Page 19 of The One Decent Thing

“Yes,” he sighed. “Yes, I’ll stop fucking arguing.”

He turned back to the laptop and picked it up again, digging in his pocket and pulling out a lighter as he did. We were okay, and I felt as light as a bubble; we were okay, and Aidan was staying, and he wasn’t angry.

But there was one more thing. “Hey, Aidan?”

“Yeah?” He flumped back down on the chair, pulled a cigarette out of his pack, and stuck it between his lips, quirking an eyebrow at me as he lit it.

It had to be said. No matter how much it felt like pulling my guts out and letting him decide if he wanted to stomp on them, it had to be said. “I really love the flowers. I might actually start sitting out here so I can look at them. You know, if you don’t mind me hanging around in your office.”

Aidan ducked his head down, so all I could see was the dull red flush on his cheekbones and the tips of his ears. “It wasn’t anything,” he said gruffly. “Don’t you have a class this afternoon?”

“Yeah, I do.” My lips ached from smiling wider than I had in a long time. Aidan wasblushing. Stupid straight guys never knew how to take a compliment. “I’ll bring home some dinner. Not pizza, okay?”

Aidan nodded and mumbled something that sounded like thanks, and I headed back into the house, happier than I’d been in so long.

Why was I so happy? Well, I had a roommate. And that was awesome. Someone to hang out with, to share dinner with, maybe even to become friends with. I couldn’t make up for the past, but picking Aidan up from prison and giving him a place to live seemed like a decent start.

Put another way, I had a hot, straight roommate who carried home heavy bags full of rainbow flowers and planted them for me, and who I was starting to really, really like.

Oh, crap. I was in so much trouble.

Chapter Ten

Aidan

So I was Sebastian’s roommate, which was one of the weirdest things that had ever happened to me — even counting the time my cellmate drank too much pruno and thought he was a frog for six hours, hopping and ribbitting and all. Everyone called him Kermit after that.

When I’d been eighteen and laughing at Sebastian in the halls at school, the idea of living with him, not to mention eating his food and wearing clothes he’d bought me, wouldn’t have computed if someone had told me that was my future. And yet here I was sitting on his couch, using his laptop, and waiting for him to get home from school so we could figure out pizza versus pasta, the latter being the only thing I could cook. Sebastian couldn’t cook at all. I got the impression he’d had a series of housekeepers throughout his childhood, and that making cookies with mom and helping stir the sauce wasn’t a thing in the Peach household.

Not that it had been a thing in mine, either. My mom was always out at a bar, and my dad did his drinking at home where he could do it in his underwear. I’d learned to make spaghetti out of self-defense because I was growing and always hungry, and we didn’t have a housekeeper.

At my trial, I’d thought the undue influence thing the prosecution trotted out was such bullshit. They’d brought witnesses, kids Sebastian and I had gone to school with, to talk about how I picked on Sebastian all the time, stalked him basically, and had him programmed to do anything I told him to avoid getting bullied even more. That was how the prosecution got Sebastian’s video testimony thrown out: by claiming he was too afraid of me to testify honestly.

Bullshit, total fucking bullshit. And yet — the way Sebastian had behaved since he picked me up had me wondering. I didn’t think he was afraid of me anymore, but he seemed to have…an investment in me, somehow. Had that only started after the trial, after my conviction? Once he focused the full force of his anxiety disorder on what had happened to me because of him? Or was it something that had started before my arrest? I knew his parents and their fucking toadies had been full of it, but it was like they’d ended up being accidentally right, somehow.

It worried me. Not enough to call Sebastian on it, or leave, but enough that I watched him for signs that he’d taken me in and provided for me because he felt compelled to, and not simply because he thought it was the right thing to do.

Of course, there were arguments in the other column too, like how he played me like a violin every time it looked like he wasn’t going to get his way.

Shit, did he ever.Please don’t argue with me, it stresses me out? Jesus fucking Christ, he played me like an expert. After seeing him completely break down, there was almost nothing I wouldn’t do to avoid putting him in that space again, and the little bastard totally knew it, too.

Which made me think: Was Sebastian really the only one who might’ve already been a little weirdly invested before the trial? The night I picked him up at the bus stop, I would’ve done anything to keep him safe. Gotten in a fight, really and truly kidnapped him, whatever. In high school, I probablyhadpicked on him more than I did on other people, and it wasn’t because he was gay and weird. There was just something about the way he reacted that kept me coming back for more, even when I knew somewhere deep down I needed to back off. I never hit him, never hurt him — the one time I ever did physically fuck with someone, he was another big jock who deserved it for being an asshole. I mean, I messed with everyone as a hobby, because I was pissed off and bored and hated school, and I wanted to make everyone around me as miserable as I was. But this guy — Randy, that was his name, the douchebag — tripped one of the special-ed kids and then kicked his books across the hallway. He totally had it coming when I knocked him into a wall and broke his wrist.

Not that anyone in the courtroom saw it that way when Randy testified against me, the whiny fuck, but whatever. I still didn’t regret it.

I sat back on the couch and rubbed my eyes. I’d long since lost any hope of actually doing any real job-hunting that afternoon; I couldn’t focus on the words on the screen past the montage of crap from years ago revolving in my head over and over. Getting a job was a pressing worry, though. It’d been a week since Sebastian officially gave me a key, and all I’d gotten so far was three mornings of hauling bricks and masonry with a guy who had his own truck and needed an extra set of hands. That wasn’t nothing; cash in hand was great. But it wasn’t going to pay for even what I ate, let alone all the other stuff Sebastian kept buying for me: the clothes, and toiletries, and a prepaid cell phone he’d turned up with a few days ago.

That sat on the coffee table next to the laptop, about as useful as a paperweight made out of guilt. The only number in it was Sebastian’s.

Looking around at his tidy living room, with its bulging bookshelves, I had a sudden vision of what it would’ve been like if Randy had tripped Sebastian instead, laughing, sneering, while Sebastian toppled to the floor and cried out in pain.

I was halfway to the back door before the red mist cleared out of my vision, and out on the patio lighting a cigarette before my jaw unclenched.

Yeah, okay. Yeah. I was a little protective, and it hadn’t started last week. If Randy had hurt Sebastian, and not that poor kid with Down’s, I wouldn’t have just broken his wrist. I’d have fucking snapped his spine.

I took a few deep breaths, closed my eyes, and let the salty breeze starting to come in off the ocean cool me down a little. Indian summer had hit with a vengeance, and the days had been hot as hell, even here on the coast, but fog tended to come in overnight. A few wisps were starting to blot out the orange-pink glow of sunset visible through the trees behind Sebastian’s property.

Half my cigarette was gone when I heard Sebastian’s car pull up out front. I nearly put it out, to pretend I hadn’t been smoking right then, but it wasn’t like he wouldn’t notice anyway. He hadn’t said anything about it, and it didn’t seem like it bothered him at all, but I felt like such an asshole spending money on smokes when I wasn’t contributing to the household.

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