Page 20 of The One Decent Thing

Well, he’d said we shouldn’t argue about money, so maybe I needed to let it go. No point in using it for relaxation if it stressed me out to do it, right?

The front door slammed, and then a minute later Sebastian opened the back door and stepped out on the patio. He looked wrecked; he’d had a midterm that afternoon, and he’d been studying twenty-four-seven for days, with books and papers spread out all over the dining table full of equations and shit that I couldn’t even begin to understand. The purple shadows under his eyes had gotten deeper and deeper as the week went on, and right now he looked like he’d been punched in the face a couple of times.

But he still smiled a little as his gaze passed over the flower pots. My breath caught, and I choked on a lungful of smoke, coughing and hacking all over the place. Eyes watering, I finally looked up — and Sebastian was smiling atme, his blue eyes bright and warm even with the purple bags under them.

“You really ought to quit,” he said. “Like, since you sound like you’re about to lose a lung and all.”

“I know,” I rasped, glad I’d just been coughing to give me a reason for sounding like that.

What was wrong with me? I couldn’t stop looking at him. He wasn’t dressed up, or even dressed particularly weird, although today he was wearing a threadbare t-shirt with the Periodic Table of Comic Book Characters on it — which passed for normal in Sebastian Land. His hair was all messy, sticking up in rumpled dark-blond waves, and he even had a little bit of stubble on his chin and cheeks, which meant he hadn’t done anything about it for days and days. He hardly grew any facial hair at all, which I kind of envied. My five o’clock shadow came in around nine in the morning.

Nothing there to stare at; he was just another scruffy college kid. Fuck, his eyes were so blue, and when he smiled it made me want to do more of whatever it took to keep that look on his face.

Sebastian shrugged. “Well, I’m not going to nag you. I’m too tired. That midterm was so brutal! Like, we’d only covered half of it in class. I mean, I think? It’s lucky I studied as much as I did, because I managed to finish, but there was this one guy behind me and I think he was crying…” Sebastian kept talking, something about the girl a few seats down from him who got up and left in the middle of the test, and the TA using binoculars to watch the people in the back, which sounded freaky and creepy as hell, but I didn’t really listen. I smoked another, sitting down with my elbows resting on my knees while Sebastian paced around the patio and chattered, and I watched his hands waving and smiled to myself.

“…didn’t want to order before I got home in case you wanted something else, so what do you think?”

Fuck, I had no idea what he’d asked me, except that it was probably about dinner. The answer was easy either way, though. “Whatever you want, Sebastian. I’m happy with whatever.”I’m happy with whatever makes you happy.

I got up abruptly and tossed my cigarette butt in the ashtray. That train of thought needed to be derailed before it could really get going. I didn’t have any claim on him, and pretending like I was going to be able to stick around after I’d gotten on my feet wasn’t going to do me any good, or him either.

“I actually want pizza again,” he said sheepishly. “I know we eat a lot of pizza. Do you get sick of pizza? I think there’s something wrong with me, because I never do, so I’m sorr—”

I’d been careful not to touch him since I’d officially moved in. The day he’d picked me up had been way more than enough of that, both for Sebastian’s sense of safety and for my own peace of mind. I’d been so touch-starved in the last four years — starved for anything non-violent, anyway — that I had to keep my distance or I’d get way more touchy-feely than either of us would actually want.

So I’d stayed a careful couple of feet away and avoided casual contact. I was so tired of his apologies, though, and more tired of him always feeling like he had something to apologizefor. Hadn’t anyone ever told him he was fine the way he was — better than fine?

Without thinking about it, I took a quick step forward and set my thumb against his mouth to shut him up. The pad of it sank into the plushness of his lips, and they felt like silk against my work-roughened skin. Since I’d cut him off mid-word, his lips were parted, and the tip of his tongue flickered against my thumb as he stuttered to a stop.

I nearly choked, and every nerve in my body sparked at once. Touching him, touching anyone, was one thing. But that wasn’t just a touch, it was a fuckingtease, a reminder of everything I’d been missing for an endless stretch of years. Soft and wet and delicate and sweet, it felt like the last time a girl had sucked me off, the last time I’d tasted someone else, the last time I’d sunk into a kiss and gotten hard and —

I stumbled back, jerking my hand away from him. His eyes had gone so big and wide he looked like that anime guy again — and then his tongue darted out and licked those cushiony lips,right where my thumb had been.

My cock went half-hard in half a second. Didn’t gay guys give amazing fucking head? I’d heard that somewhere, maybe from Kermit. Fuck, fuck no, that was a horrible thought, and I was a worthless excuse for a man to be thinking about Sebastian that way, like a caricature and not a person. He deserved better. My cock gave a throb as Sebastian sucked in a breath, those shiny pink lips still open, just wide enough…

“Go ahead and — and order the pizza,” I said, the words running together almost incoherently. “I need to — I’m going to —” I shouldered past him, nearly tripping and falling on my face when I almost ran into him and had to dodge, and stumbled into the house, my face burning and my hands trembling.

“Aidan?” His plaintive voice carried through the door as I ran away like a creepy, disgusting coward.

I didn’t answer. I bolted for the bathroom and shut myself inside, locking the door and thumping my forehead against it, once, and then twice, hoping to shake some sense and some decency into my fucked-up brain.

Not that my brain was the problem here. No, that was lower down.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

I wasn’t gay. I knew that, although it wouldn’t have been a problem for me if I was — whatever, you liked what you liked. But I knew what I liked, and that was breasts and curves and long dark hair, usually. Not skinny hips and huge blue eyes and soft blond waves and long, long legs, and adick. What did you even do with a dick? I mean, I knew what I liked women to do with my dick, and I had a few tricks with my own too, but seriously? Another guy’s? No interest.

Mine still hadn’t gone soft, though. I thumped my head against the door again.

It didn’t help.

One thing was blindingly clear: I needed to go out and get laid, somehow, because until I did I was a ticking time bomb. If I was this fucked up over my gay roommate accidentally sort-of licking my thumb, I was about to lose it.

Not to mention, thinking about Sebastian like this, when he’d welcomed me into his home and showed me an incredible amount of trust and forgiveness, was just plain fuckingwrong. It was a violation, and after what he’d told me about that sack of shit Brody? What I suspected wasn’t the whole truth, either, since Sebastian was so damn easily embarrassed? Yeah. That was what Sebastian needed, another sleazy asshole making him uncomfortable, and in his own space, no less.

I turned on the tap in the sink and ran it for a while, creating some noise and an excuse to stay hidden away for a few minutes. Some water splashed on my face, and a little extra deodorant, and a quick piss, and that was all the stalling I could do.

The mirror showed me my face had gone back to normal. No flush, no pupil dilation, nothing out of the ordinary. I straightened my shoulders, made my face a blank mask, and stepped out. I was going to have dinner with my roommate, staying at least two feet from him at all times, and then I was going to go find a girl at a bar.

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