Page 6 of The One Decent Thing

“I got —” Sebastian coughed, cleared his throat, and tried again. “I got you the hot chocolate. Even though it seems like maybe it’s too hot for hot chocolate? I mean, the weather, not the drink. That’s hot too, though. Oh — oh,dammit. I sound like a moron, right?”

He sounded like the nervous, freaked-out kid he was, and it struck me — maybe a little late, because I was the moron — how I must look to him. To the cashier at the gas station, I was just another rough-around-the-edges asshole with a nicotine habit. To Sebastian, I had to look like someone you’d walk three blocks out of your way to avoid after dark.

Big. And shabby. And scruffy. Dry skin and dull eyes, stained and threadbare old clothes, and hair ruthlessly buzzed. I looked like a thug.

In the eyes of most people, I was a thug.

“I haven’t had real hot chocolate in years,” I said softly, trying to make Sebastian feel better — and then cursed myself as Sebastian’s face crumpled with guilt.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I really didn’t —”

“I meant thank you, I can’t wait to drink it,” I said, a little too loudly in the effort to cut Sebastian off before he apologized one more fucking time. A woman in yoga pants and a tight tank top was getting out of her car a few spaces down. Her head whipped around as I spoke, her mouth dropped open, and she scurried into the Starbucks, beeping her car locked three times as she went. I stared at her perfectly round ass and tiny waist, trying not to, but — fuuuuck, she was the first attractive woman I’d seen in person in years.

When I tore my eyes away as she disappeared through the doors, Sebastian was staring at me, his cheeks red. “You don’t have to humor me.”

I blinked. “What?” God, that chick’s ass. What had we been…oh. Shame swamped me. Sebastian was having a breakdown over hot chocolate, and I couldn’t get my tongue back in my mouth long enough to focus on not being a dick. “I’m not. Really. It sounds amazing. We should get going, though. I’ll drink it in the car. If that’s okay with you?”

I dropped my cigarette on the pavement and crushed it with my heel. We did need to get going, sooner rather than later. Maybe the guys in the gas station hadn’t given a crap about whether I was a creep or not, but that woman had. If she called the police, or even complained to the Starbucks staff, I was fucked. I’d served my whole term and was nominally a free man, and not on supervisory release — but it still wouldn’t go well for me if someone complained about me. Anxiety prickled under my skin.

“Um, yes? They have lids. Is there some reason not to drink them in the car?”

My chest clenched.Because I haven’t been allowed to do anything anywhere for years. Because making my own choices makes no sense to me anymore. Because I’m used to asking permission to take a piss.“Just making sure.”

Sebastian gave me a weird look, eyebrows raised, but he grabbed his cup and got in the car, leaving mine on the hood. I picked it up and followed suit. The smell of rich chocolate, and real milk, nearly had me groaning. It took all my self-control to wait until I was back in the car, seatbelt fastened, to take a sip.

Then I really did groan aloud as it hit my tongue. Oh holy fuck, it had whipped cream on it. Whipped cream! And chocolate syrup drizzled on top of that. I licked my lips, took another drink, and felt my eyes roll back in my head.

Sebastian made a strangled sound and I glanced at him sidelong. He’d turned bright red and was staring straight out the windshield. Okay then. Maybe he was one of those people who had a problem with eating noises, like an aunt of mine had always gone ballistic when anyone slurped their soup. Fuck. Was I going to get on his nerves before we’d even made it back on the freeway? I tried to sink down in my seat a little, making myself small enough not to look like a threat or an annoyance. That would be an impossible task, but the need to get as far away from the prison as I could was like an itch I couldn’t scratch, and I felt too hot and tight all over. I couldn’t lose my ride out of here now. Not when I was so close to getting away.

I drank my hot chocolate quietly after that, and when we got on the freeway and sped up to merge with traffic, putting my personal hell farther behind me with every second, I made sure my sigh of relief was silent.

Chapter Three

Sebastian

After fifty miles, I was starting to go a little crazy. First Aidan made those —noises. Like, I’d had sex that didn’t come close to eliciting sounds like the ones he made taking his first two sips of his cocoa. Aidan’s voice was sexy enough speaking, but actually moaning in pleasure? Christ on a cracker.

Which was a horrible, awful thing for me to notice, and an even more horrible, awful thing for me to be turned on by. He was totally straight, he used to torment me several times a week for two years, he’d just gotten out of prison — where, let’s keep in mind, I sent him — and he was probably having the first decent hot drink he’d gotten in four years. I was a gross, confused pervert, and it was gross.

And now he was sitting there in total stony silence, not moving, not even breathing out loud. He hadn’t been like that in high school. Aidan talked. Sometimes too much, and a lot of the time he was being a dick when he did, but he talked, and he moved and fidgeted, always bouncing something in his hand or tapping a pencil on a cafeteria table. Had he learned to be like this in prison? And if someone like him, tall and fit and intimidating-looking, had to be quiet and still like wary prey, what the hell was it like for everyone else? What would it be like for someone like me?

I shuddered. “You okay?” His voice came out of nowhere, and I nearly swerved into the next lane.

“Yeah.” I cleared my throat awkwardly and forced myself to keep my eyes on the road. Was he staring at me? Was he angry? How had he even noticed my tiny movement, when he’d been looking anywhere but at me? “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry.”

There was a long pause. “I’m going to have to make you put a dollar in a jar every time you apologize. Like a swear jar, you know?”

My brain shut down for a second. Was he making a joke? Should I laugh? Why the hell couldn’t I stop spinning like a hamster on a wheel and have an actualthought, not just a blur of questions I couldn’t answer?

“I probably have a jar at home somewhere.” Lame. I was so lame. Beating my head against the steering wheel was probably a bad idea, right? While I was driving at seventy miles an hour?

The silence after that was fraught. At long last, he said, “Is that where we’re going? I mean, you can drop me off…anywhere. I’d rather not go there. Carterville. You know.”

A fresh wave of guilt took me out at the knees. I hadn’t even bothered to tell him where I was driving, let alone ask him where he wanted to go. “I’m sor—” I glanced over to see a faint smile curling the corner of his mouth. “I guess that’s another dollar.”

“I’ve already lost count,” he admitted wryly. “But you stopped halfway through. That’s only fifty cents.”

I did laugh at that, a strangled little chuckle that probably made me sound like a crazy person. Had Aidan had a sense of humor in high school? Of course he had, but it had been exercised at my expense so often that I never got to appreciate it. He’d been such a dick. I hated myself for still hatinghima little bit, like the fact that he’d gone to prison because of me ought to have erased every feeling I had beforehand. It didn’t work like that, of course.

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