Page 33 of Another Chance
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Frowning, sitting on Eric’s couch, a blanket draped over him against the chill of the night and with Jupiter sitting on his legs, Theo stared down at his phone and tried to find it less ominous than he did.
No new messages.
Well, that was a good thing, wasn’t it? His dad wasn’t harassing him for updates about how the work was coming, and that was definitely a good thing. More than that, though, he hadn’t heard anything from Liam in a few days.
Again, that was a good thing, right? Theo had turned on his phone a few days ago, and he’d tapped out a reply to all of the texts Liam had sent him, increasingly hysterically demanding why he wasn’t replying, asking him where he was, and just generally behaving like a teenager about the whole thing.
It was then that Theo realized how badly he’d messed up. This thing with Liam, it meant something to Liam that Theo hadn’t known about. After all, hadn’t they broken up? A month ago?
But it was better to be sure about these things. Theo wasn’t in this to hurt anyone, but there was just flat out no chance of him and Liam ever being anything to each other. Friends, maybe, eventually, if Liam was willing, but that was all there could ever be.
So he’d sent him a text, telling him that it was over and reminding him about the breakup. Liam had replied exactly once since them, asking if there was someone else, but Theo hadn’t replied back.
He wasn’t going to lead the guy on. He’d now broken up with him twice, and he figured that was enough. Let Liam calm down. They could speak in a few months when Theo got back to New York.
Only the thing was, Theo wasn’t sure that he was going back to New York. He’d had a crazy idea, actually right after making it clear, he hoped, to Liam that it was really over. Theo’s dad wanted to sell the house, right? And he didn’t actually care about anything in it?
So why couldn’t Theo buy it? And live in it?
The air was better here. When he breathed, he felt a lot of the love of writing which had led him to where he was today come flooding back into him. It had become a grind, a chore, to write, but once, it had been the only thing that he could imagine doing.
He had a notebook where he scribbled down ideas for stories that came into his head. Before he had come here, there had been only a few ideas in the last year. Since coming here, he had dozens, and he was already working out outlines for a couple of them.
Creatively, it was a good call. And personally, well, it would suck to lose his group of friends back in New York, but he would have Eric. If Eric wanted him.
Which he supposed was a bigif.
Putting down his phone, he grabbed the notebook and opened it to the page where he’d been starting to jot down an outline, the one which was furthest along. It was a good thing, he told himself, that Liam had given up. Maybe he was even now at a bar, hitting on some other guy and maybe even having some luck getting him into bed.
Theo started to write then, enjoying the feeling of the smooth plastic of the pen under his fingertips, the whisper of the snowy paper under his hand. He wrote with a computer, of course, but he also just had a soft spot for using these implements. There was a simple joy, a decided pleasure, to it, and Theo lost himself in his work.
He liked this story, actually. It could really be something. Not every idea panned out, but this one, well, he thought it just might be his next bestseller. Prompted by the events of his own life recently, it was about a man who went home and found his family home in ruins, haunted by ghosts.
Not just ghosts, he realized. But the ghosts of nostalgia, both pulling him in and pushing him away at the same time. In that, though, he had to admit, he was different from his protagonist, because he didn’t feel pushed away at all.
All he wanted was to stay. In fact, he wanted it so badly that hedistrustedthe intensity of it, and pulled away from it, because, after all, there was still time to decide.
Jupiter raised his head and let out a curious little chirp, and Theo smiled as he pettedthe little head. He’d taken the cat to the vet, gotten his medical needs taken care of, got him neutered, and he supposed that whatever else he got out of this, he had definitely acquired a cat. He couldn’t even imagine his life without the endearing little creature anymore.
“What’s up?” he asked, and then he heard it. Jupiter’s ears, much sharper than his own, had picked it up first, but there was the sound of a footstep on the wooden patio, then the door opened.
“Teddy?” Eric called, and Theo couldn’t help the smile which tugged his lips or the softening of his heart. Poor Eric. He sounded utterly exhausted, and Theo knew that he’d been putting in long hours, but he didn’t think that was all of it. Apparently half of Eric’s crew was ill, and Theo was pretty sure that his lover was fighting it off, too.
Not that Eric would admit it, stubborn man.
“I’m in here,” Theo called, and clipped his pen onto the page he was covering with his scribbles, using it as a sort of bookmark. With that done, he closed the cover of the notebook and looked up just as Eric came in.
Oh. Yes. The moment that Theo saw Eric, he knew that his guess had been right. The poor man was pale under the golden tan of working outdoors, and his shoulders were slumped, his eyes dull and exhausted.
“Eric.” Theo was instantly concerned, and he rose to his feet and paced across the wooden floors, wrapping a solicitous arm around the older man’s waist, trying to encourage him to lean on him. “Here. Come sit down.”
Eric didn’t even fight him. He didn’t even make a comment, not one, about being fine. He just let Theo lead him to the couch, and that worried Theo even more. For Eric to allow himself to be cared for, something had to be pretty wrong.
Theo sat back down, and he spread the blanket around both of them. He wrapped his arms around Eric and encouraged the other man to rest his head down on Theo’s chest, which Eric did with a soft sigh which sounded to Theo to be one of relief.
“Jesus, Eric,” Theo commented, his fingers tracing over Eric’s cheek. “You’re burning up.”
