Page 5 of The One Decent Thing

I blinked back to reality. He was sitting perfectly still, simply waiting.

“Thinking. I’m sorry.”

“You need to stop apologizing. Already told you you’ve got nothing to be sorry about, except maybe being a stupid kid. I don’t blame you for that.” He frowned. “And if that’s why you’re here, then you’re still a stupid kid. Seriously, what the fuck, dude? You drove all the way out here to pick up a felon you never even liked. Someone who was a total prick to you in school. What if I was holding a grudge, huh? You think of that? That I could’ve fucked you up the second we were out of sight of the guards?”

“Of course I thought of that.” I’d thought about very little else while I was going through the obnoxious process of trying to track Aidan down on the many, many different state websites that made such information available to the public. I eventually got his records, and then checked and checked again until there was a release date posted. “But I guess I thought that if you wanted to hurt me, maybe I deserved it. I mean, you deserved the chance. I ruined your life. You helped me. You —” The memories came flooding back: Aidan letting us into his rathole of a studio apartment, obviously embarrassed but trying not to show it. Him getting out some blankets and making me a bed on the floor, offering me the shower and then remembering he was out of shampoo and getting even more embarrassed. And then feeding me what little he had to spare. My sinuses burned, and oh God, but I was about to cry. “You made me cocoa,” I choked out, and leaned my head against the steering wheel, turning my face away.

My shoulders shook with it; I could keep the sobs from bursting out, but the tension had to go somewhere. Huddled there in humiliated misery, I wondered if I could ever make it right. The guy had made me a cup of hot chocolate, the kind with the little marshmallows mixed in, and I’d destroyed his entire future.

“Look, don’t,” Aidan said. “Don’t?” He sounded almost panicked, and I nearly laughed. Jesus, he was such a straight guy. “Um, how about you pay me back for that, okay? I’m going to go get some cigarettes at that gas station on the corner. Get me a hot chocolate in the coffee shop? I’ll be right back.”

The car rocked as he got out, and then rocked again as he shut the door. I waited until I was sure he was out of sight before I sat up and wiped my eyes.

Hot chocolate. And then we’d figure it out from there.

Chapter Two

Aidan

I never smoked before I went to prison. Well, that’s not exactly true. I smoked pot, though not as much as everyone seemed to think I did. And I’d had a couple of drunken cigarettes that tasted like crap and turned off the girl I was trying to get with, so that was that.

That changed when I got inside. It wasn’t supposed to be allowed, but a lot of inmates smoked anyway. People kept giving me cigarettes in exchange for extra clean sheets — I put in my time doing laundry for a while. And so I’d sneak them when we were out in the yard. The guards all looked the other way if you didn’t set anything on fire.

I’d meant to quit when I got out, but right then I wasn’t sure what else I could possibly do that would make me calm down a little.

Because seeing Sebastian, the weird way him picking me up mirrored what had started this in the first place — I was freaked out. Freaked out was the world’s biggest understatement. Sometimes — most often on nights when the shouts of the other inmates, and the guards threatening to put them in solitary if they didn’t shut up, and the echoes, and the smell, and the claustrophobia, all had me nearly chewing my own arms off — I thought I should have left him. Driven away, and never given it another thought.

Some nights I’d believed it would have been worth it, at least for a few minutes. I’d hated myself for thinking that way then, and I hated myself more for it now.

He’d come to get me, even though he was scared shitless. Even though he wascrying. The kid had been trying to hide it, but the way he got all choked up and then hid his face was kind of a dead fucking giveaway.

Not that I blamed him. If I hadn’t learned pretty quick to keep my emotions to myself in there, I’d have been crying every night. I did cry the first night. My cellmate wasn’t a dick about it. He just grunted, put his pillow over his head, and ignored me. Some of the stories I’d heard about guys’ first nights inside weren’t so uneventful.

It was strange as hell walking across the gravel-strewn parking lot of the gas station, watching the weeds that grew through cracks in the pavement blowing in the wind, and hearing the ding of the chime over the door. Normal-world stuff, and every little piece of that world grated on my senses like I’d passed into a different dimension. I kept expecting someone to pop out and scream that I didn’t belong there, that they were calling 911, or just to point and stare and whisper. I was wearing ill-fitting baggy jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt with grungy old sneakers, clothes that the guards had pulled out of some ancient lost-and-found pile that they used for released inmates who didn’t have their own shit to wear. I looked bad. But I guess I didn’t scream ex-con, because I got my pack of cigarettes and book of matches and got out without anyone giving me a second look.

As I rounded the end of the hedge separating the gas station from the Starbucks, my heart was pounding. I lit up, took a long, deep drag, and closed my eyes.

Moment of truth. If Sebastian’s car was gone, that was that. I wouldn’t blame him. I’d wish him well, even, and be glad he’d figured out he was better off leaving all of this behind him.

The car was there, the reflection off the windshield too blinding to tell if he was in it or not. I let out all the smoke at once, a huge gray cloud that hung in the air in front of me. The car was there. Sebastian hadn’t abandoned me here. Once I saw that I let myself feel how relieved I was, how hollow being completely alone would have left me.

Poor kid. He didn’t know it, but right now he was my everything: my lifeline, my only friend, my only connection to the real world. I had to hide that; I had to play it a little bit cool. That was a metric fuck-ton of bullshit to put on one person who really didn’t owe me anything and hardly even knew me.

Not to mention, what he did know sucked ass.What a peach, are you peachy-keen? Where’s the rest of the fruit basket?I sucked down the last bit of my cigarette and lit another from the stub, getting lightheaded and welcoming that feeling of floating away from reality.

As I got the first few fresh drags into my lungs, Sebastian pushed open the door of the Starbucks and emerged blinking, holding a big paper cup in each hand.

I hadn’t really looked at him when I got in the car — I’d been too shell-shocked. But the kid looked good. Really good. He’d finally figured out how to make his hair do something other than hang in his face, he’d ditched the eye-achingly bright neon colors for something that looked a little more grown-up — I mean, yeah, he was wearing a purple Henley, but it fit right and didn’t make me want to put on sunglasses — and his jeans probably didn’t cut off his circulation.

Still tight, though. He was walking toward me, so I couldn’t get an idea of how tight they were over his ass.

Not that I wanted to. Jesus, what was wrong with me? I’d seen a lot of guys hooking up in prison, and I’d even gone there — once. I’d gotten off, with the guy from the cell next to mine on his knees and eager as hell for it, as eager as I was, I was pretty sure, but that was it. And it wasn’t really sex. Just a blow job, and just the once. It didn’t mean anything — not that being gay was a bad thing, but I’d never done anything with a guy before prison. Although right now, I’d probably fuck anything or anyone that held still long enough.

But I could keep it together, and I had to. Not going there, even in my own head.

Sebastian smiled as he got closer, a shaky little up-curve of his lips that nearly broke my heart. Fuck, he was probably only twenty-one, and he looked it. And I was twenty-three, but I felt old enough to be his grandpa.

He kept walking until he got to the front of the car, and he set the cups down on the hood. I smoked. We stood there awkwardly for long enough that another customer had time to come out of the Starbucks, stare at us curiously, and drive away.

---