Junkie(70)

He still wouldn’t look at me.

“You’ve been carrying this around a long time, huh?” I asked gently.

He nodded.

Trent wasn’t a very vocal guy. He was good at blending in with the background, with being the friend everyone loved, but no one knew quite as well as everyone else.

It didn’t matter to me. But now I knew why.

Judging just from where I found him tonight and everything that happened since, it made me even more in awe of him. Goddamn, he was so brave.

Brave even though he was clearly barely holding it together. Strong in the face of a hurricane. Solid in a crumbling world.

He still made you his top priority tonight.

I reached for him, pulled him close. My arms wrapped around his waist and clutched his back. Even though he was wider than me, I still hunched around him. I still tried to make him feel less alone.

His face pressed into the side of my neck when he hugged me back.

I held him tighter. My sister always said I gave the tightest hugs of anyone she ever knew.

I held as tight as I could in that moment. If he were crumbling, I would hold every single piece of him in place.

He lifted his head a fraction, just enough to rest his chin on my shoulder. “I thought I was going to lose you.”

It surprised me to realize as scared as I was about what was happening between Trent and me, it seemed I just might have been a little less afraid.

He’d been the one to admit how he felt first.

He’d been the one to kiss me.

He’d been the one to give the first blowjob.

But I was the one standing here holding him.

One of my hands slid up the back of his neck to palm his head.

Trent was a paradox, and not many people saw.

He was strong. But there was something impossibly vulnerable about him.

Something that made my heart swell.

I hadn’t been sure how I felt until this moment. Until I pulled him into my arms and the rightness clicked into place.

I loved him.

I loved him in a way I’d never loved anyone before.

“You’re not going to lose me, frat boy,” I vowed softly. “I’m not going anywhere.”





Trent

He laid his head in my lap.

I sat reclined against the back of the couch with my feet up on the table and he was horizontal with his legs propped up on the arm.

Neither one of us bothered with shirts, and we’d both changed into basketball shorts with loose material instead of putting on jeans again.

I was wearing a pair of Drew’s. They were black and had a white string on the inside of the waistband. He’d given me a T-shirt, too, and though I was sorely tempted to wear it just because it was his, I opted to stay bare chested.

Since my shirt was, ah, dirty, we threw our clothes in the wash, then came back downstairs where we settled in to watch the third Terminator movie. When he flopped down and put his head in my lap, a lump formed in my throat.

This guy was turning me into a marshmallow.

Moments like these with him had been so badly wanted that getting even just one now was sort of like some impossible wish being granted.

I wasn’t an emotional type of guy, but this meant something to me.

We talked about the movie as we watched and about the stunts on screen. But never far from the back of my thoughts was him and how good it felt to have him right here.

Partway through he rolled onto his side so his cheek pillowed against my thigh. He tucked his arms around him and pulled his knees in a little.

“You cold?”

“Yeah,”

“I’ll turn on the fire place.” I offered and pushed off the back of the sofa.

“No,” he protested and pushed me down. “Don’t get up.”

When I settled back down he sighed and pushed a little further into my lap. The blanket was within reach so I pulled it down over him making sure his chest and arms were covered. Without a word he lifted the top up and invited me in.

I draped my arm over his side, across his chest and he let go of the blanket so it could fall back in to place. His hand reached for mine and we loosely linked them together.

“You gonna stop avoiding me?” he asked.

I guess I deserved that. The excuses I kept sending via text were pretty weak. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I just… It’s been a long week.”

“Ain’t that the truth?”

“Everything going okay with Joey?” I asked, wondering how much I missed.

“You should give her a chance. She’s a really good driver. She’s actually taught me some stuff.”

“Well, now that I know you’re not sleeping with her, I like her a little more.”

He laughed, then said, “Gamble’s her father.”

“No shit?” I swore.

He nodded against my leg. “Yeah, it kind of works against her, though. That and being a girl and all.”