past, and the rain picked up. It was pattering down now, splattering in little pools on the bench and turning the streetlight’s shine into a fuzzy glow. I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my horrible uniform button-down.

Finally, the words tumbled out of him. “I mean, I’ve never met him, but he seems really cool. Like, he was willing to come and pick me up, and he lives two hours away! And he’s gay. He knows what it’s like. He got kicked out of his house when he was my age.”

The alarms weren’t just ringing, now, they were screeching and flashing and practically jumping out at me and hitting me over the head.

I tried to sound calm. Make him figure it out for himself. But if he didn’t, I was going to hogtie him and stuff him in my trunk if I had to, and take him…maybe to a relative’s house, maybe back home if I couldn’t think of anything else. Home with jerk parents was still better than raped and beaten and dumped on the side of the road.

“So how long ago was that?”

Sebastian looked up sharply. “What does that matter?”

I took a deep breath. Time to be a little more direct. “Sebastian, how old is this guy?”

Maybe he was more aware of how fucked up this was than I’d thought, because his cheeks went bright red, and now he couldn’t look at me again. “He’s older, but he’s not, like,oldor anything.”

“Is he in college?” If he was under twenty-five, then there was a super slim chance he was just a dude with a crush on a younger guy and not a complete pervy predator.

Sebastian dropped the straps of his bag and crossed his arms over his chest, his shoulders folding in like he was trying to curl up into a fetal ball while he was standing. His face wasn’t getting any less red, and I could see how hard he was breathing by the shifting of his torso and the puffs visible in the chilly air.

“Is he out of college? Over thirty? Overforty?”

“He’s not over forty!”

I let that hang in the air for a minute in the ringing, defensive silence. “Not over forty. So, over thirty?” He pressed his lips together, like he hadn’t already said more than enough. “Dude. He’s twice your age. Like, he could be your father if he knocked someone up in high school.”

“It’s not what you think,” Sebastian muttered. He glared at me, tipping his chin up. I knew that look. He got that expression when he was about to try to fight back. “You just think the guy’s a creep because he’s gay. You’re a fucking homophobe!”

He threw that at me like it was a mic-drop argument-ender, and I almost laughed. I kept it down. Tact. I needed to have a little of it. “Imagine you were a girl —”

“What, because I’m gay? Because I weargirly pantsandmy name is a fruit?” He stopped, panting, fists on his hips, looking like some avenging gay angel.

I winced. Fuck, those sounded like direct quotes. From me. I took a deep breath. Yeah, I wanted to defend myself, or even apologize. But I couldn’t let him sidetrack me or we’d be here all night. “Because if a seventeen-year-old girl was standing here in the rain waiting for some guy twice her age she met online to come pick her up, what the fuck would you think was going on, Sebastian?”

That hit home. He flinched a little. “I can take care of myself. I’m not a girl.”

Inspiration struck. “Yeah? So you a misogynist now? Girls can’t take care of themselves, girls are weak, whatever?”

Sebastian gaped, his jaw dropping open. It snapped shut with a click I could hear over the soft whisper of rain and cars crossing at the intersection.

I decided it was now or never; I needed to press my advantage and get him the hell into my car before this asshole showed up and I had to get in a fight. I didn’t fight much, because I never saw the point. I also didn’t fight much because I was starting to fill out my six-foot-three-inch frame, and most guys didn’t want to go there.

Why I’d be willing to throw down on the side of the road for Sebastian — well, I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t need to think about it right then. It just was.

“Sebastian, any guy in his thirties who wants to pick up a high school kid is a creep. Gay, straight, whatever. Like, off the internet? I mean, it might be different if you were friends because you met in real life doing some hobby or something. Like if you got to know each other because you played in the same hockey league, or whatever.” He snorted, and I couldn’t help smiling. “Okay, maybe hockey was a bad example. Church. Putting on a play. Whatever.” I loved hockey. Sebastian wasn’t a jock, and that was putting it mildly. “If this dude is really your friend, he’ll be happy to meet for coffee later, right? He won’t mind if you change plans. If he only wants to get you alone at night, he’s probably not looking for someone to talk to.” A guy that old wanting to meet a high school kid for coffee sounded a little creepy, too, but it would sure as fuck be better than this.

Sebastian stared into space, chewing on his lower lip. Another car turned left, and this one slowed down and almost stopped just before the bus stop. When I turned to look, it sped off.

“I can’t go home, though,” he said finally, sounding defeated. “I mean, I don’t have anywhere to go if he doesn’t pick me up.”

“Why don’t you come to my place?” Fuck, what was I saying? But I kept going. “I don’t have a guest room or anything. I mean, it’s a studio. But I have a carpeted floor with a blanket. It’s not raining there. I think I have some hot chocolate. It’s not much, but I can put a sleeping bag —” I cut myself off, flustered as hell. Why did I suddenly sound like a real estate agent listing my crappy apartment’s amenities? He was lucky I was offering him a place to stay at all that wasn’t a wet bus stop or some pervert’s basement, right?

By the way Sebastian was smiling, he thought I sounded like a moron too. He hesitated, glancing along the street as if weighing his options, and then looked back at me. It turned out he was a lot nicer than I was, because he didn’t laugh at me; all he said was, “Thanks, Aidan.”

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